Journalist Paul Wells wins $10,000 Dafoe prize for Stephen Harper book

WINNIPEG – Paul Wells has won the $10,000 Dafoe Book Prize.

The Maclean’s magazine columnist picks up the award for “The Longer I’m Prime Minister: Stephen Harper and Canada 2006-,” published by Random House Canada.

The jury lauded Wells for providing a “lively, witty and perceptive insider, political portrait of Stephen Harper as a calculating, incremental politician, who set out to fundamentally change how Canadians see themselves and their place in the world.”

The winner was chosen from 40 submissions and a short list of five books.

The prize will be handed out at the J.W. Dafoe Foundation’s Book Prize Dinner on May 27 in Winnipeg.

The J.W. Dafoe Book Prize — named for newspaper editor John Wesley Dafoe — recognizes the best book on Canada, Canadians, and/or Canada’s place in the world.