| The Alberta Book Awards and Grant MacEwan Literary Awards were handed out on April 17 at a banquet at the Fairmont Palliser Hotel. As some 150 writers and publishing people finished their dinner, MC Chris Allen led the process of unveiling the identities of award winners in 16 categories. Not that literature was the only thing on people’s minds. Occasional announcements tracked the progress of Game 6 in the Calgary-Vancouver playoff series, which was taking place a few kilometres away at the Saddledome.
These are juried awards, which means two or three jurors are given all of the books submitted by publishers within one category. The jurors produce a short list of three nominees, with brief descriptions of their merits, and then pick the ultimate winner. Most ex-jurors will probably tell you that the process can be either a model of harmonious decision making, or marked by irreconcilable differences of opinion. In good years – that is, years with a lot of good books in a given category – jurors may feel that any of the short-listed nominees easily merits the prize. So the gracious line about it being an honour to be nominated is not an empty sentiment.
Looking around the room, and consulting the lists of winners and nominees, you would have seen a pretty encouraging mix of writers, ranging in age from recent high school grads to senior citizens.
The well-established Calgary poet Robert Hilles was recognized with the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry for his collection Wrapped Within Again: Poems New & Selected. Jacqueline Baker’s debut collection A Hard Witching won the Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Fiction, while Marty Chan’s play The Forbidden Phoenix won the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama. Edmonton’s Tim Bowling, nominated as both a poet and a novelist, won the Georges Bugnet Award for Novel with The Paperboy’s Winter. None of these authors offered overlong acceptance speeches, because, for various reasons, they weren’t there. Glen Huser was present, though, and he accepted the R. Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature with heartfelt words about the genesis of his book Stitches – which also won the Governor General’s Award.
Also present was University of Lethbridge professor Anthony J. Hall, who took the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction for his historical work The American Empire and the Fourth World.
The rubric "book awards" here covers both the writing and the publishing sides of book creation. On the publishing side of the event, one book impressed the members of completely separate juries, and consequently swept up awards in several categories. Edmonton author E.D Blodgett’s hard-to-classify collection of zoological-themed quatrains, An Ark of Koans, was that book, winning the trade fiction, book design and cover design awards. (Alan Brownoff did the book and cover design for the University of Alberta Press.) Publisher of the Year went to Broadview Press, the resourceful and profitable Calgary publisher for the academic and general markets, whose books regularly win awards and whose shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange Venture market.
The evening’s second memorable acceptance came when author Rudy Wiebe and painter Michael Lonechild appeared together to accept the prize for best children’s book for Hidden Buffalo. Both appeared genuinely delighted, and Lonechild offered the night’s only acceptance speech in Cree.
As if to reassure literary creators that a little shred of Alberta’s prosperity really can find its way to them, Revenue Minister Greg Melchin handed the $25,000 Grant MacEwan Author’s Award to Fred Stenson for his novel Lightning, making him a two-time winner of the prize. Stenson revealed its financial benefits when he noted that he took more than 15 years to write his novel The Trade, but after that book won the MacEwan Award, he was able to complete Lightning in just three years. Alberta Community Development deserves some good words for sponsoring such a significant award.
Moving on to upcoming readings, Pages on Kensington is hosting two noteworthy events. Merilyn Simonds reads from her book The Holding on Thursday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m. And on Friday, April 23, also at 7:30 p.m., Elizabeth Hudson and Susan Scott share a revealing look at what it’s like to be homeless in Canada. Local author and journalist Scott will read briefly from her research on homeless women in Calgary and Winnipeg, while former prostitute Hudson reads from her memoir Snow Bodies. For more on the latter, see the story in this issue.
Tyler Trafford launches his historical novel of Alberta, Sun on the Mountains: The Story of Blue Eye at Fort Calgary on Thursday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m.
And finally, Calgary publisher Frontenac House marked another coup recently with word that Wayward, Ali Riley’s poetry collection, has been nominated for the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award. |
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