Awards: Weston Writers' Trust Nonfiction

Rosemary Sullivan won the C$60,000 (about US$46,110) Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, which honors works published in Canada that "demonstrate a distinctive voice, as well as a persuasive and compelling command of tone, narrative, style and technique," for Stalin's Daughter: The Extraordinary & Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva.

"Compelling figures are essential in a great biography," The jury noted in its citation. "They need not be famous or historically significant but they do require an author to bring to life their passions, ideas, feats, and failures. Rosemary Sullivan achieves all of it with an insightful yet empathetic portrait of Svetlana Alliluyeva. Stalin's Daughter expansively intertwines history, political intrigue, espionage, and domestic drama, yet Sullivan hones the episodes to one struggle: Alliluyeva's attempt to escape her father's shadow. When the 'Soviet Princess' died, she was treated in the media more like a post-Cold War curiosity. Sullivan's book delivers a fully wrought literary heroine."

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