Reading series welcomes Wong, Fuller, Joudrey

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The 12th edition of the Wild and Wonderful Words reading takes place Wednesday, with a stacked lineup of writers slated to share their work.

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The 12th edition of the Wild and Wonderful Words reading takes place Wednesday, with a stacked lineup of writers slated to share their work.

Hosted as always by local author (and Free Press reviewer) Sheldon Birnie (Where the Pavement Turns to Sand), the event will once again be held at Sookram’s Brewing Co. (479-B Warsaw Ave.) and kicks off at 7 p.m.

Reading their work will be Lindsay Wong (whose Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies was published in January), M.C. Joudrey (whose novel Marmalade Parade was published in May), David Jón Fuller (whose debut novel Venue 13 was published in June) and Richard Zaric (Hiding Scars).

The Observer

The Observer

Admission is free, and all ages are welcome to attend.

● ● ●

The World So Wide, the debut novel by Winnipeg author (and Free Press reviewer) Zilla Jones, has won the gold prize for historical fiction in the 2025 Foreword Indies, prizes awarded from Foreword, which specializes in reviewing independently publish books.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

Independent books in a range of genres are submitted to Foreword, and are then judged by librarians anbd booksellers, who award gold, silver and bronze in each category.

Other Canadians who took prizes include Ben Ladouceur (gold, LGBTQ+, for I Remember Lights), Catherine Bush (silver, short fiction, for Skin) and Chyana Marie Sage (gold, autobiography and memoir, for Soft as Bones).

The complete list of winners can be seen at wfp.to/iMg.

● ● ●

Marina Endicott has won the 2026 Prairie Grindstone Prize, an award funded by an anonymous donor whose winner alternates between Alberta and Saskatchewan.

The prize, which comes with a $50,000 purse, acknowledges the writer’s collected output and contributions to an understanding of “Western Canada’s landscape, people, history, and culture.”

Endicott’s most recent novel was The Observer, published in December 2024 by Knopf Canada. At the 2024 Saskatchewan Book Awards the book won the City of Saskatoon fiction prize as well as the prize for book of the year.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies

Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies

● ● ●

A pair of juries made up of younger readers from Toronto’s Brock Public School has chosen the winners of the 2026 Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Awards, administered by the Ontario Arts Foundation with the Ontario Arts Council.

The prize recognizes books English-language Canadian children’s literature for “artistic excellence in writing and illustration.”

Chidori: A Story of One Thousand Birds, written by Jennifer Maruno and with illustrations by Miki Sato, won in the children’s picture book category.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

The top prize in the middle-grade/young-adult reader category was Kate Blair’s We Bury Nothing.

Buy on mcnallyrobinson.com

Each of the winners recieves $6,000.

winnipegfreepress.com/bensigurdson

Ben Sigurdson

Ben Sigurdson
Literary editor, drinks writer

Ben Sigurdson edits the Free Press books section, and also writes about wine, beer and spirits.

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