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Manitoba Book Awards 2020 winners

Friday, May 15, 2020 at 10:47am

The winners of the 2020 Manitoba Book Awards have been announced!

These eleven separate awards recognize excellence in Manitoba writing, book design, publishing, and stories, honoured authors and books published in the last year.

Of particular note are This Place: 150 Years Retold published by HighWater Press, which won both the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year, and The Promise Basket by Bill Richardson, which won the McNally Robinson Book for Young People, Younger Category award.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions an awards gala is impossible this year, so instead the Manitoba Book Awards is celebrating the winners via social media. To join in, visit their Facebook Page and congratulate your favourite winners!

The full list of 2020 winners can be found after the jump...


• Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction
Friends, Foes, and Furs: George Nelson's Lake Winnipeg Journals, 1804–1822 edited by Harry W. Duckworth, published by McGill-Queen's University Press

 

• Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award
The North-West Is Our Mother: The Story of Louis Riel’s People, the Métis Nation by Jean Teillet, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

 

• Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book
Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related. by Jenny Heijun Wills, published by McClelland & Stewart

 

• John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer
Lauren Carter

 

• Lansdowne Prize for Poetry
St. Boniface Elegies by Catherine Hunter, published by Signature Editions

 

• Manuela Dias Design and Illustration Awards

i. Book Design: ROMANS/SNOWMARE by Cam Scott, cover and interior design by LOKI, published by ARP Books

ii. Children’s Illustration: The Grizzly Mother (Book Two, Mothers of Xsan) by Hetxw'ms Gyetxw (Brett D. Huson), illustrations and cover art by Natasha Donovan, cover and interior design by Relish New Brand Experience, published by HighWater Press (an imprint of Portage & Main Press)

iii. General Illustration: Portraits of the Far North by Gerald Kuehl, art by Gerald Kuehl, design by Dave Maddocks, published by Vidacom Publications

 

• Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
This Has Nothing to Do with You by Lauren Carter, published by Freehand Books

 

• Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher and McNally Robinson Book of the Year
This Place: 150 Years Retold edited and published by HighWater Press (an imprint of Portage & Main Press), cover art by Natasha Donovan, cover and interior design by Relish New Brand Experience

 

• McNally Robinson Book for Young People, Younger Category
The Promise Basket by Bill Richardson, illustrated by Slavka Kolesar, published by Groundwood Books

 

• Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction
Operation Stealth Seed by George Amabile, published by Signature Editions

 

Congratulations to all of the winners!

To get your copies of these books, you may order right here on the website, by phone at 204-475-0483, or in person at our Grant Park store, which has been reopened to the public. We offer curbside pickup, delivery in Winnipeg, and worldwide shipping through Canada Post.

Categories: Awards, Winnipeg, Prairie Writing, Canadian Lit

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