More than a third of this year’s BC and Yukon Book Prizes were awarded to volumes produced by Sunshine Coast publishers.
The prizes, which recognize achievements by B.C. and Yukon writers, illustrators and publishers, marked their 40th anniversary during the annual awards gala held on Sept. 28 at the University Golf Club in Vancouver. The juried selection process and the presentations are coordinated by the West Coast Book Prize Society.
A trio of books produced by independent BC publishers Douglas & McIntyre and Harbour Publishing (based in Madeira Park) and Nightwood Editions (headquartered in Gibsons) collected four of the 10 top prizes. The books were selected from a field of 41 finalists.
Poet Jess Housty (‘Cúagilákv) became a twofold honouree: they are the winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award for their book Crushed Wild Mint (published by Nightwood Editions).
Housty presented at the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts in August alongside poet Lorna Crozier. Crushed Wild Mint is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, grounded in the poet’s motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist and observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Housty explores history, rituals, emotions and resilience, urging a re-evaluation of ties to local and distant communities.
Housty is a parent, writer and grassroots activist with Heiltsuk and mixed settler ancestry. They serve their community as an herbalist and land-based educator alongside broader work in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors, while residing in Bella Bella.
Darrel J. McLeod was posthumously awarded the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for his novel, A Season in Chezgh’un (published by Douglas & McIntyre). McLeod, a Cree from Treaty 8 Territory in Northern Alberta, appeared at the writers festival in 2019.
McLeod worked as an educator and chief negotiator of land claims for the federal government and served as the executive director of education and international affairs with the Assembly of First Nations before embarking on a writing career. His 2018 memoir Mamaskatch (2018) won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction; its 2021 sequel Peyakow was shortlisted for several prestigious awards. McLeod resided in Sooke before his death in August 2024.
Irish-born and Comox-based writer Ian Kennedy was named the winner of the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize for The Best Loved Boat: The Princess Maquinna, published by Harbour Publishing. Kennedy has produced more than a half-dozen volumes of B.C. history (including 1992’s Sunny Sandy Savary and The Life and Times of Joseph McPhee: Courtenay’s Founding Father in 2010).
Best Loved Boat traces the story of a beloved vessel known as “Old Faithful” that transported Indigenous people, settlers, missionaries, loggers, cannery workers, prospectors and travellers along the West Coast of Vancouver Island. It stopped at up to 40 ports of call over its seven-day run. The Princess Maquinna was a transportation mainstay in an era before roads, at a time when B.C. thrived with mines, canneries, and now-forgotten settlements.
Kennedy is also one of Canada’s few rugby journalists and has written for numerous magazines worldwide.
A non-fiction prize, named for longtime Roberts Creek resident (and celebrated author) Hubert Evans, was awarded to another veteran of the Festival of the Written Arts: John Valliant, for his book Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast (Knopf Press). Wanda John-Kehewin netted the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize for her story Hopeless in Hope, which explores the intergenerational impact of residential schools. The Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize went to My Baba’s Garden (Neal Porter Books), written by Jordan Scott and illustrated by Sydney Smith. Helen Knott, author of Becoming a Matriarch: A Memoir, earned the Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes.
Serial novelist, poet and memoirist Keith Maillard was recognized with the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, while the Kluane First Nation Elders took the Borealis Prize for their collection of wisdom literature, Lhù’áán Mân Ye Shäw.
