The Koffler Centre of the Arts took over administration of the awards in recent years, but when the Koffler announced a hiatus – putting the awards “on the shelf,” so to speak – several jury members decided to carry on the tradition under new auspices.

(An honorary jury member, Fuerstenberg sat at the back of the hall, watching the proceedings like a proud grandparent.)

(Waddington was a lifelong Yiddishist who translated many Yiddish poems into English).Īlthough described as an inaugural event, the afternoon ceremony felt very much like a seamless continuation of the 27-year-old annual book awards that retired professor Adam Fuerstenberg founded in Toronto in 1988. Other winners included Suri Rosen, who won in the youth literature category for her book Playing with Matches Robyn Sarah, who took the poetry prize for her collection My Shoes Are Killing Me and Ruth Panofsky, who took the Yiddish prize for The Collected Poems of Miriam Waddington: A Critical Edition. “Now, with this book, a new Jewish family was formed.” “My ancestors died in Auschwitz and my Judaism was gone,” Pick said. “Maybe I thought the magic of literature could work its magic here and help open some hearts and minds – I hope so still,” she said.Īlison Pick won the biography/memoir prize for her memoir Between Gods, a moving account of reclaiming her Jewish identity after her family’s post-Holocaust conversion to Christianity. In her brief acceptance speech, Gold said she hoped the novel would bring about some positive change in the world, even though “the idea of trying to effect social change through literature is heretical” to literary critics, she observed. Top fiction prize went to Nora Gold for Fields of Exile, her well-crafted, dystopic novel of campus life when anti-Semitism, via an anti-Israel apartheid campaign, rears its persistent ugly head.

18 as about 150 people gathered in an auditorium at York University in north Toronto for an awards ceremony to honour nine award-winning books and authors. KAREN MOCK TWITTER PHOTOĪ new chapter of the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards opened on Oct. Edward Trapunski opens at 2015 Canadian Jewish Literary Awards.

Playing with Matches by Suri Rosen