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Campus Bulletin

May 17, 2007

U of G Prof Shortlisted for Prestigious Book Award

University of Guelph English professor Dionne Brand has been shortlisted for Ontario’s Trillium Book Awards.

Brand, a Governor General’s Award winning author and poet, was shortlisted for Inventory, a long poem that asks: What would an inventory of the tumultuous early years of this new century have to account for? It tallies the physical and emotional impacts of globalization.

The awards will be presented June 4 by Ontario Culture Minister Caroline Di Cocco. The Trillium Book Awards, considered among Canada’s most prestigious, were established by the provincial government in 1987 to recognize excellence and increase public awareness of the quality and diversity of Ontario writers and writing.

Brand won the Governor General's Award for Poetry and the Trillium Award in 1997 for Land to Light On. Her novel In Another Place, Not Here, a 1998 New York Times notable book, was shortlisted for the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Award.

She also won the Toronto Book Award in 2006 for her novel What We All Long For, which follows a circle of young people of many different backgrounds as they try to make a life in the city. Trinidad-born Brand is also the author of Thirsty, which won the Pat Lowther Award for poetry.

Other Trillum Book award nominees in the English books category are: Charlotte Gray, Reluctant Genius;Wayne Johnston, The Custodian of Paradise; Anar Ali, Baby Khaki's Wings; Bernice Eisenstein, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors; and Mark Frutkin, Fabrizio's Return.

Award recipients receive $20,000. Their respective publishers also get $2,500 to promote the winning titles. All finalists receive a $500 honorarium.

Past recipients of the prize include Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro and Michael Ondaatje.