Victoria writer Kit Pearson has won the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.
An award-winning author specializing in fiction for young adults, Pearson’s books include A Handful of Time, the Guests of War trilogy (The Daring Game, Awake and Dreaming) and A Perfect Gentle Knight.
Lt.-Gov. Judith Guichon will present the award at the Lieutenant Governor’s B.C. Book Prizes Gala in Vancouver on May 3. The winner receives $5,000.
In announcing the award, the jury said: “In a career spanning three decades, Kit Pearson has demonstrated mastery in that most traditional of genres, the novel for young readers.”
The jury continued: “Kit’s characters are never cute, generic or remote. They are complicated, individual and flawed. Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they are unkind. Sometimes they are unlikable. In other words, they are real.”
Pearson was born in Edmonton in 1947. She grew up there and in Vancouver. She worked for 10 years as a children’s librarian in Ontario and British Columbia and is now a full-time writer in Victoria. She has won many awards for her writing, including the Vicky Metcalf Award for her body of work in 1988.
The jury for this year’s award was Munro’s Books manager Jessica Walker, children’s writer Sarah Ellis and CBC producer Sheila Peacock.