All booked up: this year's Manitoba Book Award winners

The Manitoba Book Awards turned a new page on Saturday by celebrating their 27th year. Sixteen Manitoban writers, publishers and designers took home prizes. 

Two new awards were presented at Saturday's ceremony, the Beatrice Mosionier Aboriginal Writer of the Year Award, and the Chris Johnson Award for best play by a Manitoba playwright. 

This year's winners are:

• Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction - Detachment: An Adoption Memoir by Maurice Mierau
• Beatrice Mosionier Aboriginal Writer of the Year Award - Deborah L. Delaronde
• Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award - John Paizs's Crime Wave by Jonathan Ball
• The Chris Johnson Award for Best Play by a Manitoba Playwright - The Secret Mask by Rick Chafe
• Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book - Magpie Days by Brenda Sciberras​​
• John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer - David Alexander Robertson
• Lansdowne Prize for Poetry - Stowaways by Ariel Gordon
• Le Prix Littéraire Rue-Deschambault - De l'amuïssement des certitudes by Laurent Poliquin​​
• Manuela Dias Book Design and Illustration Awards - Devil in Deerskins: My Life with Grey Owl, cover design by Mike Carrol, interior design by Jessica Koroscil 
• Children's Books/Graphic Novels Category - Cassie and Tonk, created and illustrated by Justin Currie, by GMB Chomichuk, and Warehouse Journal Volume 23, edited and designed by Liane Lanzar and Kevin Complido
• ​Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction - Mr. Jones by Margaret Sweatman
• ​Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher - Sanaaq: An Inuit Novel by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk, published by University of Manitoba Press
• McNally Robinson Books for Young People Awards - Hokey Dowa Gerda and the Snowflake Girl by M.J. Matheson and The World Outside by Eva Wiseman
• McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award - The Opening Sky by Joan Thomas
• Lifetime Achievement Award - Wayne Tefs
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