Canmore writer Jeff Gailus and his book The Grizzly Manifesto: In Defence of the Great Bear have found their way onto the top 10 list for the Alberta Readers’ Choice Award (ARC).
The annual Readers’ Choice Award process began with a list of 30 titles chosen from books published between October 2009 and September 2010.
From that list, Alberta librarians choose the top 10 books, which will be broken down to the top five by this year’s Book Champions, whose job it is to advocate one of the five remaining books.
Alberta readers will have the opportunity to vote for the top book, which comes with a $10,000 prize, in May.
This year’s Book Champions are Sharon Budnarchuk, co-owner of Audrey’s Books in Edmonton; Ken Chapman, one of Alberta Venture Magazine’s 50 Most Influential People of 2010; John Estacio, JUNO-nominated composer; Kirk Heuser, actor and CBC journalist and Literacy Alberta Executive Director Janet Lane.
Along with The Grizzly Manifesto, published by Calgary-based Rocky Mountain Books, the top 10 list includes Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium by Myrna Kostash; Myths of the Barrens by Bren Kolson; Too Bad: Sketches Towards a Self-Portrait by Robert Kroetsch; Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me by Sarah Leavitt; Memory’s Daughter by Alice Major; Cinco de Mayo by Michael J. Martineck; Bitter Medicine by Clem and Olivier Martini; Smoked: A Detective Lane Mystery by Garry Ryan; and finally, Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery by Helen Waldstein Wilkes.
