Toronto-based author Ian Brown is among the five finalists for this year’s $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

The Globe and Mail feature writer has been nominated for Sixty; A Diary of My Sixty-first Year; The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning? (Random House Canada).

Bestselling author Ross King has been recognized for Mad Enchantment; Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies (Bond Street Books/Doubleday Canada).

King was born in Estevan, Saskatchewan and is now based in the U.K. He’s a two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction for The Judgment of Paris and Leonardo and the Last Supper.

Vancouver-based journalist and author Deborah Campbell, a teacher at UBC , is also in the running for A Disappearance in Damascus; A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War (Knopf Canada).

Matti Friedman, who was born in Toronto and is now based in Jerusalem, arrives on the short-list for Pumpkinflowers; An Israeli Soldier’s Story (Signal/McClelland and Stewart).

And rounding out the list is Vancouver-based Sonja Larsen for Red Star Tattoo; My Life as a Girl Revolutionary (Random House Canada).

The finalists were selected from 95 titles submitted by 50 publishers.

The prize is the richest annual literary award for a book of non-fiction published in Canada – with the winner receiving a total of $60,000 – and each finalist picking up a cheque for $5,000.

The prize is named after former Ontario lieutenant-governor Hilary Weston and was established in 1997.

The winner will be announced at Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studio on November 2nd.