Tanya Talaga wins $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen prize for ‘Seven Fallen Feathers’

OTTAWA – “Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City” by Tanya Talaga has won the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

The prize jury called the book, which traces the lives and deaths of seven Indigenous high school students, “a crucial document of our times and vital to the emergence of a true vision of justice in Canada.”

Talaga, a journalist with the Toronto Star, also won the RBC Taylor Prize and was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and the BC National Award for Canadian Nonfiction for the book.

The other finalists for the Shaughnessy Cohen prize were “Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life” by Christopher Dummitt, “All We Leave Behind: A Reporter’s Journey into the Lives of Others” by Carol Off, “Out Standing in the Field: A Memoir by Canada’s First Female Infantry Officer” Sandra Perron and “Robert Bond: The Greatest Newfoundlander” by Ted Rowe.

They each receive $2,500.