By Katie Fedosenko
Stan Persky, Vancouver writer, media commentator and public intellectual receives the 2010 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence at the BC Book Prizes Gala.
Born in Chicago, Persky immigrated to Vancouver in the 1966. UBC BA’69 (Anthropology) MA ’79 (Sociology), Persky has been a media commentator for CBC and literary columnist for the Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail, This Magazine, Saturday Night and The Tyee. Persky also regularly contributes articles and reviews to Dooneys Cafe and his personal website, splitting his time between Vancouver and Berlin.
Persky is a Philosophy instructor at Capilano University and author of 20 books, including Fantasy Government: Bill Vander Zalm and the Future of Social Credit, The Short Version, At The Lenin Shipyard: Poland and the Rise of the Solidarity Trade Union and Buddy’s: Meditations on Desire. He co-founded the Georgia Straight Writing Supplements which led to the establishment of the Vancouver publishing house New Star Books.“We have chosen Stan Persky as the recipient of the 2010 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence because of the intellectual and moral integrity he brings to his work as a writer who engages with some of the most difficult questions facing society, and because of the great contributions he has made to the literary canon of Canada and British Columbia.
His numerous books and his trail-blazing efforts in creating literary journals and a forum for public engagement – not least New Star Books and the Georgia Straight – have helped develop British Columbia’s literary community into what it is today. His grace as an essayist, his curiosity and independence of thought as a critic and newspaper columnist, and his exuberance as a civil rights activist and a leading voice of the gay community have enriched us all.
Stan Persky is our Socrates. British Columbians can rightly boast that he is truly one of ours. ”
-Terry Glavin, 2009 recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.
The $5,000 award is given annually to a B.C. writer who has contributed to the growth of literary excellence in the province. Persky was presented with the award by the Honourable Steven Point on April 24th. He commented in an email to Capilano University Newsroom that “I received the lieutenant-governor’s letter informing me of the reward April 1, so I immediately assumed it was an April Fool’s joke. Once I persuaded myself that it wasn’t a seasonal hoax or a quirky display of the L-G’s sense of humour, I immediately thought of the names of about 20 other writers in B.C. who are probably more deserving of receiving this honour than I am.”
Other UBC finalists for the BC Book Prizes include alumna (Sociology) and Assistant Professor Larissa Lai, whose book of poetry Automaton Biographies was short listed for the Dorothy Livesay award and alumna (Creative Writing) and Adjunct Instructor Annabel Lyon whose novel The Golden Mean was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.