Mennonite faith, farming methods explored in book

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This article was published 13/11/2021 (1802 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

University of Winnipeg senior scholar Royden Loewen — who also operates a Steinbach-area grain farm — launches a book tonight based on a multi-year study of Anabaptist farming communities on five continents.

Mennonite Farmers: A Global History of Place and Sustainability (University of Manitoba Press) is based on Loewen’s studies of Mennonite, Amish, Brethren in Christ and Siberian Baptist communities in Canada, Bolivia, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Russia, Zimbabwe and the U.S. The book examines their farming practices and use of technology in context of their faith, history and ideas about the natural environment.

He’ll be joined in the launch at McNally Robinson Booksellers, starting at 7 p.m., by Aileen Friesen, co-director of the U of W’s Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies.

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Indigenous writers won the two big prizes plus a career achievement award at this month’s Writers’ Trust awards announcement.

Winnipegger Katherena Vermette won the $60,000 Atwood Gibson Fiction prize for her novel The Strangers and Manitoba-born Tomson Highway won the $60,000 Hilary Weston Non Fiction prize for his memoir Permanent Astonishment. In addition, Cherie Dimaline won the $25,000 Engel Findley Award for mid-career writers.

Other $25,000 career achievement awards went to Weyman Chan for poetry, Winnipeg-born, B.C.-based Linda Bailey for writing for young people and Frances Itani for a life in writing.

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Eastern Manitoba writer Donna Besel launches her memoir The Unravelling: Incest and the Destruction of a Family (University of Regina Press) Thursday at McNally Robinson Booksellers.

The book recounts what happened after Besel and her sisters reported their father’s crimes, including the emotional and legal challenges the family faced.

Besel, also known as a writer of short fiction, will be joined at the launch by poet/novelist Lauren Carter, with whom she conducts an annual writing retreat for women at Falcon Lake. The launch starts at 7 p.m. and will also be streamed on YouTube.

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The literary world will be closely following a lawsuit by the U.S. Justice Department seeking to block Penguin Random House’s takeover of Simon & Schuster.

The merger, if it goes through, will give one company control over nearly half of the market for the rights to “top-selling books,” the lawsuit states, noting that authors of highly anticipated books are currently able to benefit from bidding wars among the major publishers.

In addition to harming the interests of big name authors, the merger would be bad for small presses, many of which rely on Penguin Random House or Simon & Schuster for distribution, the lawsuit also states.

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Winnipeg witch and filmmaker Dodie Graham McKay explores animal guides, herbs, crystals and more in a book being launched Tuesday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers.

Earth Magic: Elements of Witchcraft (Llewellyn Publications) also includes essays by other contributors, including U of W assistant professor Karen Froman, who will join in the launch.

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With low COVID-19 vaccine uptake still an issue in some regions, Winnipeg writer Harriet Zaidman is launching a novel that takes readers back to another time when a new vaccine held great promise.

Her novel Second Chances (Red Deer Press) is set amid the polio epidemic of the 1950s and features a young hockey player whose chances are threatened when he contracts the disease. Another character in the book is a girl whose family is being forced to move out of the Métis community known as Rooster Town.

Zaidman launches the novel Saturday, Nov. 20 at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson, at an event that will also feature the prominent infectious diseases and critical care physician Dr. Anand Kumar and Darrell Sais, grandson of a couple expropriated from Rooster Town in 1960. The launch will also be streamed on YouTube.