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Bookends by Harry Vandervlist Probably about six people in Alberta have not had some kind of face-to-face meeting with Grant MacEwan. Either he spoke at your school or broke ground for your office building, or you met him when he was running for mayor of Calgary or you saw him speak when he was lieutenant-governor. Personally, I remember seeing him at the Sunnyside Safeway. He'd get off the LRT with his cloth shopping bags (like any good environmentalist), and with his two canes he'd slowly proceed along the sidewalk, stopping to return the greetings people bellowed at him. He was already fairly deaf back then, about six years ago. Now at 98, Dr. MacEwan hears with the aid of an apparatus that looks to have been delivered (via time tunnel?) from the lab of Thomas Edison himself – it's all tube amplifer and oversized headphones. This abates the man's wit and humility not one jot – ask anyone who saw him accept his Golden Pen Lifetime Achievement Award at the Alberta Book Awards Gala last Saturday. Propped between the front of the stage and a well-placed chair back, MacEwan gave a speech of thanks that inspired two standing ovations and many teary eyes. Neither Catherine Simmons-Niven nor Peter Oliva were tearful as they accepted their shared award for best novel. (Sarah Murphy's Lilac in Leather was the runner-up nominee.) Simmons-Niven also won the Henry Kreisel Best First Book award, which left her with little to say after her first speech. (Her book also won the Trade Book of the Year award for Red Deer Press.) Clem Martini was succinct and surprised as he accepted the award for drama, for his play Illegal Entry. A relieved Barbara Scott accepted the award for short fiction for her book The Quick, then permitted herself to have her first glass of wine of the evening right afterward. (Probably good thinking, but she didn't seem any less composed after a glass or two.) Shawna Lemay of Edmonton won for poetry with her book All the God-Sized Fruit. Red Deer Press did well, with five awards all told, but even this didn't match their 1999 performance. Poets Adeena Karasick (N.Y.C., currently) and Carmen Derkson (Victoria-Dublin-Calgary) will read this Wednesday, May 17 at The New Gallery (516d - 9 Avenue S.W.). The reading is at 7 p.m. and it's sponsored by filling Station and Talonbooks. Loup-garou, lycanthrope, werewolf or just plain Solitary Man – they all have something to do with the definition of "lagahoo." As in The Lagahoo's Apprentice, the new novel from Trinidadian Rabindranath Maharaj. The author of Homer in Flight and The Interlopers reads at Pages on Friday, May 12, at 7:30 p.m. Also at Pages, Anita Rau Badami reads from her second novel, The Hero's Walk, on Monday, May 15 at 7:30 p.m.

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