Ganeshananthan wins US$150,000 Carol Shields Prize

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This article was published 18/05/2024 (521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

American author V. V. Ganeshananthan has won the second Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, worth US$150,000, for her novel Brotherless Night.

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Ganeshananthan was crowned the winner of the prize, awarded for a work of fiction written by a female or non-binary author from Canada or the U.S., at a gala in Toronto on May 13. The prize also includes a residency at the Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland.

Each of the other four finalists — Claudia Dey for Daughter, Eleanor Catton for Birnam Wood, Janika Oza for A History of Burning and Kim Coleman Foote for Coleman Hill — received US$12,500.

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The Manitoba Writers’ Guild has announced the winners for the second annual David Williamson National Short Story Competition, affectionately known as “The Dave.”

The $1,000 first prize went to Calgary’s Lisa Pollock for the story The Promise, while the $600 second prize went to Grande Pointe, Manitoba’s Elle Qunmei Taylor for Canadian Cougars and the $400 third-place prize to Winnipeg’s Yvonne Kyle for A Good Day on Clothes.

Honourable mentions went to Winnipeg’s Rowan McCandless for Homeward Bound, Cheryl Parisien of Winnipeg for Pies, Kathleen Vance of Gibson, B.C. for Queen of the Railroad Bridge and Margaret Spratt of Winnipeg for The Carnival of Bones.

The stories have been published in the collection Beyond Boundaries II, which is available from the Manitoba Writers’ Guild for $15 plus $5 postage (or by pick up to skip the postage). To get yours email MWGPresident2023@gmail.com.

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Michael Byers and Aaron Boley’s Who Owns Outer Space? International Law, Astrophysics, and the Sustainable Development of Space has won the 2023 Donner Prize for Public Policy, a $60,000 prize awarded a book which demonstrates “excellence and innovation in Canadian public policy thinking, writing and research.”

The award was presented on May 8. The other four finalists — Abdi Aidid and Benjamin Alarie for The Legal Singularity, Joanna Baron and Christine Van Geyn for Pandemic Panic, Ignacio Cofone for The Privacy Fallacy and Kent Roach for Wrongfully Convicted — each received $7,500.

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A range of Manitoba authors and publications got nods as finalists for the National Magazine Awards, to be awarded June 7.

Finalists in the fiction category include Winnipeg’s Zilla Jones for Lightning Kills, which appeared in local literary magazine Prairie Fire, and Chelsea Peters for Mudlark, which appeared in the Fiddlehead.

Prairie Fire picked up two more nominations in the personal journalism category, for Winnipeg’s Jennifer Robinson and her piece The Passing Game as well as Avalon Moore’s Someone in a Reddish-Pink T-Shirt Walks Past the Window. Prairie Fire’s fourth nod came in the poetry category, for Cooper Skjeie’s bleach.

Local author Josiah Neufeld and author/illustrator Jonathan Dyck are finalists in the One-of-a-Kind Storytelling category for their collaboration Unquiet in the Land for Broadview magazine, while Winnipeg-based Canada’s History magazine also garnered two nominations for JJ Lee’s In My Yesterday.

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McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location has a busy week of book launches ahead.

On Tuesday, Canadian science fiction novelist Robert J. Sawyer launches his 25th book, The Downloaded, the story of astronauts and prisoners whose minds are uploaded into a computer, only to be downloaded 500 years later to find the sole survivors are members of a Mennonite community.

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On Wednesday, ex-CIBC World Markets chief economist Jeff Rubin launches A Map of the New Normal: How Inflation, War, and Sanctions Will Change Your World Forever, a look at how the pandemic, central banks, sanctions, the war in Ukraine and more have created a perfect economic storm from which there may be no return. He’ll be joined by Globe and Mail reporter Temur Durrani.

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On Thursday, Billy-Ray Belcourt comes to town to launch his new fiction collection Coexistence: Stories, which explores the lives of characters on the Prairies and West Coast yearning for some sort of connection. Belcourt will connect for a chat with Winnipeg author katherena vermette.

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Then on Friday, Susan Blacklin launches her book Water Confidential: Witnessing Justice Denied, in which she chronicles the decades of work she has done with her late ex-husband, Dr. Hans Peterson, in securing safe drinking water for First Nations and rural communities.

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All launches kick off at 7 p.m., and are available to stream on McNally Robinson’s YouTube channel.

books@freepress.mb.ca