Syjuco's Ilustrado up for Que. writing award

Filipino Canadian Miguel Syjuco, whose debut novel Ilustrado won the Man Asian Literary prize in 2008, has earned a nomination for Quebec's Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction.

He's vying for the prize with another debut novel, YOU Comma Idiot by screenwriter Doug Harris and The Extinction Club by Jeffrey Moore.

The Quebec Writers Federation announced awards in five categories on Friday.

Syjuco's novel Ilustrato, meaning the "enlightened ones," was released in Canada in April, having been nominated for the Man Asian prize before its publication in English.

It traces 150 years of Filipino history through the story of an influential family who survive regimes under the Spanish, the Americans and fellow Filipinos. Then, in present-day Manila, a young student sets out to investigate the murder of his teacher, literary lion Crispin Salvador.

Moore's The Extinction Club is the story of a drug addict who seeks a quiet refuge in the Laurentians, only to become involved in a young activist battling hunters who are orchestrating a wholesale slaughter of wildlife. His debut novel, Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain, published in 2000, won the regional and the overall Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Harris has a double nomination for comic novel YOU Comma Idiot, with another nod in the first book category. Set in Montreal, it follows the life of slacker Lee Goodstone and the characters of his neighbourhood.

Other debut novels vying for the first book prize are Larissa Andrusyshyn for poetry collection Mammoth and Sean Mills for non-fiction work The Empire Within, about political activism in 1960s Montreal.

Last year's children's literature award winner Monique Polak is up for the prize again for her The Middle of Everywhere. Also nominated are Catherine Austen's Walking Backward and Caryl Cude Mullin forRough Magic.

Nominees for the A.M. Klein Prize for poetry:

• Kate Hall, The Certainty Dream
• Michael Harris, Circus
• Erin Moure, O Resplandor

Nominees for the Mavis Gallant Prize for non-fiction include an examination of what makes places people friendly, a black history of Montreal and a look atthe future of global politics.

The nominees are:

• Avi Friedman, A Place in Mind: The Search for Authenticity
• Frank Mackey, Done with Slavery
• Cleo Paskal, Global Warring

Nominees for the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation include

• Paule Champoux, Quebec, ville du patrimoine mondial, translation of David Mendel's Quebec, World Heritage City
• Hlne Rioux, Notre Mer Nourricire, translation of Taras Grescoe's Bottomfeeder.
• Michelle Tisseyre, Sans limites : la vie exceptionelle des jumelles Rhona et Rhoda Wurtele, olympiennes et pionnires du ski au Canada, translation of Byron Rempel's No Limits : The Amazing Life Story of Rhona and Rhoda Wurtele - Canada's Olympian Skiing Pioneers.

The prizes will be awarded Nov. 23 in Montreal.