Brett Popplewell has been named winner of the 2024 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction for his book Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past.
The annual $10,000 award is given out by Wilfrid Laurier University in recognition of a Canadian writer for a first or second book in the genre of creative non-fiction and includes a Canadian locale or importance.
Outsider follows journalist Brett Popplewell as he uncovers the story of Dag Aabye, an aging former stuntman who lived alone inside a school bus on a mountain, running day and night through blizzards and heat waves. The book chronicles Aabye’s life from childhood to the silver screen, reflecting on our notions of aging, belonging and human accomplishment.
4:32Brett Popplewell reads “Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past”
The book “Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past” is the All In A Day book club pick for September.
“I am very grateful to be recognized for this award. It was a privilege just to see my book nominated alongside the works of other writers whom I admire,” Popplewell said in a press statement.
“Now to learn that Outsider is joining the list of other books to win the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction—it’s an absolute honour.”
Outsider was the All in a Day Book club pick for September 2024.
Popplewell is a writer and associate professor of journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is also the author of The Escapist: How One Man Cheated Death on the World’s Highest Mountain.
“This is a fascinating story of endurance, both physical and mental,” said Bruce Gillespie, an award juror and associate professor at Laurier’s Brantford campus.
“It’s a book that’s hard to put down once you start to read it and delivers a deeply satisfying conclusion.”
The Current23:41The extraordinary life of Dag Aabye
Born in Nazi-occupied Norway, Dag Aabye became one of the world’s first extreme skiers, a Hollywood stuntman, a logger and eventually, an ultra-marathoner. Now 82, he lives in a bus in the B.C. bush, running two to six hours a day and occasionally befriending bears. We talk to Aabye and journalist Brett Popplewell, who has written about Aabye’s extraordinary life in Outsider: An Old Man, A Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past.
Popplewell will receive the award at a ceremony and reception on April 3, 2025, at 1:30 p.m. ET in the Lodge Administration Building on Laurier’s Waterloo campus.
Founded in 1991, by late writer and award-winning journalist Edna Staebler, the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction is the oldest national literary award bestowed by a Canadian university.
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