Wayde Compton Wins 2015 City of Vancouver Book Award

Book Award winner Wayde Compton (photo via http://waydecompton.com/)

An interconnected short story collection about Vancouver's recent past and its dystopian very-near future is the winner of the 2015 City of Vancouver Book Award.

Writer Wayde Compton was presented the prize for The Outer Harbour (Arsenal Pulp Press) on Thursday, November 12 at the 2015 Mayor's Arts Awards.

Written with efficiency and precision, The Outer Harbour, Compton's first work of short fiction, is a challenging and eclectic collection. The Book Award jury saw it as a creative manifesto, a call for action to change our relationship with our most marginalized inhabitants and humanize land use and development in our city.

Compton is the author of two books of poetry, 49th Parallel Psalm (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize finalist) and Performance Bond. He also edited the anthology Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature. His non-fiction book After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region was a City of Vancouver Book Award finalist in 2011. The same year, he was the Vancouver Public Library's Writer in Residence. Compton is the director of the Writer's Studio and the Southbank Writer's Program at Simon Fraser University Continuing Studies.

Three other titles were shortlisted for the 2015 City of Vancouver Book Award: Live at the Commodore (Arsenal Pulp Press) by Aaron Chapman, Hastings-Sunrise (Nightwood Editions) by Bren Simmers, and Mister Got To Go, Where are you? (Red Deer Press) by Lois Simmie with illustrations by Cynthia Nugent.

The shortlisted titles and winner were chosen by an independent jury. The winner receives a cash prize of $3,000.

The City of Vancouver Book Award has been awarded annually since 1989 to recognize authors whose works demonstrate excellence and contribute to an appreciation and understanding of Vancouver's history, unique character or achievements of its residents.