Author lineup rolled out for Thin Air festival

Plume Winnipeg has begun rolling out the lineup of authors for the Thin Air/Livres en fête writers festival, which takes place Sept. 20-28 in venues throughout Winnipeg.

Among the fiction authors announced are David Bergen (Days of Feasting and Rejoicing), Giles Blunt (Bad Juliet), Zilla Jones (The World So Wide), Liann Zhang (Julie Chan is Dead), Kate Cayley (Property) and Griffin Bjerke-Clarke (He Who Would Walk the Earth).

Non-fiction authors include Scott Oake (For the Love of a Son), Bob Joseph (21 Things You Need to Know About Indigenous Self-Government), Bruce McIvor (Indigenous Rights in One Minute), Gabrielle Drolet (Look Ma, No Hands) and Jo-Ann Roberts (Storm the Ballot Box), while participating poets include Duncan Mercredi (Only the Scent of You Remained), katherena vermette (Procession) and Cam Scott (Manor’s Ransom).

For details on particular events (dates, times, venues) visit the official website.

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Longtime public servant Roger Turenne launches his English-language memoir, Bit Player on Big Stages: A Journey Through Diplomacy, Advocacy, and Cultural Survival (Sutherland House), on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location with a couple of special guests.

Turenne’s small-town Francophone roots backstopped his decades as a public servant, government advisor, environmental advocate and more. He’ll be joined at the memoir’s launch by Sutherland House publisher Neil Seeman and former Manitoba premier Greg Selinger.

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Turenne wrote the English and French versions of Bit Player on Big Stages simultaneously; the latter was published by Les Éditions du Blé.

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He recently hung up his stethoscope after a lengthy career as a Winnipeg veterinarian, and on Thursday at 7 p.m. Philipp Schott will be at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location to launch his latest book Heal the Beasts: A Jaunt Through the Curious History of the Veterinary Arts.

In his latest, Schott explores the history of veterinary medicine, exploring vets, animal healers and the how the culture of caring for animals arose.

Schott has written three other books of non-fiction about his own experience as a vet (The Accidental Veterinarian series) as well as a trio of mystery novels featuring rural Manitoba veterinarian Dr. Bannerman.

He’e be joined at the Heal the Beasts launch by fellow vet Dr. Keri Hudson Reykdal.

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On Friday, Blumenort’s Brittany Penner launches the story of her adoption by a Mennonite family, her many fellow Indigenous foster siblings who came and went, and the tangled roots of her identity she uncovered as an adult.

Penner will launch Children Like Us: A Métis Woman’s Memoir of Family, Identity and Walking Herself Home at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location at 7 p.m. Friday, where she’ll be joined in conversation by Shelagh Rogers, former host of CBC’s The Next Chapter.

Penner is a family physician and lecturer at the University of Manitoba, and is in the process of completing a master of liberal arts degree from Harvard. Children Like Us is her first book-length work of non-fiction.

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Winnipeg-based Lindsay Wong and Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press have partnered on an initiative designed to highlight Canadian BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) writers of literary fiction and non-fiction.

Wong will oversee the call for submissions, which opened on Aug. 26, and will partner with selected writers to develop and edit manuscripts for publication by Arsenal Pulp.

Wong’s 2018 memoir The Woo-Woo, which was a finalist on CBC’s Canada Reads and for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust of Canada Prize for Nonfiction, was published with Arsenal Pulp Press.

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(Her next book, the novel Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies, lands Jan. 13, 2026 via Penguin Canada.)

For more information on how to apply for the initiative, visit the Arsenal Pulp website.

books@freepress.mb.ca