Skip to content

Thomas King laughing all the way to the bank with humour award

Thomas King is the winner of coveted Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for his novel Indians on Vacation and takes home the grand prize of $15,000

NEWS RELEASE
STEPHEN LEACOCK ASSOCIATES
*************************
The president and board of Stephen Leacock Associates are pleased to announce that Thomas King is the winner of the 2021 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for his autobiographically-inspired novel Indians on Vacation, published by HarperCollins Publishers.  The award of the medal is accompanied by a prize of $15,000. 

Thomas King is an award winning novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter and photographer. His critically acclaimed, best-selling books include Medicine River; Green Grass, Running Water; One Good Story, That One; Truth and Bright Water; A Short History of Indians in Canada; The Back of the Turtle (winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction); Sufferance; The Inconvenient Indian (winner of the RBC Taylor Prize); the DreadfulWater mystery series, including most recently Obsidian; and the poetry collection 77 Fragments of a Familiar Ruin (shortlisted for the Nelson Ball Prize).

The two runners-up, Joseph Kertes (for his novel Last Impressions, published by Penguin Random House) and Murray Morgan (for his novel Dirty Birds, published by Breakwater Books) will each receive a prize of $3,000.

The board congratulates all the winners for their splendid efforts.  It also acknowledges and appreciates the efforts of all the authors who submitted books for this year's medal.

A Canada-wide panel of judges had narrowed 77 initial submissions to form a longlist of 10 highly recommended works, with only three books eventually being selected for the shortlist. 

Once again, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the medal and cash prizes will not be awarded at the usual Gala Dinner but will be mailed to the winners.  The authors' achievements will be celebrated instead at next year's Gala Dinner, in 2022, together with the winners of the 2020 and 2022 medals.

The Leacock Medal is named in memory of Stephen Leacock; humourist, author, economist and lecturer, and is generously sponsored by the Dunkley Charitable Foundation.

More information about the Leacock Medal is available on the Leacock Associates’ website, on the Leacock Medal Facebook page, and on Twitter @LeacockMedal.

*************************


Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.