A Ryerson journalism graduate has been shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction.
Graeme Smith’s war memoir, The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan, was one of five nominees for the 13-year-old prize. In it, Smith recounts shocking details of his time reporting from the front line of Canada’s mission in southern Afghanistan and how the war took a turn for the worse.
Suanne Kelman, associate chair at the Ryerson School of Journalism, taught Smith first year radio reporting in 1997. “I certainly hope he gets it,” she said. “He is someone we can be very proud of.”
Smith also won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize last year.
Other nominees for the Taylor Prize are Charlotte Gray’s The Massey Murder: A Maid, Her Master, and the Trial That Shocked a Country; Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America; J.B. MacKinnon’s The Once and Future World; and David Stouck’s Arthur Erickson: An Architect’s Life.
The winner will be announced on March 10, and will receive $25,000. The remaining finalists will receive $2,000 each.
Read The Ryersonian’s Q&A with Smith here.
Amanda Soufi graduated from the Ryerson School of Journalism in 2014.