Write on! University of Manitoba punctuates Manitoba Book Awards
It wasn’t just that Ariel Gordon, editorial assistant at University of Manitoba Press, won the 2015 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry for the second time (she won in 2009, for her first book, Hump), but her entire office took home awards as well. Gordon’s book Stowaways was lauded as a delightful collection of poetry that is based in Manitoba but with many twists and turns to the offbeat.
At the Manitoba Book Awards gala at the Marlborough Hotel on Saturday night, many U of M graduates and three U of M Press publications received recognition.
Maurice Mireau [MA/1991] won the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction for his work, Detachment: An Adoption memoir, about his adoption of two children from Ukraine.
The Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award was given to Jonathan Ball [MA/05] for John Paizs’s Crime Wave, about the 1985 cult film.
The Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher went to Sanaaq, an Inuit Novel, by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk. Earlier this year, Sanaaq was chosen by the Association of American University Presses as one of 22 out of 330 best book covers at its 2014 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show.
U of M Press also won two of the Manuel Dias Book Design and Illustration Awards. In the Design Category, it won for the book Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl, by Anahareo, edited by Sophie McCall and design by Mike Carroll and Jessica Koroscil. And in the General Illustration Category, it was recognized for its work on the Faculty of Architecture’s Warehouse Journal Vol. 23, edited and designed by Liane Lanzar and Kevin Komplido. In the category of Children’s Books or Graphic Novel, GMB Chomichuk [BEd/08] won for Cassie and Tonk, about a girl who befriends a robot.
Brenda Sciberras [BA/02] won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book for her poetry collection Magpie Days.
The McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award (Younger Category) was won by M.J. Matheson [BFA(hons)/90] for Hokey Dowa Gerda and the Snowflake Girl, published by Peanut Butter Press.
And to round out the success of U of M staff and alumni, Le Prix littéraire Rue-Deschambault was awarded to Laurent Poliquin [PhD/12] for De l’amuïssement des certitudes.