Recently, four B.C. publishers earned national recognition at the Nova Scotia Book Awards, the Indigenous Voices Awards, the Whistler Independent Book Awards, and the Canada-Japan Literary Awards. From harrowing memoirs and emotional picture books to works that challenge colonial narratives in education, these books showcase the diversity and impact of B.C.’s publishing talent—and continue to resonate with readers across the country.
B.C. is home to the second-largest English-language book publishing sector in Canada. Representing 18% of the English-language Canadian-owned publishing industry, B.C.’s publishers bring Canadian writing and culture to a global audience, exporting to more than 40 countries. The province is also home to a thriving literary ecosystem, with 425 businesses, 46 independent publishers, and 300 independent bookstores.
Congratulations to Arsenal Pulp Press!
Finding Otipemisiwak: The People Who Own Themselves, by Sixties Scoop survivor Andrea Currie, has won the Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction Award as part of the Nova Scotia Book Awards presented in Halifax on June 2.
Otipemisiwak is a Plains Cree word describing the Metis, meaning “the people who own themselves.”
Andrea Currie was born into a Metis family with a strong lineage of warriors, land protectors, writers, artists, and musicians – all of which was lost to her when she was adopted as an infant into a white family with no connection to her people. It was 1960, and the Sixties Scoop was in full swing. Currie takes us through her journey, from the harrowing time of bone-deep disconnection, to the years of searching and self-discovery, into the joys and sorrows of reuniting with her birth family. Finding Otipemisiwak weaves lyrical prose, poetry, and essays into an incisive commentary on the vulnerability of Indigenous children in a white supremacist child welfare system, the devastation of cultural loss, and the rocky road some people must walk to get to the truth of who they are. Her triumph over the state’s attempts to erase her as an Indigenous person is tempered by the often painful complexities of re-entering her cultural community while bearing the mark of the white world in which she was raised.
Congratulations to Orca Book Publishers!
Two Orca Book titles have been awarded with an Indigenous Voices Award: Hummingbird/Aamo-binashee, written and illustrated by Jennifer Leason, and Lost at Windy River: A True Story of Survival, by Trina Rathgeber.
“When we lose connection with others, we lose ourselves, and Windigo’s darkness grows and spreads.” Hummingbird/Aamo-binashee is a deeply emotional and beautifully illustrated picture book in which the ancestors send a hummingbird to a child lost in Windigo’s darkness. Its teachings of resilience, love and connection bring the child home and remind us that our ancestors are always watching and can help us find our way if we only ask. This bilingual book includes full text in both English and Anishinaabemowin.
In Lost at Windy River: A True Story of Survival, a young Indigenous girl defies the odds and endures nine days alone in the unforgiving barrens. It is 1944, and thirteen-year-old Ilse Schweder got lost in a snowstorm while checking her family’s trapline in northern Canada. Ilse faces many challenges, including freezing temperatures, wild animals, snow blindness and frostbite. With no food or supplies, she relies on Traditional Indigenous Knowledge passed down from her family. Ilse uses her connection to the land and animals, wilderness skills and resilience to find her way home. This powerful tale of survival is written by Ilse Schweder’s granddaughter.
Congratulations to Page Two Books!
Two Page Two Book titles have been nominated for Whistler Independent Book Awards 2025: The Longest Road: To Hell and Back Again from Addiction to Advocacy, by Joe Calendino and Gary Little, and Re-Storying Education: Decolonizing Your Practice Using a Critical Lens, by Carolyn Roberts.
In The Longest Road, Joe Calendino details his journey to rock bottom, from the Hells Angels clubhouse, to ending up strung out and desperate in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, to the scene of a recent life-changing accident. Now an executive director of Yo Bro Yo Girl Youth Initiative, he made it his mission to protect at-risk youth from that same fate. The Longest Road, Calendino reveals all his remarkable moments of struggle, intervention, recovery and redemption, as well as the stories of the hidden angels who helped save his life, and the young people he now strives to help. With this timely and page-turning memoir, Calendino shows he is living proof that sometimes all it takes is someone believing in you to completely change your life.
Re-Storying Education is a process of dismantling old narratives taught in education and rebuilding new narratives that include all the voices that have created this place known as Canada today. Outlining how colonialism has shaped both the country and the public school system, Re-Storying Education uses an Indigenous lens, offering ways to put Indigenous education, history, and pedagogy into practice. Drawing from her own experiences as an Indigenous student, educator, and administrator, in public and band-operated school systems, Indigenous academic Carolyn Roberts offers a deep understanding of how to support educators with Indigenous education and to create a nurturing and inclusive environment for all students. Roberts offers questions for self-reflection, suggestions for professional action, recommended resources for further learning, personal stories and anecdotes, insights from her own decolonizing teaching practices, and playlists that reflect the spirit of the work and that uplift Indigenous voices.
Congratulations to Talonbooks!
Gaman – Perseverance by Art Miki has won the Canada Council’s 2025 Canada-Japan Literary Award. The Canada-Japan Literary Awards recognize the literary merit of books on Japan, on Japanese themes or on themes that promote mutual understanding between Japan and Canada, written by authors from Canada or translated from Japanese into English or French by translators from Canada.
This revealing memoir by the former president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians describes the long journey towards resolution for the historic injustice that deprived Japanese Canadians of their basic human rights during and after World War II. Gaman – Perseverance details the intense negotiations that took place in the 1980s between the Government of Canada and the NAJC – negotiations which finally resulted in the historic Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement of September 1988 and the acknowledgment by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that Canada had wronged its own citizens. Gaman – Perseverance provides a unique, intimate glimpse into Miki’s involvement with the Japanese community and the projects that embody meaningful historical preservation.
