George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature

The George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature is a literary award given to a British Columbian author "who has achieved an outstanding degree of social awareness in a new book published in the preceding calendar year."[1] The prize was created in 2004 by Alan Twigg, publisher of BC Book World, along with John Lent of Okanagan College[2] and Ken Smedley, then working for the George Ryga Centre Society.[3] In 2014 Alan Twigg took over responsibility for the award after the sale of Ryga House. Originally the prize included a sculpture/plaque by sculptor, Reg Kienast, entitled The Censor's Golden Rope. Now it includes a cash award of $2,500.

Nominees and winners
Year Winner Finalists
2004
Judge: Craig McLuckie		 Blue ribbon Maggie De Vries, Missing Sarah: A Vancouver Woman Remembers Her Vanished Sister
  • Marie Clements, Burning Vision
  • Matt Hern, Field Day: Getting Society Out of School
  • Patricia E. Roy, The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man's Province, 1914-41
2005
Judge: Ross Tyner		 Blue ribbon Robert Hunter, The Greenpeace to Amchitka: An Environmental Odyssey
2006
Judge: Myrna Kotash		 Blue ribbon Leslie A. Robertson and Dara Culhane, In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside Vancouver
  • Jean Barman, Stanley Park's Secret: The Forgotten Families of Whoi Whoi, Kanaka Ranch, and Brockton Point
  • Michael Kluckner, Vanishing British Columbia
2007
Judge: Sharon Josephson		 Blue ribbon Harold Rhenisch, The Wolves at Evelyn: Journeys Through a Dark Century
  • Daniel Francis, Red Light Neon: A History of Vancouver's Sex Trade
  • Lynne Van Luven, Nobody's Mother: Life Without Kids
2008
Judge: Ivan Townshend		 Blue ribbon Leilah Nadir, The Orange Trees of Baghdad: In Search of My Lost Family
  • Gary Geddes, Falsework
  • Ernest Hekkanen, Of a Fire Beyond the Hills
2009
Judge: Ivan Townshend		 Blue ribbon Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo
  • Brian Dedora, A Slice of Voice at the Edge of Hearing
  • JoAnn Dionne, Little Emperors: A Year with the Future of China
  • Manjit Virk, Reena: A Father's Story
2010
Judge: Greg Simison		 Blue ribbon Larry Campbell, Neil Boyd and Lori Culbert, A Thousand Dreams: Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the Fight for Its Future
2011
Judge: Andrew Steeves		 Blue ribbon Richard Wagamese, One Story, One Song
  • Gabor Gasztonyi, A Room in the City: Photographs of Gabor Gasztonyi
  • Sylvia Olsen, Working with Wool: A Coast Salish Legacy and the Cowichan Sweater
  • Benjamin Perrin, Invisible Chains: Canada's Underground World of Human Trafficking
  • John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
2012 No award presented
2013
Judge: Angie Abdou		 Blue ribbon Joel Bakan, Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children
  • Michael Christie, The Beggar's Garden
  • Howard White, A Hard Man to Beat: The Story of Bill White, Labour Leader, Historian, Shipyard Worker, Raconteur
2014
Judge: Sean Johnston		 Blue ribbon Bev Sellars, They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School
  • Adrienne Fitzpatrick, The Earth Remembers Everything
  • Gillian Wigmore, Dirt of Ages
2015
Jury: George Brandak, Anne Chudyk, Beverly Cramp		 Blue ribbon Shelley Wright, Our Ice is Vanishing / Sikuvat Nunguliqtuq: A History of Inuit, Newcomers, and Climate Change
  • Michael Buckley, Meltdown in Tibet: China's Reckless Destruction of Ecosystems from the Highlands of Tibet to the Deltas of Asia
  • Ann Rogers and John Hill, Unmanned: Drone Warfare and Global Security
2016
Jury: Trevor Carolan, Jane Curry, George Johnson		 Blue ribbon Andrew MacLeod, A Better Place on Earth: The Search for Fairness in Super Unequal British Columbia''
  • David R. Boyd, The Optimistic Environmentalist: Progressing Toward a Greener Future
  • Larry Gambone, No Regrets
  • Chris and Josh Hergesheimer, The Flour Peddlar
  • Carrie Saxifrage, The Big Swim: Coming Ashore in a World Adrift
  • David Suzuki, Letters to My Grandchildren
2017
Jury: Trevor Carolan, Jane Curry, Beverley Cramp		 Blue ribbon Wade Davis, Wade Davis: Photographs
  • Stephen Collis, Once in Blockadia
  • Ivan Coyote, Tomboy Survival Guide
  • Marc Edge, The News We Deserve: The Transformation of Canada's Media Landscape
  • James Hoggan with Grania Litwin, I'm Right and You're an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up
  • Eric Jamieson, The Native Voice: The Story of How Maisie Hurley and Canada's First Aboriginal Newspaper Changed a Nation
  • Alan Livingstone MacLeod, Remembered in Bronze and Stone: Canada's Great War Memorial Statuary
  • Christopher Pollon and Ben Nelms, The Peace in Peril: The Real Cost of the Site C Dam
  • Anton Scamvougeras, Dysconnected: Humans Isolated by their Personal Technology
  • Ron Smith, The Defiant Mind: Living Inside a Stroke
2018
 Blue ribbon Travis Lupick, Fighting for Space: How a Group of Drug Users Transformed One City's Struggle with Addiction''
  • Gary Geddes, Medicine Unbundled: A Journey through the Minefields of Indigenous Health Care
  • David Suzuki and Ian Hanington, Just Cool It! The Climate Crisis and What We Can Do
2019[4]
 Blue ribbon Rod Mickleburgh, On the Line: A History of the British Columbia Labour Movement''
2020[4]
 Blue ribbon Diane Pinch, Passion & Persistence: Fifty Years of the Sierra Club in British Columbia''
  • The Graphic History Collective and David Lester, 1919: A Graphic History of the Winnipeg Strike
  • Wendy Wickwire, At the Bridge: James Teit and an Anthropology of Belonging
  • Ross Hoffman with Alfred Joseph, Song of the Earth: The Life of Alfred Joseph
  • Philip Huynh, The Forbidden Purple City
2021[4]
 Blue ribbon Geoff Mynett, Service on the Skeena: Horace Wrinch, Frontier Physician''
  • Jean Barman, On the Cusp of Contact: Gender, Space, and Race in the Colonization of B.C.
  • Emma Hansen, Still: Love, Loss, and Motherhood
  • Benjamin Perrin, Overdose: Heartbreak and Hope in Canada's Opioid Crisis
  • Maureen Webb, Coding Democracy: How Hackers are Disrupting Power, Surveillance, and Authoritarianism
2022[4]
 Blue ribbon Alexandra Morton, Not On My Watch: How a Renegade Whale Biologist Took on Governments and Industry to Save Wild Salmon''
  • Darrel J. McLeod, Peyakow: Reclaiming Cree Dignity
  • Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
  • David Spaner, Solidarity: Canada's Unknown Revolution of 1983
  • Jody Wilson-Raybould, “Indian” in the Cabinet: Speaking Truth to Power

References
  1. The George Ryga Award
  2. Ryga, George. "George Ryga Award Overview". BC Book Awards. Retrieved 8 June 2020.
  3. Ware, Grahame. "George Ryga Award: The Okanagan Years".
  4. "George Ryga Award Winners". BC Book Awards. Pacific BookWorld News Society. Retrieved 16 June 2023.
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