Sandra Ridley and Huda Mukbil are the English-language winners for the 2024 Ottawa Book Awards.
Presented annually for the past 39 years, the awards recognize the top English and French books published by local authors in the past year.
Ridley won the English fiction award for her novel Vixen. Composed of six chapters in varied forms, Vixen is a poetic foray into haunting tales of ecological collapse, hunting and domestic violence. Ridley offers a vulnerable exploration of cruelty and ultimately survival.
Ridley is a Saskatchewan-born poet currently based in Ottawa. She was a finalist for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize for her collection Silvija. Her other books include Fallout, Post-Apothecary and The Counting House.
Huda Mukbil’s novel Agent of Change won the English non-fiction award.
Agent of Change is about Mukbil’s own experience working as an intelligence officer for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Mukbil was the first Black Arab-Canadian Muslim woman to join CSIS and she was at the forefront of the fight against terrorism after 9/11. Her expertise in international security and her commitment to workplace transparency drove important changes in the organization.
Mukbil is an Ottawa-based international security consultant, activist and a former intelligence officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
Sébastien Pierroz won the French fiction award for Deux heures avant la fin de l’été. Due to insufficient entries, there was no award in the category of French non-fiction.
The Ottawa Book Awards have been given out annually since 1985.
Past winners include Kagiso Lesego Molope, Tim Cook, Charlotte Gray, Elizabeth Hay and Frances Itani.