CanLit dominates Commonwealth prize short list

Emma Donoghue, Michael Winter and Richard B. Wright are among the dozen Canadians in the running for the 2011 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Now in its 25th year, the literary honour celebrates fiction by established and new writers in four Commonwealth regions: Africa, the Caribbean and Canada, South Asia and Europe and South East Asia andthePacific.

Organizers announced regional short lists on Thursday and, for the Caribbean and Canada section, Canadians dominated both the best book and best first book categories while Caribbean writers were completely shut out.

Among the Canadian contenders are Donoghue, the Irish-born writer who now makes her home London, Ont.,and Montreal's Miguel Syjuco.

Donoghue, who collected accolades all through 2010 for Room, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for her book. The novel was also shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize, but ultimately lost out to British writer Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question.

Syjuco has received several international honours for his book Ilustrado. It won both the Man Asian Literary Prize and the Palanca Prize in the Philippines in 2008, when it was still an unpublished manuscript.

Along with Syjuco, two other emerging Canadian authors are nominees for their debut efforts: Alexander MacLeod, son of noted writer Alistair MacLeod, for Light Lifting and Sarah Selecky for The Cake is for the Party. Selecky and MacLeod were previously rivals on the Giller Prize shortlist.

Best book finalists for the Caribbean and Canada are:

• The Sky is Falling by Caroline Adderson.
• Room by Emma Donoghue.
• The Master of Happy Endings by Jack Hodgins.
• In The Fabled East by Adam Lewis Schroeder.
• The Death of Donna Whalen by Michael Winter.
• Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard by Richard B. Wright.

Best first book finalists for the Caribbean and Canada are:

• Bird Eat Bird by Katrina Best.
• Doing Dangerously Well by Carole Enahoro.
• Mennonites Don't Dance by Darcie Friesen Hopsack.
• Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod.
• The Cake is for the Party by Sarah Selecky.
• Ilustrado by Miguel Syjuco.

In the other Commonwealth zones, high-profile finalists include The Long Song by Andrea Levy and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoe by David Mitchell. Both British writers are nominated for best book in the South Asia and Europe region.

The sectional winners will be announced March 3. Then, those eight will compete for the overall Commonwealth best book and best first book awards.

The final winners will be named at the Sydney Writers' Festival in Australia on May 21, with the best book laureate receiving 10,000 (about $16,000 Cdn) and the best first book winner receiving 5,000 (about $8,000 Cdn).

Established in 1987, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize has previously been awarded to writers such as Zadie Smith,Peter Carey, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieand J.M. Coetzee.

Canadians have also repeatedly captured the prize, including Austin Clarke (The Polished Hoe), Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes),Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall On Your Knees), Mordecai Richler (Solomon Gursky Was Here) and Rohinton Mistry (Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance).

To be eligible, authors must be citizens of one of the Commonwealth's 53 member countries, and publish a book in English.