Spillett, Clark split debut book award

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This article was published 18/05/2019 (2619 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The 2019 Manitoba Book Awards took a page from the 2017 Oscars — the ceremony featuring the La La Land/Moonlight best picture award mix-up — when one of the winners was left out of the announcement May 3.

At the awards, Tasha Spillett was announced as the sole winner of the award for best first book, for her graphic novel Surviving the City. The next week, organizers announced that the award had in fact been a tie between Spillett and automotive journalist-turned-crime writer Michael J. Clark.

Clark receives the award for Clean Sweep, about a smuggler-turned-pastor who helps ex-cons go straight, sometimes by helping them disappear.

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Two memoirs about childhood in the 1980s are going up against a novel about a mother with a house full of adult offspring on this year’s short list for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

The Figgs by Calgary novelist Ali Bryan focuses on retiree June Figg as she deals with three children, a new grandchild and her husband’s revelations. Mark Critch, of This Hour Has 22 Minutes, was previously shortlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize for his memoir of growing up in Newfoundland, Son of a Critch. Toronto journalist Cathal Kelly looks at the passions of his youth — from Star Wars to the Smiths — in Boy Wonders.

The short list for the $15,000 prize was narrowed from 68 entries. The winner will be announced June 8.

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The development and evolution of Winnipeg’s largest park is placed in the context of the history of North American parks in Assiniboine Park: Designing and Developing a People’s Playground.

David Spector, former research manager with Parks Canada, launches the book Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.

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The president of Université de St. Boniface, Gabor Csepregi, uses examples from art and literature to explore life-altering moments in a book of philosophy that offers readers advice for reflection.

Csepregi, who’s also an adjunct philosophy professor at Laval University, launches In Vivo: A Phenomenology of Life-Defining Moments at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Wednesday at 7 p.m.

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Often-close and sometimes-troubling relationships between Mennonite fathers and daughters are the subject of Finding Father: Stories From Mennonite Daughters, a collection of essays edited by Mary Ann Loewen.

Loewen, along with contributors Lynda Loewen and Cari Penner, will launch the book at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Thursday at 7 p.m.

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University of Manitoba professor of history and labour studies Julie Guard shines a light on a women’s movement linked to the Communist Party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) that fought rising inflation in Radical Housewives: Price Wars and Food Politics.

Guard examines the history of the Housewives Consumers’ Association, which was founded in 1937 and continued to campaign against increases in food costs into the 1950s. She launches the book Friday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers.

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A Saskatchewan farmer and former director of research for the National Farmers’ Union focuses on the circular flows of water, nutrients, carbon and other materials — and contrasts that with the rising energy and material consumption of human civilization — in Civilization Critical: Energy, Food, Nature, and the Future.

Darrin Qualman launches his book, calling for a transformation of human systems to match those natural flows, Friday at 7:30 p.m. at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location.

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