Toronto author Kamal Al Solaylee wins $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for ‘Brown’

Toronto author Kamal Al-Solaylee is the winner of the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. (Photo: Kamal Al-Solaylee/Facebook)

OTTAWA — Toronto author Kamal Al-Solaylee is the winner of the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

Al-Solaylee was honoured at the Politics and the Pen gala in Ottawa Wednesday night for “Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (To Everyone).”

The win comes one day after Al-Solaylee was named a finalist for the $20,000 Trillium Book Award honouring Ontario-based writers.

“Brown” (HarperCollins Canada) blends storytelling and on-the-street reporting conducted over two years in 10 countries from four continents, with research on immigration, workers’ lives and conditions, and the pursuit of a lighter shade of brown as a global status symbol.

The Yemeni-born Al-Solaylee, an associate professor of journalism at Ryerson University, also reflects on his own identity and experiences as a brown-skinned person raised with images of whiteness as the only indicators of beauty and desire.

“Kamal Al-Solaylee’s book dares to propose and define an emerging racial category, drawing on a lifetime’s travel and inquiry to discuss the common experience and the awkward status of the Latin, Asian and Mediterranean peoples of the fast-rising global south,” the jury wrote in its citation.

“Thoughtful and refreshing, ‘Brown’ has a chance to become a made-in-Canada intellectual landmark.”

The Shaughnessy Cohen Prize is handed out annually to a literary non-fiction title capturing a political subject of relevance to Canadian readers with the potential to shape or influence thinking on political life within the country.

The award is presented by the Writers’ Trust of Canada, and was established in 2000 in honour of the late Windsor, Ont., MP Shaughnessy Cohen.

The remaining shortlisted authors will each be awarded $2,500. The finalists were:

— Christie Blatchford for “Life Sentence: Stories from Four Decades of Court Reporting — Or, How I Fell Out of Love with the Canadian Justice System (Especially Judges)” (Doubleday Canada);

— James McLeod for “Turmoil, As Usual: Politics in Newfoundland and Labrador and the Road to the 2015 Election” (Creative Publishers);

— Ian McKay and Jamie Swift for “The Vimy Trap: Or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great War” (Between the Lines); and

— Noah Richler for “The Candidate: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail” (Doubleday Canada).

This year’s jury includes CBC foreign correspondent Nahlah Ayed, National Post columnist Colby Cosh and former Halifax MP Megan Leslie who is currently serving as vice-president, oceans for World Wildlife Fund Canada.