The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts is pleased to announce the Al and Eurithe Purdy BC Award for Excellence, an annual prize recognizing an outstanding book of fiction or non-fiction that is both authored and published in British Columbia. The prize is made possible through the generous support of Eurithe Purdy—in memory of her late husband, the great Canadian writer Al Purdy—and was created to honour his literary legacy and his ties to British Columbia. The $5,000 prize will be awarded to an author whose work shows literary merit, craft, originality, creativity and is rooted in BC’s cultural, historical or literary landscape. Starting in 2026, the award will be presented each year at the Festival of the Written Arts.
Please join us to celebrate the inaugural shortlist for the Al and Eurithe Purdy BC Award for Excellence. Three outstanding authors from British Columbia will be on hand to speak about and read from their shortlisted works, discuss the joys and challenges of publishing in BC, and share insights about the writing life and their literary craft.
Sarah Louise Butler is a novelist based in the West Kootenay region of the BC Interior. With a background in physical geography and environmental studies, her stories seek to portray natural landscapes and their non-human inhabitants as characters in their own right. Her debut novel, The Wild Heavens, was a 49th Shelf Book of the Year, and a favourite of book clubs and libraries across the country. It was chosen as a Vancouver Public Library Top 20 Favourite Books of 2020. Her second novel, Rufous and Calliope, is a “geographical fiction” that features runaway children, treehouse hideaways, early-onset dementia and the persistence of hope amidst ecological grief. It is a finalist for the 2026 BC and Yukon Book Prizes’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.
Both of Butler’s novels have recently been translated and released in French. Butler was named a CBC Writer to Watch in 2020.
George Abbott is serving his first term as Chief Commissioner of the BC Treaty Commission having just been appointed in April. In 2025, he was appointed BC treaty commissioner, to help guide treaty negotiations between First Nations, the province, and Canada. A former BC Liberal MLA and cabinet minister, he served in several prominent roles while in government, including as minister of aboriginal relations and reconciliation.
He is an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Victoria, director and chair of Technical Safety BC, and the author of Unceded: Understanding British Columbia’s Colonial Past and Why It Matters Now and Big Promises, Small Government: Doing Less with Less in the BC Liberal New Era. He also served for seventeen years in local government as the director and chair of the Columbia Shuswap Regional District and as a councillor in the District of Sicamous. He lives in Victoria, BC.
Cecilia Dick DeRose was born into a hardworking Secwepemc family at Esket (Alkali Lake) on January 14, 1935. She was the fourth of ten children born to Amelia Joe and Matthew Dick. At seven years old, Cecilia was sent to St. Joseph’s Mission, the same residential school near Williams Lake where her parents and siblings were sent. There, instead of the education she hoped would lead her to a career as a teacher, lawyer or journalist, she endured cruel treatment so familiar to those who were forced to attend residential school. Despite this, she retained her Secwepemctsin language and developed a strength of character that would carry her through the rest of life. After marrying a non-Indigenous man and losing her Indigenous status, Cecilia fought to retain her Secwepemc culture and traditions, and eventually regained her status. She went on to become an ambassador of Secwepemc language and cultural practices. She eventually taught the Secwepemcstin language in the public-school system, fulfilling her dream of becoming a teacher. Cecilia DeRose passed away on April 8th, 2026.
Sage Birchwater is the author of Chiwid, Williams Lake: Gateway to the Cariboo Chilcotin, and the bestselling Chilcotin Chronicles. He was a staff writer for the Williams Lake Tribune until 2009, and is the editor of Gumption & Grit: Extraordinary Women of the Cariboo Chilcotin (Caitlin Press, 2009). His most recent books, Talking to the Story Keepers: Tales from the Chilcotin Plateau and One Arrow Left, were published by Caitlin Press in 2022 and 2025, respectively. Sage lives in Williams Lake, BC, and continues to write about the Chilcotin.
