TORONTO — Debut novelist Nicholas Herring took home the top fiction prize at the Writers’ Trust Awards Wednesday evening for his tale of a lobster fisher whose unhappily monotonous life is upended by a series of unexpected events.
Herring, who hails from Murray Harbour, P.E.I., won the $60,000 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for “Some Hellish,” published by Goose Lane Editions.
"I thought it was a joke," Herring said of hearing his name called at the awards’ first in-person ceremony since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"My mind went blank. I'm kind of in a state of shock."
Herring said he didn't expect anything to come of his novel, which draws from his own experience fishing lobster off P.E.I.
In their citation, the jury praised the work as lending the “age-old story of human versus nature” a “fresh cadence."
“What Cormac McCarthy did for cowboys and horses, Nicholas Herring does for fishermen and boats,” they wrote.
The top non-fiction prize went to Toronto epidemiologist Dan Werb for “The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure,” published by Crown.
"(The book) ended up being what I wanted it to be. It ended up being an optimistic counter-narrative about what went right during the pandemic," Werb said at the ceremony as he accepted the $60,000 award.
His book traces the history of coronavirus research and several outbreaks, from SARS to MERS to COVID-19.
The jury described it as "a scientific detective story that leaves the reader frightened that the villain is still on the loose, and maybe in the house."
Meanwhile, francesca ekwuyasi was awarded the $10,000 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers for her novel "Butter Honey Pig Bread."
The Writers’ Trust of Canada handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes Wednesday, including four career awards worth $25,000 apiece.
Non-fiction writer Candace Savage was recognized with the Matt Cohen Award celebrating a lifetime of contributions to Canadian literature.
The Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People went to Elise Gravel.
Irish-born, Canada-based writer Shani Mootoo took the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award, which is given to a mid-career writer in recognition of their past and future achievements in fiction.
Poet and playwright Joseph Dandurand was awarded the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize honouring a mid-career poet for mastery of the form.
Runners-up for the two top prizes each received $5,000.
The other fiction finalists were Rima Elkouri, Kevin Lambert, Darcy Tamayose and Saeed Teebi.
The non-fiction shortlist included Geoff Dembicki, Tara McGowan-Ross, Debra Thompson and Joshua Whitehead.
The Writers’ Trust is the first of three major literary awards to be awarded this month.
The winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize will be named Monday, and the Governor General’s Literary Awards will be handed out on Nov. 16.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 2, 2022.
Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press
