This year’s Atlantic Book Awards, honouring the best titles from East Coast writers, were presented at a gala ceremony in New Brunswick on April 27, capping off this year’s Atlantic Book Festival.

This was the first time the event was hosted bilingually, and the first time it was held in New Brunswick. The inaugural New Brunswick Book Awards were also presented by the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick and The Fiddlehead.

The winners are as follows:

• Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction – Catherine Hogan Safer, Wild Pieces (Creative Book Publishing)
• Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature – Sharon E. McKay, Prison Boy (Annick Press)
• Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association’s Best Atlantic-Published Book Award – Pedlar Press for Robert Mellin’s Winter in Tilting: Slide Hauling in a Newfoundland Outport
• Scholarly Writing – Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman, The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada (Fernwood Publishing)
• The Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award for Non-fiction – Janet Maybee, Aftershock: The Halifax Explosion and the Persecution of Pilot Francis Mackey
• Democracy 250 Award for Historical Writing – Pádraig Ó Siadhail, Katherine Hughes: A Life and Journey (Penumbra Publishing)
• Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction – Sarah Mian, When the Saints (HarperCollins Canada)
• Lillian Shepherd Award for Excellence in Illustration – Ron Lightburn, Frankenstink!: Garbage Gone Bad (Tundra Books)
• Margaret and John Savage First Book Award – Sarah Mian, When the Saints (HarperCollins)
• New Brunswick Book Award for Fiction – Beth Powning, A Measure of Light (Knopf Canada)
• New Brunswick Book Award for Non-fiction – Donald Savoie, What is Government Good At: A Canadian Answer (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
• Westminster Books Award for Poetry – M. Travis Lane, Crossover (Cormorant Books)
• Pioneer Award – Marguerite Maillet
• Beacon Award for Social Justice Literature – Maureen St. Clair