Nominated for the CNFC Readers’ Choice Award

So earlier this fall I found out that I had been nominated for the CNFC (Creative Non-Fiction Collective) Readers’ choice Award for my story Warplanes (which appeared in Grain last summer). I was thrilled, of course; it’s a great honour. My dear friend Eufemia Fantetti was nominated last year and the past winners—Susan Olding for Pathologies (2010) and Theresa Kishkan for Phantom Limb (2009)—are both wonderful writers. The award was announced  at the CNFC conference in Banff, where an excerpt from my story was read in front of the collective members by the lovely and generous Betsy Warland.

I didn’t know who won this year or who the other nominees were until today, when I found the information on their website. Turns out I was one of three shortlisted writers: the winner, Eve Joseph, who won for her personal essay “Intimate Strangers” from the Winter 2010 issue of The Malahat Review (which I loved, by the way), and Charles Foran, who was nominated for Mordecai: Life and Times, a book for which he recently won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction, only the largest non-fiction award in Canada! Needless to say, I am humbled.

You can check the collective’s website here, join, and sign up for their listserve, which I am mildly addicted to. The list aims to keep subscribers abreast of issues, concerns, and professional development options pertaining to nonfiction writing. So far I haven’t felt courageous enough to contribute to any of the enthralling, inspiring and thought-provoking discussions that take place in that virtual community, but maybe I’ll get over it one day.