Love Non Fiction? Cast Your Vote for the Best.

The Writers' Trust of Canada launched its literary awards in 1997, with a fiction and non-fiction prize. While Rogers has sponsored the fiction prize for its entire 14 years, the non-fiction prize has had several different sponsors.

 In 2011, the prize brought on a new sponsor and was relaunched as the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, upping the winner's purse to $60,000.

A number of prominent Canadian writers have been finalists for this award in its past incarnation, including Noah Richler, Anna Porter, Taras Grescoe and Carol Shields.

Below the jump, you will find 14 polls, one for each year the prize has been given out. In each poll, vote for the book you'd most like to see on the Canada Reads: True Stories list. You can vote once in each poll and the polls below will close on Tuesday, October 4 at midnight, ET.

Each vote counts as one point. Books accumulate points based on polls and recommendations. The 40 books with the most support will be named the Canada Reads: True Stories Top 40

To vote
http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/2011/09/great-true-stories-hilary-weston-writers-trust-prize-for-nonfiction.html

Wow, It was Close

Canada Reads 2011 picked the political satirical novel, The Best Laid Plans, by first time author  Terry Fallis.

Fallis was in Thunder Bay last August as a presenter at The Sleeping Giant Writers Festival.  He spoke about the travail of getting the book published. Rejection followed rejection.  He entered the book in the Leacock  contest and won.  He also podcast the book in segments using his own store-bought set-up and a quiet room at the top of his house.  Soon, he had picked up a following.  Finally and at last, a publisher.  I talked to Terry after the workshop and he praised  our festival highly. 

Terry toppled The Birth House by Ami McKay in a dramatic finish to this year's contest.  This morning, the participants voted off Carol Shield's Unless which was the audience favourite and The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou.  The graphic novel Essex County by Jeff Lemire had been eliminated last week.  (For a complete list of the books in the running,  scroll down and check the side bar.)

Congratulations to Terry Fallis.  Come back to Thunder Bay.