Biblioasis
is proud to announce that
THIS GREAT ESCAPE
The Case of Michael Paryla
by Andrew
steinmetz
has been
shortlisted for the 2013
HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR
NONFICTION
Valued at $60,000
At a ceremony held
this morning at Maple Leaf Gardens, the Honourable Hilary M. Weston announced
that Andrew Steinmetz’s This Great
Escape: The Case of Michael Paryla (Biblioasis 2013) has been shortlisted
for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.
Praising Steinmetz
for his “obsessive and poetic gaze,” Weston called This Great Escape—the biography of a part-Jewish actor, cast as a
Gestapo agent in the 1963 Steve McQueen/John Sturges film—“inventive and
suprisingly humorous.”
At $60,000, the
Weston is Canada’s richest nonfiction prize, and one of the largest nonfiction
prizes in the world. First established by the Writers’ Trust in 1997 and
sponsored by Viacom, the prize was endowed by philanthropist and former
Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Hilary M. Weston in 2011. Previous winners
include Candace Savage, Charles Foran, James FitzGerald, Brian Brett, and Anna
Porter.
The other nominees
include Thomas King (The Inconvenient Indian),
J.B. McKinnon (The Once and Future World),
Graeme Smith (The Dogs are Eating Them
Now), and Priscila Uppal (Projection).
Each will receive a prize of $5,000, and the winner, to be announced at the
annual gala on Oct. 21st, will receive an additional $55,000.
This year’s judges
are Hal Niedzviecki, Samantha Nutt, Candace Savage, Andreas Shroeder, and Evan
Solomon.
For more about This Great Escape,
trade reviews, ordering information, or for a Q&A with Andrew Steinmetz,
please read on. An interview also appeared in last Saturday’s Ottawa
Citizen.
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