Maurice Vellekoop is the winner of this year’s Toronto Book Award.
Vellekoop won for his graphic memoir I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together.
I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together depicts his intense childhood and difficult young adulthood as a young gay person in a strict Christian household. Set in Toronto from the 1970s, Vellekoop begins to see his relationships with his mother and father fracture.
As he ventures out on his own, he explores his passion for art and is set on finding romance and is met with violent attacks and the anxiety surrounding the AIDS era.
Established by Toronto City Council in 1974, the $10,000 Toronto Book Awards honour books that are inspired by the city. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the prize.
The winner was announced at an award ceremony at the Toronto Reference Library on Nov. 7, 2024.
Vellekoop is a Toronto-born writer and artist. He has been an illustrator for the past three decades, including for companies like Air Canada and Bush Irish Whiskey. He is also the author of A Nut at the Opera.
I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together shows an artist’s personal journey to self-love and acceptance.
“There was a lot of unresolved guilt and shame from childhood and the exact moment that I came out and started going to bars was when AIDS hit the world so there was a lot of just naked fear running amongst the community and for me, it was terrifying too,” Vellekoop told The Next Chapter‘s Ali Hassan in a March 2024 interview.
“So on top of the guilt and the shame, there was that and then there was also this very narrow gay culture at the time in the ’80s. Most gay men wore a moustache and a polo shirt and that was the uniform, right? Everybody went to the gym too so if you were not a gym bunny, you just didn’t get attention. I was this skinny little twink avant la lettre, before twinks were a thing, so I couldn’t really connect with people of that community too.”
The Next Chapter18:56Maurice Vellekoop reflects on family, art, and growing up gay in a religious household
In Maurice Vellekoop’s vividly drawn graphic memoir I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, we see how faith, family, fraught sexuality and a deep love of art shaped the course of his life.
The 2024 shortlist included two novels, two nonfiction books and one graphic memoir. Vellekoop’s book is the first graphic novel ever to win the prize.
“Vellekoop’s yearning to live his best gay life conflicts with his traditional family, and with the often flighty and intimidating Toronto arts scene of the 1980s and 90s. With vulnerability and humour, Vellekoop shares his experiences against the backdrop of our city, whose intricate suburban and downtown auras he captures in graphic form,” the jury said in a statement.
“The memoir celebrates the complexities of friendship, the echoes of family history, the weight of self-confrontation, the necessities of exploration, fantasy and storytelling.”
This year the Toronto Book Awards received 150 submissions. The jury was composed of Desmond Cole, Anthony De Sa, Jane Farrow, Rabindranath Maharaj and Kerri Sakamoto.
The other four finalists, who each received a $1,000 prize, include Reuniting with Strangers by Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio, a novel-in-stories about the reunification of Filipino caregiver families over one Canadian winter; The Roosting Box by Kristen Den Hartog, a nonfiction work about the early years of Toronto’s Christie Street Hospital; The Rasmussen Papers by Connie Gault, a novel about ambition and subterfuge set in the city’s Cabbagetown neighbourhood; and nonfiction book The Suicide Magnet by Paul McLaughlin, a work about the grassroots fight to have a suicide barrier erected on a downtown Toronto bridge.
The Next Chapter10:44Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio explores the Filipino immigrant experience in her debut novel, Reuniting With Strangers
In her first novel, the Toronto community worker and author tells a story about the Filipino diaspora and how a family separated by immigration comes to heal across one Canadian winter.
Many of the shortlisted books are available in accessible formats on the Centre for Equitable Library Access website.
Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik won last year for their novel Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO.
Other past winners include Sarah Polley for Run Towards the Danger, Kim Echlin for Speak, Silence, Desmond Cole for The Skin We’re In and Dionne Brand for Theory.