Writers’ Trust Award
…and the nonfiction award goes to Brian Brett, for Trauma Farm. Looking forward to reading it.

Zadie Smith on the Essay
…and in defence of the novel – a response to David Shields’ forthcoming Reality Hunger. Thanks to Stephen Gauer for the link, here. An interesting article.  I’ll have more to say about it soon (I hope.) Looking forward to reading both the Shields and the Smith.

An Interview with Andrew Westoll
I met Andrew Westoll at UBC, but already knew his writing from Event, where he was a winner in the journal’s annual creative nonfiction contest in 2003. That piece eventually grew into his first book, The River Bones, which describes the five months he spent travelling in the rainforests of Suriname in search of the rare blue frog called okopipi. Charles Montgomery called The River Bones a “fascinating journey through a landscape thic

New History of Memoir
A New York Times review by Judith Shulevitz of Ben Yagoda’s new history of memoir. Thanks to Myrna Kostash for the link.

Governor General’s Award for Nonfiction
This year’s winner is M.G. Vassanji, for A Place Within: Rediscovering India. (Doubleday Canada; distributed by Random House of Canada) The jury comments, “An utterly brilliant, evoc