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Tyler LeBlanc a double-winner at Atlantic Book Awards

Atlantic Book Awards logoThe winners of the Atlantic Book Awards were announced the evening of May 13 in a virtual ceremony.

Halifax’s Tyler LeBlanc won for both historical writing and non-fiction for Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion (Goose Lane Editions). The book looks at the 18th-century exile of the Acadian people through LeBlanc’s own family’s experience. The jury for the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award hailed it as a “rigorously researched narrative” and “a truly stunning work.”

Silver Donald Cameron, who died on June 1, 2020, won the Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award posthumously for his true-crime narrative Blood in the Water: A True Story of Revenge in the Maritimes (Viking Canada/Penguin Random House Canada).

Halifax illustrator Sydney Smith won The Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration for I Talk Like a River (Neal Porter Books/PRHC). Written by Jordan Scott, the picture book about a child with a stutter whose father guides him towards self-acceptance is also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature – Illustrated Books.

The inaugural Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award went to southwestern Nova Scotia’s Tammy Armstrong for her collection Year of the Metal Rabbit (Gaspereau Press). The award was presented by the late Maxine Tynes’s sister, Margaret Nyajeka.

The complete list of winners follows:

Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction
The Appendage Formerly Known as Your Left Arm, Julie Curwin (Boularderie Island Press)

Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children’s Literature
Keep This to Yourself, Tom Ryan (Albert Whitman & Company)

Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing
A Long Journey: Residential Schools in Labrador and Newfoundland, Andrea Procter (ISER Books)

Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association’s Best Atlantic-Published Book Award
Dirty Birds, Morgan Murray (Breakwater Books)

Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing
Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, Tyler LeBlanc (Goose Lane Editions)

Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award
Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, Tyler LeBlanc (Goose Lane Editions)

Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)
The Spoon Stealer, Lesley Crewe (Nimbus Publishing)

J.M. Abraham Poetry Award
Black Matters, Afua Cooper and Wilfried Raussert (photog.) (Roseway Publishing)

Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Excellence in Illustration
I Talk Like a River, Jordan Scott and Sydney Smith (ill.) (Neal Porter Books/PRHC)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award (Fiction)
Aftershock, Alison Taylor (HarperCollins)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award (Non-Fiction)
The Dome Chronicles, Garry Leeson (Nevermore Press)

Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award
Year of the Metal Rabbit, Tammy Armstrong (Gaspereau Press)

Robbie Robertson Dartmouth Book Award (Non-Fiction)
Blood on the Water: A True Story of Revenge in the Maritimes, Silver Donald Cameron (Viking Canada/PRHC)

Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award
Speechless, Anne Simpson (Freehand Books)