Hindle tells Fish stories in self-help book

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FROM Bernard Malamud's The Natural to Chad Harbach's 2011 hit The Art of Fielding, baseball has long been the most literary of sports.

Winnipegger John Hindle, former manager of the Goldeyes, takes baseball books in a new direction in a business and self-help book called Making Contact: How to Connect with People.

Hindle, who managed the Fish for eight years, founded the store Home Run Sports and now works as a keynote and seminar speaker, uses stories from his years in sports to illustrate the importance of making contact with employees, co-workers and customers.

He launches his book May 22 at 8 p.m. at McNally Robinson.

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Norway House writer and instructor Dorene Meyer has been shortlisted for seven awards in the Word Guild Canadian Christian Writing Awards.

Meyer, a part-time instructor at the University College of the North, is nominated for awards for her books Lewis and Joshua -- the second and third volumes in a series entitled The Group -- and her poem Bannock and Sweet Tea. The fourth volume in her series, Missy, was recently launched at McNally Robinson.

Eight other Manitobans have been nominated for awards: Linda Klippenstein, Sally Ito, Ricki ten Hove, Carla Anne Conroy, Sherri Hildebrandt and Ted Hull for their books and Kurt Armstrong and Terrie Todd for articles.

The winners will be announced at an awards gala June 13 in Mississauga, Ont.

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When Winnipeg writer Sharon Chisvin's eldest child began elementary school, the idea of making schools safe for kids with allergies was largely unheard of. That inspired her to write a rhyming story about a girl with a peanut allergy.

Twenty years later, she has teamed up with illustrator/kindergarten teacher Carol Ieszcz, who has two children with food allergies, to turn The Girl Who Cannot Eat Peanut Butter into a children's book. In addition to self-publishing and selling it online (www.allergypicturebook.com) and through bookstores, they've made the book available through the 100 per cent nut-free Sweet Impressions Bakery.

Chisvin is a longtime book reviewer for the Free Press.

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Publisher Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Canada in Toronto, is turning its amplifiers to 11 to announce a forthcoming title, Fire in the Unnameable Country, by Ghalib Islam. In a press release issued nearly two years before the book's February 2014 publication date, the company cites Margaret Atwood's praise for the author, one of her former University of Toronto creative writing graduate students, then describes the book in breathless prose:

"A fever dream of dystopian scenarios evolving by shotgun mitosis on the page, Fire in the Unnameable Country could easily be the result of William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick and M.C. Escher collaborating on a sequel to Inception set on the Arabian Peninsula in the aftermath of a Reagan-era imperial intervention."

Sounds like somebody's having a fever dream.

booknewsbob@gmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 12, 2012 J8