The Canadian Jewish Literary Awards is honouring nine outstanding books for 2020. Now in its sixth year, the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards recognizes and rewards the finest Canadian writing on Jewish themes and subjects.
“Even during this year of isolation, choosing only nine Award winners from the depth and breadth and quality of the submissions was a challenge,” said Jury chair, Edward Trapunski. “Although the annual Awards ceremony will be online it will show the vibrancy of the culture and the appeal of Jewish themes for fiction and non-fiction writers.”
Winners have been declared in the following categories: fiction, biography, Jewish thought and culture, poetry, history, books for children and youth, Yiddish, scholarship, and Holocaust.
The Awards ceremony will be presented on the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards and the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies YouTube channels on October 25, 2020, at 2:00 pm. The ceremony will be available for later viewing on these channels. You will see and hear winning authors speak about their books.
POETRY
Swoon by Elana Wolff (Guernica Editions). This collection of poems explores a variety of subjects but returns again and again to our longing for transcendence. Informed by Jewish texts and contexts, with a sure-handed control of language and image, the poems are passionate but mature, precise and curious, willing to risk everything for a chance to slip behind the curtain of the familiar to get a glimpse at the divine. The poems in Swoon are philosophical considerations, meditations on the sacred and profane with a subtle understanding of one’s own connection tothe world. It is a subtle, sensual book of observances pleasing to the ear.
CLICK HERE for a pdf of the full press release with all the Honorees
