For Immediate Release
December 2, 2008
WINNER ANNOUNCED
2008-2009 METCALF-ROOKE AWARD FOR SHORT FICTION
Emeryville – Biblioasis, along with judges John Metcalf and Leon Rooke, are pleased to announce the winner for the 2008-2009 Metcalf-Rooke Award for fiction. What Boys Like & Other Stories by Toronto author Amy Jones, was selected from more than 90 entries.
Originally from Halifax, Amy Jones is a graduate of the Optional Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at UBC. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in several Canadian publications, including The New Quarterly, Grain, Prairie Fire, Event, Room of One’s Own, The Antigonish Review, and 08: Best Canadian Stories. In 2006, she was the winner of the CBC Literary Award for Short Story in English. Amy currently lives in Toronto.
In addition to the $1,500.00 cash prize from Steven Temple Books, Jones will also be given
- a publishing contract with Biblioasis
- a book tour
- a profile in the New Quarterly
- a leather-bound copy of their winning book
- an appearance at the Ottawa International Writers Festival
- featured reading at a TINARS launch (This Is Not A Reading Series) hosted by Pages Books and Magazines in Toronto
Judges John Metcalf and Leon Rooke write that:
We were struck by her narrative drive but taken mostly by the crispness of her dialogue and a humour we found irresistible. As with all talented writers, there is something idiosyncratic about her vision of things, something difficult to pin down but recognizably Amy Jones whenever it occurs.
This sort of thing: A mother and daughter dressing to go to the funeral of the daughter’s husband. Lilly, the mother, is nearly lost to reality:
For a moment, Georgia thinks she sees some sort of recognition in Lily’s eyes: that this is not a dress rehearsal for some school play, that this hat, this veil are more than just a costume, that the event that they are preparing for has some kind of meaning attached to it. But then it is gone, and she pats Georgia lovingly on the shoulder and says ‘You look beautiful Gigi’ humming a little as she packs up her sewing kit, and Georgia just wants to smack her, pull her hair out, pinch her earlobes, anything, anything to make her cry.
Georgia drives them both to the funeral. Lily still has a driver’s license, but Georgia has not let her use it since that day last summer when she drove her car off the road and into a sunflower field just outside of Truro. “It was beautiful,” Lily had said. “All that yellow. Like being under water.”
Funny, yes, but hauntingly more.
-- John Metcalf and Leon Rooke
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Also named last week on the Shortlist for 2008-2009 Metcalf-Rooke Award were: Daniel Griffin. Mercedes Buyers’ Guide and Other Stories; Dave Margoshes. A Book of Great Worth: Stories from My Father; Ryan Turner. What We’re Made of; and Terence Young. The Garden of Fugitives.
Previous winners of the Metcalf-Rooke Award are Patricia Young for Airstream, Kathleen Winter for boYs, and Rebecca Rosenblum for Once. The Metcalf-Rooke Award is sponsored by Biblioasis, Steven Temple Books, The New Quarterly, TINARS and Pages Books and Magazines and the Ottawa International Writers Festival.
For further information
Dan Wells, Publisher, Biblioasis at (519) 968-2206 or e-mail biblioasis@gmail.com,
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