Giller winner named as U of W writer in residence
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/09/2023 (1135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The winner of the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize has been named the University of Winnipeg’s 2023 Jake MacDonald writer in residence.
Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad began the online residence on Sept. 18, and will hold the writer in residence position until Dec. 12.
El Akkad’s debut novel, 2017’s American War, won the author the Kobo Emerging Writers Prize. His follow-up, 2021’s What Strange Paradise, chronicles a young boy fleeing Syria, and landed El Akkad the Giller Prize.
El Akkad will deliver the Jake MacDonald reading and Q&A on Thursday, Oct. 12 at 7 p.m. via Zoom — to register visit wfp.to/65u. Later in the fall he’s take part in a writers panel (date to be announced) and will be available for manuscript consultations for U of W students and community members. For more see wfp.to/65Y.
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If a book and a cup of tea is your idea of the perfect Sunday, Gretchen Rue has just the novel for you.
Rue will launch her latest cozy mystery, Death By a Thousand Sips, tomorrow at 3 p.m. at Whodunit Bookshop (163 Lilac St.), followed by a tea tasting.
Rue’s second book in the Witches’ Brew mystery series (following 2022’s Steeped to Death) brings back Phoebe Winchester, who has taken over a bookshop and tea shop in the Victorian manor inherited from her aunt and must clear her name and find a killer after a body is found at an estate sale.
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Fall book launch season continues this coming week at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location, with a quartet of weekday events spanning a number of genres.
Vancouver author Jordan Abel launches his debut novel Empty Spaces on Tuesday at an event being put on by Thin Air 2023: Winnipeg International Writers Festival and hosted by Free Press columnist Niigaan Sinclair.
On Wednesday, Winnipeg author Jason Pchajek launches his debut novel Bounty, set in Winnipeg a century from now, in conversation with graphic novelist GMB Chomichuk.
On Thursday, Storefront MB launches David Penner Architect, a collection of works by and about organization’s late founder. And on Friday, Thin Air 2023 presents Beatrice Mosionier, who will be joined by katherena vermette to launch the 40th anniversary edition of Mosionier’s novel In Search of April Raintree, about a pair of sisters taken from their family and placed in foster homes.
All four of the events are free, have online streaming options and start at 7 p.m.
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The ReLit Awards, which has been honouring independent authors and publishers for 23 years, is going on hiatus.
“Our three years of applications to funding agencies were unsuccessful, while other funding opportunities did not present themselves,” said executive director Katherine Alexandra Harvey in an email release.
As the organization seeks new funding opportunities, future awards will be cancelled until further notice, although the 2023 ReLit Awards will take place as planned; long lists for the prizes are expected soon.
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The five finalists for the $75,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction were announced on Sept. 20, with a range of topics being represented on the short list.
This year’s finalists are My Road from Damascus: A Memoir by Jamal Saeed (translated by Catherine Cobham), Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe, Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls by Angela Sterritt, Ordinary Wonder Tales: Essays by Emily Urquhart and Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant.
The winner will be announced Nov. 21 at the Writers’ Trust Awards ceremony.
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Also on the non-fiction front, Surrey, B.C.’s Louie Leyson has won the 2023 CBC nonfiction prize for Glossary for an Aswang. Leyson’s piece is an “unconventional meditation on Filipina identity,” according to the press release; Leyson will receive $6,000 and a two-week writing residency at Artscape Gibraltar Point.
The other four finalists for the prize, who will each receive $1,000, were Finnian Burnett of Princeton, B.C. for That Poor Girl, Christine Lowther of Tofino, B.C. for Environmental Services, Barbara Joan Scott of Calgary for Black Diamond and Kelly S. Thompson, originally from Barrie, Ont. and currently based in Colorado Springs, Colo., for The Edge of Change. Maxime Jolivel won the top prize in French for Histoire de pêche.
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