Nanaimo native Tamas Dobozy is shortlisted for the $25,000 Governor General's Literary Award for his short-story collection, Siege 13.
Dobozy, who studied English and creative writing at the University of Victoria, said Tuesday he'd just received the news and was in shock.
"It's like manna from heaven, it's completely bizarre," the 43-year-old writer said from Sir Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., where he is an associate professor of English.
Dobozy is also up for the $25,000 Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize, along with Toronto's Linda Spalding (The Purchase). Spalding is also up for the Governor's General's Literary Award.
Siege 13 is about the Red Army's seige of Budapest during the Second World War. It is Dobozy's third collection of short stories. His previous book, Last Notes and Other Stories, won a Governor General's Literary Award for French translation in 2007.
Dobozy lived in Nanaimo until he was three. Raised in Powell River, he completed his UVic degree in 1991.
Also on the Governor General's shortlist: former Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam of Toronto for The Headmaster's Wager, Toronto's Robert Hough for Dr. Brinkley's Tower, and Carry Snyder of Waterloo, Ont., for The Juliet Stories.
Finalists for the Governor General's non-fiction prizes include CBC reporter Nahlah Ayed for her memoir A Thousand Farewells: A Reporter's Journey from Refugee Camp to the Arab Spring, and Noah Richler for What We Talk About When We Talk About War.
Also on that list is Ross King of Woodstock, U.K. (originally from North Portal, Sask.) for Leonardo and the Last Supper; Vancouver's Wade Davis for Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest; and Carol Bishop-Gwyn of Toronto for The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Celia Franca.
English and French-language finalists were also announced in the categories of drama, poetry, children's text, children's illustration and translation.
The finalists were chosen out of about 1,700 books.
The winners will be announced Nov. 13 in Montreal.
