From the book jacket: "A literary SF parable about a woman named Morgan and her offbeat household. In the near future, when political and social conservatism dominates society, Morgan inherits a big, century-old mansion in a prairie city and moves there to rebuild her life. She fills the house with sexual misfits and political outcasts, in a sense, orphans like herself. But the final tenant is one she never could have imagined. A dozen or more humanoid alien infants have been brought to Earth to be given into the care of major Earth governments. This is stunning but distant news--until Morgan is hired to raise one of them, named Blue... "Candas Jane Dorsey's first novel, the fantasy Black Wine, won three significant awards and got enthusiastic reviews across the United States and Canada." She lives in Alberta. 
From the book jacket: "In a family not at all reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie, four Japanese-Canadian sisters struggle to escape the bonds of a family and landscape as inhospitable as the sweltering prairie heat. Their father, moved by an incredible dream of optimism, decides to migrate from the lush green fields of British Columbia to Alberta. There, he is determined to deny the hard-pan limitations of the prairie and to grow rice. Despite a dearth of both water and love, the family discovers, through sorrow and fear, the green kiss of the Kappa Child, a mythical creature who blesses those who can imagine its magic... "Hiromi Goto's first novel, Chorus of Mushrooms, received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canadian Region and was co-winner of the Canada Japan Book Award. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published in literary journals. She is currently completing a collection of short stories, and her first novel for young adults, The water of Possibility, has just been published. 
From the book jacket: "Alice falls in love with Peter in Orkney in the 1860s and pursues him to the New World. They join the rebellion against the Canadian acquisition of Manitoba and fight on the side of the charismatic Métis leader Louis Riel. While not Métis themselves, they prefer the company of revels and outcasts to the men who are invading from the east. Alice participates in the political execution of Thomas Scott, an odious Orangeman who is determined to destroy Riel and crush his followers. Thereafter, she is haunted by Scott's ghost.... "Margaret Sweatman is a playwright and lyricist and the author of two previous novels, Sam and Angie and Fox, winner of the McNally Robinson Prize for the Manitoba Book of the Year and the John Hirsch Award for the most promising Manitoba writer. Margaret Sweatman lives in Winnipeg." 
From the book jacket: "The novel careens through a world of ideas and stories in which the transforming power of books, the thirst for knowledge, and the pursuit of immortality become erotic... Set in the eighteenth century, the narrative revolves around a world-spanning quest for the infinite book. Along the way the novel gathers stories that range from a Chinese tale of jealousy and lost love to the remarkable history of Alexandria's other great library and to epoch-making moments on the battlefields of colonial America... "Thomas Wharton was born in northern Alberta. His acclaimed first novel, Icefields, won the regional Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Caribbean and Canada), the Writers Guild of Alberta Best First Book Award, and the Banff Mountain Book Festival Grand Prize. His work has been anthologized in Canada and the U.S. Wharton lives in Edmonton." 
From the book jacket: "Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past—and soon to be haunted by the future. In early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is a slacker in a beach community of expatriates, barely supporting his wife and daughter. Then one day he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the appearance of a two-hundred-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. This no ordinary artifact. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory ... sixteen years in the future. Then, not much later, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok—obliterating the city and killing thousands... "Born in California, Robert Charles Wilson grew up in Canada. He is the author of many acclaimed SF novels, including A Hidden Place, The Divide, Gypsies, Bios, and the award-winning bestseller Darwinia. He lives near Toronto."
AND THE AWARD GOES TO . . .
LIST OF BOOKS FROM WHICH THE 2002 SHORTLIST WAS CHOSEN
