The Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction is a Canadian literary award, presented annually by the Writers' Trust of Canada to the best work of non-fiction by a Canadian writer.
Sponsorship history
First established in 1997, the award's original corporate sponsor was Viacom. Pearson Canada, the regional branch of an educational book publishing company, took over the award in 1999, and Nereus Financial, a stock brokerage, became the sponsor from 2006 to 2008. After Nereus dropped its sponsorship, the award had no corporate sponsor until 2011, when Hilary Weston (a philanthropist and former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario) was announced as the award's new sponsor.
Canada's most lucrative non-fiction prize, the winner receives a cash sum of and all finalists receive . Prior to Weston's patronage of the award, the prize would consist for the winner and for the finalists.
Nominees and winners
{| class="wikitable sortable mw-collapsible" width=100%
|+Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction winners and finalists
!Year
!Author
!Title
!Result
!Ref.
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |1997
|
|Small Mercies: A Boy After War
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Mrs. King: The Life and Times of Isabel Mackenzie King
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Power in the Blood: Land, Memory, and a Southern Family
|-
|
|Flowers on My Grave
|-
|
|Pickford: The Woman Who Made Hollywood
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |1998
| and Yvonne Johnson
|Stolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Isaiah Berlin: A Life
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Progeny of Ghosts: Travels in Russia and the Old Empire
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |1999
|
|Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II and the Heart of our Century
|Winner
|
|-
|
|'
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|History of Medicine: A Scandalously Short Introduction
|-
|
|After Daniel: A Suicide Survivor's Tale
|-
|
|Baltimore's Mansion: A Memoir
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2000
|
|Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|Sacré Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec
|-
|
|Out of Poverty: And into Something More Comfortable
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2001
|
|Time Lord
|Winner
|
|-
|
|As Near to Heaven by Sea
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|Jane Austen
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2002
|
|Houseboat Chronicles: Notes from a Life in Shield Country
|Winner
|
|-
|
|'
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2003
|
|Virtual Clearcut, or The Way Things Are in My Hometown
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? Finding Common Ground
|-
| and Sheila Hirtle
|Sahara: A Natural History
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2004
|
|'
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Down to This: Squalor and Splendour in a Big-City Shantytown
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Jacob's Wound: A Search for the Spirit of Wildness
|-
|
|There is a Season: A Memoir in a Garden
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="4" |2005
|
|'
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk
|rowspan=3| Finalist
|rowspan=3|
|-
|
|Race Against Time: Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa
|-
|
|Dead Man in Paradise
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2006
|
|'
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Ride the Rising Wind: One Woman's Journey Across Canada
|-
|
|This is My Country, What's Yours? A Literary Atlas of Canada
|-
|
|Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2007
|
|Kasztner's Train: The True Story of Rezso Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust
|Winner
|
|-
|
|'
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|Fortune's a River: The Collision of Empires in Northwest America
|-
|
|God's Mercies: Rivalry, Betrayal and the Dream of Discovery
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2008
|
|Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Under Pressure: Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|Burning Down the House: Fighting Fires and Losing Myself
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2009
|
|Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life
|Winner
|
|-
|
|'
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2010
|
|What Disturbs Our Blood: A Son's Quest to Redeem the Past
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother and Me
|-
| and Mary Theberge
|'
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2011
|
|Mordecai: The Life & Times
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Nation Maker: Sir John A. Macdonald: His Life, Our Times; Volume Two: 1867-1891
|-
|
|Adventures in Solitude: What Not to Wear to a Nudist Potluck and Other Stories from Desolation Sound
|-
|
|Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2012
|
|
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|'
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|This Great Escape: The Case of Michael Paryla
|-
|
|Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2014
|
|This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Shopping for Votes: How Politicians Choose Us and We Choose Them
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Tell it to the World: International Justice and the Secret Campaign to Hide Mass Murder in Kosovo
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Kitten Clone: Inside Alcatel-Lucent
|-
|
|Empire of Deception: From Chicago to Nova Scotia – The Incredible Story of a Master Swindler Who Seduced a City and Captivated the Nation
|-
|
|Cease: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Desire
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2016
|
|'
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Sixty: A Diary of My Sixty-First Year: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Pumpkinflowers: An Israeli Soldier's Story
|-
|
|Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies
|-
|
|Red Star Tattoo: My Life as a Girl Revolutionary
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2017
|
|Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Tomboy Survival Guide
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Birds Art Life: A Field Guide to the Small and Significant
|-
|
|All We Leave Behind: A Reporter's Journey into the Lives of Others
|-
|
|Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2018
|
|All Things Consoled: A Daughter's Memoir
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Antigone Undone: Juliette Binoche, Anne Carson, Ivo Van Hove, and the Art of Resistance
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Heart Berries
|-
|
|In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2019
|
|Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related
|Winner
|
|-
|
|'
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person
|-
|
|All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward
|-
|
|'
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2020
|
|Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts in Search of My Family's Past
|Winner
|
|-
|
|Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats)
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Nishga
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|On Foot to Canterbury
|-
|
|Peyakow
|-
|
|Disorientation
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2022
|
|'
|Winner
|
|-
|
|'
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Nothing Will Be Different: A Memoir
|-
|
|'
|-
|
|Making Love with the Land
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2023
|
|Ordinary Notes
|Winner
|
|-
|
|My Road from Damascus
|rowspan=4| Finalist
|rowspan=4|
|-
|
|Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls
|-
|
|Ordinary Wonder Tales
|-
|
|Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2024
|
| There Is No Blue
| Winner
|
|-
|
| Vantage Points: On Media as Trans Memoir
| rowspan=4| Finalist
| rowspan=4|
|-
|
| Here After
|-
| , Jack Whalen
| Invisible Prisons: Jack Whalen’s Tireless Fight for Justice
|-
|
| Everything and Nothing At All
|-style=background:lightyellow
! rowspan="5" |2025
|
| Theory of Water
| Winner
|
|-
|
| One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
| rowspan=5| Shortlist
| rowspan=5|
|-
|
| The Snag
|-
|
| The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse
|-
|
| A Truce That is Not Peace
|}
Weston International Award
In 2023, the Writers' Trust introduced the Weston International Award, a prize which honours international non-fiction writers. Unlike the Canadian award, the international award does not release a list of finalists in advance of the winner announcement, and honours the writer for their overall body of work rather than an individual book.
- 2023 – Robert Macfarlane
- 2024 – Pankaj Mishra
- 2025 – Leslie Jamison
References
External links
- Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction