Announcing the 2019 Canadian Authors Association Fred Kerner Book Award Winner: Maureen Medved for Black Star (Anvil Press)

Maureen Medved, Vancouver, BC
Black Star
(Anvil Press)

Maureen Medved’s writing has been published in literary journals and magazines and on the stage and screen internationally. Maureen’s adaptation of her novel The Tracey Fragments opened the Panorama program of the 57th annual Berlin International Film Festival, winning the Manfred Salzgeber Prize for a film that “broadens the boundaries of cinema today.” Her novel Black Star came out in April 2018 and a non-fiction book is forthcoming in 2020. She writes about film and television for Herizons and is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia.

 

The other shortlisted authors were:

Lauren B. Davis, Princeton, NJ
The Grimoire of Kensington Market
(Wolsak and Wynn Publishers)

Lauren B. Davis is the author of Against a Darkening Sky; The Empty Room, one of the National Post‘s “Best Books of the Year”; and Our Daily Bread, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and a Globe and Mail “Best Books of the Year.” Her other books include the bestselling and critically acclaimed novels The Radiant City, a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and The Stubborn Season, as well as two short story collections, An Unrehearsed Desire and Rat Medicine & Other Unlikely Curatives. Lauren was born in Montreal and now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

 

Paulette Dubé, Jasper, AB
Autant
(Thistledown Press)

Paulette Dubé was raised in the French village of Legal, Alberta. One of her memories from that time was watching her third sister being delivered on the kitchen table. She has pretty much been hooked on “magic,” as her dad called the birthing process, ever since. Today, she relies heavily on the good fortune of living in Jasper National Park with her family for her daily dose of magic realism. Autant, her seventh literary project, is an homage to her Franco-Albertan roots and the fierce love in family. Talon, her first novel, made the shortlists for the Alberta Writers’ Guild Best Novel Award (2003) and the Starburst Award (2003). Her poetry garnered a number of rewards including the Milton Acorn Memorial People’s Poetry Award (1994), the CBC Alberta Anthology (1998) and the CBC Literary Awards (2005).

 

Loren Edizel, Toronto, ON
Days of Moonlight
(Inanna Publications)

Loren Edizel was born in Izmir, Turkey, and has lived in Canada most of her life. She is the author of three novels, Adrift (2011) (long-listed for the ReLit Awards), The Ghosts of Smyrna (2013), and a collection of short stories, Confessions: A Book of Tales (2014). The Ghosts of Smyrna was also published in Turkish, in Turkey, in 2017. Her short fiction has appeared in journals in both Canada and in Turkey. She lives in Toronto with her family.

 

Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli, Sudbury, ON
for La Brigantessa
(Inanna Publications)

Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli is a professional member of the Canadian Authors Association and the Writers’ Union of Canada. An alumna of the Humber School for Writers, she has been published in sixteen anthologies. La Brigantessa (Inanna Publications) was recently awarded Gold for Historical Fiction in the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY Awards). It is also shortlisted for the Northern Lit Awards.

Rosanna was born in Calabria, Italy, and immigrated to Canada with her family at three years of age. She has received four OECTA (Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association) Best Practice Awards for her unique strategies in early literacy, promoting positive pupil interactions, building pupil self-esteem, and helping pupils who grieve.

Since retiring from teaching in June 2015, Rosanna is pursuing her literary goals full-time. She has two books published by Harlequin UK and a children’s book that will be released by Pajama Press in September 2019. She will be reading from La Brigantessa in Orvieto, Italy, in June 2019 and conducting research for her next historical novel.

 

The winner was announced on Saturday, May 18 during CanWrite! 2019, Canadian Authors’ annual writers’ conference. This year’s conference was held at the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus from May 16 to May 19.

Find out more about CanWrite! 2019 at https://canadianauthors.org/national/canwrite-2019-overview/