Two Carleton University professors named as jurors for 2010 Charles Taylor Prize

Ottawa – Noreen Taylor, chair of the board of trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation, announced today that two of the jurors for the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction are Carleton’s Andrew Cohen, professor of journalism and international affairs and Tim Cook, adjunct research professor.

The third juror is Sheila Fischman.

About the Members of the Jury:

Professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University and award-winning author, Andrew Cohen has worked for many newspapers, including The Globe and Mail, where he was a member of the Editorial Board, a columnist, and a correspondent in Washington, D.C. between 1997 and 2001. He has won two National Newspaper Awards, three National Magazine Awards and the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal. Among his five books are While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World, which was named a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are, a national bestseller. His latest book, Extraordinary Canadians: Lester B. Pearson, was named a 2008 Globe and Mail notable book. Andrew Cohen lives in Ottawa with his wife, Mary Gooderham, an author, editor and journalist, and their son and daughter.

Tim Cook is the Great War historian at the Canadian War Museum as well as an adjunct research professor at Carleton University. He is the author of the award-winning books No Place to Run and Clio’s Warriors, as well as At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War, Volume One, which won the 2007 J. W. Dafoe Prize and the 2008 Ottawa Book Award. Earlier this year, Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917 - 1918, the second volume in his series on the Great War, was named the winner of The 2009 Charles Taylor prize for Literary Non-Fiction. His latest book, The Madman and the Butcher: Sir Sam Hughes, Sir Arthur Currie, and their War of Reputations, is slated for publication in the fall of 2010. Residents of Ottawa, Tim Cook and his wife Sarah Klotz have three daughters.

The most respected name in the Québec translating scene, Sheila Fischman has translated more than 125 works from French to English by such contemporary Québec writers as Roch Carrier, Anne Hébert, and Gaétan Soucy. Next Episode, her translation of Hubert Aquin’s Prochain épisode, won the 2003 CBC Radio Canada Reads competition. She is the receipient of honorary degrees from the University of Ottawa and the University of Waterloo, and the winner of numerous literary awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 1974, 1984, and 1998; the Félix-Antoine Savard Translation Prize in both 1989 and 1990; the 1998 IBBY Award for translation in 1998; and the 2008 Molson Prize in the Arts. Her translations were finalists for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 1999 and 2006. Named a member of the Order of Canada in 2000 and a chevalier, Ordre nationale du Québec in 2008, Sheila Fischman lives in Montréal.

About the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction:

The trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation established The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction to commemorate the life and work of the late Charles Taylor, one of Canada’s foremost essayists and a prominent member of the Canadian literary community. Charles Taylor was a foreign correspondent with The Globe and Mail and the author of four books: Radical Tories; Reporter in Red China; Six Journeys: A Canadian Pattern; and Snow Job.

The Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction is awarded annually to the author
whose book best combines an excellent command of the English language, an elegance
of style, quality of thought, and subtlety of perception.

The prize consists of $25,000 for the winning author and $2,000 for each of the runners up. All of the shortlisted titles receive extensive national publicity and marketing support.

The jury will announce the shortlist for The 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction at a press conference on January 5 and the winner during a gala awards ceremony on February 8, 2010. Both shortlist and winner events will take place at Le Meridien King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto.

The trustees of the Charles Taylor Foundation are Michael Bradley (Toronto), Judith
Mappin (Montreal), David Staines (Ottawa), and Noreen Taylor (Toronto).

For more information please visit: www.thecharlestaylorprize.ca