AU Press publication wins Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction

October 13, 2010

John Leigh Walters' A Very Capable Life: The Autobiography of Zarah Petri has won the 2010 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction. The book, published by Athabasca University Press in December 2009, was one of three finalists for the national award announced in Waterloo, Ont., on October 12.

The $10,000 annual award, administered by Wilfrid Laurier University, encourages and recognizes Canadian writers for a first or second work of creative nonfiction that includes a Canadian locale or that is significant to Canada.

In A Very Capable Life, Walters reshapes the autobiographical impulse by writing in the first-person voice of his mother, Zarah Petri. The author's use of Petri's colloquial and engaging narration makes the book part oral history, part memoir and part re-imagination of twentieth century events.

"Walters offers the story of his mother's journey from Hungary to Canada as a feminine picaresque with the indomitable Zarah in the dual roles of heroine and storyteller, said Laurier associate professor Tanis MacDonald, speaking on behalf of the Staebler Award jury. "In recreating his mother as a resourceful and often hilarious character, Walters' sustained act of literary ventriloquism captures the ingenuity and passion of the diasporic narrative in Canadian cultural history."

Walters, of Kitchener, Ont., has spent A lifetime writing, producing and hosting television programs in the United States and Canada. Most recently, he produced and hosted an interview program for CTV in Waterloo. Now retired, he has turned to writing memoir. A Very Capable Life is his first book.

The other finalists for the award were Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada by Allan Casey (Greystone Books) and Smiling Bears: A Zookeeper Explores the Behaviour and Emotional Life of Bears by Else Poulsen (Greystone Books).

For more information, please contact:

Walter Hildebrandt, Director
Athabasca University Press
780-421-2544
walterh@athabascau.ca

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Updated August 21, 2012