Presented in partnership with Hamilton Public Library on Thursday, December 14th, 2023.
Guests of the ceremony heard excerpt readings from the Shortlisted authors and witnessed the announcement of the award recipients in each category!
Hosted by Anuja Varghese
Anuja Varghese is a Pushcart-nominated writer based in Hamilton, ON. Her debut collection of genre-blending short stories titled CHRYSALIS was released in March 2023 with House of Anansi Press. CHRYSALIS received the Canada Council for the Arts Governor General's Literary Award in Fiction, as well as the Writers' Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2+ Emerging Writers 2023. Her work appears in Hobart, The Malahat Review, Humber Literary Review, Plenitude Magazine, and others. She is @anuja_v on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
Award Recipients
Fiction Award Recipient: Sheila Murray for Finding Edward published by Cormorant Books
Non-Fiction Award Recipient: Joyce Grant for Can You Believe It? How to Spot Fake News and Find the Facts published by Kids Can Press
Poetry Award Recipient: Fareh Malik for Streams that Lead Somewhere published by Mawenzi House Publishers
Children's Book Award Recipient: Joyce Grant for Can You Believe It? How to Spot Fake News and Find the Facts published by Kids Can Press
Kerry Schooley Book Award Recipient: Darrell Epp for Permanent Smoke published by Quoir
30th Annual Hamilton Literary Awards Shortlist:
Fiction Category
Ainslie Hogarth for “Motherthing”
Robert McGill for “A Suitable Companion for the End of Your Life”
Sheila Murray for “Finding Edward”
Non-Fiction Category
David J. Forsyth for “Alice and the Machine Gunner”
Joyce Grant for “Can You Believe It? How to Spot Fake News and Find the Facts”
Rollie Pemberton for “Bedroom Rapper: Cadence Weapon on Hip-Hop, Resistance and Surviving the Music Industry”
Carl Watts for “I just wrote this five minutes ago…”
Poetry Category
Gary Barwin for “The Most Charming Creatures”
Fareh Malik for “Streams that Lead Somewhere”
Chris Pannell for “The Fragmentarium and Other Poems”
Children's Book Award
Joyce Grant for “Can You Believe It? How to Spot Fake News and Find the Facts”
Lawrence Hill for “Beatrice and Croc Harry”
Sylvia McNicoll for “What the Dog Knows”
Kerry Schooley Book Award
Darrell Epp for “Permanent Smoke”
Carrie Snyder for “Francie’s Got a Gun”
Brent van Staalduinen for “Cut Road”
Article written by Spectator Reporter, Jeff Mahoney
About the program
About Kerry Schooley
The 29th annual Hamilton Literary Awards
On December 12, 2022, the 29th annual Hamilton Literary Awards were presented at Theatre Aquarius. The Awards celebrated literary excellence in works published in 2021 from the Greater Hamilton Area and Six Nations of the Grand River. Authors were recognized in the categories of Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry and the Kerry Schooley Book Award.
Read more about the legacy of the Awards and the 2022 Award Recipients: