Thank you to the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award for nominating FIREFLY this year. What an incredible honour to be named to such a terrific list of Canadian books.

As FIREFLY receives this wonderful shortlist nomination (administered by the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Foundation), a terrific nod from the Canadian literary community, I have to say that I am truly humbled and frankly a little amazed.

Congratulations to all the nominees, the two winners will be announced in June.

Read the announcement and nominees here (you'll want to read these books!): http://communications.arts.on.ca/T/OF...

Is there is a writer anywhere who starts writing a book with the goal of winning awards and commendations? We HOPE for those things of course, we DREAM of them in our wildest moments of literary abandon, but to ACHIEVE them is something altogether different.

I think most writers will tell you that their goal at first anyway, is to write a story that they are itching to tell and which connects with someone. It's as simple and straightforward an impulse as that!

I am quite sure that my sister-in-law, the inspiration for the character Aunt Gayle and the creator of Thunder Thighs, one of Canada's largest film and television costume shops (and where my story is set), would be pretty amazed by the literary love for FIREFLY too! Since this book is in part a tribute to her and to her costume empire, I could not be happier for the attention it has received.

Shine bright, Firefly, and thank you all!

Here is another blog post about the nomination: https://phdowding.blogspot.com/2022/0...