The Chair of the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards Jury. He is a writer and broadcaster and the author of four books, one of which was #1 on the Financial Post best-seller list. A producer for CBC Radio and Television for over 20 years, he won the ACTRA Award as Best Writer, Radio Documentary for his work on the five-hour production George Orwell: A Radio Biography. He was senior producer of The Arts Report on CBC Radio, which won the Imperial Oil Award for Excellence in Arts Journalism. He was nominated for an International Peabody Award for the 50th Anniversary Grey Cup Broadcast documentary. He was a founding member of Toronto Women in Film and Television and was an editor of Changing Focus: The Future for Women in the Canadian Film and Television Industry.
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An award-winning author of more than 20 children’s books, many of them dealing with the Holocaust and human rights. Her book The Last Train, a Holocaust Story, won multiple awards including the prestigious Norma Fleck Award as best Canadian non-fiction children’s book and was chosen as Canadian Children’s Book Centre Best Books. The Ship to Nowhere was honored by the Sydney Taylor Awards. Her most recent book, Righting Canada’s Wrongs: Anti-Semitism and the MS St. Louis, received a starred review from the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. Her forthcoming book is Nothing Could Stop Her, the Courageous Life of Ruth Gruber.
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A lifelong publishing professional who worked with new and established writers of literary fiction, children’s literature and narrative non-fiction, in her role as a literary Agent at the Helen Heller Agency and as a Senior Acquisitions Editor at Penguin Canada, Key Porter Books and HarperCollins. She has taught at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies and at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Chang School, and has served as Jury Chair for the Canadian Jewish Book Awards and the Sunburst Awards for Literature of the Fantastic. In 2016, she was honored by Editors Canada as a finalist for the Tom Fairley Award for editorial excellence.
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A best-selling author and award-winning journalist who has written for newspapers and periodicals from London, Berlin, Washington, Toronto, and Ottawa. His seven books of history, biography, and commentary range in content subjects from Canada’s constitutional politics to national character and Arctic exploration. While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His latest book, Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History, was optioned as a feature film in Hollywood. For 23 years, he was an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. Since 2002, he has written a regular column for The Ottawa Citizen appearing in Postmedia Newspapers across Canada. He is the founding president of Historica Canada. and he chairs the Advisory Board of The Trudeau Centre at the University of Toronto and he works with The New Israel Fund of Canada.
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Holds a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University and a law degree from the University of Toronto. As an academic, he taught English Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto and Administrative Law and Legal Ethics at York University’s Osgoode Hall Law School. As a lawyer, he served as a law clerk for the Chief Justice of Canada, Brian Dickson. He was Lead Commission Counsel for the Air India Inquiry. He served as Deputy Attorney General for Ontario as well as Deputy Minister of Indigenous Affairs. He was elected president of the Canadian Jewish Congress in 2009 and served until the organization’s dissolution in 2011. He practices law in Toronto and writes and speaks on the intersection of culture and human rights. Freiman has become an advocate for the preservation of a Holocaust memorial site in Ukraine where over 1,200 Jews were shot and buried in 1943. He is the co-chair of the CIJA Rapid Response Legal Task Force responding to the current wave of antisemitism in Ontario In 2020, he was awarded the Order of Ontario.
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Professor Emeritus of the French Department at the University of Western Ontario, where he founded the Holocaust Literature Research Institute. He has published or edited 26 books in English and French on literature, semiotics, and genocide issues and the Holocaust, including Les Témoignages écrits de la Shoah. He is a recipient of the Ordre des Palmes académiques (French for ‘Order of Academic Palms’) bestowed by the French Republic on distinguished academics and teachers.
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The founding producer of the acclaimed CBC Radio literary program Writers & Company, with host Eleanor Wachtel. Over its 33-year weekly run, she produced award-winning, in-depth interviews with remarkable international writers and artists, including 14 Nobel Prize winners and notable Jewish authors including Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and Amos Oz. As principal story editor for CBC Radio Drama, she commissioned and developed scripts and led workshops across Canada. Sandra has evaluated scripts for Telefilm and the Ontario Film Development Corporation and has edited both fiction and nonfiction books for a variety of publishers. She served as a juror for the David A. Stein documentary prize at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival for 2024.
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