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Release Date: March 16, 2005

Headline: Four Raincoast authors nominated for BC Book Prizes

Press Release: Vancouver (March 16th, 2005) -- Raincoast Books is pleased to announce that four of its authors, Bill Gaston, Aislinn Hunter, Cynthia Nugent and Rex Weyler, have been shortlisted for the prestigious BC Book Prizes. Bill Gaston is nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for his novel, Sointula; Aislinn Hunter for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for her book, The Possible Past; Cynthia Nugent for the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize for her book, Francesca and the Magic Bike; and Rex Weyler for Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for his book, Greenpeace. The awards, administered by the West Coast Book Prize Society, will be announced at a gala event on April 30th in Vancouver.

Bill Gaston is widely considered to be one of Canada’s finest authors of fiction. His numerous novels and short fiction collections have won him many accolades, including a Giller Prize nomination and the inaugural Timothy Findley Award. Sointula was released in fall 2004 to great critical acclaim and was supported by a tour of Canada’s major literary festivals. Bill Gaston lives in Victoria.

Aislinn Hunter is the author of three previous books which have all been shortlisted for, or won, major national awards. The Possible Past, a poetic meditation on time and place, is her second book of poetry and was recognized by critics for its maturity and strength of voice. Aislinn Hunter spent the fall of 2004 as a writer-in-residence for Lancaster University in the Lake District, UK, but is now back in her home city of Vancouver.

Cynthia Nugent is an award-winning artist as well as a teacher and writer. She has illustrated a number of picture books, including Mister Got To Go and Arnie, Goodness Gracious, Gulliver Mulligan and When Cats Go Wrong. Her most recent book, Francesca and the Magic Bike was released in 2004 to wide attention. She lives in Vancouver.

Rex Weyler, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, is one of the founders of Greenpeace International, and was a photographer on many of Greenpeace’s most notable early activist voyages. Greenpeace, his thorough and honest history of Greenpeace’s founding and first decade in Vancouver, was published in several countries — Canada, the U.S, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand — and took him on an international book tour in 2004. Rex Weyler lives in Vancouver.

Raincoast Books congratulates all four authors on their nominations for the BC Book Prizes:

Sointula
by Bill Gaston
1-55192-719-5
$34.95 CDN, cloth

The Possible Past
by Aislinn Hunter
1-55192-721-7
$18.95 CDN, paper

Francesca and the Magic Bike
by Cynthia Nugent
1-55192-561-3
$12.95 CDN, paper

Greenpeace
by Rex Weyler
1-55192-529-x
$34.95 CDN, cloth

 

For more information on the BC Book Prize, please visit www.bcbookprizes.ca

For more information, or to schedule interviews with the authors, please contact:

David Leonard
Senior Publicist
Raincoast Books
david {at} raincoast dot com
416 934 9903

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Raincoast Books is a Canadian publisher and distributor based in Vancouver, BC.

Raincoast Publishing, which includes the Polestar imprint and key titles from Press Gang Publishers, produces a wide range of fiction and non-fiction titles for adults and children. Raincoast Distribution is the exclusive Canadian distributor for publishers from the U.K., the U.S. and Canada. Visit www.raincoast.com for more information.