The 2020 winners of Alberta Literary Awards have been announced, and a Grande Prairie author is being honoured.  

Sue Farrell Holler won the R. Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature for her book Cold White Sun, published by Groundwood Books. 

Cold White Sun is a young adult novel released in March 2019. 

Holler says, “It’s the story of Tesfaye, a boy who escapes Ethiopia with his life and is smuggled into Canada. The result of months of intense, deeply personal interviews and countless hours of detailed research, writing his story is among the top experiences of my life. I learned and grew in ways I didn’t know I needed to learn or grow.” 

She says that all the books she writes are based on or inspired by true stories.  

Holler is an active member of the Grande Prairie chapter of the Children’s Literature Roundtable, a professional member of the Canadian Authors’ Association and a decades-long member of both the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and the Young Alberta Book Society.

The 2020 Alberta Literary Awards were not able to be held in person because of COVID-19, so they were streamed live on June 4.

Watch the video here: