Stephen Weir articles, editorials and popular social media weir postings

--> Giller Prize Longlist Has a Familiar Face  By Stephen Weir for Caribbean Camera The Scotiabank Giller Prize announced early this week its longlist for the 2018 Canadian book award. There are 12 works of fiction in the running for this year’s   $100,000 prize. Esi Edugyan, is one of the authors longlisted for Canada’s most prestigious Fiction Prize. She has been nominated for her new book Washington Black . Washington Black tells the story of George Washington Black; an eleven-year-old field slave living on a Barbados sugar plantation. From the brutal cane plantations to the icy waters of the Canadian Arctic, from the mud-filled streets of London to the eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black is the tale – inspired by a true story – of a world destroyed by slavery and the search to make it whole again. Esi Edugyan made history in 2011 by being the first Black woman to win the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel  Half-Blood Blues . She is the only pa

. BIG NAMES. SRO EVENT. SPONSORED BY RBC TAYLOR PRIZE RBC Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction Spotlight: We Were Here First   with  Thomas King ,  Lee Maracle ,  Samual Watson  and  Waubgeshig Rice . "We weren't concerned because we never thought you (white people) would stay ..." laughed  First Nation's author Lee Maracle at  last night's RBC Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction Spotlight: We Were Here First.  Well-known CBC Host (not that one - it was CBC videographer Waubgeshig Rice) had asked Maracle and three other celebrated indigenous writers from Canada and Australia to comment on the evening's theme  - We Were Here First. The Friday evening book event was an integral part of the closing weekend of Harbourfront's International Festival of Authors.  The festival, now in its 35th year, brings the world's biggest names in literature to a number of Harbourfront stages  along Toronto's waterfront. The  Friday night panel had two fa