Affiliates Thomas King and Cherie Dimaline Nominated for the 2014 Burt Award

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Affiliates Thomas King and Cherie Dimaline are both nominated for this year’s Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature.

The nominees for this year’s award were announced on September 3 by CODE, an NGO based in Canada dedicated to the causes of literacy and education.

King has been nominated for The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America (Doubleday Canada) while Dimaline’s nomination comes for The Girl Who Grew a Galaxy (Theytus Books). Rounding out this year’s nominees are Bev Sellars (They Called Me Number One (Talonbooks)) and Monique Gray Smith (Tilly, a Story of Hope and Resilience (Sono Nis Press)).

The goal of the Burt Award, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, is to encourage young people across Canada to get excited about reading. Last year, almost 1,000 libraries, schools and community centres that serve aboriginal youth received over 7,500 copies of the first, second and third prize winning books with plans to do the same for this year’s prize-winning books.

The winners will be unveiled at a gala event at Winnipeg’s Manitoba Theatre for Young People on September 27. First place comes with a monetary prize of $12,000 with $8,000 being awarded to the second-place author and $5,000 going to the author receiving third prize.

Read more about this year’s Burt Award here.