16 March 2006
Jan Zwicky Shortlisted for Dorothy Livesay Prize
Gaspereau Press is pleased to announce that Jan Zwicky’s Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences (Gaspereau Press, 2005) has been shortlisted for the 2006 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Fellow nominees are Stephen Collis for Anarchive (New Star Books), Meredith Quartermain for Vancouver Walking (NeWest Press), Jordan Scott for Silt (New Star Books) and George Sipos for Anything but the Moon (Goose Lane Editions).
The Dorothy Livesay prize is sponsored by the BC Teachers’ Federation and is one of eight BC Book Prizes given annually to recognize excellence in British Columbia literature. 2006 marks the 22nd year since the awards were first created. The winners for all eight prizes will be announced on 29 April 2006 at the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prizes Gala to be held at the Marriot Pinnacle Hotel Vancouver and hosted by author and radio personality Bill Richardson. The gala will be the final event in this year’s BC Book & Magazine Week. For more information about the prizes and the week’s events, please visit http://www.bcbookprizes.ca/
BACKGROUND
Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences is a vital addition to a remarkable body of work. The songs in this collection are miniature odes, lyric apostrophes to household fixtures, human emotions, shades of light, currents of air, sounds, departures and solitudes. Zwicky’s poems walk the tightrope between thinking and being, strengthening the act of imagination that connects past, present and future.
Jan Zwicky is a musician, philosopher and award-winning poet. Thirty-seven Small Songs & Thirteen Silences is her sixth collection of poems. In 1999 her collection Songs for Relinquishing the Earth won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. In 2004 her philosophic work Wisdom & Metaphor (Gaspereau Press, 2003) and poetry collection Robinson’s Crossing were both nominated for Governor General’s Awards. Zwicky teaches philosophy at the University of Victoria.
Gaspereau Press is a literary publisher and printer based in Kentville, Nova Scotia. The press is committed to literature and the book arts, incorporating a range of modern and antique forms of printing and binding to create books that are distinctive in manufacture and design. Its publications have won numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the Alberta Book Award for fiction, and numerous Alcuin Awards for excellence in book design.
For more information contact Beth Crosby
47 Church Avenue,
Kentville, NS, B4N 2M7
902-678-6002, info@gaspereau.com
