by Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 01/98) - On the eve of the paperback version of Dying for Gold coming off the press, author Lee Selleck was nominated for a national award.

He says the nomination for the book about the Giant Mine labor dispute made him feel that his five years of hard work had received recognition on a national level.

"We were happy. It was nice that the business community has recognized it as an important story...because we did a thorough and insightful job and put it across fairly clearly," said Selleck, now an employee of CBC's Northbeat.

Selleck said he hopes that being one of three finalists for the National Business Book Award will help to boost the sales of the paperback.

"The timing is really very good. I'm sure that having an award from a very prestigious group of panellists who looked at it, that stamp of approval is bound to help you some. The more people who read it -- that's what we wrote it for. It is a story we thought people should read and we put four to five years of our lives into that effort."

He said he is particularly pleased the book, which he co-authored with Francis Thompson, received praise for the business side of the story because he feels that the dispute was primarily about big business.

"At the core of it, it's a story about business decisions by corporations, by trade unions, by governments, even by RCMP and what those decisions can mean to people's lives, that's what it's all about."

Selleck said the response to the book has been positive from all sides involved in the strike.

"The feedback we've had on the book in general has been very, very positive and that includes miners who were on the picket line, their families, people who were working as staff inside at the mine, from government types, from all sorts of people who just were around Yellowknife."

The long-time journalist said he was driven to write the story because of the effect it was having on his community.

"To me what made it important is what it did to this town, what it did to the many victims. We hope that it would make people think about the decisions that they make...It's about ethics, it's about people, it's about the health about our business and our community."