It's been a heck of a year for 2009 SiWC presenter Annabel Lyon and her book The Golden Mean, which was nominated for the Giller, the Governor General's Award, and the Writers' Trust. We are THRILLED to congratulate her for winning the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The jury called the book an "alarmingly confident and transporting debut novel." Pretty impressive stuff, don't you think? You can read more about the award here.

CONGRATULATIONS, ANNABEL!!

This week we're continuing with our series of presenter introductions, combining old friends who are returning to us with new faces to the SiWC experience.

Today's newbie is Annabel Lyon.

Annabel is the author of work in quite a variety of genres, but this year has really been her chance to shine. She's just found her name on the shortlist for the Giller Prize, as well as the Writers Trust awards, so we are very excited to have her join us.

If you check out the presenter page on our site, you'll find that Annabel is the author of Oxygen (short stories), The Best Thing for You (novellas), and All-Season Edie (juvenile novel).

Her first novel for adults, The Golden Mean, will be published by Random House of Canada in August 2009. She has taught fiction writing at the Banff Centre's Wired Writing Program and is currently an instructor with UBC's Booming Ground. She lives in New Westminster, BC. 

What it doesn't say is that Annabel is the new voice of young Canadian Literature -- and we are SO lucky to have her!

Returning to us this year is fabulous agent Sorche Fairbank. Sorche [pronounced Sore-ka] is one of our long-time friends of the conference, and we are thrilled to have her back with us again.  

Great day today at Word on the Street. Had a blast making the rounds, talking about the conference and meeting the glowing literati of the Vancouver area. Tons of our presenters were on the street, performing, schmoozing, having a ball.

It was the first official 'shadow' outing for my successor, Kathy Chung. Kathy will be keeping a close eye on the workings of the conference this year, as she'll be taking over as conference coordinator in 2010. We'll be profiling her on this blog very soon.

The Book Broads [Angela Crocker, Kim Plumly and Peggy Richardson] interviewed Kathy and me for a video post on their blog. We'll post a link to it here when it goes live. We talked about all the great stuff we have planned for the conference this year -- it's going to be a winner! The Book Broads will all be volunteering at the conference -- make sure to say hi when you see them this year!

Other SiWC 2009 presenters at WOTS included:  Annabel Lyon, who was just this week included on the Giller Prize longlist for her new novel The Golden Mean, was interviewed by former presenter favourite Stephen Galloway.