Emerging authors land $10K prize to kickstart career
The Writers' Trust of Canada has announced the winners in three categories of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, which aims to help developing authors land a book deal and further their work.
Vancouver author Jess Goldman won the short fiction award for the story Tombstone of a Tsaddik, beating out Toronto's Alexis Lachaîne and Victoria's Hana Mason.
In the creative non-fiction category, the top spot went to Toronto's Phillip Dwight Morgan for White Trucks and Mergansers; Morgan beat out fellow Torontonians Graham Slaughter and Huyen Trân.
And in the poetry category, Vancouver author Dora Prieto took top honours for Loose Threads, besting Vancouver's Cicely Grace and Saskatchewan's Nicole Mae.
Each of the winners receives $10,000, are invited to networking events and have their work published in both print and digital formats. For more about the authors and to read their submissions, see wfp.to/iwl.
● ● ●
The Forks Market launches a new literary series on Friday with a discussion about Winnipeg, affordability and more.
The first instalment of the Lectures and Lagers series kicks off at 6 p.m. with Michel Durand-Wood, author of You'll Pay for This! How We Can Afford a Great City for Everyone, Forever, published by Great Plains Press.
The event, which takes place in the second-floor event space at The Forks Market, will see Durand-Wood read from the book and then take part in a Q&A with Johanna Hurme of 5468796 Architecture.
Registration is required, with a suggested donation of $20; Durand-Wood's book can also be purchased through the registration page, which is at wfp.to/iwT.
The lagers of said event (as well as ales, wine and non-alcoholic beverages) will be available for purchase from an on-site mobile bar.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
● ● ●
Spring book launches at McNally Robinson Booksellers' Grant Park location are in the final stretch before the quieter summer months set in.
On Wednesday at 7 p.m., Winnipeg educator and filmmaker Kevin Nikkel launches Founding Folks: An Oral History of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, published by University of Manitoba Press, which includes interviews with folk fest staff, volunteers and performers.
The event will be hosted by David Knipe and will feature the musical stylings of Big Dave McLean.
On Friday, Nikkel's documentary about the Winnipeg Folk Festival, When We Became Folk Fest, opens at the Dave Barber Cinematheque (100 Arthur St.); the opening-night screening will be followed by a Q&A featuring Nikkel and Winnipeg music historian John Einarson.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Back at McNally Robinson, on Thursday at 7 p.m. York University English Prof. Robert Zacharias launches In Search of a Mennonite Imagination: Key Texts in Mennonite Literary Criticism, published by CMU Press.
The essay and review collection, edited by Zacharias, compiles over 50 pieces of writing from 44 authors spanning more than 150 years; Zacharias also provides an introduction to the book as well as to many of the pieces of writing in the book.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
Then on Friday at 7 p.m., Manitoba sheep farmer and wool mill owner Anna Hunter launches her book The True Cost of Wool: A Vision for Revitalizing the Canadian Industry, published by Nine Ten Publications.
Hunter examines how the Canadian wool industry has changed over the decades, and how Canada could rebuild a local wool industry to the benefit of farmers, consumers and the environment.
Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com
books@freepress.mb.ca
Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer
Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press's literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben.
In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press's editing team before being posted online or published in print. It's part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.
Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber.
Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Edmonton Journal
2 days ago
- Edmonton Journal
Edmonton Internationa Jazz Festival spans the genre, including prog outfit Kneebody this Sunday at Starlite
Article content Instead of picking up a new bassist, the band opted for a more interesting approach, with Wood taking on the role while still sitting behind his kit. With one hand on the bass playing complex lines, the other on a drumstick, Wood has caused many a fellow musician to go slack-jawed with amazement. 'He's definitely the most amazing musician I've ever known,' says Endsley. 'We knew that Nate had done something like this with a singer-songwriter he was working with, but this is really complex stuff and he's able to pull it off. Now he's been doing it for long enough that he says it feels like he's playing it all as one instrument. Lately he's been taking bass solos, and that's another thing entirely.' Wood took on bass and drum duties for a few tunes on Chapter, but it's with Reach, released in mid-April, that he's become the official one-man rhythm section for the band. It's an incredible trick, but once you're past watching it as a trick the music sucks you in: free flowing prog jazz as indifferent to genre rules as it is to cliches. To hear it is one thing, to watch it another.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Leslie Jamison wins Writers' Trust award for international non-fiction author
American author and essayist Leslie Jamison has won this year's $75,000 Weston International Award. The prize, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada, recognizes the career achievement of a non-fiction writer from outside of Canada. Jurors praise Jamison's 'mastery of language' and say she brings rigorous scholarship to writing about her most intimate thoughts. Jamison's non-fiction work includes the essay collections 'The Empathy Exams' and 'Make It Scream, Make It Burn' and the memoirs 'The Recovering' and 'Splinters.' She also teaches at Columbia University, where she directs the non-fiction Masters of Fine Arts program. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. The Writers' Trust plans to host an on-stage interview with Jamison at the Royal Ontario Museum in September. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 18, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
14-06-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
Lubrin lands $10K award for debut fiction
Canisia Lubrin better may need to upgrade her literary trophy case soon. On June 5, Lubrin's Code Noir was named the winner of the $10,000 Writers' Union of Canada Danuta Gleed Literary Award, presented to the best first collection of short fiction by a Canadian author in English. The win comes just months after Lubrin won the US$150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for the work of 'linked fictions.' Code Noir also landed on the short lists for the Writers' Trust of Canada's Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction. Subterrane Buy on Lubrin has landed big awards in both poetry and fiction — her 2020 poetry collection The Dyzgraphxst won the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2021, an award which came with $65,000. ● ● ● More prizes: Montreal's Valérie Bah has won the $60,000 Amazon Canada First Novel award for their book Subterrane, published in October 2024 by Véhicule Press. Dubbed a 'speculative comedy,' the book focuses on the Black and queer voices in the fictional North American metropolis of New Stockholm, and how communities in cities are being short-changed in the name of prosperity. Buy on A number of Manitoba authors have won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award in previous years, including Joan Thomas in 2009 for Reading by Lightning, katherena vermette in 2017 for The Break, Michael Kaan in 2019 for The Water Beetles and Casey Plett in 2020 for Little Fish. ● ● ● Looking for an ideal (and somewhat last-minute) Father's Day gift? Winnipeg music historian and author John Einarson will be signing copies of his latest book From Born to Be Wild to Dazed and Confused: Rock Music's Revolution in 1968 at the Indigo at St. Vital Centre from 1-3 p.m. ● ● ● Michael Decter launches his second novel The Fulcrum at 7 p.m. tonight at McNally Robinson Booksellers' Grant Park location in one of the bookstore's last readings before summer. The novel, Decter's second work of fiction and ninth book overall, follows a budding climate scientist and his long-distance beau, she also a scientist, who encounter a woman on the run from the IRA in Cambridge, Mass. that derails their plans. Meanwhile, the hurricane to end all hurricanes is bearing down on Miami. Can anyone be saved? ● ● ● The Prairie Comics Festival and At Bay Press are co-hosting the launch of the latest graphic novel about four young women in the 1980s hell-bent on justice in the face of the exploitation of women. Curb Angels: Pound for Pound picks up the story the quartet launched in 2019's Curb Angels, written by Christopher Ducharme and illustrated by Lisa Mendis. The latest volume, written by Nyala Ali and illustrated by Mendis, catches up on the foursome as they continue to fight injustice. Every Second Friday The latest on food and drink in Winnipeg and beyond from arts writers Ben Sigurdson and Eva Wasney. The launch of Curb Angels: Pound for Pound takes place Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Prairie Comics Festival studio (611-70 Arthur St.), where Ali, Mendis and typographer Lucas C. Pauls will read from and discuss the graphic novel. Copies of both volumes will be available to purchase and get signed; the event is free to attend. ● ● ● Local authors will convene at Sookram's Brewing Co. (479-B Warsaw Ave.) on Wednesday at 7 p.m. as part of the fourth Wild & Wonderful Words reading event. Hosted once again by creator and local author Sheldon Birnie (Where the Pavement Turns to Sand), the event will feature readings by Ariel Gordon (Fungal, Treed, Stowaways), Mitchell Toews (Pinching Zwieback), Antonio Marrazas Luna and Zoë Mills. The event is free and all ages. books@ Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press's literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben. In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press's editing team before being posted online or published in print. It's part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
