Yasuko Thanh and Margriet Ruurs are the winners of this year’s Victoria Book Awards, which aim to increase visibility and opportunity for local authors.

Thanh received the $5,000 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for her 2016 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize–winning novel Mysterious Fragrance of the Yellow Mountains (Hamish Hamilton Canada), about a group who bands together to poison French occupying forces in 1908 Indochina.

Ruurs was awarded the $5,000 Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize for her picture-book Stepping Stones: A Refugee Family’s Journey (Orca Book Publishers). The title tells the story of Syrian refugees through stone tableaux art created by Syrian artist Nizar Ali Badr.

The authors were recognized at the a ceremony on Oct. 11.