By Design or by Chance? wins two awards at Write! Canada

At the Write! Canada convention awards night (June 17, 2004), By Design or by Chance?, an overview of the intelligent design controversy, won two Canadian Christian Writing Awards, one in the category of books on culture and the other in the category of personal growth/Bible study & theology. The culture award was shared with Dianne B. Stinton of Nairobi, Kenya, for Jesus of Africa.

By Design or by Chance? (Augsburg Fortress 2004), by Toronto journalist, Denyse O’Leary, was first published in Canada, but the US edition followed a month later.

“What makes the wins especially gratifying is that we had such a strong field this year,” O’Leary said. “The number of books that honestly deserve prizes rapidly outstripped the number of prizes available. It seems that Christians in Canada are beginning to find their literary voice.”

Service note: If you are looking for my extended review of Privileged Planet, go here. If you are looking for information on the showing of Privileged Planet at the Smithsonian, go here and here to start, and then this one will bring you up to date.

For the first time, Quill and Quire, the Canadian book publishing industry’s publication, sent a reporter to the Write! Canada convention. The reporter interviewed O’Leary and others at some length on the growth of high quality writing among Canadian Christians.

Write! Canada is sponsored by The Word Guild, which aims at “connecting, developing & promoting Canadian writers & editors who are Christian.”

You can read excerpts from By Design or by Chance?

Blog service note: I have enabled Comments to the June 16 post now that I am back in town.