Artist in Residence David Adams Richards Nominated for Fiction Prize
Published: Monday, Jun 18, 2012
St. Thomas University alumnus and Artist in Residence David Adams Richards’s latest novel, Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul, has been nominated for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize. The prize is awarded annually by the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.
Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul was called “a stark, stunning and profound new novel” which “exposes Canada’s rawest nerve” by the National Post. The Globe and Mail said the book made for “classic tragedy, but Richards's larger picture includes a moral lesson at once topical and timeless.”
Richards has long been one of Canada’s most beloved writers. The author of fourteen novels, a book of short stories, and five books of non-fiction, he is highly regarded in the eyes of both his readers and reviewers. Last year, Richards was given the ‘Matt Cohen Award: A Celebration of a Writer’s Life’ from the Writers’ Trust of Canada.
He holds four honorary degrees, including one from St. Thomas University, and was named to the Order of New Brunswick and Order of Canada for his profound literary influence. He has been Artist in Residence at St. Thomas University since January 2011.
Richards is one of only three writers to earn the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction (Nights Below Station Street) and non-fiction (Lines on the Water). He was nominated for Governor General Literary Awards for his novels Road to the Stilt House, For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down, Mercy Among the Children, and The Lost Highway. Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace won the Canadian Authors Association Award and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down garnered the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in English Language Literary Arts and the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. The Friends of Meager Fortune won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean). His screenplay Small Gifts, won a Gemini Award for best writing and the New York Film Festival Award for best script.
The Washington Post called Mercy Among the Children, winner of the Giller Prize, “a contemporary masterpiece ... in the ... tradition of Tolstoy, Camus and Melville.” The Globe and Mail, called God Is. “an unconventional prose-poem in three movements, extolling plain speaking about the mysterious moments that transformed the child born lame on the left side and who became the drinking companion of arsonists, thieves, drug dealers and murderers, into the mature writer too often called ‘our Tolstoy’ and too rarely ‘our Blake.’”