Personal memoirs dominate the shortlist for the 2013 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-fiction.

Selected from a longlist of 10 titles, this year’s finalists includes Modris Eksteins and Robert Fowler, who today were both nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, and Candace Savage, winner of the 2012 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-fiction. B.C. poet and novelist George Bowering rounds out the list.

The shortlisted titles are:

• Pinboy, George Bowering (Cormorant Books)
• Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age, Modris Eksteins (Knopf Canada)
• A Season in Hell: My 130 Days in the Sahara With Al Qaeda, Robert Fowler (HarperCollins Canada)
• A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape, Candace Savage (Greystone Books)

The shortlist was selected by a jury comprised of retired librarian Paul Whitney, Globe and Mail books editor Martin Levin, and publishing-industry veteran Jan Whitford. The winner, who will receive $40,000, will be announced in February.