Alan
Cumyn Elizabeth Hay
Michael Ondaatje
David Adams Richards
Eden Robinson Fred
Stenson 2000
Jury Panel 2000
News
Bill Burridge survives torture at the hands
of terrorists in the South Pacific to return home to Ottawa,
where he throws himself singlemindedly into building a human
rights organization to stand watch over the world's most
troubled areas. He is a man struggling to hold his life
together, plagued by memories of his incarceration and by
the strain of his disintegrating  marriage.
After two years he is drawn back to Santa Irene, to serve
on a Truth Commission investigating past atrocities. He
becomes enmeshed in a world of betrayal and shifting loyalties,
where, it appears, nothing is as it seems. Alan Cumyn's
most recent novel was the highly acclaimed Man of Bone,
which won the Ottawa-Carleton Book Award and was a finalist
for Ontario's Trillium Award in 1999. He worked for eight
years for the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board, writing
on international human rights issues. His previous novels
are Waiting for Li Ming and Between Families and
the Sky. Cumyn has taught in the People's Republic of
China and in Indonesia, and is the author of a bestselling
guide to working and studying abroad. Alan Cumyn lives in
Ottawa.
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From some accidents of love and weather we
never quite recover. At the worst of the Prairie dust bowl
of the 1930s, a young man appears out of a blizzard and
alters the lives of two sisters. His disarming presence
in a family adept at making do throws into relief a rivalry
that sets the stage for all that follows in a narrative
spanning just over thirty years. Hay's characters are at
once eccentric and familiar. Among them, the two sisters:
Lucinda, beautiful, fastidious, and reserved; and her younger
sister, bold, homely Norma Joyce, tricky and tenacious,
at first a strange, dark self-possessed child, later a woman
who learns something of the redemptive nature of art.
A Student of Weather is Elizabeth Hay's first novel,
following her short story collection Small Change,
which was shortlisted for three prizes: the Governor General's
Award for Fiction, the Trillium Award, and the Rogers Communications
Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. She is also the author of
Crossing the Snow Line, a collection of short fiction; and
two collections of creative non-fiction: The Only Snow
in Havana, and Captivity Tales: Canadians in New
York. Born in Owen Sound, Ontario, Elizabeth Hay now
lives in Ottawa with her husband and three children
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The time is our own time. The place is Sri
Lanka, the island nation off the southern tip of India,
a country formerly known as Ceylon, forced into the late
twentieth century by the ravages of  civil
war and the consequences of a country divided against itself.
Into this maelstrom steps a young woman called Anil Tissera.
She is a forensic anthropologist sent by an international
human rights group to work with local officials to discover
the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing
the island. What follows is a novel about love, family,
loss, the unknown enemy and the quest to unlock the hidden
past - all propelled by a riveting mystery. Novelist and
poet Michael Ondaatje was born in Sri Lanka, and came to
Canada in 1962. His published works include Coming Through
Slaughter, which won the Books in Canada First Novel
Award in 1976; There's a Trick with a Knife I'm Learning
to Do, which won the Governor General's Award in 1980;
In the Skin of a Lion, which won the City of Toronto
Book Award and the Trillium Award, and was shortlisted for
the Governor General's Award; and The English Patient,
which won The Governor General's Award and the Booker Prize
and was later made into a successful Academy Award-winning
film. Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.
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Mercy Among the Children is the story
of Sydney Henderson and his son Lyle. As a young man, Sydney,
believing he has accidentally killed a friend, makes a pact
with God vowing to never harm
another if the friend's life is spared and the boy walks
away unharmed. Later, tragedy strikes when a small boy is
accidentally killed and Sydney is accused of the crime.
While Sydney refuses to defend himself and his family, Lyle
adopts a more aggressive strategy and it is left to Lyle
to decide what the legacy of his father's pact will be.
Richards' characters strive for a sense of human dignity
that rings with universal truth.
David Adams Richards is an award-winning
author of both fiction and non-fiction. Lines on the
Water won the Governor General's Award in 1998. He is
well-known for his Miramichi trilogy: Nights Below
Station Street, winner of the 1988 Governor General's
Award; Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace, winner
of the Canadian Authors Association Award; and For Those
Who Hunt the Wounded Down, winner of the Thomas Radall
Award. His most recent novel is The Bay of Love and Sorrows,
published in 1998. David Adams Richards lives in Toronto
with his wife and their two sons
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Set amidst the long, cool shadows of B.C.'s
Rocky Mountains, Monkey Beach is the story of a family
on the edge of heartbreak. This is a novel which reminds
us that places, as much as people, have stories to tell.
Seventeen-year-old Jimmy Hill, ambitious and handsome, is
the  pride
of the village. Jimmy shows little interest in courtship
- until he falls in love with Karaoke, tough as nails and
the village beauty. But their young romance is cut short
by the news of a horrifying accident at sea and Jimmy's
mysterious disappearance. Monkey Beach is a story about
childhood and the pain of growing older, a tale of family
grief and redemption.
Eden Robinson is a First Nations woman whose
father is Haisla and whose mother is Heiltsuk. She grew
up in Haisla territory near Kitimaat, B.C. Her first book,
a collection of stories called Traplines, was published
in 1996. Traplines was awarded the Winifred Holtby
Prize for the best work of fiction in the Commonwealth,
and was selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice and
Notable Book of the Year. Eden Robinson lives in North Vancouver.
Monkey Beach is her first novel.
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Written between the lines of recorded history,
The Trade tells the story of Edward Harriott, a Hudson's
Bay Company clerk on the North Saskatchewan River; his Metis
cousin Margaret; Harriott's friend Chief Factor One Pound
One; and Jimmy Jock Bird, a former-Governor's Metis son.
It's 1822. The Hudson's Bay Company, swollen by a merger
with its bitter rival, the North West Company, is about
to exercise its uncontested monopoly over the lands drained
by Hudson Bay. Here is a story that traces how European
culture tried to root itself in this anarchic place and
how the mighty fur trade was rolled under by the greater
forces of change and history.
Fred Stenson is the author of ten books,
including the novels Lonesome Hero and Last One
Home and the short-story collections Teeth and
Working without a Laugh Track. He has written more
than one hundred films and videos, including History TV's
The Great March and the Discovery series World of Horses.
He is a past winner of the Alberta Motion Picture Industry
Association's award for best documentary script. A third
generation Albertan, he lives in Calgary, Alberta.
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Alan Cumyn
Elizabeth Hay
Michael Ondaatje David
Adams Richards
Eden
Robinson Fred Stenson
2000 Jury Panel
2000
News
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Alan
Cumyn
Elizabeth
Hay
Michael
Ondaatje
David
Adams Richards
