Philippa Dowding's Blog - Posts Tagged "thunder-thighs"

Thank you to the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award for nominating FIREFLY this year. What an incredible honour to be named to such a terrific list of Canadian books.

As FIREFLY receives this wonderful shortlist nomination (administered by the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Arts Foundation), a terrific nod from the Canadian literary community, I have to say that I am truly humbled and frankly a little amazed.

Congratulations to all the nominees, the two winners will be announced in June.

Read the announcement and nominees here (you'll want to read these books!): http://communications.arts.on.ca/T/OF...

Is there is a writer anywhere who starts writing a book with the goal of winning awards and commendations? We HOPE for those things of course, we DREAM of them in our wildest moments of literary abandon, but to ACHIEVE them is something altogether different.

I think most writers will tell you that their goal at first anyway, is to write a story that they are itching to tell and which connects with someone. It's as simple and straightforward an impulse as that!

I am quite sure that my sister-in-law, the inspiration for the character Aunt Gayle and the creator of Thunder Thighs, one of Canada's largest film and television costume shops (and where my story is set), would be pretty amazed by the literary love for FIREFLY too! Since this book is in part a tribute to her and to her costume empire, I could not be happier for the attention it has received.

Shine bright, Firefly, and thank you all!

Here is another blog post about the nomination: https://phdowding.blogspot.com/2022/0...

FIREFLY is having an incredible year, I am overwhelmed and delighted by all the attention the book has received. Thank you to the MYRCA Northern Lights 2023 and IODE Violet Downey 2022 Awards for nominating FIREFLY to their shortlists!

Last November 2021, FIREFLY won the Governor General's Literary Award, a huge honour.

Now it has also had four wonderful nominations added to that honour: The Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Award, The OLA Red Maple Award, The IODE Violet Downey Book Award AND the MYRCA Northern Lights Book 2023 award.

Here's a longer blog post about the IODE nomination:
https://phdowding.blogspot.com/2022/0...

And a longer post about the MYRCA Northern Lights 2023 nomination:
https://phdowding.blogspot.com/2022/0...

Wow. I cannot tell you how amazing this is, no one expects this kind of success when they set out to write a book (you might dream of it though), and I'm really grateful to all the nominating committees and readers who have taken FIREFLY into their hearts. THANK YOU ALL!

And to top it all off, I just signed a feature film option for FIREFLY. It's been a pretty great few months. Thanks also to my terrific publisher, DCB Young Readers!

Keep reading, everyone!

Young readers in Alberta and Manitoba are enjoying great Canadian books and voting on their favourites this spring, 2023. THANK YOU to both the Rocky Mountain Book Awards (RMBA) in Alberta and the Manitoba Young Readers Choice Awards (MYRCA) for including FIREFLY on their curated shortlists for readers in grades 6-8.

Here is the list for the RMBA selected books: https://rmba.info/category/nominees/2...

Here is the MYRCA list: http://www.myrca.ca/2023-northern-lig...

As a lovely addition to the MYRCA excitement, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival is also highlighting the selected books and authors with additional info, here is my page but go and look around, there are wonderful writers here (this site will be dismantled at the end of Feb. 2023): https://thinairkids.ca/user/534/

If you want to know what book I hid from my family as a child, or see images of Thunder Thighs costumes (the costume shop which inspired The Corseted Lady in FIREFLY), go see!

Canadian and provincial Reader's Choice awards are so important to kids, they get to read works written by talented Canadian authors. These awards are also incredibly important to Canadian writers and their publishers since they help get the word out about books and boost sales in the process.

This author is really grateful. Thank you all!