What the judges said about the shortlist:

Elspeth Cameron - And Beauty Answers: The Life of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle
(Cormorant Books Inc.)

Cameron shares with us an important story of Canadian modern art and two women who blazed new trails as sculptors - Florence Wyle and Frances Loring. Her meticulous research provides great insight into the Toronto cultural scene of the early twentieth century while focusing on Moore Park's most famous residents. "The Girls," as their friends called them, sculpted monuments to the beautiful and the great. This book is a monument to their fascinating lives.

David Chariandy - Soucouyant
(Arsenal Pulp Press)

A son is faced with his mother's advancing dementia, through the lens of two generations of immigrant life in Scarborough. Particularly compelling are the flashbacks to the mother's dirt-poor girlhood and youth, and the invocation of one of the most powerful mythical characters of the Caribbean, the Soucouyant, a horrible woman ghost that haunts the night, but rescues this girl for another day, another time. A brilliant narrative from a young writer.

Glen Downie - Loyalty Management
(Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd.)

Undeniably Torontonian, Downie's poems travel nimbly through our old Victorian homes, up the trees in our yards, down our streets and into other lands. This book evokes vibrant images of objects and relationships, filtered through layers of immense kindness, a shrewd eye for deceit, and an established technical skill. These poems are richly textured and utterly readable.

Elyse Friedman - Long Story Short
(House of Anansi Press Inc.)

This is a beautifully comprised collection (one novella, five short stories) of smart, comedic and surprising Toronto tales. The stories delve into the lives of "regular" Torontonians - at the prom, in a tired apartment building, at a neighbourhood bar, pulling dandelions from the lawn - and reveal their secrets. The dialogue is taut and true, the situations compelling, and the black humour is tinged with pathos.

Barbara Gowdy - Helpless
(HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.)

Toronto - its laneways, neighbourhoods, quirky shops, and amazing diversity of its people - is both the setting and a character in Barbara Gowdy's novel, Helpless. Gowdy is a fearless writer who creates fully-realized characters to unsentimentally explore the abduction of a girl by pedophile. This book in less brave, less experienced hands could have been just another pulp police procedural; it is, instead, an intelligent and searching exploration of the universal human condition - helpless.