We are proud to publish once again a shortlist of first-time Canadian novelists nominated for the Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award. This year's shortlisting of authors deemed by Books in Canada to have penned the most outstanding debut novels of 2001 is the 25th time such a list has been drawn up. This fall, with the presentation of the prize to the winning finalist, will mark the 25th Anniversary of the First Novel Award, a milestone for the award and the magazine which turns 30 years of age this year. We wish to congratulate the nominees. They are a remarkable group of writers, and we feel fortunate to be able to commemorate the anniversary of this award by bringing some added limelight to their superb accomplishments.

We would like to thank Amazon.com for their heartfelt enthusiasm for, and generous sponsorship of this award. Equally, we wish to thank W.P. Kinsella, author of many successful novels, for his dedication and energetic efforts to reading through the first novels published in 2001, reviewing the majority of these, and then to making a painstaking selection of those books he judged to be most worthy of recognition. Kinsella has written 42 mini-reviews for the First Novels column between last July and April of this yearùno mean feat, and this after reading what must have been close to 60 books. He sets down unequivocally his impressions of what was on offer in the first novels category for 2001 in his shortlist column (pp4-5).

Mavis Gallant was awarded the Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix for lifetime achievement on April 4th. T.F. Rigelhof was at the event and has provided a short write-up of the occasion. Gallant's short stories are celebrated world-wide, and as David Ingham asserts in his review of Home Truths, recently republished, time hasn't touched the "essential truths" contained in her fiction. The stories continue to move with their recurring themes of exile and displacement, and of unstable or troubled relationships between friends, lovers, parents and children.

Some of the same themes are explored by other Canadian authors, mainly of Jewish descent, in a collection edited by Norman Ravvin, entitled Not Quite Mainstream: Canadian Jewish Short Stories. The stories are varied, showcasing a large range of voices and literary temperaments, but many return to their authors' early experiences of being immigrants, struggling to make it in a new country, trying to put behind them the trauma of losing family, or narrowly escaping the Jewish genocide in Europe. Two Holocaust-related memoirsùthose of Erwin Schild and Hanna Spencerùare reviewed here. Fundamentally, both books celebrate life. Both offer examples of human resilience, the desire and strength to start over and succeed. Such books teach us that it is imperative to go on as well as not to forget. In this spirit, the May issue aims to highlight the achievements of some of Canada's Jewish authors. It falls on Jeffrey Canton, our children's books editor to remind us with his review of Hana's Suitcase (by author Karen Levine) that life's wondrous flame was extinguished in so many. Take a look at the picture of Hana Brady (p41). She died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz at the age of thirteen.