Awarding the top Canadian nonfiction of the year

“In this exquisitely written memoir, Baillie delves into the fine despair coating family relationships, calling into question how clearly we see those we live most closely to. Through the art of the essay, she explores her mother’s passing, her father’s protective role, and the long-term consequences of living with a sister who has schizophrenia. Here are the age-old challenges of loving someone who doesn’t understand us, the doomed attempts to save someone from themselves, and the constant reckoning with the millions of ways family imprints itself on us. An elegy to the beautiful fight to keep a family together and an ode to the devastating loss when things fall apart, There Is No Blue rattles the bones of what it is to be in imperfect relationships with the people we are tied to by birth and blood.”—2024 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury (Annahid Dashtgard, Taylor Lambert and Christina Sharpe)