Toronto’s Colin McAdam wins Writers’ Trust Award

Toronto’s Colin McAdam claimed the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award on Wednesday night, taking home the $25,000 prize for his novel A Beautiful Truth.

“In prose both strange and startling, McAdam asks what, if anything, separates the human from the animal; he answers with heartbreaking honesty,” the jury wrote in awarding the prize.

“This is the kind of book you finish just to pick back up again, if only to figure out how he pulled it off.”

The book is told through the eyes of two chimpanzees and their human caretakers.

The 13th annual awards were presented at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto.

There were five prizes for literary merit and a sixth for long-standing service to the country’s literary community, which went to publisher McClelland & Stewart.

Other prizes included:

Newfoundland’s Lisa Moore, who wrote Caught and February and recently won the CBC’s Canada Reads competition, taking home the $25,000 Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award.

Andrew Nikiforuk, an Albertan journalist who investigates social and ecological issues, received the $20,000 Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.

Barbara Reid, a children’s book illustrator and author, widely known for her creative use of the clay material Plasticine, won the $20,000 Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People.

Naben Ruthnum, author of the short story Cinema Rex, won the $10,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize.

Rogers is the parent company of City, CityNews and CityNews.ca.

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