Ellie just won Canada's highest literary prize:
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertai...748/story.html
TORONTO - Ontario-born author Eleanor Catton has followed up her Man Booker Prize with a Governor General's Literary Award.
The Canada Council for the Arts announced this morning that the 28-year-old is the winner in the fiction category for her novel, "The Luminaries."
Last month, Catton became the youngest author to win the Booker for the mystery story, which is set amid a gold rush in New Zealand — where the writer moved with her family at age six from London, Ont.
This year's winner of the Governor-General's Award for non-fiction is "Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page" by Vancouver-based Sandra Djwa.
Katherena Vermette of Winnipeg claimed the English-language poetry prize for "North End Love Songs," while the drama honour went to "Fault Lines: Greenland — Iceland — Faroe" by Nicolas Billon, who was born in Ottawa, grew up in Montreal and now lives in Toronto.
Gov. Gen. David Johnston will present the awards, each worth $25,000, on Nov. 28th in Ottawa.
"The Luminaries" (McClelland & Stewart) is Catton's second novel after 2008's "The Rehearsal," which won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award.
The structure and characters of the 832-page story revolve around astrological charts from the year in which the tale is set.
A peer assessment committed appointed by the Canada Council to judge the fiction finalists called it "an entire narrative universe with its own mysterious cosmology."
"This exhilarating feat of literary design dazzles with masterful storytelling," the committee — which included Toronto's Kyo Maclear, Beth Powning of Markhamville, N.B., and Edmonton's Thomas Wharton — said in a statement.
"Each character is a planet — complex and brilliantly revealed. Precise sensual prose illuminates greed, fear, jealousy, longing — all that it means to be human."
Catton lives in an apartment in Auckland with her partner, American-born poet Steven Toussaint, and teaches creative writing at the Manukau Institute of Technology.
In a recent interview with The Canadian Press, she said her Booker win — which came with a 50,000-pound (C$80,000) purse and an international spotlight — "has had a kind of catapulting effect" on her life.
But she hoped it wouldn't alter things too much.
"What I want to say is I hope that nothing in my life that I care about changes — you know, my relationships with my family and my friends and my work. I hope that that stays the same or develops in its own way, according to its own speed.
"One thing I don't want is for this to get in the way of my relationship with myself."
The winner for children's literature, text was Toronto-based Teresa Toten for "The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B" (Doubleday Canada), in which the protagonist is dealing with obsessive compulsive disorder.
In the children's illustration category, the winner was Toronto's Matt James for "Northwest Passage" (Groundwood Books), which is told through the lyrics of Canadian singer/songwriter Stan Rogers' ballad.
The translation winner was Donald Winkler of Montreal for "The Major Verbs" (Signal Editions), a translation of a book by Quebec's Pierre Nepveu.
The publisher of each winning book receives $3,000 to support promotional activities.
Non-winning finalists receive $1,000.
This year, 978 titles in the English-language categories and 624 titles in the French-language categories were submitted.
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