TORONTO: The 2020 Toronto Book Awards winner will be announced on November 30 with an online ceremony in conjunction with program partner, Toronto Public Library.
After lively jury deliberation, the finalists for this year’s Toronto Book Awards have been named.
This year’s shortlist includes a novel, a graphic novel, a short story collection and two works of non-fiction and tell stories that reflect the diversity and depth of the communities that call Toronto home.
Finalists for the 2020 Toronto Book Award are: Frying Plantain by Zalika Reid-Benta (House of Anansi Press)
Frying Plantain is a series of linked short stories tracing the path of a Jamaican-Canadian girl in Toronto from childhood to the beginning of her adult life.
These stories evoke the complexity of a person while also, with equal complexity, evoking a neighborhood (Eglinton West) over time: shifting, complicated, many peopled, loved.
Dancing After TEN by Vivian Chong and Georgia Webber (Fantagraphics) | Project
manager and access support by Kathleen Rea
Although she worked with collaborator Georgia Webber, Dancing After Ten, is Vivian Chong’s story, a stunningly-poignant memoir and a landmark in the graphic memoir genre.
A successful cornea operation temporarily repairs Chong’s eyesight after an unfortunate freak occurrence. She scurries to sketch and chronicle her memories against the inexorable affliction crippling her newly-implanted corneas. Dancing After Ten is a compellingly
uncommon experience, perfect for a pandemic and Covid’s myriad accompanying metaphors of blindness.
In the Beggarly Style of Imitation by Jean Marc Ah-Sen (Nightwood Editions)
In the Beggarly Style of Imitation defies categorization and almost defies description. It could be called short stories, it could be called an experimental novel, it could be called a meditation on style.
In this book, style is a serious game that demonstrates through formal play the limitations of believing in authenticity. This is a profoundly ambitious book that exhilarates, infuriates, and challenges the reader.
The Missing Millionaire by Katie Daubs (McClelland & Stewart)
Katie Daubs’s The Missing Millionaire is rich in characters, history, and a specificity of detail that brings early-20th-century Toronto to the reader with thrilling immediacy. Investigating the famous 1919 disappearance of Ambrose Small allows Daubs to take interesting byroads into the theatrical, law enforcement, and mental health treatment past of Toronto.
The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole (Doubleday Canada) A skillful blend of history and reportage, The Skin We’re In punctures any illusions Torontonians may harbor about race relations in their City, and provides a local front-line perspective on Black Lives Matter.
Desmond Cole describes his progression from journalist to activist on behalf of Toronto’s black residents fed up with mistreatment at the hands of the police, lip service from politicians and media, and indifference from the community at large.