Sonja Larsen’s Debut Memoir Shortlisted for the Edna Staebler Award

Sep 21, 2017
Topics: News

We are excited to share that Sonja Larsen’s debut memoir, Red Star Tattoo, is among the three finalists for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction!

Every year since 1991, the Edna Stabeler Award celebrates at least one creative non-fiction publication—with a Canadian locale and/or significance—by a Canadian writer of one or two books. The award is administered by Wilfrid Laurier University, and is valued at $10,000.
 
Isabel B. Slone reviewed Larsen’s memoir in The Globe and Mail:
“Larsen’s story is engrossing, and at times unbelievable. She uses sweeping and poetic language to mask the deeply disturbing nature of the book . . . and the prose lopes along steadily, smoothing out all of the jagged edges left by the story itself. If the purpose of a memoir is for the author to come to terms with their own existence, then Red Star Tattoo is a catharsis.”
 
Red Star Tattoo, which took the writer eight years to write, was published by Random House Canada in 2016, and shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction in the same year. Larsen is represented by Page Two principal and Transatlantic Agency associate agent Trena White.
 
The winner of the Edna Staebler Award 2017 will be announced later this month. For more information about the award, please visit the Wilfrid Laurier website.