Non-Fiction Award Wind-up

Over the last 3 days, three major non-fiction awards have been handed out: the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and the Governor General's Literary Awards. The winners are:

Samuel Johnson Prize Winner

Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize Winner

Governor General's Literary Award Winner

The Guardian writes that Davis's book "puts the three attempts to climb Everest, between 1921 and 1924, into the context of the first world war: most of the 23 climbers had seen action, including Mallory, and Davis explores how the yearning to conquer the mountain was partly a response to the atrocities of the previous decade."

Savage's book "is a personal narrative that addresses the violent history of the Cypress Hills region of eastern Saskatchewan, where Savage lives part of the year. The jury’s citation describes A Geography of Blood as 'a haunting meditation on time and place' and 'a part memoir, part history, part geological survey, part lament, part condemnation of the accepted myth of the settlement of the Western Plains,'" according to Quill & Quire.

King, also from Saskatchewan, awed the GG prize jury: "Leonardo and the Last Supper is a combination of brilliant storytelling and superlative writing. Ross King portrays the towering genius of Leonardo in a way that will engage experts and delight a general audience. Impeccable research delivered with a novelist’s panache."

Read more about the respective awards at The Guardian, Quill & Quire, and CBC News.