Donoghue's Room up for Writers' Trust Award

Emma Donoghue's Man Booker-nominated Room is one of five Canadian novels in the running for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

The Writers' Trust announced finalists for the $25,000 award on Wednesday in Toronto.

Others on the list include:

• Trevor Cole of Hamilton, Ont., for Practical Jean.
• Michael Helm of Toronto for Cities of Refuge.
• Kathleen Winter of Montreal for Annabel.
• Michael Winter of St. John's for The Death of Donna Whalen.

Kathleen and Michael Winter are sister and brother.

London, Ont.-based Donoghue's Room is a dark fairy tale told from the point of view of a five-year-old boy who is confined with his mother in a 3.4-metre-square room padded with tiles.

It was released in Canada this month by HarperCollins, at the same time real-life stories of kidnap victims are in the news. Despite the Booker nomination, it was overlooked on the nominations list for the Giller Prize.

The Writers' Trust also announced nominations for its $25,000 non-fiction prize and the Journey Prize for short-story writing.

This year marks the first nomination for a graphic novel in the non-fiction category, with the nod to Vancouver writer Sarah Leavitt's adult graphic memoir about dealing with Alzheimer's.

The contenders also include a new examination of the Group of Seven published in association with the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinberg, Ont., and an examination of Dr. John Gerald FitzGerald, founder of Connaught Labs and a medical pioneer whose family life was shadowed with illness, written by his grandson.

The finalists are:

• James FitzGerald of Toronto for What Disturbs Our Blood: A Son's Quest to Redeem the Past.
• Ross King, a Canadian-raised art historian now living in Oxford, U.K. for Defiant Spirits: The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven.
• Sarah Leavitt of Vancouver for Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer's, My Mother and Me.
• John Theberge and Mary Theberge of Waterloo, Ont., for The Ptarmigan's Dilemma: An Exploration into How Life Organizes and Supports Itself.
• Merrily Weisbord of Montreal for The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das.

The $10,000 Journey Prize is awarded annually to a new and developing writer of distinction for a short story published in a Canadian literary publication. This year's finalists:

• Devon Code of Toronto for Uncle Oscar, published in The Malahat Review.
• Krista Foss of Hamilton, Ont., for The Longitude of Okay, published in Grain Magazine.
• Lynne Kutsukake of Toronto for Mating, published in The Dalhousie Review.

The winners will be announced on Nov. 2 in Toronto.