Reproducing Another Win?
Ian Williams Up For Big Book Prize
By
Stephen Weir
Trinidadian
born Ian Williams is considered to be one of the country’s top poets. However, he is in the news these days for
Reproduction, his first novel. The
38-year old’s book tells the story of three generations of a Caribbean Canadian
family living Toronto.
Reproduction
is one of five novels that have made the $60,000 First Novel Award. Given out annually by Amazon Canada and The
Walrus Magazine, the prize honours the achievements of Canadian authors and
their debut novels.
Williams
left T&T in 1988 and moved to Brampton with his older brother and
parents. He turned out to be a brilliant
student earning his doctorate in English from the University of Toronto at just
25 years of age. He is currently an assistant professor of poetry in the
Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia.
His
first book, You Know Who You Are, was a finalist for the ReLit Poetry
Prize. His poetry collection, Personals,
was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize. A short story
collection, Not Anyone’s Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for
the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. CBC named him as one of
ten Canadian writers to watch.
The
five nominated books are:
- The Amateurs, Liz Harmer
- Searching for Terry Punchout, Tyler Hellard
- Little Fish, Casey Plett
- Split Tooth, Tanya Tagaq
- Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead
- Reproduction, Ian Williams
The
winner will be announced at the annual Amazon Canada First Novel Award
ceremony on Wednesday, May 22, at the Globe and Mail Centre
in Toronto. This year's panel of judges is composed of Diane
Schoemperlen, a Governor General Award–winning author of 14 books,
including This Is Not My Life which was shortlisted for the 2017 RBC
Taylor Prize; Quebec’s Dimitri Nasrallah, and novelist Hugh MacLennan.
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