Massive congrats to Crow by Amy Spurway (Goose Lane Editions), which has won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for Fiction at the 2020 Atlantic Book Awards! The Atlantic Book Awards works to promote and acknowledge excellence in Atlantic Canadian writing and book publishing through an annual awards ceremony and related events.
Crow has seen a lot of recognition for its brilliance this year, including as runner-up for the Leacock Medal for Humour and shortlisted for the Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction.
About Crow:
When Stacey Fortune is diagnosed with three highly unpredictable — and inoperable — brain tumours, she abandons the crumbling glamour of her life in Toronto for her mother Effie’s scruffy trailer in rural Cape Breton. Back home, she’s known as Crow, and everybody suspects that her family is cursed.
With her future all but sealed, Crow decides to go down in a blaze of unforgettable glory by writing a memoir that will raise eyebrows and drop jaws. She’ll dig up “the dirt” on her family tree, including the supposed curse, and uncover the truth about her mysterious father, who disappeared a month before she was born.
Witty, energetic, and crackling with sharp Cape Breton humour, Crow is a story of big twists, big personalities, big drama, and even bigger heart.
Amy Spurway was born and raised on Cape Breton, where, at the age of 11, she landed her first writing and performing gigs with CBC Radio. She has worked as a communications consultant, editor, speech-writer, and performer. Her writing has appeared in Today’s Parent, the Toronto Star, Babble, and Elephant Journal. She lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Amy is represented by Marilyn Biderman.
To see the full list of winners, please visit: http://atlanticbookawards.ca/