The Sunburst committee is pleased to announce the winner of the 2001 award: Galveston by Sean Stewart. The presentation took place Saturday, September 29, 2001, at the Canwest Global Performing Arts Theatre as part of the Winnipeg International Writers Festival. The author received a cash prize of $1,000 and a solid bronze "sunburst" medallion crafted by Linda Carson (based on a design by Marcel Gagné). The presenter of the award was juror Leon Rooke. The jurors for the 2001 Sunburst Award are John Clute, Candas Jane Dorsey, Phyllis Gotlieb, Monica Hughes and Leon Rooke.
From the book jacket: "Galveston had been baptized twice. Once by water in the fall, 1900. Again by magic during Mardi Gras, 2004. Creatures were born of survivors' joy and sufferers' pain: scorpions the size of dogs, the Crying Clown, the Widow who ate her victims. And the Island of Galveston would forever be divided—between the real city and a city locked in a constant Mardi Gras, an endless Mardi Gras..."
From his website: Sean Stewart has published seven novels about real people in slightly impossible circumstances. He has won four national awards in Canada, had two novels chosen as New York Times Notable Books, and been published in five languages, of which Hebrew is the coolest because they read upside down and backwards. His novel Mockingbird was a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy awards. His traditional motto is, "I want to write meaning-of-life thrillers—books that explore the most profound aspects of human existence, but don’t skimp on swordfights." This is pretty rich because he keeps editing out the damn swordfighting scenes, but he was a pretty good fencer once and, God help him, some day he’s going to get that dueling scene back in. Mr. Stewart is currently residing in California.
