ORILLIA, Ont. — The president and board of directors of Stephen Leacock Associates have named authors Ali Bryan, Patrick deWitt and Deborah Willis to the short list for the 2024 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.
“The three finalists for the Leacock Medal of Humour in 2024 meet our judging criteria exceptionally well," said Daphne Mainprize, the President of the Stephen Leacock Associates. "The books must be humorous, well-written with a great degree of style and depth. Our national panel of independent judges has selected the three top humorous books from the past year from 74 entries."
The winner will be announced on Saturday, June 22 at the Leacock Medal Gala Dinner where all three finalists will be celebrated, and a number of former winners will be in attendance. The MC for this event will be Steve Patterson (well known as the host of the CBC's The Debaters) and Trevor Cole (winner in 2011) will entertain everyone as the fictional Mayor of Mariposa.
Tickets for this event and for the Meet the Authors and Student Showcase event the previous evening (with two-time Medal winner Terry Fallis as MC) are available for purchase online up to June 7 at www.leacock.ca/gala.php.
The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour awards are sponsored by the Dunkley Charitable Foundation.
In the running for the medal and $25,000 prize are, in alphabetical order by author surname:
Ali Bryan, Coq, (Freehand Books)
Ali Bryan's first novel, Roost, won the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and was the official selection of One Book Nova Scotia. Her second novel, The Figgs, was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. Ali lives in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies on Treaty 7 territory, where she has a wrestling room in her garage and regularly gets choked out by her family.
Patrick deWitt, The Librarianist (House of Anansi Press)
Patrick deWitt is the author of the novels French Exit (an international bestseller and a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize), The Sisters Brothers (winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and a finalist for the Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize), and the critically acclaimed Undermajordomo Minor and Ablutions. Born in British Columbia, he now resides in Portland, Oregon.
Deborah Willis, Girlfriend on Mars (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
Deborah Willis’s last short story collection, The Dark and Other Love Stories, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first book, Vanishing and Other Stories, was named one of The Globe and Mail’s Best Books of 2009, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for fiction. Her work has also appeared in The Walrus, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Lucky Peach, and Zoetrope. She has worked as a bookseller at Munro’s Books in Victoria, BC, as a technical writer, and as a writer-in-residence at Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver, MacEwan University, and the University of Calgary. Deborah currently works as an editor at Freehand Books and lives in Calgary with her partner and daughter.
For more information about Stephen Leacock Associates, please visit www.leacock.ca.
