National Magazine Awards finalists and special category winners announced

Neville Gilfoy will be receiving the coveted Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement at this year's National Magazine Awards. [UPDATE: see his reaction in an item in his hometown newspaper, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald.]The awards foundation released its list of the nominees for its 30th anniversary year. Other notable awards that were announced in advance:

• The Foundation's second annual Best Student Writer Award goes to Buffy Cram for her article "Man Hands" that appeared in Prairie Fire.
• The Alexander Ross Award for Best New Writer goes to Jeremy Klaszus, for his articles "Big Oil on Trial" and "Trouble in the Fields" in Alberta Views magazine.

The three finalists for Magazine of the Year are L'actualité, Explore and The Walrus.

The Walrus has the most award nominations, with 51, Toronto Life has 23, Maclean's and Report on Business magazine have 15 each (as does Toro, which has discontinued publication) L'actualité had 14.

A complete list of finalists is available at the magazine awards website. In making the outstanding achievement award, the foundation said in a release:

Gilfoy has over 30 years experience in magazine publishing, and has had a really good time along the way. He's been behind the launch of several magazines, including Atlantic Insight (50,000 paid subscriptions within 8 months), Eastern Woods and Waters and Atlantic Progress (later Progress; and he also created a French-language counterpart Progres), and has successfully built one of the most capable, committed and determined publishing teams in Canada.

Gilfoy served as a CPPA/CMPA board member from 1979-1987, as president of the APCC, and as chair of the board of the Greater Halifax Partnership. For 15 years he taught at the Banff Publishing Workshop. He has presented at hundreds of seminars and conferences, from CMPA and Mags U to economic development groups and high school classes. In 1999 he launched Face to Face, one of the most unique entrepreneurial conferences produced by any magazine in North America. Greg Keilty, publisher of SkyNews, notes that Gilfoy "ached to see Atlantic Canada prosper and believed an entrepreneurial revolution was required to make it happen."

Yet at the core of Gilfoy's success is his talent and determination for making those around him share his "uncommon delight" for the magazine industry. "He eats, sleeps and dreams the business of magazine publishing," says Dirk van Loon, editor and publisher of DvL Publishing Inc., "and gladly shares what he knows with anyone else crazy enough to get into the racket."

The winners of the individual categories will be announced June 15th, 2007 at the Carlu in Toronto.