RBC Taylor Prize

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The RBC Taylor Prize (2000–2020), formerly known as the Charles Taylor Prize, was a Canadian literary award, presented by the Charles Taylor Foundation to the best Canadian work of literary non-fiction. It was named for Charles P. B. Taylor, a noted Canadian historian and writer. Instituted in 2000, the 2020 prize was the final year the prize was awarded.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The prize was originally presented every two years until 2004, and became an annual award from 2004 onwards. The monetary value of the award increased over the years. The final award in 2020 had a monetary value of $30,000.

The award adopted its present name in December 2013, when RBC Wealth Management was announced as the new corporate sponsor.<ref name=rbc>"Charles Taylor Prize now known as RBC Taylor Prize; adds secondary award" Template:Webarchive. Victoria Times Colonist, December 9, 2013.</ref> In addition, under RBC's sponsorship the award added a second $10,000 award for an emerging Canadian literary non-fiction writer between the ages of 18 and 35, to be chosen by the winner of the main award. This award was presented for the first time at the 2014 ceremony.<ref name=rbc />

In 2018 the new RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writers Mentorship Program was unveiled. This was a professional development program designed to support the next generation of Canadian writers and was part of the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writers Award, a distinction that was given annually to a Canadian author whose work embodies the pursuit of excellence in literary non-fiction.

The mentorship program was made available to five Canadian non-fiction writers, who were selected in partnership with a national network of university and college writing programs. These students were paired with the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize shortlisted authors, who would help support their career development and growth.

In 2020, the organizers announced that the 2020 award would be the final presentation of the award.<ref>Jane van Koeverden, "RBC Taylor Prize, an annual $30K Canadian nonfiction prize, is ending after 2020". CBC Books, November 21, 2019.</ref>

Winners and nomineesEdit

RBC Taylor Prize winners and finalists
Year	Author	Title	Result
2000	Template:Sortname	Baltimore's Mansion	Winner	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	Template:Sortname	A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and North America in the Nineteenth Century	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	Always Give a Penny to a Blind Man
	Template:Sortname	Losing the Dead
	Template:Sortname	Paper Shadows: A Chinatown Childhood
2002	Template:Sortname	Jane Austen	Winner	<ref name=":0" />
	Template:Sortname	Notes from the Hyena's Belly: Memories of my Ethiopian Boyhood	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery and Meaning in an Ordinary Church
	Template:Sortname	The Spinster and the Prophet: Florence Deeks, H.G. Wells and the Mystery of the Purloined Past
	Template:Sortname	Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China
	Template:Sortname	Time Lord: The Remarkable Canadian who Missed His Train and Changed the World
2004	Template:Sortname	Belonging: Home Away From Home	Winner
	Template:Sortname	If This Is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories?	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	In the Shadow of Silence: From Hitler Youth to Allied Internment, A Young Woman's Story of Truth and Denial
	Template:Sortname	Lake of the Prairies: A Story of Belonging
	Template:Sortname	Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
2005	Template:Sortname	The Last Heathen: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia	Winner
	Template:Sortname	A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	Acquainted With the Night: Excursions Through the World After Dark
	Template:Sortname	There is a Season: A Memoir in the Garden
2006	Template:Sortname	Dead Man in Paradise	Winner
	Template:Sortname	Curse of the Narrows: the Halifax Explosion of 1917	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	The Boys, or Waiting for the Electrician's Daughter
	Template:Sortname	The Greek for Love: A Memoir of Corfu
2007	Template:Sortname	Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest	Winner
	Template:Sortname	Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Vol. One: 1919-1968	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism	Finalist
2008	Template:Sortname	John A.: The Man Who Made Us: The Life and Times of John A. Macdonald, Vol. One: 1815-1867	Winner
	Template:Sortname	From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	Kasztner's Train: The True Story of Rezso Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust
	Template:Sortname	Lost Genius: The Story of a Forgotten Musical Maverick
	Template:Sortname	The Film Club: A True Story of a Father and Son
2009	Template:Sortname	Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1917-1918	Winner
	Template:Sortname	Angel of Vengeance: The Girl Assassin, the Governor of St. Petersburg and Russia's Revolutionary World	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	Sugar: A Bittersweet History	Finalist
2010	Template:Sortname	The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Search For His Disabled Son	Winner
	Template:Sortname	Just Watch Me: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 1968-2000	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	René Lévesque
	Template:Sortname	The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
2011	Template:Sortname	Mordecai: The Life & Times	Winner
	Template:Sortname	Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	On the Farm: Robert William Pickton and the Tragic Story of Vancouver’s Missing Women
	Template:Sortname	The Geography of Arrival: A Memoir
	Template:Sortname	The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das
2012	Template:Sortname	The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A Canadian Story of Resilience and Recovery	Winner
	Template:Sortname	Afflictions & Departures: Essays	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe
	Template:Sortname	Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest
	Template:Sortname	The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son and a Suit
2013	Template:Sortname	Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy	Winner	<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	Journey with No Maps: A Life of P.K. Page	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	Leonardo and The Last Supper
	Template:Sortname	The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Celia Franca
	Template:Sortname	Warlords: Borden, Mackenzie King, and Canada’s World Wars
2014	Template:Sortname	The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America	Winner	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	Template:Sortname	Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life	Finalist	<ref name=":1" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan
	Template:Sortname	The Massey Murder: A Maid, Her Master, and the Trial That Shocked a Country
	Template:Sortname	The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be
2015	Template:Sortname	They Left Us Everything	Winner	<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	And Home Was Kariakoo: A Memoir of East Africa	Finalist
	Template:Sortname	Boundless: Tracing Land and Dream in a New Northwest Passage
	Template:Sortname	One Day in August: The Untold Story Behind Canada’s Tragedy at Dieppe
	Template:Sortname	The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times
2016	Template:Sortname	Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva	Winner	<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1\|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	Template:Sortname	Dispatches from the Front: The Life of Matthew Halton, Canada’s Voice at War	Finalist	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":2">Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	Sixty: The Beginning of the End, or the End of the Beginning?		<ref name=":2" />
	Template:Sortname	The Reason You Walk
	Template:Sortname	This Is Happy
2017	Template:Sortname	Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies	Winner	<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	By Chance Alone: A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz	Finalist	<ref name=":3">Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World		<ref name=":3">Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story		citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":3" />
	Template:Sortname	This Is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications		citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
2018	Template:Sortname	Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City	Winner	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
	Template:Sortname	In the Name of Humanity	Finalist	<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1\|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	Island of the Blue Foxes: Disaster and Triumph on Bering’s Great Voyage to Alaska
	Template:Sortname	Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine
	Template:Sortname	Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place
2019	Template:Sortname	Lands of Lost Borders: Out of Bounds on the Silk Roads	Winner	<ref name=":4">Template:Cite news</ref>
	Template:Sortname	All Things Consoled: A Daughter’s Memoir	Finalist	<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1\|citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=":4" />
	Template:Sortname	Jan in 35 Pieces: A Memoir in Music
	Template:Sortname	Just Let Me Look at You: On Fatherhood
	Template:Sortname	Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age
2020	Template:Sortname	Bush Runner	Winner	<ref name=":5">Deborah Dundas, "Winner of last RBC Taylor prize chokes back tears: ‘I wondered if anybody cared about what I wrote’". Toronto Star, March 2, 2020.</ref><ref name=":0" />
	Template:Sortname	Had It Coming	Finalist	<ref name=":5" />
	Template:Sortname	Highway of Tears
	Template:Sortname	The Mosquito
	Template:Sortname	The Reality Bubble

RBC Taylor Emerging Writer AwardEdit

The RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award was instituted for the first time in 2014. The award was presented to an emerging writer selected by the winner of that year's primary award, and consisted of $10,000 and a mentorship from the writer who made the selection.

In 2018, the RBC Taylor Foundation also announced the creation of a mentorship program for writers who had not yet published their first non-fiction manuscript. Five writers would be selected for the mentorship each year, each receiving mentorship from one of the shortlisted main prize authors.<ref>"New Mentorship Program announced for Emerging Writers". Canada NewsWire, February 7, 2018.</ref>

2014 - Leanne Betasamosake Simpson<ref>"Writer, scholar, storyteller and First Nations activist Leanne Simpson named recipient of inaugural RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award". CNW Group, March 17, 2014.</ref>
2015 - Iain Reid<ref>"Iain Reid wins $10K RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award". CBC Books, May 11, 2015.</ref>
2016 - Adnan Khan<ref>"Awards: Adnan Khan receives RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award". Quill & Quire, May 17, 2016.</ref>
2017 - Cassi Smith<ref>"Saskatchewan’s Cassi Smith wins $10,000 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award". The Globe and Mail, April 19, 2017.</ref>
2018 - Alicia Elliott<ref>"Alicia Elliott wins RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award". The Globe and Mail, May 3, 2018.</ref>
2019 - Jessica J. Lee<ref>"Jessica J. Lee wins $10K RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award". CBC Books, April 16, 2019.</ref>
2020 - Simone Dalton<ref name=cbc2020-03-18>

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ReferencesEdit

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External linksEdit

RBC Taylor Prize