The Writers’ Trust of Canada’s
Timothy Findley Award
Sponsored by the Writers’ Trust of Canada
Winner: $15,000

In the spring of 2003 The Writers' Trust of Canada established an annual award for a male writer in mid-career in the name of the late Timothy Findley. Before his death in June 2002, Mr. Findley wrote, "It is truly wonderful to know that the Marian Engel Award will now have a partner."

The Timothy Findley Award serves to recognise a body of work (comprised of no less than three works of literary merit which are predominantly fiction) rather than a single book. All male Canadian writers are considered and no age restrictions apply.

Born in 1930, Timothy Findley pursued acting as a profession for 15 years before taking up writing full-time in 1962. Along with writing for radio, television, and film, his early novels, The Last of the Crazy People (1967) and The Butterfly Plague (1969), were rejected by Canadian publishers and largely ignored by the Canadian press. It was not until his third novel, The Wars (1977), that Mr. Findley garnered critical and commercial praise and won that year's Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. He later went on to further success producing eight more novels, three collections of short fiction, two works of non-fiction and several plays, including The Stillborn Lover (1993) and Elizabeth Rex (2000), the recipient of the Governor General's Award for Drama.

Mr. Findley was also honoured throughout his lifetime for his tireless contributions to the arts in Canada and abroad. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada (1986), received the Order of Ontario (1991), and was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France in 1996. He also devoted considerable time and energy helping to establish organisations that supported and defended writers in Canada. He was a founding member and chairperson of the Writers' Union of Canada, a President of P.E.N. International's Canadian chapter, and served as a board member with the Writers' Trust. of Canada.

2007 Recipient

Previous Recipients

2007 Michael Crummey
2006 Douglas Glover
2005 Rohinton Mistry
2004 David Adams Richards
2003 Guy Vanderhaeghe
2002 Bill Gaston

Guidelines (click to download PDF)