Saskatchewan Book Awards
Shortlist 2007 Press Release

(2007 Shortlist)

NEWS RELEASE

October 18, 2007

Readers Help to Choose the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Awards Shortlist

For the first time in 2007, readers chose some of the titles nominated for the Saskatchewan Book Awards.  The new Readers’ Choice Award, sponsored by the Regina Public Library, brought in a shortlist voted on by library patrons across the province. In all other categories shortlists are chosen by juries of writers, publishers, and other book professionals. Nominations were announced today at simultaneous news conferences in Saskatoon and Regina. The 2007 list pares down the original 210 entries to 70 nominations in 13 categories.

Rebecca Grambo’s The Great Sand Hills: A Prairie Oasis, a beautiful book filled with photographs by Branimir Gjetvaj, received five nominations, two of them for its publisher Nature Saskatchewan.  Six books received three nominations each. Bix's Trumpet and other stories by Dave Margoshes and Thin Moon Psalm by poet Sheri Benning are both nominated for three writing awards.  Canadian Plains Research Center shares nominations with the editors of Saskatchewan: Geographic Perspectives and historian Garrett Wilson, who wrote Frontier Farewell.  Likewise, Coteau Books shares nominations for The Book of Beasts with fiction writer Bernice Friesen. Fiddle Dancer, a first book by Anne Patton and Wilfred Burton, and its publisher, the Gabriel Dumont Institute, also share three nominations.  In total, there are 75 authors or editors and 26 publishers nominated for 42 titles.

Distinctive characteristics of Saskatchewan culture are highlighted in many of the books on this year’s list. Fourteen of the nominations are for books from the Aboriginal community.  Doug Cuthand’s Askiwina: A Cree World is nominated for two awards. Harold Johnston’s Two Families: Treaties and Government received nominations for Book of the Year, as well as, First People’s Publishing.  The Native Law Centre’s publication First Nation Jurisprudence and Aboriginal Rights is nominated for the Publishing in Education and First Peoples’ awards. Blair Stonechild’s The New Buffalo is nominated in the Scholarly Writing category. Elsewhere, first-time author Mary-Ann Kirkby received two nominations, in both the Non-Fiction and First Book categories, for I Am Hutterite. Octogenarian William Driedger tells the story of a boy growing up in a Mennonite village in his first book, Jakob, Out of the Village, nominated for the Regina Book Award.

The 15th Anniversary Awards Gala will take place on Saturday, November 24 at Regina’s Conexus Arts Centre, when the winners of all 13 awards will be announced.  This year’s guest speaker will be Sandra Birdsell, whose novel The Russlander, recipient of numerous Saskatchewan Book awards, was nominated for both the Giller Prize and a Governor General’s Award.  Shortlisted authors will read at the Regina Brunch on November 3, 12 noon at the Hotel Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza, Saskatoon Brunch on November 18, 11:30 a.m. at the Delta Bessborough Hotel, Prince Albert Reading Event at John M. Cuelenaere Library on November 15 at 7 p.m., and at the Swift Current Reading Brunch on November 18, 12 noon at the Days Inn. Tickets for all SK Book Awards events can be purchased on-line at tickets@bookawards.sk.ca , or you may call 791-7744.

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For more information, call Glenda James, Executive Director, at 306-569-1585