Shortlist Announced For Inaugural Cedric Literary Awards

Fourteen BC writers “of a certain age” have made it to the short list of candidates for the inaugural 2015 Cedric Literary Awards.

More than 160 manuscripts ranging from poems to full-length novels were submitted to the Cedrics by unpublished BC authors age 50 and better.

The writers, ranging from 50 to 96, represent a seniors’ talent pool from Victoria, Duncan and Salt Spring Island to Vancouver, Harrison Hot Springs, Kelowna and New Hazelton. The selection panelists include: Shirley Alphonse, Yvonne Blomer, Isa Millman, Wendy Morton, Sylvia Olsen, Julie Paul, and Terence Young - well-known and accomplished writers and poets in their own right.

The winners in the categories of Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, Poetry and First Nations Writing will be announced and each presented with a $3,000 award at a gala dinner at The Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre in Vancouver on Tuesday, November 10, 2015. The keynote speaker at the dinner will be 2014 Governor-General’s Award Winner for English-language Poetry, Arleen Paré.

Tickets for the gala dinner are available to all competition participants and friends and family at a cost of $85 per person. 

Email executive director Veronica Osborn at vosborn@thecedrics.ca.

The Cedric Literary Awards have been created specifically to attract unpublished English and French-speaking authors of fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, as well as First Nations writers, aged 50 years of age or better.

“The awards program is a first-of-its-kind in Canada, and encourages and celebrates the writing talents of BC seniors with a lifetime of experience to share. This year’s inaugural competition has surpassed all expectations in terms of participation and interest on the part of writers and those with an interest in writing and publishing,” Osborn says.

2015 CEDRIC LITERARY AWARDS SHORTLIST

CREATIVE NON-FICTION
• Margitta Maud
  Out of Darkness
  Duncan

• Eileen Hayes
  Silk Sisters, Five and Six
  Sidney

• Robert Sherman
  Cop Talk
  Kelowna

 • Sarah Kendall
  Let Me Show You Chocolate Lilies
  Victoria

• David Giblin
  Strange Karma for the French Petty Nobility
  Victoria

FICTION
• Joel Scott
  Arrows Flight
  Chemainus

• D. Ross Fisher
  Raincoast Sketches (Of a Small Town)
  Campbell River

• Margaret Durand
  Blood Memories
  Salt Spring Island

• Patrick Shandley
  A Corruption Born of Time
  Victoria

• Nela Leja
  Our Lady and the Black Ox
  Harrison Hot Springs

FIRST NATIONS WRITING
• Irene Lynxleg
  Keesis’s Trimble Park Diary
  Vancouver

• Yvonne Lattie
  Past & Future Experience Of A Gitxsan Woman
  New Hazleton

POETRY
• Susan Braley
  The Imminence of Fracture
  Victoria

• Wendy Donawa
  Sakura, Sakura (The Gorge Suite: A Cartography of Sorrow)
  Victoria