Growing up, my mother weaned me on cold, political and rather heavy Russian literature specialists such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Solzhenitsyn. During my teenage years I was introduced to the thoughts of George Orwell and Ray Bradbury's Farhenheit 451. Therefore, this leads me to my next question – is there ever a good reason to ban a book? Censorship, in our Canadian culture and country of free press seems to be a word of taboo. It will probably surprise you then that Annabel Lyon's book, The Golden Mean was banned by BC Ferries. The reason for this book ban may surprise you. There are no racy tidbits or derogatory sections in the book. The reason for the book ban is actually because there is a picture of a man's exposed rear-end on the back of the cover art. How scandalous. 

Imagination is a primal human tool, a lodestone that helps us find our place in creation. Proof abounds in the writing of Ursula K. Le Guin.

At age 80, Le Guin’s body of work includes 50-plus books – novels, short stories, children’s books, poetry, essays, and translations. Many have garnered awards and worldwide acclaim, including A Wizard of Earthsea (and its five companion books), The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, The Word for the World is Forest, The Beginning Place, Always Coming Home, and Lavinia.

When people think of Cortes Island, they usually associate it with the Hollyhock Centre, summer getaways,  a laid-back lifestyle, or stunning views of Desolation Sound. They probably don’t think of it in connection with post-apocalyptic gang wars, genetically modified child prostitutes or hulking psychically scarred killers.

But that’s the Cortes Island that science fiction writer Donna McMahon has evoked in her new novel, Second Childhood (Drowned City Press, 2010). A sequel to 2002’s Dance of Knives, the book is set mostly on Cortes Island and nearby Campbell River in the year 2109, years after the West Coast has been battered by climate change, sea level rise, global ecological and economic collapse, and a major earthquake.

The story revolves around the struggle to heal Simon Lau, a central character in the earlier book, in the tranquillity of Cortes. The task is not an easy one because of Simon’s own state, the problems of his therapist and figures from his past who come in search of him, for vengeance or other reasons.

The West Coast Book Prize Society is proud to recognize Stan Persky as the recipient of the 7th annual Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. 

British Columbia’s Lieutenant Governor, the Honourable Steven Point, will present the award at the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prizes Gala to be held at Government House in Victoria on April 24, 2010. The event will be hosted by broadcaster Shelagh Rogers.

“We have chosen Stan Persky as the recipient of the 2010 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence because of the intellectual and moral integrity he brings to his work as a writer who engages with some of the most difficult questions facing society, and because of the great contributions he has made to the literary canon of Canada and British Columbia.