Marcello Di Cintio is shortlisted for the 2019 Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction and The W.O. Mitchell Book Prize for his book Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense.Di Cintio travels to Palestine looking for something other than the narrative of a seemingly unending struggle and, in the process, reveals a more complex story as seen through the eyes of authors, books, and literature.

The winners will be announced at the Alberta Literary Awards Gala on Saturday, June 8th, at the Coast Edmonton Plaza Hotel in Edmonton. A prize of $1,500 will be awarded to the winner of the category.

Other categories include: the R. Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, and the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama.

 Marcello Di Cintio is the author of four books, including the critically acclaimed Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, winner of the 2013 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Di Cintio’s essays have been published in the Walrus, Canadian Geographic, the International New York Times, Condé Nast Traveller, and Afar. He lives in Calgary.

The Alberta Literary Awards were created in 1982 by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta to recognize excellence in writing by Alberta authors.