Winterset Award
August 13th - 15th, 2010
2008 Award Winner
Winner
- Randall Maggs - "Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems."
Finalists
- Sara Tilley - "Skin Room"
- Marie Wadden - "Where the Pavement Ends: Canada’s Aboriginal Recovery Movement and the Urgent Need for Reconciliation"
2007 Award Winner
Winner
- Kathleen Winter - "boYs"
Finalists
- Paul Rowe - "The Silent Time"
- George Rose - "Cod: An Ecological History of the North Atlantic Fisheries"
The Winterset Award is an entirely separate entity from the Festival, and was established in 2000 by Richard Gwyn OC, to commemorate his late wife Sandra Fraser Gwyn.
Sandra was a native of St. John's, a summer resident in Eastport and a tireless promoter across Canada of the arts in Newfoundland. She was a distinquished journalist and prize-winning social historian, known best for her books The Private Capital and Tapestry of War.
The name Winterset is taken from the house on Winter Avenue in St. John’s where Sandra grew up. Built circa 1830, this house would be the oldest residential property in the city except that it was torn down and replaced by a 1950s bungalow shortly after Sandra’s mother left Newfoundland.
The purpose of the annual award is to celebrate and support excellence in Newfoundland writing. Qualified entrants must be either native-born Newfoundlanders or residents of the province. All published works of literary endeavours are eligible: novels, poetry, non-fiction, works of drama and books for children and young adults. Works submitted to the competition must have been published in the calendar year preceding the annual award. The only criterion for the content of the published work is literary excellence.
The annual Award is presented at a ceremony at Government House in St. John’s usually in March. The winning author receives a prize of $5,000, a commemorative plaque and finalists receive prizes of $1,000 each. The Award is thus among the largest regional literary awards in Canada. The winner and finalists are selected by a jury of three, comprised of a previous Winterset winner and a guest juror living outside the province with a specialized knowledge of Newfoundland. The award is managed by Richard Gwyn and administered by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council.