Hunter’s first story collection lands prize nod

Winnipeg author Catherine Hunter is among the five finalists for the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Danuta Gleed Literary Award, a prize that goes to the year’s best debut short-fiction collection.

Hunter is in the running for the $10,000 prize for her collection Seeing You Home, published in September 2025 by Signature Editions.

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While Hunter has published numerous novels and poetry collections, Seeing You Home is her first book of short fiction. The other shortlisted authors for the prize are Caitlin Galway (A Song For Wildcats), Tracey Lindberg (The Cree Word for Love: Sâkihitowin), Mikka Jacobsen (Good Victory) and Lelia Marshy (My Thievery of the People).

In addition to the top prize, two of the other shortlisted authors will be awarded $1,000. The winners will be announced in June.

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Kyle Edwards, a member of Ebb and Flow First Nation who grew up on Lake Manitoba First Nation and now lives in New York, is one of six finalists for the $60,000 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

Edwards’ Small Ceremonies follows the plight of two Indigenous teens in Winnipeg’s North End and their struggling hockey team over the course of a year. It was awarded the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction in November 2025.

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Other finalists for the prize, which will be awarded in early June, are Kate Cayley for Property, Ben Ladouceur for I Remember Lights, Antonio Michael Downing for Black Cherokee, Maria Reva for Endling and Jim Claytor for the graphic novel Nowhere.

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Five First World War soldiers are sent to euthanize an injured comrade when they discover a fallen angel who might hold the key to ending the war — if the soldiers can set aside their individual desires and work together.

Such is the story at the core of Chicago author Daniel Kraus’ novel Angel Down, winner of the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. On May 4 it was announced Kraus’ book beat out Katie Kitamura’s Audition and Torrey Peters’ Stag Dance: A Quartet for the prestigious award.

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Toronto author and Anglican priest Maggie Helwig has won the $40,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for political writing for her book Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community, published in May 2025 by Coach House Books.

The book explores the housing crisis in Canada’s urban centres, focusing primarily on the encampment set up next to the Anglican church where Helwig ministers, and the people living in the encampment.

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Civic discourse and infrastructure often prioritizes built components of the city in which we live — roads, sidewalks, housing and the like. But in some ways we’re not seeing the forest for the trees — and with her latest book, Winnipeg author Erna Buffie hopes to change that.

In Out on a Limb: Saving the Urban Tree Canopy, Buffie examines the trend of North American cities neglecting urban canopies, the ways in which the protection and maintenance of urban flora has been underfunded, the role urban forests play in the resilience of both climate and everyday life and what civic leaders can do to improve the plight of natural landscapes.

Buffie launches Out on a Limb Wednesday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location, where she’ll be joined in conversation by author (and Free Press copy editor) Ariel Gordon.

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Also on Wednesday, poet Joanne Epp will offer words alongside video projections by Jennifer Still and cello by Nathaniel Froese at an event taking place in Selkirk dubbed “Nothing But Time.”

The performance gets underway at 7 p.m. in the Harvey Theatre at the Gaynor Family Regional Library (806 Manitoba Ave.).

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Sam K MacKinnon launches their debut novel The Body Riddle on Friday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location, and will be joined in conversation by Coby Friesen.

Published by House of Anansi Press, the novel is an exploration of the messy nature of identity, transfirmation and queer longing. In 2022, a portion of The Body Riddle saw MacKinnon nominated for the John Hirsch Emerging Writer Award at the Manitoba Book Awards.

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