The 2014 Ottawa Book Award winners were revealed at a ceremony at Shenkman Arts Centre Wednesday evening. The awards recognize excellent works published the year prior by Ottawa authors.

Paul Wells won in the non-fiction category for The Longer I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada, 2006   (Random House Canada), judged by University of Ottawa political science professor Stephen Brown, and author-journalists Elaine Kalman Naves and Barbara Sibbald.

David O’Meara won the Ottawa Book Award for fiction category and the $1,500 Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry for his collection A Pretty Sight (Coach House Books), judged by writers Rachna Gilmore, Nadine McInnis, and Nicola Vulpe.

Philippe Bernier Arcand received the French-language award, le Prix du livre d’Ottawa, for his non-fiction work La dérive populiste (Poètes de brousse), judged by University of Ottawa history professor Damien-Claude Bélanger, Simon Fraser University lecturer in French Claire Trépanier, and University of Ottawa French literature professor Marcel Olscamp.

Each winner received a $7,500 prize, with each shortlisted author receiving $1,000.

From the jury:

“Paul Wells provides disturbing insights into this government’s determination to stay in power, its good fortune in the face of possible adversity, its mistakes and its battle to control information. This is a well-written, important book published at a timely juncture in Canada’s political history… David O’Meara’s A Pretty Sight captures wonderfully the strange fragility of human existence. Sometimes serious, sometimes puckish, always perfectly tuned, O’Meara’s poems delight and disturb.”