Crushed Wild Mint Awarded Two BC and Yukon Book Prizes
We’re thrilled to announce that Jess Housty has been awarded both the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award for their poetry collection Crushed Wild Mint. The prizes were announced at the 40th annual BC and Yukon Book Prizes Gala in Vancouver, BC, on September 28.
Jury statement:
“Crushed Wild Mint achieves a generosity of kindness and humanity. Housty’s poems welcome readers, in all our frailties, as they share observances of familial and community love with a gentleness whose power surprises us and leaves us changed. Housty’s poems feed us rose petals slowly. They invite us up mountains and into the ocean of their Haíɫzaqv homelands, allowing our imaginations to more clearly understand what reciprocity might mean.”
The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize is awarded to the best poetry collection written by an author living in BC or Yukon. The Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award is presented to the originating publisher and the author of the book that demonstrates the greatest success in terms of public appeal, initiative, design, production and content.
Crushed Wild Mint is a collection of poems embodying land love and ancestral wisdom, deeply rooted in the poet’s motherland and their experience as a parent, herbalist and careful observer of the patterns and power of their territory. Jess Housty navigates the realms of the natural and supernatural, examining transformation and the effort our bodies exert—supported by mountains, oceans, ancestors, and the grief and love that accompany connection. Through their exploration of history, rituals, emotions and resilience, Housty encourages us to contemplate our place in the world, urging a re-evaluation of our ties to both local and distant communities.
Jess Housty is a parent, writer and grassroots activist with Heiltsuk (Indigenous) and mixed settler ancestry. They serve their community as an herbalist and land-based educator alongside broader work in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. They reside and thrive in their unceded ancestral territory in the community of Bella Bella, BC.
Alongside Housty, Nightwood authors Cathy Stonehouse and Brandon Reid were finalists for the 2024 BC and Yukon Book Prizes. Stonehouse’s poetry collection Dream House was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Reid’s debut novel Beautiful Beautiful was nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.