Canadian writers nab accolades aplenty

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This article was published 12/01/2019 (2790 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Canadian authors earned end-of-year honours on both sides of the Atlantic last month.

Appointments to the Order of Canada, announced Dec. 27, included novelist, playwright and CBC presenter Ann-Marie MacDonald, whose first novel, Fall on Your Knees, was an Oprah pick and international bestseller, and Kit Pearson, who won the Governor General’s Award for children’s literature in 1996 and the Canadian Library Association Children’s Book of the Year Award three times.

Forensic anthropologist and thriller writer Kathy Reichs was named an honourary member of the Order of Canada, in recognition of her academic work and her 19 novels featuring anthropologist/sleuth Temperance Brennan. Reichs, an American citizen, lives in Montreal and in North Carolina.

John Kirk Howard, the founder and president of Dundurn Press, was also named to the Order for his contributions to the literary world.

In the U.K., Margaret Atwood was named a Companion of Honour during the Queen’s year-end honours announcements.

Other honours for authors included knighthoods for YA fantasy author Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials series) and Monty Python alumnus and author Michael Palin, whose latest book, Erebus, tells the story of the doomed Franklin Expedition and an earlier, successful Antarctic voyage by the same sailing ship.

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Last year was a very good one for Katherena Vermette and Gordon Goldsborough.

The two authors each placed two books on the McNally Robinson Booksellers’ top 10 lists for local bestsellers. Vermette held down second place on the fiction list for her 2016 novel The Break and sixth place for her 2018 book of poetry river woman, while Goldsborough came in second on the non-fiction list with More Abandoned Manitoba, a followup to his book Abandoned Manitoba, which was the 10th best seller of the year.

The top spots on the two lists were claimed by Miriam Toews for her novel Women Talking and Evelyn Peters, Matthew Stock and Adrian Werner for Rooster Town: The History of an Urban Métis Community.

Third place in fiction went to Michael Kaan’s novel The Water Beetles, which last year won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award in the Manitoba Book Awards as well as the Amazon Canada award for best first novel. On the non-fiction side, third place went to Bill Redekop’s Lake Agassiz: The Rise and Demise of the World’s Greatest Lake.

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If one of your plans for 2019 was to get some writing done, Manitoba novelist and poet Lauren Carter’s three-week online course may help.

The class, featuring 10 email lessons, two video sessions and an online critique session, begins today and runs until Feb. 3. There’s still time to sign up: details are at wfp.to/bQK.

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A Winnipeg special education teacher launches an illustrated children’s book featuring a little goat who teaches kids lessons on emotional regulation, friendship and appreciating the moment.

Charlotte Jackson launches Finnigan’s Bliss at 2 p.m. at the McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location, featuring illustrations by Helen Yang, who drew and painted the book’s art work at the age of 12.

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Local writer Karen Bate wraps up a mystery series set in a fictionalized version of Winnipeg when she launches Frost: A Mayfair Murder Mystery.

Bate’s four mystery novels (Ice, Flood, Steam and Frost) are each set in a different season in the fictional city of Mayfair, which has some similarities to Winnipeg. The new book, set during the fall, deals with the psychological pressures of investigating the murder of a colleague of her protagonist, Det. Emma Star.

Bate launches the book Thursday at the McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location at 7:30 p.m.

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