SEATTLE - January 8, 2005. Vancouver author Keith Maillard has been awarded the Creative Arts Prize by The Polish American Historical Association for his novel, The Clarinet Polka. The award will be presented in Seattle, January 8, 2005 at the annual meeting of The Polish American Historical Association, an affiliated society of the American Historical Association.

The Clarinet Polka, published in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son in 2002, received wide acclaim, including starred reviews by industry journals Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, The American Library Journal and Booklist. Washington Post reviewer Zofia Smardz wrote that the novel contains "one of the few descriptions I've seen in an English-language book that comes close to doing justice to the Polish experience of the [Second World] war.";

The Clarinet Polka is the sixth successive Maillard book to receive or be nominated for a major literary award. Gloria was shortlisted for the 1999 Governor General's Award for Fiction; Dementia Americana won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for Best First Book of Poetry; Hazard Zones was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize; Light in the Company of Women was runner-up for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; and Motet won the Ethel Wilson prize at the 1989 BC Book Awards.

In November, 2004, Maillard received the West Virginia Library Association's Literary Merit Award in addition to being inducted into the Wheeling, WV Hall of Fame.