Rowan McCandless, Katherena Vermette & Clayton Thomas-Müller among finalists for 2022 Manitoba Book Awards
Rowan McCandless, Katherena Vermette, and Clayton Thomas-Müller are among the finalists for 2022 Manitoba Book Awards.
The 11 awards celebrate local books, writers, publishers, and designers and illustrators.
Persephone's Children chronicles Rowan McCandless's odyssey as a Black biracial woman escaping the stranglehold of a long-term abusive relationship. Through a series of thematically linked and structurally inventive essays, including a contract, a crossword puzzle, and a metafictional TV script, McCandless explores the fraught and fragmented relationship between memory and trauma.
Rowan McCandless is a writer from Winnipeg. She has won the Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize and has been longlisted for the Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize.
A breathtaking companion to her bestselling debut, Vermette's The Strangers brings readers into the dynamic world of the Stranger family, examining the strength of their bond, the shared pain in their past, and the light that beckons from the horizon. This is a searing exploration of race, class, inherited trauma, and matrilineal bonds that refuse to be broken.
The Strangers won the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer living in Winnipeg. Her other books include the poetry collections North End Love Songs and river woman, the novel The Break and the four-book graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo.
Tying together personal stories of survival that bring the realities of the First Nations of this land into sharp focus, and lessons learned from a career as a frontline activist committed to addressing environmental injustice at a global scale, Thomas-Müller offers a narrative and vision of healing and responsibility through his book Life in the City of Dirty Water.
Life in the City of Dirty Water was a finalist on Canada Reads 2022.
Clayton Thomas-Müller is a member of the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation located in Northern Manitoba. He's campaigned on behalf of Indigenous peoples around the world for more than 20 years, working with numerous organizations for social and environmental justice. Life in the City of Dirty Water is his first book.
In Out of Mind, David Bergen delves into the psyche of Lucille Black, mother, grandmother, lover, psychiatrist, and analyst of self, who first appeared in Bergen's bestselling novel The Matter with Morris.
David Bergen has written 10 novels and two collections of short stories. He won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel The Time in Between in 2005. He was also a finalist in 2002 for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction for the book The Case of Lena S. His novel The Age of Hope was defended by Ron MacLean on Canada Reads in 2013.
The winners will be announced on June 9, 2022.
You can see the complete shortlists below.
The finalists for the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction are:
- Dadibaajim: Returning Home Through Narrative by Helen Olsen Agger
- Manitobaines engagées by Lise Gaboury-Diallo and Michelle Smith
- Persephone's Children: A Life in Fragments by Rowan McCandless
- Returning to Ceremony: Spirituality in Manitoba Métis Communities by Chantal Fiola
- We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing by Jillian Horton
The finalists for the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award are:
- Did You See Us? Reunion, Remembrance, and Reclamation at an Urban Indian Residential School by Survivors of the Assiniboia Indian Residential School, preface by Theodore Fontaine, edited by Andrew Woolford
- Mont Blanc-Winnipeg Express by Seream
- Mosienko: The Man Who Caught Lightning in a Bottle by Ty Dilello
- Scofflaw by Garry Thomas Morse
- The Strangers by Katherena Vermette
The finalists for the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book are:
- Lessons in Fusion by Primrose Madayag Knazan
- Lost on the Prairie by MaryLou Driedger
- Persephone's Children: A Life in Fragments by Rowan McCandless
- Run As One: My Story by Errol Ranville
- We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing by Jillian Horton
The finalists of the John Hirsch Emerging Manitoba Writer Award are:
- Wren Brian
- Joanna Graham
- Teresa Horosko
- Sam K MacKinnon
- Chimwemwe Undi
The finalists for the Lansdowne Prize for Poetry are:
- Cattail Skyline by Joanne Epp
- L'ivresse fragile de l'aube by Laurent Poliquin
- Tablet Fragments by Tamar Rubin
- The Lost Cafeteria by Joel Robert Ferguson
- The World Is Mostly Sky by Sarah Ens
The Book Design finalists for the Manuela Dias Book Design and Illustration Awards are:
- Dadibaajim: Returning Home Through Narrative by Helen Olsen Agger, cover design by Mike Carroll, interior design by Jess Koroscil
- Ex Nihilo by E.D. Blodgett & J.R. Léveillé, cover & interior design by M.C. Joudrey & Matthew Stevens
- Frame by Frame: An Animator's Journey by Co Hoedeman, cover & interior design by M.C. Joudrey & Matthew Stevens
- Gibbous Moon by Dennis Cooley & Michael Matthews, cover & interior design by M.C. Joudrey & Matthew Stevens
- Spíləx̣m: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence by Nicola I. Campbell, cover & interior art by Carrielynn Victor, interior design by Jennifer Lum
- Warehouse Journal Volume Thirty edited by Chelsea Colburn & Teresa Lyons, design by Chelsea Colburn & Teresa Lyons
The Children's Illustration finalists for the Manuela Dias Book Design and Illustration Awards are:
- Jigging for Halibut With Tsinii by Sara Florence Davidson & Robert Davidson, illustrations & cover art by Janine Gibbons, design by Jennifer Lum, map by John Broadhead
- Molly's Magic Door by Kirstin Link, illustrations & design by Jason Doll
- The Wolf Mother by Hetxw'ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson), illustrations & cover art by Natasha Donovan, design by Relish New Brand Experience
- We Dream Medicine Dreams written & illustrated by Lisa Boivin, design by Jennifer Lum
- You Came From My Heart by Brenlee Coates, illustrations & design by Roberta Landreth
The finalists for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction are:
- Hour of the Crab by Patricia Robertson
- Prodigies by Bob Armstrong
- So Many Windings by Catherine Macdonald
- Status Update by George Toles & Cliff Eyland
- The Strangers by Katherena Vermette
The finalists for the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher are:
- Coming to Canada by Starkie Mak, design by M.C. Joudrey & Matthew Stevens, published by At Bay Press
- Did You See Us? Reunion, Remembrance, and Reclamation at an Urban Indian Residential School by Survivors of the Assiniboia Indian Residential School, preface by Theodore Fontaine, edited by Andrew Woolford, design by Vincent Design, published by University of Manitoba Press Double Wahala,
- Double Trouble by Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike, cover design by Fred Martins, interior design by Rachelle Painchaud-Nash, published by Griots Lounge Publishing
- Jigging for Halibut With Tsinii by Sara Florence Davidson & Robert Davidson, illustrations & cover art by Janine Gibbons, design by Jennifer Lum, map by John Broadhead, published by HighWater Press
- Spíləx̣m: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence by Nicola I. Campbell, cover & interior art by Carrielynn Victor, interior design by Jennifer Lum, published by HighWater Press
- The Frog Mother by Hetxw'ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson), illustrations & cover art by Natasha Donovan, design by Relish New Brand Experience, published by HighWater Press
The finalists for the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction are:
- Alternate Plains: Stories of Prairie Speculative Fiction edited by Darren Ridgley & Adam Petrash
- Manistique by Craig Terlson
- Prodigies by Bob Armstrong
- So Many Windings by Catherine Macdonald
- The Unpleasantness at the Battle of Thornford: A Father Christmas Mystery by C.C. Benison
The finalists for the McNally Robinson Book for Young People are:
- Glory On Ice: A Vampire Hockey Story by Maureen Fergus
- I Sang You Down from the Stars by Tasha Spillett-Sumner
- T. Rexes Can't Tie Their Shoes by Anna Lazowski
- The Eagle Mother by Hetxw'ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson)
The finalists for the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award are:
- Gibbous Moon by Dennis Cooley & Michael Matthews
- Life in the City of Dirty Water by Clayton Thomas-Müller
- Out of Mind by David Bergen
- Searching for Signal by Lori Cayer
- The Strangers by Katherena Vermette
- We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing by Jillian Horton
