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Shortlist announced for Stephen Leacock Medal

The shortlist has been announced for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. The $15,000 prize recognizes Canadian humour writing.

The shortlisted works represent writers from across Canada. Heidi L.M. Jacobs’s Molly of the Mall is about an aspiring novelist who works at the West Edmonton Mall.

Amy Spurway’s Crow is about a woman whose terminal cancer diagnosis inspires her to return to her hometown in Cape Breton and write a tell-all memoir about her supposedly “cursed” family.

Drew Hayden Taylor’s Cottagers and Indians is a play about the tensions between Indigenous and settler communities in Ontario’s cottage country.

The winner will be announced on June 5 via the Leacock Medal’s Facebook and Twitter pages. The gala dinner has been cancelled for 2020 but the shortlisted authors will be invited to attend the annual celebration in 2021.

The shortlisted books are listed below.

  • Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear, Heidi L.M. Jacobs (NeWest Press)
  • Crow, Amy Spurway (Goose Lane Editions)
  • Cottagers and Indians, Drew Hayden Taylor (Talonbooks)