Family memoir, Van Gogh book vie for $60,000 non-fiction Writers’ Trust prize

TORONTO – A family memoir by former Globe and Mail drama critic Kamal Al-Solaylee and a cultural study through the lens of artist Vincent Van Gogh are among the finalists for the $60,000 Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-fiction.

Prize organizers also announced Tuesday that CTV correspondent and Maclean’s columnist Barbara Amiel Black will join the existing three-member judging panel to choose the ultimate winner.

Al-Solaylee’s “Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes” (HarperCollins Publishers) examines the history of the author’s parents through 1960s Yemen to Beirut to Cairo and then back to modern-day Yemen.

“Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery, and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age” (Knopf Canada) — by historian Modris Eksteins — contains 56 short sections, each related to a Van Gogh work.

Rounding out the list is a Taras Grescoe’s public transportation study “Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile” (HarperCollins Publishers); J.J. Lee’s memoir of his tailor-father “The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit” (McClelland & Stewart); and Candace Savage’s “Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape” (Greystone Books/David Suzuki Foundation).

Each finalist receives $5,000.

The short list was chosen by former Ontario lieutenant governor James Bartleman, past prize finalist Charlotte Gill and writer Marni Jackson.

A total of 104 titles were submitted by 51 publishers. A winner will be announced in November.