2010 Atlantic Book Awards & Festival

With the spirit of the Olympic Games still lingering in the air, Atlantic Canadian authors, illustrators and publishers will now take their turn at the podium. The 2010 Atlantic Book Awards and Festival springs to life on Saturday April 10 and runs until Sunday April 18 with free literary events in all four Atlantic Provinces.

Festival details will be available at atlanticbookawards.ca, as well as on the Atlantic Book Awards Society  Facebook page and Twitter account (twitter.com/atlbookawards). In addition, look for a Festival brochure at local bookstores in early April.

The awards ceremony, naming winners in the categories of fiction,  non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature, is always a highlight of the festival. Held on Wednesday, April 14 at Alderney Landing Theatre in Dartmouth, N.S., the soiree will be cohosted byNewfoundland playwright, comedienne and author Berni Stapleton and Costas Halavrezos, host of CBC Radio’s Maritime Noon. The doors open at 6:00 p.m. with a silent auction in support of the festival before the show kicks off at 7:00 p.m. Booksellers will be on hand and cash bars will be open all evening. “The Atlantic Book Awards Society was delighted by the success of last year’s festival, and the 2010 Book Awards and Festival promises to be even bigger and better,” says Heather MacKenzie, Board Chair of the Atlantic Book Awards Society.

Bigger and better it certainly will be. Earlier this year, the Society announced that the three awards administered by the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia (The Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, The Evelyn Richardson Memorial Non-fiction Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize) along with the Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature,will once again be part of theAtlantic BookAwards and Festival.The 2010 festival is particularly special as both the Brimer and the Raddall Award, the region’s richest literary prize, celebrate  their twentieth anniversary this year. In total, thirteen awards will be presented, including the two HRM Mayor’s Awards—for Excellence in Book Illustration and for Literary Achievement—for which there are no shortlists.

Mark your calendars and don't miss the chance to show your support for the contendersand see who is crowned the champion of their field at the 2010 Atlantic Book Awards ceremony on April 14.