Noah Richler has been nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.JENNIFER ROBERTS/The Globe and Mail
The finalists for this year's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing – which range from a gonzo campaign memoir to an introspective examination of race – were announced on Tuesday.
The $25,000 prize celebrates non-fiction "that captures a political subject of relevance to Canadian readers and has the potential to shape or influence thinking on Canadian political life." It was founded in 2000 in honour of the Windsor, Ont., member of Parliament, who died in 1998. Previous winners include Anna Porter, Jane Jacobs, and John Ibbitson, who won last year's prize for his biography of Stephen Harper.
The five nominees, who were selected by a jury composed of National Post columnist Colby Cosh, former Halifax MP Megan Leslie, and CBC correspondent Nahlah Ayed, are former Globe and Mail critic Kamal Al-Solaylee for Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone); Christie Blatchford for Life Sentence: Stories from Four Decades of Court Reporting – Or, How I Fell Out of Love with the Canadian Justice System (Especially Judges); Ian McKay and Jamie Swift for The Vimy Trap: Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War; James McLeod for Turmoil, as Usual: Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador and the Road to the 2015 Election; and Noah Richler, a finalist for the prize in 2012, for The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.
The winner will be announced on May 10 at the Politics and the Pen gala in Ottawa.