The Pacific BookWorld News Society, Yosef Wosk, and Vancouver Public Library have announced the 16th annual longlist for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature.
“In keeping with playwright and novelist George Ryga’s status as a marginalized Ukrainian Canadian who was deeply concerned with social justice, three judges are asked to select an outstanding work of literary and social value that opens up discussion of social and cultural issues”, according to the press release on BC BookLook.
The judges in 2019 were Jane Curry, head of the Vancouver Public Library’s Joe Fortes branch, author and professor Trevor Carolan, and freelance journalist and art critic Beverly Cramp.
The 2019 George Ryga Award longlist:
- A Whisper Across Time by Olga Campbell (Jubaji Press)
- I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter by David Chariandy (McClelland & Stewart)
- Against the Current: The Remarkable Life of Agnes Deans Cameron by Cathy Converse (TouchWood Editions)
- Breaching the Peace: The Site C Dam and a Valley’s Stand Against Big Hydro by Sarah Cox (On Point Press / UBC Press)
- Dear Current Occupant by Chelene Knight (Book*hug)
- Homeless Memorial by John La Greca (Ekstasis Editions)
- Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age by Darrel J. McLeod (Douglas & McIntyre)
- On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement by Rod Mickleburgh (Harbour Publishing)
- Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography by Andrea Warner (Greystone Books)
- If You’re Not Free at Work, Where Are you Free?: Literature and Social Change, Selected Essays and Interviews 1994 – 2014 by Tom Wayman (Guernica Editions)
The winner will be announced in June during a ceremony at the Vancouver Public Library in conjunction with the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for an outstanding literary career in BC. The George Ryga Award winner will receive $2,000.