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The Cundill History Prize Advisory Committee is established to provide guidance and serve as a sounding board to the Cundill History Prize team throughout the prize year. Composed of experts in their respective fields, the committee strives to foster a diverse range of perspectives and voices, and to uphold the highest standards of ethical conduct.
The Advisory Committee members believe that deeply researched and engaging historical writing has the power to inspire, challenge, and transform us, and that it plays a vital role in shaping our understanding of the world and our place in it. By working closely with the Prize team at McGill University, the Committee aims to ensure that the best works of historical literature receive the recognition they deserve, and that the literary arts continue to thrive and evolve.
A graduate of McGill University and Université Laval, he was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 1990. In his private career, Senator Meighen practiced litigation and commercial law in Montreal and Toronto. He is Counsel to the law firm Ogilvy Renault (now Norton Rose Fulbright), and was Legal Counsel to the Deschênes Commission on War Criminals. He is Chairman of Cundill Funds (Vancouver) and sits on the McGill Board of Governors. In 2014, The Honourable Michael A. Meighen was appointed as the 19th Chancellor of McGill University.
Philip Cercone worked for the Canada Council and was Director of the Awards to Scholarly Publications Program until 1985, whereupon he took up an academic appointment at McGill University as Executive Director and Editor-in-chief of McGill-Queen's University Press. He has contributed to peer-review panels on the funding of journals and books at the Canada Council and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and presided over organizations including the Association of Canadian Publishers and Association of American University Presses. He co-founded eBOUND Canada and as president of ACP in the early 1990s he spearheaded the creation of the Canada Book Fund at Heritage Canada, which to this day continues to financially support Canadian publishers.
Kari Cullen is an award-winning documentary film producer and arts consultant. Kari sits on the Boards of the Festival des Arts de Saint Sauveur, and the Writers' Trust of Canada. She holds an International MBA from the Schulich School of Business and a Journalism Degree from Carleton University.
George Gibson is executive editor at Grove Atlantic. Prior to that he was publishing director of Bloomsbury USA. He has edited and/or published books by writers such as Dava Sobel, Ross King, Mark Kurlansky, Carol Anderson, Tom Standage, and Albert Woodfox.
Andrew Gordon is a literary agent at David Higham Associates in London, and a director of the company. He joined DHA in 2007, having spent the first fifteen years of his career on the publishing side, working in publicity at Hodder & Stoughton before moving to editorial at Little, Brown. In 2001 he moved to Simon & Schuster UK, rising to head of non-fiction. Andrew now represents a range of authors of both fiction and non-fiction, including leading journalists, commentators and historians on both sides of the Atlantic.
A graduate of McGill University (BA '77) and the University of Toronto (MA '80), Brad has worked in book publishing since 1981. He first started at McClelland and Stewart in sales, moving to Penguin Books Canada where he became President in 1996. In 1998 he moved to Bantam Doubleday Dell, which acquired Random House in 1999. In 2006 he became COO and in 2008 he was appointed President and CEO of Random House Canada. In 2013 Random House and Penguin merged and he became head of the merged company. Twice president of the Canadian Publishers Council and a member of the Board of the Writers Trust, Brad has served on various other publishing boards and committees over the years, including the McGill Arts Faculty Advisory Board and the Cundill Prize Advisory Board. He is currently retired and living in Prince Edward County making Pinot Noir and reading a few books .
Zoë Pagnamenta is the co-founder and managing partner of Calligraph, a literary agency with offices in New York and Boston. Zoë represents a range of literary fiction and non-fiction. Prior to forming Calligraph in June 2023, she ran her eponymous agency for fifteen years, spent five years as the director of the New York office of Peters, Fraser & Dunlop, and worked for several years as an agent at the Wylie Agency in both New York and London. Born in the US, but raised in the UK, Zoë has lived in New York for many years and works with a list of writers, including many historians, from both sides of the Atlantic, including winners of Bancroft, Samuel Johnson and Pulitzer Prizes, Cullman Center and Guggenheim Fellowships, PEN and Whiting Awards. She is a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at the NYPL.
Beverley Slopen is a literary agent based in Toronto Canada where she represents more than 100 distinguished, internationally published authors of literary and commercial fiction and serious non-fiction ranging from history, anthropology, mathematics, philosophy, international affairs and memoir, true crime. She has long experience in North American publishing, for a time as a free-lance journalist for Time Magazine, Publishers Weekly, and the Toronto Star, and as a Canadian consultant to Book-of-Month Club. She regularly attends the Frankfurt Book Fair, the London Book Fair, Book Expo America and has a network of international co-agents in various territories.
Stephen Couchman has spent most of his career in private and public philanthropy. Before joining The Peter Cundill Foundation, Stephen spent three years as Project Director for the Trans Bhutan Trail restoration project. Before that, he was the Executive Director of the Huronia Community Foundation and spent 18 years as Senior Advisor for a private family foundation. Serving as Program Director for Outward Bound Canada, Vital Signs Coordinator for the Toronto Foundation, and Leadership Development Consultant have contributed to his path. Over the years Stephen has volunteered on several boards in the charitable sector and has been involved in numerous public policy, education, and community development initiatives. Stephen received an Honours BA in Comparative Development from Trent University and a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University.
Lisa Quinn served as Director of the Wilfrid Laurier University Press since 2016. Before that, she was Associate Director and Acquisitions Editor at WLUP, where she began her career in publishing in 2006. During her tenure, Quinn built award-winning lists in a range of disciplines, notably in Indigenous studies, life writing, literature, cultural criticism, feminist scholarship, environmental humanities, social work, and social policy. Quinn is an active leader and advocate within the academic and trade publishing communities in Canada and internationally. She is currently President of the Ontario Book Publishers Association and a member of the Boards of Directors of the Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) and Livres Canada Books. Quinn has previously served as President of the Association of Canadian University Presses from 2016 to 2019. Quinn holds an MLIS from Western University and has served on Library Relations committees for both the Association of University Presses and the ACP.
Kyle Wyatt is the editor-in-chief and executive director of the Literary Review of Canada, a beloved and celebrated monthly magazine about books. Having studied theory and history at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln as an undergraduate, he holds a PhD in literature and print culture from the University of Toronto, where he won the A.S.P. Woodhouse Prize for best dissertation in the Department of English. His writing has appeared in various peer-reviewed journals, as well as the Times Literary Supplement, The Walrus, and other newsstand titles. As an editor, he has received multiple National Magazine Awards, and he has edited or art-directed many other award-winning or anthologized reviews, essays, and illustrations.