Author Jack Hodgins has earned a dozen literary awards in his career, but admits it never becomes old hat to be nominated.
“Each time there’s a different reason to be pleased or excited. And also you want some kind of feedback that suggests you’re not losing it,” the Saanich resident said, after being nominated for the 2011 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. “It would be discouraging if your first couple of books won awards and then nothing else ever happened.”
Hodgins’ novel, The Master of Happy Endings, is among five works nominated for the prize, which comes with $5,000.
The award was established by the City of Victoria and Butler Brothers Supplies in 2004. It goes to the best fiction, non-fiction or poetry book written by a Greater Victoria author and published the previous year.
Other nominees include Carla Funk’s poetry book apologetic, and non-fiction works by Stephen Hume (A Walk with the Rainy Sisters), Sylvia Olsen (Working with Wool) and John Schreiber (Old Lives: In the Chilcotin Backcountry).
Also to be awarded at a gala ceremony Oct. 12 at the Union Club in Victoria is the 2011 Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize.
The three finalists for that honour and the $5,000 prize are illustrator Kristi Bridgeman (Uirapuru) and authors Sarah N. Harvey (Death Benefits) and Arthur John Stewart (Odd Ball).
The ceremony is open to the public and begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 and are available at Munro’s Books, Bolen Books and Ivy’s Bookshop.
vmoreau@oakbaynews.com