Vancouver plays Inheritance and The Piano Teacher among Governor-General's Literary Award finalists
B.C. books The Most Precious Substance on Earth, Time is a Flower, and All the Quiet Places also up for prize
VANCOUVER PLAYS Inheritance: a pick-the-path experience and The Piano Teacher: A Healing Key have just been named finalists for the Governor-General’s Literary Awards.
Inheritance, staged right before the pandemic hit in 2020 by Alley Theatre, was written by Vancouver’s Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn, with Los Angeles’s Darrell Dennis. Published by Talonbooks, the innovative play about a family cabin that sits on Indigenous land invited the audience to choose from several story lines; it has a forward by David Suzuki.
Meanwhile, The Piano Teacher by Vancouver’s Dorothy Dittrich, also published by Talonbooks, was staged in 2017 by the Arts Club Theatre Company; it’s a beautiful meditation on grieving and the healing power of music.
Fiction finalists included two B.C. novels: Brian Thomas Isaac’s All the Quiet Places (Brindle & Glass / TouchWood Editions) and Shashi Bhat’s The Most Precious Substance on Earth (McClelland & Stewart / Penguin Random House Canada).
In the Young People’s Literature category for illustrated books, Vancouver’s Julie Morstad has received a nod for Time is a Flower (Tundra Books, Penguin Random House Canada).
Each writer, translator, or illustrator whose book is selected as a winner in its category receives a $25,000 prize. Publishers receive $3,000 to promote the winning book; finalists receive $1,000 each. They’re chosen by the Canada Council for the Arts’ peer assessment committees.
The 14 winners for 2022 will be announced on ggbooks.ca on November 16, 2022.
You can read about the full list of 70 finalists in English and French languages here.
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