Our September Author of the Month: DAVID A. ROBERTSON

DAVID A. ROBERTSON, a writer and freelance journalist, is the recipient of the Writers’ Union of Canada Freedom to Read Award. His memoir, Black Water, won the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award and the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction. His middle-grade fantasy series, the Misewa Saga, includes the #1 national bestseller The Barren Grounds. He won the Governor General’s Literary Award for the illustrated books On the Trapline and When We Were Alone. Robertson is also the writer and host of the award-winning podcast Kiwew. He is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and lives in Winnipeg.

The Theory of Crows is his first novel for adults. Deep in the night, Matthew paces the house, unable to rest. Though his sixteen-year-old daughter, Holly, lies sleeping on the other side of the bedroom door, she is light years away from him. How can he bridge the gap between them when he can’t shake the emptiness he feels inside? Holly knows her father is drifting further from her; what she doesn’t understand is why. Could it be her fault that he seems intent on throwing everything away, including their relationship? A poignant and evocative novel about the bonds of family and the gifts offered by the land.

Join us for the launch of The Theory of Crows on Wednesday, September 14 at 7:00 PM CDT! The event will be hosted live in our Winnipeg Grant Park bookstore and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream with live chat. For more details see this page.

Free Press Book Club Summer Reading

The Winnipeg Free Press has returned with their Reading Challenge for Kids!

The Free Press has chosen four different books for each of three age groups (7 to 9, 10 to 12 and 13 to 15), the details of which can be found on the Free Press website. There is a wide range of genres, themes and perspectives for kids to explore from a ton of local authors.

All of these books are available at our Grant Park bookstore and many can be found or requested at our Forks location.

Kids can read books from whatever age category they want, in whatever order they want, as slowly or as quickly as they want and will also have the opportunity to submit reviews of the books they’ve read. The Free Press will run a selection of those reviews in print in their Saturday books section twice throughout the summer.

For more information on the Summer Reading program, including book picks and how to sign up, please visit the Free Press website here.

Manitoba Book Awards 2022 winners

Presenting the winners of the 2022 Manitoba Book Awards! With over a dozen different categories, these awards celebrate excellence in Manitoba writing, publishing, illustrating, and book design.

This year's winners include:

Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction
Dadibaajim: Returning Home Through Narrative by Helen Olsen Agger, published by University of Manitoba Press

Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award / Prix littéraire Carol-Shields de la ville de Winnipeg
Mont-Blanc-Winnipeg Express par Seream, publié par Les Éditions du Blé

Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book
CO-WINNERS:
• Persephone's Children: A Life in Fragments by Rowan McCandless, published by Dundurn Press
• We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing by Jillian Horton, published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

John Hirsch Emerging Manitoba Writer Award
Chimwemwe Undi

Lansdowne Prize for Poetry
The Lost Cafeteria by Joel Robert Ferguson, published by Signature Editions

Manuela Dias Book Design and Illustration Awards
• BOOK DESIGN: Warehouse Journal Volume Thirty edited & designed by Chelsea Colburn & Teresa Lyons, published by Warehouse Journal, Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba
• ILLUSTRATION: Category held over until 2023.
• CHILDREN'S ILLUSTRATION: You Came From My Heart by Brenlee Coates, illustrations by Roberta Landreth, published by FriesenPress

Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
CO-WINNERS:
• Hour of the Crab by Patricia Robertson, published by Goose Lane Editions
• Prodigies by Bob Armstrong, published by Five Star (an imprint of Gale, a Cengage Company)

Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher
Did You See Us? Reunion, Remembrance, and Reclamation at an Urban Indian Residential School by Survivors of the Assiniboia Indian Residential School, preface by Theodore Fontaine, edited by Andrew Woolford, design by Vincent Design, published by University of Manitoba Press

Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction
So Many Windings by Catherine Macdonald, published by At Bay Press

McNally Robinson Book for Young People (Younger Category)
I Sang You Down from the Stars by Tasha Spillett-Sumner, published by Owlkids Books

McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award
Out of Mind by David Bergen, published by Goose Lane Editions

Congratulations to all!

Canadian Independent Bookstore Day 2022

Canadian Independent Bookstore Day is taking place on Saturday, April 30!

This year we're celebrating with contests. Two of them to be specific:

In our own McNally Robinson contest, every purchase made with us on April 30th will be eligible to enter a draw to win a prize pack filled with an assortment of books (look after the jump below to see photos of some of the prizes). Customers who purchase items in-store will be given a ballot to fill out, and customers who purchase on our website will be entered automatically. The winners will be determined the week following and contacted directly about their prizes.

The second contest is put on by our friends at the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association (CIBA) and gives you a chance to win one of three gift cards — $250, $500, or $1000! — to the Canadian independent bookstore of your choice. In this contest, each book purchased at a Canadian indie bookseller (including McNally Robinson!) is worth one entry, so the more books you buy the more entries you can submit. Better yet, books written/illustrated by a Canadian are worth double. Books can be purchased online, by phone, or in-store. Once you've got your receipt (or in the case of online orders, your confirmation email), you will visit CIBA's website to submit your entries. You may visit their website now to read all of the details about the CIBA contest.

These contests are open at all of our bookstores and on our website, but only on April 30th. Our bookstores are open 10 AM to 9 PM that day, and online purchases made between 12:00 AM and 11:59 PM are eligible. So we'll see you then for Canadian Independent Bookstore Day!

Thank you to everyone for continuining to support Canadian independent bookselling. We've been Canada's largest indie bookseller for over 40 years, and that's all thanks to readers like you!

Thanks also to the Canadian Independent Booksellers Association for their support all these years, and to the publishers who have helped us put together our contest prizes (not to mention all the resources they provide to help get books into the hands of our readers!).

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