Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature

The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature is a major Canadian literary award relaunched in 2016 and presented annually by Toronto's Koffler Centre of the Arts. The Awards honour the best Jewish Canadian writing in four categories, each with an annual prize of $10,000: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Young Adult and Children's literature, and History. A fifth $10,000 prize for Poetry is awarded every three years.

The Awards consider submissions from both print and digital sources (including books, e-books, graphic novels, digital storytelling, and a variety of media). Writers must be Canadian or the submission must have significant Canadian content. Writers must be Jewish or the submission must have significant or predominantly Jewish content.[1]

A professional jury of three individuals working in the arts and media oversee the award selection process. The shortlist for the inaugural Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature was announced on September 15, 2016. The winners were announced on September 29, 2016.

History

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The original Canadian Jewish Book Awards were founded in 1988 by Adam Fuerstenberg.

In 1994, the Koffler Centre of the Arts took over the Awards management. From 2004 to 2014 – with the support of a donation from Lillian and Norman Glowinsky – the Awards were renamed the Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards.

In 2015, the Koffler Centre of the Arts put the Awards on hiatus for one year to reframe the program. The resulting Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature continues Fuerstenberg's original ambition, "bringing increased awareness of the Canadian Jewish canon to the public, as well as supporting and celebrating Canadian books and writers."[2]

The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature are supported by a donation by the Lillian and Norman Glowinsky Family Foundation.[3]

List of winners and shortlists of the Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature

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Year Winners Shortlists
2016
Jury: Pierre Anctil, Devyani Saltzman, Laurence Siegel

FICTION

NON-FICTION

  • Mark Celinscak, Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Nazi Concentration Camp

HISTORY

  • Beverley Chalmers, Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women’s Voices under Nazi Rule

CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT

  • Emil Sher, Young Man with Camera

POETRY

  • Daniel Goodwin, Catullus’s Soldiers [4]

FICTION

NON-FICTION

HISTORY

  • Beverley Chalmers, Birth, Sex and Abuse: Women’s Voices under Nazi Rule
  • Andrew Cohen, Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours that Made History
  • Maria Noriega Rachwal, From Kitchen to Carnegie Hall: Ethel Stark and the Montreal Women’s Symphony Orchestra
  • Ira Robinson, A History of Antisemitism in Canada

CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT

POETRY

  • Daniel Goodwin, Catullus's Soldiers
  • Seymour Mayne, Cusp Word Sonnets
  • Ruth Panofsky, The Collected Poems of Miriam Waddington
  • Rachel Zolf, Janey's Arcadia
2017
Jury: Bob Bossin, Ami Sands Brodoff, Cary Fagan

FICTION

NON-FICTION

HISTORY

CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT

FICTION

  • Eric Beck Rubin, School of Velocity
  • Peter Behrens, Carry Me
  • Danila Botha, For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known

NON-FICTION

  • Sarah Barmak, Closer: Notes from the Orgasmic Frontier of Female Sexuality
  • Judy Batalion, White Walls
  • David Leach, Chasing Utopia
  • Miriam Libicki, Toward a Hot Jew

HISTORY

CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT

  • Deborah Kerbel, Feathered
  • Tilar Mazzeo and Mary Farrell, Irena’s Children
  • Irene N. Watts and Kathryn E. Shoemaker, Seeking Refuge
2018
Jury: Beverley Chalmers, Joseph Kertes, Lee Maracle

FICTION

NON-FICTION

  • Julija Šukys, Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter’s Reckoning

HISTORY

  • Hugues Théorêt, The Blue Shirts: Adrien Arcand and Fascist Anti-Semitism in Canada

CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT

  • Deborah Katz, Rare is Everywhere

FICTION

NON-FICTION

  • Molly Applebaum, Buried Words: The Diary of Molly Applebaum Sarah Barmak
  • Elaine Dewar, The Handover
  • Julija Šukys, Siberian Exile: Blood, War, and a Granddaughter’s Reckoning

HISTORY

  • Roger Frie, Not in My Family: Germany Memory and Responsibility After the Holocaust
  • Hugues Théorêt, The Blue Shirts: Adrien Arcand and Fascist Anti-Semitism in Canada
  • Max Wallace, In the Name of Humanity: The Secret Deal to End the Holocaust

CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT

  • Melanie Fishbane, Maud
  • Kathy Kacer, To Look a Nazi in the Eye: A Teen’s Account of a War Criminal Trial
  • Deborah Katz, Rare is Everywhere
2019
Jury: Ayesha Chatterjee, Melanie J. Fishbane, Eric Beck Rubin

FICTION

NON-FICTION

POETRY

  • Linda Frank, Divided

HISTORY

  • Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy

CHILDREN'S/YOUNG ADULT

FICTION

NON-FICTION

  • Anne Michaels, Infinite Gradation
  • Lezli Rubin-Kunda, At Home: Talks with Canadian Artists about Place and Practice
  • Sarah Weinman, The Real Lolita

POETRY

  • Linda Frank, Divided
  • Anne Michaels, All We Saw
  • Suzannah Showler, Thing Is

HISTORY

  • Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy
  • Robert Harris, Song of a Nation: The Untold Story of Canada’s National Anthem
  • Sarah Wobick-Segev, Homes Away from Home: Jewish Belonging in Twentieth Century Paris, Berlin and St. Petersburg

CHILDREN’S/YOUNG ADULT

2020
Jury: Judy Batalion, Allan Levine, Shani Mootoo

FICTION

  • Sarah Leavitt, Agnes, Murderess

HISTORY

NON-FICTION

YOUNG ADULT/CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

FICTION

HISTORY

  • Zelda Abramson & John Lynch, The Montreal Shtetl: Making Home After the Holocaust
  • Matti Friedman, Spies of No Country
  • Heidi J.S. Tworek, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945

NON-FICTION

YOUNG ADULT/CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

2021
Jury: Zelda Abramson, Nathan Adler, Naomi K. Lewis

FICTION

HISTORY

  • Sharon Kirsch, The Smallest Objective

NON-FICTION

  • Myriam Steinberg, illustrations by Christache, Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of (In)fertility

YOUNG ADULT/CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

FICTION

HISTORY

  • Sharon Kirsch, The Smallest Objective
  • Paul Roberts Bentley, Strange Journey: John R. Friedeberg Seeley and the Quest for Mental Health
  • Celia Rabinovitch, Duchamp’s Pipe: A Chess Romance--Marcel Duchamp and George Koltanowski

NON-FICTION

  • Rick Salutin and Gideon Salutin, illustrated by Dušan Petričić, Gideon’s Bible: A Father and Son Discuss God, the Bible, and Life
  • Myriam Steinberg, illustrations by Christache, Catalogue Baby: A Memoir of (In)fertility
  • Rachel Matlow, Dead Mom Walking

YOUNG ADULT/CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

  • Michelle Barker, My Long List of Impossible Things
  • Gordon Korman, War Stories
  • Helaine Becker, illustrated by Kari Rust, Emmy Noether: The Most Important Mathematician You’ve Never Heard Of
2023

Jury: Sidura Ludwig, Syd Zolf, Alain Goldschläger

FICTION

NON-FICTION

HISTORY

  • Jeffrey Veidinger, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust

POETRY

YOUNG ADULT/CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

FICTION

NON-FICTION

HISTORY

  • Judy Battalion, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos
  • Mark Celinscak, Kingdom of Night: Witnesses to the Holocaust
  • Jeffrey Veidinger, In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust

POETRY

YOUNG ADULT/CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

  • Cary Fagan, Water, Water
  • Charlotte Schallié, But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust
  • Erin Silver, Sitting Shiva

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature re-launch with 5 prizes worth $10K". CBC.ca, February 23, 2016
  2. ^ "About". kofflerarts.org.
  3. ^ "Two Jewish Literary Awards Provide More Opportunities". Canadian Jewish News, March 8, 2016.
  4. ^ "Winners". kofflerarts.org.
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