Renowned author Wayson Choy will be receiving this year’s George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions to B.C. literature.
“We are delighted to be recognizing Wayson Choy for his considerable literary contributions,” says Vancouver Public Library’s chief librarian Sandra Singh.
“His stories connect us, help us understand our city's past, and let us see life through a different perspective. He has helped tear down barriers between cultures and generations,” Singh says.
The George Woodcock Award is BC’s most prestigious literary honour, which recognizes an author whose outstanding literary career and contributions to society span several decades.
“I'm proud to have my pioneer Chinatown stories – and my own personal ones – recognized as part of the shared literary history of all Canadians,” says Choy, who went on to thank George Woodcock, whom this award is named after.
Choy’s life has been a great influence in his writing, including his struggles to embrace Chinese traditions as a first-generation Canadian, accidentally discovering he was adopted, facing two near-death experiences and being openly gay. These topics became the focus of documentaries such as Wayson Choy: Unfolding the Butterfly and Searching for Confucius.
Choy grew up in Vancouver’s Chinatown during the 1940s. He was the first Chinese-Canadian student to enroll in a creative writing class at the University of British Columbia. Here, he began working on The Jade Peony – a bestselling novel that has garnered the City of Vancouver Book Award in 1995. Choy also received the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction for Paper Shadows: A Memoir of a Past Lost and Found in 1999 and Ontario’s Trillium Book Award in 2005 for All That Matters.
The special public presentation for this honour will take place at the VPL’s central branch downtown on June 11. The co-sponsors are the Writers’ Trust of Canada and Yosef.
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