祝贺加拿大笔会主席CHARLES FORAN获奖 姜维平 今天得知，Charlie 的人物传记《MORDECAI》，2011年11月1日获得了加拿大最大的非小说奖，奖金6万加币。据说，他还有可能再次获得加拿大总督奖，结果11月15日公布。2010年底，他曾把这本力作赠送给我，并题名留念，此前，我曾应邀去过他居住的小镇，见到了他和太太，为了写作此书，他花费了整整五年时间，采访了上百个知情者，几乎很少与他人来往，一个人在小搁楼上奋笔疾书，数易其稿，终成大器，他自甘寂寞，艰苦创作的精神令我印象深刻，为了支持他接任新一届加拿大笔会主席，我上个月向笔会捐款1000美金，以略表心情，已经收到了他的回函，值此，在他获奖的激动人心的时刻，谨向他及加拿大笔会表示热烈的祝贺！ 以下是近日新闻网上关于他获奖的英文稿： Richler biographer wins Canada’s largest non-fiction prize
Charles Foran won the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Non-Fiction $60,000 award for Mordecai: The Life & Times, Knopf Canada. Charles Foran, author of the best-selling biography Mordecai: The Life & Times (Knopf Canada), was named winner of the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-Fiction Tuesday evening, the richest annual literary award for a nonfiction book published in Canada. Foran, who has written 10 books, both fiction and nonfiction, took the $60,000 prize over shortlisted contenders Charlotte Gill, Richard Gwyn, Ray Robertson and Grant Lawrence. They were awarded $5,000 each. Mordecai: The Life & Times won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction earlier this year and is in the running for the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction, to be announced Nov. 15. The Writers’ Trust prize was awarded by the Hon. Hilary M. Weston in Toronto’s Koerner Hall, in the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning. The event was hosted by Albert Schultz, founding artistic director of Soulpepper Theatre Company, and featured a performance by the Toronto songwriter and pianist Michael Kaeshammer. The jury citation referred to Foran’s book as “an epic work of scholarship and energy … inclusive, intelligent … yet laced with the underlying perfume of tragedy … well written, exciting to read, even-handed, and magisterial.” Excerpts from the five shortlisted books — Gill’s Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe (Greystone Books/David Suzuki Foundation): Gwyn’s Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times; Volume Two: 1867-1891 (Random House Canada); Lawrence’s Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nude Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound (Harbour Publishing); and Robertson’s Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live (Biblioasis) — were read by writer/broadcaster Noah Richler, and actors Sheila McCarthy, William Webster, Joseph Ziegler and Diego Matamoros. Born in Toronto, Foran has taught at universities in China, Hong Kong, and Canada, and is a former columnist for the Montreal Gazette. He lives in Peterborough, Ontario. Foran is the current president of PEN Canada, the worldwide writer’s organization committed to defending authors and free speech. The Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award winner will be announced Nov. 1. Shortlisted are The Meagre Tarmac by Charles Blaise (Biblioasis), The Beggar's Garden by Michael Christie (HarperCollins), The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt (Anansi Press), Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan (Thomas Allen) and The Quiet Twin by Dan Vyleta (HarperCollins). 2011年11月4日于多伦多 |
