Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Ontario author Berry wins $5,000 fiction prize

PETERBOROUGH author Michelle Berry has been selected as the winner of an inaugural $5,000 fiction prize from Winnipeg publisher Enfield & Wizenty.

Berry will receive the cash as an advance against the fall 2010 publication of her novel This Book Will Not Save Your Life.

"We received about 30 manuscripts and at least half of them were solid," said Gregg Shilliday, who operates E&W as an imprint of his company Great Plains Publications.

E&W will also publish two other finalists for the award: Newfoundlander Jeff Bursey's debut novel, Verbatim; and Kingston, Ont., short-story writer Richard Cumyn's The Young and Their Country.

Bursey and Cumyn will receive E&W's standard publishing advance, Shilliday says, which is closer to $1,000.

This coming fall will mark E&W's third season, and Shilliday says the contest was designed to increase the imprint's visibility with writers.

Berry has published at least two other novels and two short-story collections. The Canadian arms of both Penguin and Random House have released her work.

She describes her new novel as being about "morbid obesity, arson, attempted murder, magicians and Dr. Benjamin Spock."

 

 

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 21, 2010 D2

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