The Geography of Hope

So there's been some fine news this week here at GOH HQ: The Geography of Hope has been shortlisted for two major literary awards!

The more high-profile and potentially lucrative of these is the National Business Book Award, administered by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Here's the shortlist blurb's money quote:

This is an important book offering a glimpse of the future from a business and, more importantly, human perspective.

Equally flattering is word from closer to home that mine is one of only three titles on the shortlist in the non-fiction category at the Alberta Literary Awards. (The non-fiction prize is officially the Wilfred Eggleston Award; Eggleston, it turns out, was a fellow alum of Queen's University from the whimsically monickered Manyberries, Alberta.)

The winner of the National Business Book Award will be announced at a luncheon in Toronto on April 22; the Alberta Literary Awards are handed out in Edmonton on June 7. It's an honour just to be nominated in both cases, and I will be sure to thank all the little people who made it possible in the event of a victory. Alas, there is no Vanity Fair post-party in either case.

**MASS-MEDIA BROKEN TELEPHONE UPDATE**

My National Business Book Award nomination has given rise to an excellent case study in the unique strain of miscommunication produced by the modern news media, as it attempts to juggle timeliness with accuracy, limited reportorial resources and presumptions to objectivity. By which I mean it's been a pretty fascinating game of Broken Telephone unfolding over the course of the day's Google News feed.

It begins with the award's own press release, whose blurb on my book reads thusly:

"Chris Turner, The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, published by Knopf Canada. Turner embarked on a global quest to explore the possibilities of sustainable living. He visits eco-pioneers in 10 countries, reporting on solar energy in Germany, hydroelectricity in Southeast Asia and the world's first solar-powered subdivision, located in Alberta. Turner offers a glimpse of the future from a business and, more importantly, human perspective."

Now, let's overlook for a moment the factual error (my book was published by Random House, not Knopf), and focus instead on the section with the data point in it: "Turner embarked on a global quest to explore the possibilities of sustainable living. He visits eco-pioneers in 10 countries" (emphasis mine). I have no idea where they dug up that figure - by my own count , I actually set foot in nine of the countries I discuss in the book, and off the top of my head I can think of at least a half-dozen others that receive significant mention - but anyway there it is, the most treasured thing in the news business: a number. A stat! Run with it!

Jump now to the Canadian Press news brief on the award shortlist, which condenses the original description to this: "Chris Turner for "The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need (Random House Canada), which looks at eco-pioneers in 10 countries." Now it sounds like we're talking about some sort of roundtable of pioneers, each in their respective national costume, kind of like how they depict the UN in cheesy movies.

And so let's move finally to the CBC's online article, which garbles the details into this one-liner: "The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, by Chris Turner, which profiles 10 eco-pioneers." Now this? This is flat-out wrong. I don't profile anyone. But now anyone getting their news from CBC.ca thinks a collection of character sketches of "eco-pioneers" is a nifty enough idea to compete against, for example, Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine for a national book prize.

Well, back to vainly Googling myself. By the time this thing hits the CanWest wire, I bet The Geography of Hope is a profile of eco-pioneer Chris Turner.