Whitehead lands on Lambda award short list

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This article was published 27/03/2021 (1818 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fresh from winning the 2021 offering of CBC’s Canada Reads for his debut novel, Jonny Appleseed, Joshua Whitehead is one of several Canadians nominated in various categories of the U.S.-based Lambda Literary Awards.

Whitehead, from Peguis First Nation, is nominated in the LGBT anthology category for his work as editor of the speculative fiction anthology Love After the End.

He’s joined on the list of Lambda nominees by his Canada Reads runner-up Francesca Ekwuyasi, nominated in the lesbian fiction category for her story collection Butter Honey Pig Bread.

Nominated in the gay memoir/biography category is Billy-Ray Belcourt, for A History of My Brief Body. Vivek Shraya is nominated in the transgender fiction category for The Subtweet.

Winners will be announced June 1.

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One of the survivors of the 2018 Humboldt Broncos bus crash launches a memoir of his life and recovery from brain injury on Wednesday, in an online event sponsored by publisher HarperCollins.

Kaleb Dahlgren’s Crossroads is described as a story of resilience and positivity and deals both with the loss of 16 friends and teammates and the outpouring of support from across Canada and around the world in the aftermath of the disaster.

The online discussion is open to people who buy or pre-order copies of the book. For more, see wfp.to/dahlgren.

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Winnipeg veterinarian Philipp Schott launches his debut novel The Willow Wren (ECW Press) online on Thursday in a McNally Robinson Booksellers event.

Schott, who has also written a non-fiction book entitled The Accidental Veterinarian, will discuss his novel with Joanne Kelly, who does a weekly books feature on CBC Winnipeg. The Willow Wren is based on a true story of a neurodivergent boy in Nazi Germany who survives the bombings, the Hitler Youth and the Russian occupation before fleeing to the west.

To take part, see wfp.to/schott.

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American libraries and their patrons may be big winners in U.S. government post-COVID stimulus spending, thanks to a bill introduced in the House of Representatives that would provide US$5 billion to support improvements to libraries.

The American Library Association (ALA) hailed the bipartisan support for the Build America’s Libraries Act, which was introduced by Michigan Democrat Andy Levin and Alaska Republican Don Young, along with 52 co-sponsors.

The bill seeks to provide funds to address decades of needed repairs and updates, as well as the construction of modern library facilities in underserved and disadvantaged communities. It’s also intended to address needs that have been magnified by the coronavirus pandemic.

“The pandemic has highlighted the importance of community places — physical spaces, like libraries, where we can meet, read, and learn together,” said ALA president Julius C. Jefferson, Jr, in a story in Publishers Weekly. “We must ensure that libraries are safe, healthy, and accessible to everyone, not only today, but for decades to come. At the same time, the pandemic has exposed the depths of the digital divide. Libraries work on the front lines of digital inclusion, but many of them are doing so with twentieth-century facilities. To solve twenty-first-century problems, libraries need twenty-first-century infrastructure.”

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Alberta novelist Tyler Enfield is the winner of the Best Traditional Novel award in the annual Spur Awards for western writing for his 2020 novel Like Rum Drunk Angels (Goose Lane Editions).

The Spur Awards are the top awards in the western genre, and are bestowed by the Western Writers of America.

Like Rum Drunk Angels is variously a comic novel and a postmodern work that brings together the tropes of the western genre with nods to the tales of the Arabian Nights, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and William Faulkner.

Enfield’s debut novel Madder Carmine was a western with references to Dante and was published by Winnipeg’s Great Plains Publications in 2015.

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