City of Vancouver Book Award

The City of Vancouver Book Award is a Canadian literary award, that has been presented annually by the city of Vancouver, British Columbia to one or more works of literature judged as the year's best fiction, non-fiction, poetry or drama work about the city.

As with the City of Toronto Book Award, the award may go to one or more books.

The award has a monetary value of $3,000. The prize is funded by interest earned from the city's publishing reserve, which was established in 1977 as a permanent legacy for writers and publishers. The fund received royalties generated from Vancouver's First Century: A Photo History of Vancouver, edited by city staff. The third edition of the book, renamed Vancouver: A City Album, or many years generated royalty payments for the fund.

Honorees

City of Vancouver Book Award winners and finalists ^[1]

Year	Author	Title	Result	Ref.
1989 [a]	Paul Yee	Saltwater City: An Illustrated History of the Chinese in Vancouver	Winner
1990	Sky Lee	Disappearing Moon Cafe	Winner
	Rosemary Brown	Being Brown: A Very Public Life	Finalist
	Stan Persky	Buddy's: Meditations on Desire	Finalist
	John Schreiner	The Refiners: A Century of BC Sugar	Finalist
1991 [b]	Michael Kluckner	Vanishing Vancouver	Winner
	Cyril Leonoff	Leonard Frank: An Enterprising Life	Finalist
	Robin Ward	Robin Ward's Vancouver	Finalist
1992 [c]	Gerald Straley	Trees of Vancouver: A Guide to the Common and Unusual Trees of the City	Winner
	Elizabeth Bower	No Forwarding Address	Finalist
	Gregory Edwards	Hidden Cities	Finalist
	Paul Grescoe	Flesh Wound	Finalist
	Timothy Oke and Graeme Wynn	Vancouver and Its Regions	Finalist
1993 [d]	Bruce Macdonald	Vancouver: A Visual History	Winner
	Irene Howard	The Struggle for Social Justice in British Columbia	Finalist
	Michael Kluckner and John Atkin	Heritage Walks Around Vancouver	Finalist
1994 [e]	Denise Chong	The Concubine's Children	Winner
	Paul Grescoe and Karl Spreitz	Vancouver: Visions of a City	Finalist
	Robin Ward	Robin Ward's Heritage West Coast	Finalist
	Michael J. Yates	Line Screw	Finalist
1995 [f]	Elspeth Cameron	Earle Birney: A Life	Winner
	Lois Simmie and Cynthia Nugent	Mister Got to Go	Finalist
	Ulli Stelzer and Robert Davidson	Eagle Transforming: The Art of Robert Davidson	Finalist
1996 [g]	Wayson Choy	The Jade Peony	Winner
	Grant Buday	Monday Night Man	Finalist
	Robert A. J. McDonald	Making Vancouver: Class, Status & Social Boundaries 1863-1913	Finalist
1997 [h]	Rhodri Windsor Liscombe	The New Spirit: Modern Architecture in Vancouver, 1938-1963	Winner
	John A. Cherrington	Vancouver at the Dawn: A Turn-of-the-Century Portrait	Finalist
	Fred Thirkell and Bob Scullion	Postcards from the Past: Edwardian Images of Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley	Finalist
1998 [i]	Chuck Davis	The Greater Vancouver Book: An Urban Encyclopaedia	Winner
	Betty O'Keefe and Ian Macdonald	The Mulligan Affair: Top Cop on the Take	Finalist
	Carmen Rodríguez	And a Body to Remember With	Finalist
1999 [j]	Bud Osborn	Keys to Kingdoms	Winner
	Shawn Blore and the editors of Vancouver Magazine	Vancouver: Secrets of the City	Finalist
	Grant Buday	White Lung	Finalist
2000 [k]	Lilia D'Acres and Donald Luxton	Lions Gate	Winner
	Christine Allen and Collin Varner	Gardens of Vancouver	Finalist
	Wayson Choy	Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood	Finalist
	Wing Chung Ng	The Chinese in Vancouver: The Pursuit of Identity and Power, 1945-80	Finalist
2001 [l]	Madeleine Thien	Simple Recipes	Winner
	Douglas Coupland	City of Glass: Douglas Coupland's Vancouver	Finalist
	Timothy Taylor	Stanley Park	Finalist
	Gary Wyatt (ed.)	Susan Point: Coast Salish Artist	Finalist
2002 [m]	Keith Carlson	A Sto:lo-Coast Salish Historical Atlas	Winner
	Doreen Armitage	Burrard Inlet: A History	Finalist
	Bart Campbell	The Door is Open: Memoir of a Soup Kitchen Volunteer	Finalist
	Cynthia Flood	Making a Stone of the Heart	Finalist
2003 [n]	Lincoln Clarkes , Ken Dietrich-Campbell, Patricia Canning and Elaine Allan	Heroines	Winner
	Reid Shier (ed.)	Stan Douglas: Every Building on 100 Block West Hastings	Winner
	John J. Clague and Bob Turner	Vancouver, City on the Edge: Living with a Dynamic Geological Landscape	Finalist
	Fiona Tinwei Lam	Intimate Distances	Finalist
2004 [o]	Daniel Francis	L.D.: Mayor Louis Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver	Winner
	Annabel Lyon	The Best Thing for You	Finalist
	Paul Yee	The Bone Collector's Son	Finalist
	Caroline Adderson	Sitting Practice	Honourable mention
	John Punter	The Vancouver Achievement: Urban Planning and Design	Honourable mention
	Maggie de Vries	Missing Sarah: A Vancouver Woman Remembers Her Vanished Sister	Honourable mention
2005 [p]	Lance Berelowitz	Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination	Winner
	Wayson Choy	All That Matters	Finalist
	Leslie Robertson and Dara Culhane (eds.)	In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside Vancouver	Finalist
	Various	The Vancouver Stories: West Coast Fiction from Canada's Best Writers	Finalist
2006 [q]	Jean Barman	Stanley Park's Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch, and Brockton Point	Winner
	James P. Delgado	Waterfront: The Illustrated Maritime History of Greater Vancouver	Winner
	Derek Hayes	Historical Atlas of Vancouver and the Lower Fraser Valley	Finalist
	Abraham J. Rogatnick , Ian M. Thom, and Adele Weder	B.C. Binning	Finalist
2007 [r]	Michael Kluckner	Vancouver Remembered	Winner
	Grant Arnold and Michael Turner	Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs	Finalist
	Anita Rau Badami	Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?	Finalist
	Brett Josef Grubisic	The Age of Cities	Finalist
2008 [s]	Brad Cran and Gillian Jerome	Hope in Shadows: Stories and Photographs of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside	Winner
	Gary Geddes	Falsework	Finalist
	Eve Lazarus	At Home With History: The Untold Secrets of Greater Vancouver's Heritage Homes	Finalist
	Kaija Pepper	The Man Next Door Dances: The Art of Peter Bingham	Finalist
2009 [t]	Lee Henderson	The Man Game	Winner
	Gabor Maté	In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts	Finalist
	Meredith Quartermain	Nightmarker	Finalist
2010 [u]	Bruce Grenville and Scott Steedman	Visions of British Columbia	Winner
	George Bowering	The Box	Finalist
	Matt Hern	Common Ground in a Liquid City	Finalist
	Chris MacDonald	A Guidebook to Contemporary Architecture in Vancouver	Finalist
2011 [v]	Michael Christie	The Beggar's Garden: Stories	Winner
	Lynne Bowen	Whoever Gives Us Bread: The Story of Italians in British Columbia	Finalist	[2]
	Wayde Compton	After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region	Finalist	[2]
	Lesley McKnight	Vancouver Kids	Finalist	[2]
2012 [w]	W. H. New	YVR	Winner
	John Mikhail Asfour and Elee Kraljii Gardiner (eds.)	V6A: Writing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside	Finalist	[3]
	Claudia Cornwall	At the World's Edge: Curt Lang's Vancouver	Finalist	[3]
	Ali Kazimi	Undesirables: White Canada and the Komagata Maru	Finalist	[3]
	Jen Sookfong Lee	The Better Mother	Finalist	[3]
2013 [x]	Amber Dawn	How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler's Memoir	Winner	[4]
	Jancis M. Andrews	The Ballad of Mrs. Smith	Finalist
	Brad Cran	Ink on Paper	Finalist
	Harold Kalman and Robin Ward	Exploring Vancouver: The Architectural Guide	Finalist
	Sean Kheraj	Inventing Stanley Park: An Environmental History	Finalist
2014 [y]	David Stouck	Arthur Erickson: An Architect's Life	Winner
	Bruce Grierson	What Makes Olga Run?	Finalist	[5]
	Doretta Lau	How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?	Finalist	[5]
	Ashley Little	Anatomy of a Girl Gang: A Novel	Finalist	[5]
	Billeh Nickerson	Artificial Cherry	Finalist	[5]
2015 [z]	Wayde Compton	The Outer Harbour: Stories	Winner	[6] [7]
	Aaron Chapman	Live at the Commodore: The Story of Vancouver's Historic Commodore Ballroom	Finalist
	Bren Simmers	Hastings-Sunrise: Poems	Finalist
	Lois Simmie and Cynthia Nugent	Mister Got To Go, Where Are You?	Finalist
2016 [aa]	Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun , Karen Duffek, and Tania Willard	Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories	Winner	[8]
	Wayde Compton and Renée Sarojini Saklikar (eds.)	The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them	Finalist	[9]
	Lorimer Shenher	That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away	Finalist	[9]
2017	Carleigh Baker	Bad Endings	Winner	[10]
	Grant Arnold , Ian M. Thom, Susan Point, Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse, Thomas Cannell, Myrtle McKay, and William McLennan	Susan Point: Spindle Whorl	Finalist
	Gabrielle Prendergast	Pandas on the Eastside	Finalist
	Sam Wiebe	Invisible Dead	Finalist
2018	Chelene Knight	Dear Current Occupant	Winner	[11]
	Travis Lupick	Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction	Finalist
	Erín Moure	Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by Toots	Finalist
	Rachel Rose	Sustenance: Writers from BC and Beyond on the Subject of Food	Finalist
2019	Robert Watt and Susan Point	People among the People: The public art of Susan Point	Winner
	Phillip Huynh	The Forbidden Purple City	Finalist
	Eve Lazarus	Murder by Milkshake: An Astonishing True Story of Adultery, Arsenic, and a Charismatic Killer	Finalist
	Susin Nielsen	No Fixed Address	Finalist
	Shazia Hafiz Ramji	Port of Being	Finalist
2020	Catherine B. Clement	Chinatown Through a Wide Lens: The Hidden Photographs of Yucho Chow	Winner	[12]
	Francine Cunningham	on/me	Finalist	[13]
	Alex Leslie	Vancouver for Beginners	Finalist	[13]
2021	Michelle Good	Five Little Indians	Winner	[12]
	Joseph Dandurand	The East Side of It All	Finalist	[13]
	Danny Ramadan and Anna Bron	Salma the Syrian Chef	Finalist	[13]
	Marlene Yuen	Ho Sun Hing Printers	Honourable mention	[ citation needed ]
2022	Karen Duffek , Bill McLennan, and Jordan Wilson	Where the Power Is: Indigenous Perspectives on Northwest Coast Art	Winner
	Meghan Bell	Erase and Rewind	Finalist	[14]
	Henry Doyle	No Shelter	Finalist	[14]
	Grace Eiko Thomson	Chiru Sakura: Falling Cherry Blossoms	Finalist	[14]
	Paul Wong	Debbie Cheung & Christopher Lee, Occupying Chinatown	Finalist	[14]
2023	Chelene Knight	Junie	Winner
	Evelyn Lau	Cactus Gardens	Finalist
	Michele Assarasakorn , Nathan Fairbairn	PAWS: Mindy Makes Some Space	Finalist
	Danny Ramadan	The Foghorn Echoes	Finalist
	Tara McGuire	Holden After and Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose	Finalist
	Jan Wade , Deanna Bowen, Wayde Compton, Daina Augaitis, Siobhan McCracken Nixon	Jan Wade: Soul Power	Finalist
2024	Henry Tsang	White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver	Winner
	C. A. Tanaka	Baby Drag Queen	Finalist
	Jen Sookfong Lee	Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart	Finalist
	Rueben George , Michael Simpson	It Stops Here: Standing Up for Our Lands, Our Waters, and Our People	Finalist
	Joni Low , Jeff O'Brien, editors, plus numerous authors	What Are Our Supports?	Finalist

Notes

1. The 1989 jurors were Jean Barman, Russell Kelly, and Doreen Westgarth.
2. The 1991 jurors were Sue Baptie, Sean Rossiter, and Don Stewart.
3. The 1992 jurors were Jean Barman, Janice Douglas, and Margaret Gabriel.
4. The 1993 jurors were Gordon Elliott, John Oliphant, and Lucy Stewart.
5. The 1994 jurors were Andrea Davies, Chuck Davis, and Bruce Macdonald.
6. The 1995 jurors were Irene Howard, Nancy Stubbs, and Greg Willett.
7. The 1996 jurors were Mary Ann Cantillon, Irene Howard, and Brahm Kornbluth.
8. The 1997 jurors were Laura Hackett, Judy Taylor, and Anne Yandle.
9. The 1998 jurors were Donna Brendon, Ian Chunn, and Vickie Jensen.
10. The 1999 jurors were Mark Leier, Bob Sarti, and Joseph Stewart.
11. The 2000 jurors were Shamina Senaratne, Nina Smart, and Joseph Stewart.
12. The 2001 jurors were Brenda Peterson, Shamina Senaratne, and Don Stewart.
13. The 2002 jurors were Brenda Peterson, Denise Ryan, and Michael Varty.
14. The 2003 jurors were George Fetherling, Michael Varty, and Anne Yandle.
15. The 2004 jurors were Crystal Allen, Keith Bunnell, and George Fetherling.
16. The 2005 jurors were Keith Bunnell, Laurie Roggeman, and Max Wyman.
17. The 2006 jurors were Rod Clarke, Glenn Deer, and Laurie Roggeman.
18. The 2007 jurors were Glenn Deer, Marc Fournier, and Karen X. Tulchinsky.
19. The 2008 jurors were Michelle Benjamin, Marc Fournier, and Fernanda Viveiros.
20. The 2009 jurors were Janice Douglas, Fred Wah, and Fernanda Viveiros.
21. The 2010 jurors were Janice Douglas, Fred Wah, and Jean Wilson.
22. The 2011 jurors were Emilie Dierking, Lee Henderson, and Jim Wong-Chu.
23. The 2012 jurors were Jane Bouey, David Chariandy, and Rebecca Wigod.
24. The 2013 jurors were Andrea Davies, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, and Paul Whitney.
25. The 2014 jurors were Jordan Abel, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, and Anna Ling Kaye.
26. The 2015 jurors were Anna Ling Kaye, Zoey Leigh Peterson, and Sirish Rao.
27. The 2016 jurors were Shirley Lew, Zoey Leigh Peterson, and Mary Schendlinger.

References

1. "Book Award winners and short lists". City of Vancouver . Retrieved 2023-06-13.
2. Samson, Natalie (2011-09-15). "City of Vancouver Book Award reveals shortlist". Quill and Quire . Archived from the original on 2022-10-07. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
3. Carter, Sue (2012-09-13). "City of Vancouver Book Award announces shortlist". Quill and Quire . Archived from the original on 2015-09-28. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
4. Carter, Sue (2013-11-25). "Amber Dawn wins City of Vancouver Book Award". Quill and Quire . Archived from the original on 2021-05-23. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
5. Robertson, Becky (2014-09-17). "City of Vancouver Book Award shortlist announced". Quill and Quire . Archived from the original on 2017-06-06. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
6. Sherlock, Tracy (2015-11-12). "Author Wayde Compton wins 2015 City of Vancouver Book Award". Vancouver Sun . Archived from the original on 2022-01-29. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
7. "Wayde Compton wins City of Vancouver Book Award". The Georgia Straight . 2015-11-12. Archived from the original on 2023-02-08. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
8. "This year's City of Vancouver Book Award goes to Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories". The Georgia Straight . 2016-10-03. Archived from the original on 2022-06-14. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
9. Lao, Lucy (2016-09-06). "City of Vancouver announces finalists for 2016 Book Award". The Georgia Straight . Archived from the original on 2022-12-08. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
10. Robertson, Becky (2017-10-12). "Carleigh Baker wins 2017 Vancouver Book Award". Quill and Quire . Archived from the original on 2022-11-27. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
11. Smith, Charlie (2018-12-08). "Chelene Knight's Dear Current Occupant wins City of Vancouver Book Award". The Georgia Straight . Archived from the original on 2022-12-09. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
12. Dunphy, Martin (2021-11-20). "Winners of the 2021 and 2020 Vancouver Book Award announced, along with city's new poet laureate". The Georgia Straight . Archived from the original on 2023-03-22. Retrieved 2023-06-13.
13. Gee, Dana (2021-10-20). "Vancouver Book Award finalists named". Vancouver Sun . Archived from the original on 2022-05-22. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
14. Zoria, Anna (2022-08-29). "Five finalists announced for the 2022 City of Vancouver Book Award". BC Alliance for Arts + Culture. Archived from the original on 2022-08-29. Retrieved 2023-06-13.

External links

• City of Vancouver Book Award