Ontario Library Service – North (OLS - North) has announced the winners of the 2017 Northern Lit Awards. The awards recognize and celebrate the literary excellence from Northern Ontario authors.
A panel of Northern Ontario public and First Nations librarians reviewed submissions to select a winner in each of the following categories; English Adult Fiction and the Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Award for Non- Fiction.
The winners represent literary work written by authors with a connection to Northern Ontario and whose book has been published in the past two years.
They were announced and awards presented at the OLS – North conference banquet Sept. 27.
English Adult Fiction:
Chalk – Doug Diaczuk (Anvil Press)
“’You’ and L, a mysterious third gender runaway, hit the road on a mission to find the meaning of life. Traveling by plane, bus and car, You run into trouble with the cops, mourn a family tragedy, smoke hundreds of cigarettes, attend a retirement party, come to terms with a broken heart, and discover that all roads lead back to where You started - in the flowers drawn by two little girls in coloured chalk on the sidewalk.”
Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Award for Non-Fiction:
Alone Against the North – Adam Shoalts (Viking Press)
“When Adam Shoalts ventured into the largest unexplored wilderness on the planet, he hoped to set foot where no one had ever gone before. What he discovered surprised even him. Shoalts was no stranger to the wilderness. He had hacked his way through jungles and swamp, had stared down polar bears and climbed mountains. But one spot on the map called out to him irresistibly: the Hudson Bay Lowlands, a trackless expanse of muskeg and lonely rivers, caribou and wolf—an Amazon of the north, parts of which to this day remain unexplored.”
