Governor-General’s Literary Award-winning poet Karen Solie, who was born in Saskatchewan and teaches in Scotland, has won the Windham-Campbell Prize in the poetry category — and the US$175,000 (around $239,000) that comes with the award.

Solie won the Governor General’s award for the collection Wellwater, published by House of Anansi. The book also won Solie the 25,000-pound (around $46,000) T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry.

The Windham-Campbell Prize is administered by Yale University and features writers nominated in secret and whose judges remain anonymous. Solie shared the poetry win with Joyelle McSweeney; in the fiction category the top honours were shared by Adam Erlich Sachs and Gwendoline Riley.

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Fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay, who lived in Winnipeg for a time, is among the finalists named for the annnual Aurora Awards, presented by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association.

Kay’s Written on the Dark, which came out in paperback on April 28, is among the finalists for the best novel award — the short list also includes Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Bewitching as well as The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine by Robert J. Sawyer, who launches the book in Winnipeg at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location on Wednesday, May 27.

The winners will be announced at an online ceremony taking place on Aug. 9.

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Winnipeg author Joel Nedecky is among the finalists for the $1,000 best first crime novel prize in this year’s Crime Writers of Canada’s awards of excellence.

Nedecky’s novel The Broken Detective, published in October 2025 by Run Amok Books, follows a down-on-his-luck Winnipeg detective who digs into a megachurch harbouring secrets in an attempt to find a missing woman.

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The winners will be announced on May 29. Other authors in contention for this year’s nine Crime Writers of Canada awards include Louise Penny, Jen Sookfong Lee, Eddy Boudel Tan, C.S. Porter and Iona Whishaw. The full list of awards and finalists can be seen at wfp.to/iaK.

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A character in a house high in the mountains of an unnamed location and the man who owns the house, who suffers from memory issues, must try and piece together why they have been brought together.

So goes Winnipeg author M.C. Joudrey’s latest novel Marmalade Parade (Guernica Editions), which launches at 7 p.m. tonight at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location. Joudrey will be joined in conversation by author, screenwriter and University of Manitoba film studies professor George Toles.

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Winnipeg author Cale Plett launches their sophomore novel on Wednesday at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location at 7 p.m. — a first foray into the horror genre.

Plett’s debut Wavelength, published in 2025, was a young adult LGBTTQ+ romance. With The Saw Mouth, published by Delacorte Press on Tuesday, Plett moves into the young adult horror genre with the story of a genderqueer teen who survives a family tragedy and moves to a rural town, only to find something is hunting the teen and their new family.

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Plett will be joined for the launch of The Saw Mouth by Victoria Koops.

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From queer horror to fantasy: Raven’s End Books’ Fellowship of Fables book club will meet Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the store (1859 Portage Ave.) to discuss Australian author Ceinwen Langley’s The Misadventures of an Amateur Naturalist. Copies of Langley’s book are available for purchase from the store or Raven’s End’s website.

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Longtime local playwright and actor Debbie Patterson can now add “co-editor” to the hats she wears, as she launches Rebellious Bodies and Radical Acts: Deaf and Disabled Artists Raise the Curtain on Cripping the Stage, a collection of essays and dramatic works, on Thursday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location.

Published by Coach House Books, the collection brings together a myriad of voices working in disability theatre, offering critique, interviews, essays, poems and more. Patterson, who also contributed to the book, co-edited Rebellious Bodies and Radical Acts with Canadian playwright Alex Bulmer.

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