The finalists for the 2024 Ottawa Book Awards were announced Sept. 17, and I can’t wait to read their books!
The annual awards recognize the best English and French books from Ottawa authors published in the previous year. Brett Popplewell, whose book Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past was nominated in the English non-fiction category, told me what this means to him.
“It’s an honour to be nominated for this award. Ottawa is my hometown and though Outsider is mostly set in British Columbia and Norway, I wrote the majority of the book from a desk looking out at the Rideau River.”
Outsider is about Dag Aabye, a septuagenarian ultra marathon runner who has been called the world’s first extreme skier and who acted in the movie Goldfinger. He lives in a bus in the remote wilderness of British Columbia.
“He didn’t have the things that the rest of us in society kind of accumulate because we feel like we need to,” said Popplewell. “So, I asked him a simple question, which was, is there anything in this world that you wish you had—and his answer really launched me on this book project—he said, ‘I wish I had a photograph of my mother.’”
Outsider follows Popplewell’s journey to find out who Aabye’s parents were and to fulfill the enigmatic man’s wish while capturing his philosophy on aging, nature and society, subjects that readers have found fascinating.
“I’m really humbled by the response that it’s had with readers,” Popplewell said. “It has been really heartening to see the response and to hear from readers who reach out every week, people from all across the country and elsewhere.”
Along with Popplewell, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with the extremely talented authors of several of the nominated books, including Rebecca Hirsch Garcia and Natalie MacLean, so I know the competition will be fierce.
The finalists for the 2024 Ottawa Book awards show us the city’s literary potential. They represent what we can achieve. Popplewell agrees. “If some of the success of this book helps to inspire others to want to chase their own stories,” he said, “I hope that it’s able to do that. There were writers before me; their success really inspired me. I think we need those kinds of people in our community, showing other people that you can, that this too is possible.”
The finalists for the 2024 Ottawa Book Awards are:
English Fiction
- The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia
- Elementary Particles by Sneha Madhavan-Reese
- The Family Code by Wayne Ng
- An Unruly Little Animal by Scott Randall
- Vixen by Sandra Ridley
French Fiction
- Prise Deux by Pierre-Luc Bélanger
- Deux heures avant la fin de l’été by Sébastien Pierroz
- Jaz by Michèle Vinet
English Non-Fiction
- Keep My Memory Safe: Fook Soo Am, The Pagoda by Stephanie Chitpin
- Wine Witch on Fire: Rising from the Ashes of Divorce, Defamation, and Drinking Too Much by Natalie MacLean
- Agent of Change: My Life Fighting Terrorists, Spies and Institutional Racism by Huda Mukbil
- Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past by Brett Popplewell
- Clara at the Door with a Revolver by Carolyn Whitzman
*There weren’t enough entries to award a French non-fiction prize for 2024.
The winners will be announced Wednesday, Oct. 16, and will each receive a $7,500 prize. The finalists will receive $1,000 each.
Visit the Ottawa Book Awards for more information. The books nominated this year and in previous years are available through the Ottawa Public Library.
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