The finalists for this year’s Nova Scotia Book Awards and Atlantic Book Awards have been announced.

The winners of both sets of awards will be announced at the Atlantic Book Festival later this spring.

The awards, which celebrate Atlantic and Nova Scotian writing and publishing, are collectively worth more than $60,000.

The Nova Scotia Book Award nominees are:

Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction

• A Sense of Things Beyond by Renée Belliveau (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)
• We Were Not Kings by Robert de la Chevotière (Little A/Amazon Publishing)
• Five Seasons of Charlie Francis by Danica Roache (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)

Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award

• Mothershift: Reclaiming Motherhood as a Rite of Passage by Jessie Harrold (Shambhala Publications)
• The Golden Daughter by Halina St. James (House of Anansi Press)
• In Search of Puffins: Stories of Loss, Light, and Flight by Marjorie Simmins (Pottersfield Press)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Fiction

• Five Seasons of Charlie Francis by Danica Roache (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)
• The Tudor Prophecy by Julie K Strong (OC Publishing)
• Mrs. Walford by Brenda Tyedmers (Self-published)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Non-Fiction

• Service and Sacrifice: Extraordinary Nova Scotians in the Great War by Ken Hynes (Nimbus Publishing)
• The Illogical Adventure: A Memoir of Love and Fate by James MacDuff and Mirriam Mweemba (Pottersfield Press)
• Storm the Ballot Box: An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution by Jo-Ann Roberts (Nimbus Publishing)

The winners of the Nova Scotia Book Awards will be announced at a ceremony in Dartmouth, N.S., on June 1.

The nominees for the Atlantic Book Awards, which are open to writers from all four Atlantic provinces, are:

Alistair MacLeod Award for Short Fiction

• We, the Ancestors by Geoff Butler (self-published)
• Winter Sky by Shelley Thompson (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)
• Here by Heidi Wicks (Breakwater Books)

Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children’s Literature

• The Mystery of the Haunted Dance Hall by Charis Cotter (Tundra Books)
• Joe and the Wreck of the Tribune by Jacqueline Halsey (Nimbus Publishing)
• Bertie Stewart is Perfectly Imperfect by Melanie Mosher (Nimbus Publishing)
• Our Ancestor’s Kitchen by Willie Poll (Annick Press)
• The Newest Gnome by Lauren Soloy (Tundra Books)

APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award 

• Goose Lane Editions for Erica Rutherford: Her Lives and Works | Ses vies, ses œuvres  by Pan Wendt
• Breakwater Books for Just Around the Corner by Yvonne Rumbolt-Jones
• Breakwater Books for Openly Karl by Karl Wells

J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award

• Yes Is The Only Word the Earth Understands by Leigh Faulkner (Owl’s Head Press)
• Future Howl by Sue Goyette (Gaspereau Press)
• Nightjar by Natalie Rice (Gaspereau Press)
• antibody by Rebecca Salazar (McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada)
• Familial Hungers by Christine Wu (Brick Books)

Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award

• A Sense of Things Beyond by Renée Belliveau (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)
• milktooth by Jaime Burnet (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)
• We Were Not Kings by Robert de la Chevotière (Little A/Amazon Publishing)
• The Ignis Psalter by Danny Jacobs (Porcupine’s Quill)
• Five Seasons of Charlie Francis by Danica Roache (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)

Winners of the Atlantic Book Awards will be announced on June 4 at a ceremony in Halifax.