Sarah Polley, winner of the 2022 Toronto Book Award.

Toronto writer and director Sarah Polley has won the 2022 Toronto Book Award for Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory.

Polley’s book, an essay collection that explores difficult stories from her own life, published earlier this year by Hamish Hamilton, was one of five finalists for the annual award, now in its 48th year. Polley was awarded the $10,000 prize in Toronto on November 16. Each of the finalists received $1,000. The four other finalists for this year’s prize were Camilla Gibb (The Relatives, Doubleday Canada); Falen Johnson (Two Indians, J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing); H.N. Khan (Wrong Side of the Court, Penguin Random House Canada); and Adrienne Shadd, Afua Cooper, and Karolyn Smardz Frost (The Underground Railroad, Next Stop, Toronto!, Dundurn Press).

The volunteer jury for this year’s award was comprised of author Ann Y.K. Choi, retired Toronto Public Library librarian Margaret Henry, poet Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, author Phillip Dwight Morgan, and Indigenous educator Brenda Wastasecoot. There were 73 submissions for this year’s award.

The Toronto Book Award was established in 1974 and honours books inspired by the city.