MONTREAL -- Nino Ricci, who won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction on Tuesday, wasn't always showered with praise.
"I was told as a young undergrad that I didn't have what it took to be a writer and that I should seek another profession," he said in an interview shortly after his prize was announced.
"The only advice I can give to a young writer is to persist."
Tuesday's win, for his novel "The Origin of Species," is the second time the Toronto author has received the prestigious fiction prize. The first was in 1990 for his debut novel, "Lives of the Saints."
The jury said "The Origin of Species," Ricci's fifth novel, "is written with great humanity, realism and wit." Set in Montreal in the 1980s, it tells the story of a young man at a crossroads in his life and how he deals with it.
Ricci beat out a strong field of writers including David Adams Richards and Rawi Hage. Hage's novel "Cockroach" had also been shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and for a Writers' Trust Award.
In his acceptance speech, Ricci paid tribute to the awards and to governors general, past and present, who have "continued to carry the torch for Canadian culture, sometimes in the face of the whims of the individual governments of the day."
Ricci said there is a hunger among Canadians to hear their own stories, and that has made them more supportive of Canadian writers.
"They're much more so now than they were, say, 40 years ago when there wasn't really much of an audience at all for Canadian literature, and it was a bit of a stigma really to be a Canadian author," he said in the interview.
Although that situation has changed "dramatically," Ricci said things still remain precarious for home-grown literature and cited the concentration of booksellers and publishers, which has led to a reduction in the number and kinds of books available, and the dwindling amount of space given to books coverage by media.
He said winning the Governor General's award is "a real boost."
"It's particularly great in this sort of grey, mid-career stage, when particularly nowadays it's very easy to be forgotten, to fall off the map because there tends to be so much emphasis on the hot, new writers because there's more sex appeal for that," Ricci said.
"If you're not one of those and you're not one of these canonical, much-prized older writers, you're in this murky grey (area) where you feel like you sink or swim, book by book."
Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford picked up the non-fiction prize for her book about Afghanistan, "Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death From Inside the New Canadian Army."
Blatchford said she felt "a bit tremulous" about winning the award and that the subject of the book is still emotional for her. She choked up slightly while giving her acceptance speech.
She said in an interview that she felt compelled to write about Canada's soldiers after returning from a stint in Afghanistan and seeing their bravery and comradeship.
"I felt that I never had a choice," she said. "I just feel that it was a story that I was born to tell. I very much wanted this book to honour them, what they do and who they are."
Blatchford said the soldiers that fought the Second World War are always singled out for their duty and sacrifice, and the new generation is ready to pick up the torch from them.
"These kids who are in their 20s and early 30s are every bit cut from the same cloth as that greatest generation," she said.
Blatchford's colleague at the Globe and Mail, John Ibbitson, received the children's literature prize for "The Landing."
The drama prize was won by Catherine Banks of Halifax for "Bone Cage," while the poetry award was picked up by Toronto's Jacob Scheier for "More to Keep Us Warm."
Quebec literary icon Marie-Claire Blais won the French-language fiction prize for her novel "Naissance de Rebecca a l'ere des tourments."
"It is important because it shows that everything is not lost," Blais said of the awards. "Even if we don't want to encourage our culture and artists today, the existence of these prizes (is) still hopeful."
The winners receive $25,000, while the publishers of each winning book get $3,000. Runners-up take home $1,000.
Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean will present the awards during a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Dec. 10.
