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Staebler Prize Nomination
Grant Lawrence's debut book, Adventures In Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound ($26.95, Harbour Publishing), has dominated the BC Bestseller list for much of 2011, and Lawrence was honoured earlier this year with a prestigious BC Book Prize, the Bill Duthie's Booksellers' Choice Award. Now his book has been recognized on the national stage with a nomination for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. The $10,000 award, administered by Wilfrid Laurier University, encourages and recognizes Canadian writers for a first or second work of creative non-fiction that includes a Canadian locale and/or significance.
The other two books shortlisted for the prize are Jew and Improved: How Choosing to be Chosen Made Me a Better Man by Benjamin Errett (Harper Collins) and Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery by Helen Waldstein Wilkes (Athabasca University Press).
Award juror and Laurier professor Tanis MacDonald said the books shortlisted for this year's award are different from each other in tone, style and subject matter, but similar in that they all address issues of defining or redefining the self through a search for family. "Each book in its own way is about finding space for history and finding oneself inside that history," said MacDonald.
Vancouver resident Grant Lawrence is a popular voice across Canada as host of the CBC Radio 3 Podcast and Grant Lawrence Live, and through his appearances on various CBC Radio One programs such as DNTO, Spark, All Points West and On the Coast. Fans of independent music tune in to his podcast or turn up an old song from a record by The Smugglers, Grant's defunct rock band.
In Adventures in Solitude we meet the childhood Grant, a self-proclaimed nerd donning knee braces and coke-bottle glasses who was reluctantly dragged each summer to a piece of land his father bought next to BC's Desolation Sound Marine Park in the 1970s--just in time to encounter the gun-toting cougar lady, left-over hippies, outlaw bikers and an assortment of other characters. It was these early experiences, many alongside an influential hermit named Russell, which led Grant to a life of music and journalism far away from Desolation Sound, only to return as an adult and discover the magic and beauty the place has to offer. In Adventures in Solitude Grant regales us with tales of "going bush," the tempting dilemma of finding an unguarded grow-op, and other laugh-out-loud stories from this unique place. He still spends much of each summer at his cabin in the Sound.
The other two books shortlisted for the prize are Jew and Improved: How Choosing to be Chosen Made Me a Better Man by Benjamin Errett (Harper Collins) and Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery by Helen Waldstein Wilkes (Athabasca University Press).
Award juror and Laurier professor Tanis MacDonald said the books shortlisted for this year's award are different from each other in tone, style and subject matter, but similar in that they all address issues of defining or redefining the self through a search for family. "Each book in its own way is about finding space for history and finding oneself inside that history," said MacDonald.
Vancouver resident Grant Lawrence is a popular voice across Canada as host of the CBC Radio 3 Podcast and Grant Lawrence Live, and through his appearances on various CBC Radio One programs such as DNTO, Spark, All Points West and On the Coast. Fans of independent music tune in to his podcast or turn up an old song from a record by The Smugglers, Grant's defunct rock band.
In Adventures in Solitude we meet the childhood Grant, a self-proclaimed nerd donning knee braces and coke-bottle glasses who was reluctantly dragged each summer to a piece of land his father bought next to BC's Desolation Sound Marine Park in the 1970s--just in time to encounter the gun-toting cougar lady, left-over hippies, outlaw bikers and an assortment of other characters. It was these early experiences, many alongside an influential hermit named Russell, which led Grant to a life of music and journalism far away from Desolation Sound, only to return as an adult and discover the magic and beauty the place has to offer. In Adventures in Solitude Grant regales us with tales of "going bush," the tempting dilemma of finding an unguarded grow-op, and other laugh-out-loud stories from this unique place. He still spends much of each summer at his cabin in the Sound.
Submitted on September 14, 2011 in By David.
