‘Chronic Condition’ book makes another short list, this time the Donner Prize

TORONTO – Ottawa-based journalist Jeffrey Simpson’s book about the Canadian health care system is up for another lucrative award.

“Chronic Condition: Why Canada’s Health Care System Needs to be Dragged into the 21st Century” (Allen Lane Canada) has made the short list for the $50,000 Donner Prize, which honours public policy writing by Canadians.

That, after being named a finalist for the $10,000 John W. Dafoe Book Prize last month and for the recently awarded Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

Other finalists for the 15th annual Donner Prize include journalist Mary Janigan for “Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark: The West Versus the Rest Since Confederation” (Knopf Canada), which is also a contender for the John W. Dafoe award.

The Donner Prize short list is rounded out by “Sante: l’heure des choix” by Claude Castonguay (Les Editions du Boreal), the former Quebec minister of health, and “Hunger in the Balance: The New Politics of International Food Aid” by Jennifer Clapp, a research chair in global food security and sustainability at University of Waterloo (Cornell University Press).

The 2012/2013 short list was chosen from a field of 60 submissions. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony in Toronto on April 25.