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News Release

October 17, 2006

Two U of G Authors Nominated for Governor General's Literary Awards

Two University of Guelph English professors have been nominated for a 2006 Governor General's Literary Award. Dionne Brand is nominated in the poetry category for her book Inventory, and Andre Alexis is nominated in the children’s literature category for Ingrid and the Wolf.

Trinidad-born Brand is the author of nine volumes of poetry, including the acclaimed Land to Light On, which won a Governor General’s Award in 1997, and thirsty, which won the Pat Lowther Award and the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. The Toronto resident also wrote In Another Place, Not Here, a 1998 New York Times notable book, and At the Full and Change of the Moon.

Brand was recently named winner of the Harbourfront Festival Prize at the International Festival of Authors and the Toronto Book Award for her novel What We Long For.

Alexis is the acting associate director of U of G’s new master of fine arts in creative writing program. He was born in Trinidad in 1957 and grew up in Canada. His début novel, Childhood, won the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1998, shared the Trillium Award and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Rogers Communications Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

He is also the author of an internationally acclaimed collection of short stories, Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa, which was shortlisted for a Regional Commonwealth Prize, and has published a play, Lambton Kent. Alexis hosts the CBC program Skylarking, which airs Sundays at 4 p.m. on Radio Two.

The other authors shortlisted in the poetry category are Ken Babstock, Elizabeth Bachinsky, John Pass and Sharon Thesen. The other authors in the children’s literature (text) category are William Gilkerson, Glen Huser, Teresa Toten and Budge Wilson. The winners will be announced Nov. 21.

The Canada Council for the Arts funds, administers and promotes the Governor General’s Literary Awards, worth $15,000 each. Each winner receives a specially bound copy of the winning book. Non-winning finalists each receive $1,000 in recognition of their selection as finalists.