Two books released by an imperiled B.C. publisher are among the 10 titles long-listed for Canada’s largest literary non-fiction prize.
A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape by Candace Savage and The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen by Stephen Bown are both published by Douglas and McIntyre, which recently announced it is going into bankruptcy protection. Both books are contending for the $40,000 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

The other eight contenders include:

• A Season in Hell: My 130 Days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda by Robert Fowler (published by Harper Collins) HarperCollins Canada
• A Thousand Farewells: A Reporter’s Journey from Refugee Camp to the Arab Spring by Nahlah Ayed (Doubleday); Penguin Group Canada
• here we are among the living: a memoir in emails by Samantha Bernstein (Tightrope) Tightrope Books
• Pinboy: A Memoir by George Bowering (Cormorant) Cormorant Books
• Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins (Knopf) Knopf Canada
• Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile by Taras Grescoe (Harper Collins) HarperCollins Canada
• Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy by Andrew Preston (Knopf)
• Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello di Cintio (Goose Lane) Knopf Canada

The shortlist will be announced on December 4, and the award will be presented in Vancouver in early 2013. Last year, Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill, also published by D and M, won the award, which was first awarded in 2005.
D & M Publishers Inc.
Goose Lane Editions