Tim Cook among nominees for B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction

VANCOUVER – Military historian Tim Cook, writer-urbanist Charles Montgomery and poet-novelist Alison Pick have made the long list for the 2015 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

A total of 10 books are in the running for the annual $40,000 prize, which is presented by the British Columbia Achievement Foundation, an independent group established and endowed by the province of B.C.

Ottawa-based Cook, who won the Charles Taylor Prize in 2009, made the B.C. National Award cut for “The Necessary War: Canadians Fighting The Second World War 1939-1943” (Penguin Canada).

Montgomery, a 2005 Charles Taylor Prize winner who splits his time between Vancouver and Mexico, is nominated for “Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design” (Doubleday Canada).

And Toronto-based Pick, who made the long list for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2011, is in the running with “Between Gods: A Memoir” (Doubleday).

Jury members Jared Bland, John Fraser and Anne Giardini chose the long list from 134 books submitted by 33 publishers.

Other nominees for the 11th annual prize include Toronto Star columnist Chantal Hebert with Jean Lapierre for “The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and The Day That Almost Was” (Knopf Canada).

Journalist Michael Harris is longlisted for “The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We’ve Lost in a World of Constant Connection” (Harper Collins).

And writer-professor Joseph Heath is a nominee with “Enlightenment 2.0: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Our Economy, and Our Lives” (Harper Collins).

The short list will be announced early next month and the award will be presented in Vancouver in February.

The full long list can be found at: http://www.bcachievement.com/nonfiction/longlist.php