Montrealer’s graphic novel a finalist for Shields Prize

The short list for the fourth annual Carol Shields Prize for Fiction has landed, with five writers in contention for the US$150,000 (around $204,700) award given to an English- language woman or non-binary author in Canada or the U.S.

Montreal’s Lee Lai is the only Canadian on this year’s short list, who nabbed a spot for the graphic novel Cannon. Other finalists for this year’s prize are Hellions by Julia Elliott, The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes, A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar and Lion by Sonya Walger.

Previous winners of the prize are Fatimah Asghar for When We Were Sisters (2023), V.V. Ganeshananthan for Brotherless Night (2024) and Canisia Lubrin for Code Noir (2025). This year’s jurors were Ivan Coyote, Cherie Dimaline, Chitra Divakaruni, Carmen Maria Machado and Deesha Philyaw.

The winner will be announced at an event in Toronto on June 2. For more about the prize see carolshieldsprizeforfiction.com.

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The annual Writes of Spring poetry reading, a joint venture between the Free Press, the Winnipeg Arts Council and Plume Winnipeg, takes place Sunday at 2 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.

The 11th annual event helps celebrate National Poetry Month, with Manitoba poets submitting work in the hopes of being one of the 12 to be selected for the collection of poems which appear in today’s Free Press (see the 49.8 section).

This year’s collection, whose theme was “land and sea,” was edited by Ariel Gordon and melanie brannagan frederiksen, who will host the afternoon Writes of Spring event.

The poets for the 2026 Writes of Spring project, who will also read at the launch, are RYAN AD, Jody Baltessen, Janine Brown, Joanne Epp, David Jón Fuller, James Hargrove, Bertrand Nayet, Désirée Penner, proma tagore, Alexander Wiebe, Jess Woolford and Chey Wright (also known as IDIC Verse).

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B.C. author Tom Wayman has been awarded the $10,000 Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize for his poetry collection Out of the Ordinary: New Poems.

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The prize was created in 2024 “to preserve Al Purdy’s literary legacy and celebrate the achievements of outstanding Canadian poets.” This year’s jury included Sid Marty, Susan Musgrave and 2025 winner A.F. Moritz.

Wayman has published more than 20 poetry collections as well as other literary works.

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Former teacher and human rights advocate Art Miki brings his latest book to McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location for a conversation about his family’s experiences during the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.

Road to Justice chronicles the plight of Miki and his family, who were uprooted from their B.C. home when he was a child in 1942, and sent to work at a Manitoba sugar beet factory. The author of Gaman — Perseverance: Japanese Canadians’ Journey to Justice shows how he and others fought for redress for the wrongs committed agains many families at the time.

Miki will launch Road to Justice Friday at 7 p.m., where he’ll be joined by illustrator Geoff Miki as well as Fortunato Lim, president of the Asian Heritage Society for Manitoba.

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A tough pill to swallow, particularly on Canadian Independent Bookstore Day: used bookstore Globosapiens (3096 Portage Ave.) is closing its doors on Thursday.

In an April 9 social media post, it was announced the bookstore will close permanently on April 30 due to a “landlord issue,” although it was also noted that “(t)here’s a small chance we may continue month-to-month if an agreement is reached with the landlord.”

Naturally, Globosapiens is not buying used books at the moment.

winnipegfreepress.com/bensigurdson