Awards for the Subject of the Book not the Author
As a great Canadian author and the master of the Top 10 Canadian Writing Awards list, I spend a lot of time justifying my craft using measures other than book sales.
I have the easiest time in this realm when I talk about Her Daughter the Engineer: the Life of Elsie Gregory MacGill.
Elsie was an exceptional person, and her life story would be impactful and moving in almost any hands. My main tasks in writing her long overdue biography were to keep spelling mistakes to a minimum, get the dates right, and avoid issues beyond my grasp.
Although her life has attracted important scholarly study over the years and although she was certainly known within the aviation and women’s movement circles, many readers of the book were surprised by the simple chronicling of her impressive achievements and example.
The biography thus played a role in seeing
- Elsie named a woman of National Historic Significance in Canada
- the Canadian 99’s Women Pilots dedicate an award in Elsie’s honour
- Elsie inducted into the Women in Aviation International Hall of Fame
I would, of course, never presume these awards to be recognition of my skill as a writer. Better to leave such pretentiousness unsaid and imply it delicately on a blog post that it is linked to a list of the Top 10 Canadian Writing Awards.
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