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New Releases
Crisp
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Aphelion
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Darkening Archipelago (The)
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Voice Your Choice, Alberta Readers |
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 NeWest Press got a nice Monday lift this week from the news that two of its 2009 titles — The Frog Lake Reader by Myrna Kostash, and Fishing for Bacon by Michael Davie — are among the five contenders for the inaugural Alberta Readers' Choice Award. With a $10,000 prize going into the winner's bank account, it's a literary competition on the same monetary scale as the Governor-General's Award.
Regular NeWest readers will be very familiar with both titles already. In The Frog Lake Reader, Edmonton author Myrna Kostash masterfully assembles a wide range of sources and multiple cultural perspectives — from modern-day historians to contemporary eyewitnesses — into a swiftly paced, panoramic account of the 1885 Cree uprising known as the Frog Lake Massacre.
Fishing for Bacon, meanwhile, is the delightful debut novel from Calgary’s Michael Davie, a coming-of-age romp about hapless teen Bacon Sobelowski, who undergoes a wild series of erotic misadventures on his Kenny Rogers-inspired quest to find his special “someone.”
The Alberta Readers’ Choice Award is a new prize created by the Edmonton Public Library and the Book Publishers Association of Alberta and designed to promote the work of Alberta authors and publishers,  as well as encourage the reading public to support Alberta literature. A longlist of 10 titles was compiled by librarians across the province, then whittled down to the current shortlist of five by a jury of Alberta notables, including musician/senator Tommy Banks, arts and heritage figure/Red Deer mayor Morris Flewwelling, broadcaster/journalist Fil Fraser, and book-business entrepreneurs Laurie Greenwood and Simone Lee.
As in the CBC’s popular “Canada Reads” competition, the winner will be determined by the public — although each juror will attempt to sway the vote by championing their favourite title at a panel discussion at Edmonton’s Stanley Milner Library on April 17: Tommy Banks will argue the merits of The Frog Lake Reader, while Laurie Greenwood will go to bat for Fishing for Bacon.
Voting is open from March 15 to April 30 at the official ARC Award website. The winner will be announced at the Alberta Book Publishing Awards gala at the Delta Edmonton South Hotel on May 14, 2010.
So pick up copies of the competing titles at your local EPL branch or your favourite bookstore and cast your vote! |
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"A Writer Is A Reader," Says Roy Innes |
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 Here's a nice little profile of NeWest mystery author Roy Innes that Carol Baird-Krul wrote for an eclectic new website with the odd title Features Blogmazine. It appears to be a repository for essays about people and activities Carol and her co-blogger Enise Olding find interesting. And that list apparently includes B.C.-based mystery writers.
For anyone who's always dreamed of becoming an author but could never carve out the time to concentrate on a writing project, it's heartening to read about someone like Roy, who came to writing comparatively late in life after a decades-long career in the medical profession. NeWest Press has published two of Innes' entertaining "Inspector Coswell" mysteries, Murder in the Monashees and West End Murders. You can look forward to reading the third in the series, Chilcotin Murders, when it comes out this fall. Reading And Writing: An Author's Life |
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Featured Media:
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Poet and translator 