Vancouver journalist Carol Shaben has won the Edna Staebler Award for creative non-fiction for Into the Abyss: How a Deadly Plane Crash Changed the Lives of a Pilot, a Politician, a Criminal and a Cop (Random House Canada).

The $10,000 award, presented by Wilfrid Laurier University, recognizes Canadian writers for a first or second work of creative non-fiction that includes a Canadian locale and significance. In Into the Abyss, Shaben recalls the 1984 plane crash in northern Alberta that killed six passengers and wounded four others, including her father.

Shaben will receive the award at a presentation on Nov. 13.