A former Prince George resident is on the shortlist for one of Canada's most prestigious book awards.
George Sipos knows the literary industry from all angles, as the longtime proprietor of Mosquito Books in B.C.'s northern capital and also as an author. He is now the executive director of ArtSpring, the performing and visual art centre on Salt Spring Island. Prior to that he was the general manager of the Prince George Symphony Orchestra.
He has so far penned two acclaimed collections of poetry - Anything But The Moon and The Glassblowers - and just made his prose debut with the release of The Geography of Arrival, a memoir of his early years emigrating from Hungary to Canada.
Sipos wasn't keenly awaiting the release of the Charles Taylor Prize nominations on Tuesday.
The author figured his memoir didn't fit the profile of the $25,000 literary non-fiction award, and he thought his publisher was simply too small to compete with what he calls the "big boys" that usually scoop up book prizes.
So he reacted with "considerable disbelief" when he heard that his book had made the short list alongside such higher-profile fare as Toronto-based author Stevie Cameron's On The Farm and Charles Foran's Mordecai: The Life and Times.
"I've always thought of it as a strictly non-fiction prize," Sipos said in a telephone interview from his office in Salt Spring Island, B.C. "My book is partially poetic, it's partially a memoir, it's partially philosophical and contemplative, and it's not really the type of book I'd normally thought of as a Charles Taylor candidate. So I hadn't really contemplated it at all.
"I was thinking more along the lines of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer," he added sarcastically, with a laugh.
On The Farm investigates the Robert Pickton murders while Charles Taylor juror David Macfarlane calls Mordecai... a "fantastically good biography" of the late Montreal writer by Foran, a Toronto native.
Rounding out the list are Defiant Spirits by Estevan, Sask.-born scribe Ross King, a book about the rise of the Group of Seven that was also nominated for the Writer's Trust of Canada Award, and The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das by Montreal native Merrily Weisbord, which Macfarlane called "quite an astonishing book."
The Geography of Arrival, meanwhile, is a recollection of Sipos's childhood in London, Ont., where his family settled after emigrating from Hungary.
The book was published by Gaspereau Press, the same imprint that faced scrutiny when it was unable to meet demand for The Sentimentalists when the novel won the Scotiabank Giller Prize late last year.
Though Gaspereau was initially resistant to outsourcing production, the problem was eventually resolved after the publisher cut a deal with Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre to produce 70,000 copies.
Gaspereau Press co-owner Gary Dunfield said Tuesday the publisher was "really pleased" that Sipos was nominated for the Charles Taylor and didn't express concern about meeting demand.
"We're only (on the) short list, we've been here before, we have some idea what it looks like," Dunfield said in a telephone interview. "Winning is another thing altogether, so we'll sort it out as we get there."
"It is in print, orders are filled, I have no outstanding orders. There's books here. We'll continue to sort it out as we go forward."
Sipos wasn't worried, either.
"Actually, when Gary Dunfield phoned me just now, I made a joke about: 'Well, I guess we should be talking to Douglas & McIntyre, right?'," quipped the 61-year-old, who mused that he would likely use any prize money to help his two adult children pay off student loans.
"But no, the Giller is the major, major prize in the country and it really moves books. I think the other prizes - important as they are and prestigious as they are - don't really have that same effect. And I think Gaspereau has a fair number of copies of the book sitting there in their little warehouse.
"In any case, that's kind of a publisher's issue and not really an author issue, so much."
Macfarlane, the Giller-nominated author of Summer Gone, said Sipos's memoir was a "lovely, lovely book" and that he hoped the Charles Taylor recognition would inspire a wider audience to discover it.
"I'd certainly hope so," he said. "It's what every writer wants to have happen. And to be perfectly honest, it's not just Gaspereau - writers always worry about getting their books into stores. And this, I hope, will help them do that."
The Charles Taylor Prize has become one of the biggest non-fiction book prizes in Canada since its inaugural year in 2000.
Ian Brown claimed last year's prize for The Boy in the Moon, about a father's search for his disabled son, while Tim Cook's Shock Troops won in 2009.
This year's short list was whittled down from 153 submissions by a three-person jury that also included The Worlds Within Her author Neil Bissoondath and University of British Columbia professor Eva-Marie Kroller.
"I was totally staggered" by the number of entries, said prize founder Noreen Taylor, whose late husband, Charles, was an author and journalist who died in 1997. "I think this list could have gone to 10, I'm being honest."
Said Macfarlane: "One unifying element of all these books - very diverse in subject matter, very diverse in approach - is that they're all beautifully written books. ... For me, if I was to say what's holding this list together, I would say five good books that engaged me from beginning to end."
The winner of the annual award will be announced at a gala luncheon in Toronto on Feb. 14, with the runners-up receiving $2,000 each.
