Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik win Toronto Book Award for Moving the Museum

Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik were awarded the 2023 Toronto Book Award for their book Moving the Museum, published by Goose Lane Editions and the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation at the southern tip of Georgian Bay. She is the inaugural curator of Indigenous Art and co-lead of the Indigenous and Canadian Art Department at the AGO.

Georgiana Uhlyarik is the Fredrik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art, and co-lead of the Indigenous and Canadian Art Department at the AGO.

The jury described Moving the Museum as “revelatory,” saying the book “kicks the colonial gaze to the curb, insisting instead that museums and galleries radically shift what they’ve been doing and offers page after page enacting the potential of Indigenous art to empower, inspire and create community.”

Moving the Museum was chosen from a list of finalists that included:

Nomenclature by Dionne Brand (Penguin Random House)
Wild Fires by Sophie Jai (The Borough Press)
Finding Edward by Sheila Murray (Cormorant)
Clara at the Door with a Revolver by Carolyn Whitzman (On Point Press)

Browse a TPL reading list that includes the finalists above along with this year’s longlisted titles.

2023 Jury

Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is a writer, poet, spoken word artist, publisher, Indigenous arts activist and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing, Indigenous Literatures and Oral Traditions at University of Toronto Scarborough. Her publications include fiction, nonfiction, radio commentaries and plays, libretti, a graphic novel, two spoken word albums, a chapbook, a full-length collection of poetry and a volume of her collected poetry. Kateri is a member of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation, Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation in Ontario and the mother of two creative and wonderful boys.

Jamila-Khanom Allidina is a writer and editor living in Toronto. Her short fiction has appeared in Room MagazineThe Puritan and other publications. She holds a Master in Fine Arts from Columbia University.

Steven W. Beattie spent more than 12 years as Review Editor at Quill & Quire, Canada’s magazine of the publishing trade industry. His writing and criticism have appeared in The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Walrus, Canadian Notes & Queries and elsewhere. He maintains the literary website That Shakespearean Rag.

Sue Carter is the Deputy Editor at Inuit Art Quarterly and the former Editor-in-Chief at Quill & Quire. She frequently writes about culture for several publications and teaches writing and editing for magazines at Centennial College.

karen lee is the grand prize winner of the 2020 Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize, PRISM international and received a fellowship from Cave Canem. Her work has been published in The New QuarterlyRoomThe FiddleheadThe Malahat ReviewThe Humber Literary Review, Brick/Brickyard, anthologized in Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, and the 2018 Small Axe Literary Prize shortlist. Tekkin Back Tongue, her first poetry manuscript, is named after her self-directed writing residency in Ghana in 2018; lee also conducted self-directed writing residencies in Kenya in 2021, Germany and France in 2022. lee is a Jamaican Patwah court interpreter, voiceover artist/actor, vocalist and poet.

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