Two Coquitlam authors are up for BC Book Prizes.
Yesterday (Monday), the West Coast Book Prize Society named Paul Watson and Onjana Yawnghwe as finalists for the coveted awards.
Watson is shortlisted in the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize category for his book Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition (McClelland & Stewart) while Yawnghwe’s work, Fragments, Desire (Oolichan Books), is in the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize category.
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Watson was on the icebreaker that led the discovery expedition of Sir John Franklin’s unsuccessful voyage through the Northwest Passage with HMS Erebus and Terror, in 1845.
Yawnghwe, a native of Thailand, co-founded Fish Magic Press, which specializes in limited-run, handmade chapbooks, and was the co-editor of Xerography. Fragments, Desire is her first book of poetry and she plans to publish another, titled The Small Way, with Caitlin Press this summer.
The 34th annual BC Book Prizes winners will be announced at the Lieutenant Governor’s gala on May 4 at the Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront in Vancouver.
jcleugh@tricitynews.com
