Vancouver author David Stouck is the winner of the second annual Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Book on British Columbia for his acclaimed biography of Arthur Erickson, a renowned architect and urban planner. Stouck will be presented with the award at a reception at the University of British Columbia’s Irving K. Barber Learning Centre in June. The award, which includes $1,000 in prize money, is given by the UBC Library and the Pacific BookWorld News Society.

Published by Douglas & McIntyre last September, Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life was a finalist for the RBC Taylor Prize, as well as winner of both the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize and the Hubert Evans Non-fiction Prize. Stouck is the author of previous works of biography, including Ethel Wilson: A Critical Biography (University of Toronto Press, 2003) and Collecting Stamps Would Have Been More Fun: The Correspondence of Sinclair Ross 1933–86 (University of Alberta Press, 2010).

Erickson was the designer of celebrated buildings around the world, including the UBC’s Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. In a press release, Stouck says, “Although Arthur Erickson’s career was global, the biography is first and foremost a book about British Columbia…. Winning the Basil Stuart-Stubbs Prize is important because this will help make it known to those I consider the book’s first audience – the people of B.C.”

The other finalists include Inventing Stanley Park: An Environmental History by Sean Kheraj (UBC Press) and Charles Edenshaw by Robin Kathleen Wright, Daina Augaitis, Robert Davidson, and James Hart (Black Dog Publishing).