Joanne Jackson Hybrid Book Launch

Tuesday May 17 2022 7:00 pm - Travel Alcove + YouTube, Saskatoon

Join Joanne Jackson for the hybrid launch of her new novel A Snake in the Raspberry Patch.

The launch will be hosted live in the Travel Alcove of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Saskatoon and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream with live chat. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

It’s the summer of 1971 and Liz takes care of her four sisters while waiting on the birth of the sixth Murphy child: a boy. And yet something is not right. Adults tensely whisper in small groups, hands shaking. Her younger sister Rose seems more annoying, always flashing her camera and jotting notes in her notepad.

The truth is worse than anyone could imagine: an entire family slaughtered in their home. The small rural town reels in the aftermath. For Liz, these events complicate her already tiring life, and if Rose gets it into her head that she can solve a murder…. The killer must be someone just passing through, a random horror. It almost begs the question: where do murderers live?

A Snake in the Raspberry Patch is Joanne Jackson’s second novel. She lives in Saskatoon with her husband and a border collie named Mick.

Aimée Craft & Jill Blakley Hybrid Book Launch

Tuesday May 17 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join editors Aimée Craft and Jill Blakley for the launch of In Our Backyard: Keeyask and the Legacy of Hydroelectric Development (University of Manitoba Press), featuring a presentation from Robert Spence, elected councillor of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream with live chat. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

Beginning with the Grand Rapids Dam in the 1960s, hydroelectric development has dramatically altered the social, political, and physical landscape of northern Manitoba. In Our Backyard tells the story of Manitoba Hydro’s Keeyask dam and accompanying development on the Nelson River, amplifying Indigenous voices that environmental assessment and regulatory processes have often failed to incorporate.

Aimée Craft is an Associate Professor at the Faculty Law, University of Ottawa, and an Anishinaabe-Métis lawyer from Manitoba. She co-leads a series of major research grants on Decolonizing Water Governance and works with many Indigenous nations and communities on Indigenous relationships with and responsibilities to nibi (water).

Jill Blakley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning and Interim Vice Dean Faculty Relations in the College of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan. She is the lead editor of the international Handbook of Cumulative Impact Assessment.

Robert Spence is a father of six and a grandfather of eight, with two more grandchildren on the way. He has been a fisherman for most of his life, a constable for seven years, and councillor of the Tataskweyak Cree Nation for six years. A hunter and artist, Robert promotes land-based learning and healing, and is currently trying to get the Churchill River Sturgeon full protection.

GMB Chomichuk Hybrid Book Launch

Wednesday May 18 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join us as we celebrate the launch of GMB Chomichuk's The Backbone of Night, Book Two of The Automatic Age Saga (Yellow Dog), featuring special guest J.H. Moncrieff.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

In the Automatic Age, the autovolts have swept the earth clean of most of its human inhabitants. Kerion and Barry are of the few survivors, mistaken as robots in the first purge because of Kerion’s prosthetics. Kerion fears that his son will grow up a lonely anomaly on an earth free of people. The discovery of a group of intentionalized fanatics may be the hope they need to reconnect with the human experience. But is it better risk dangerous isolation or stay with a group of religious zealots? The truth will send them on the run in a fight for survival beneath the sea of stars to the tower known as the BACKBONE OF NIGHT.

GMB Chomichuk is an award-winning writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in comics, graphic novels, books, role-playing games, film, television and theatre. He is the host of Super Pulp Science a podcast about how genre gets made. His work in words and pictures ranges from the heartwarming to bloodcurdling. Other books by GMB Chomichuk include Apocrypha: The Legend of Babymetal from Z2, Will I See? from Portage and Main Press, The Automatic Age from Great Plains, The Eye Collector from HEAVY METAL, Dragon Nanny from Chasing Artwork and Dead Work from The Dead Work Collective.

Special guest J.H. Moncrieff is an award-winning author of sixteen dark fiction novels. Her City of Ghosts won the Kindle Book Review Award for Best Horror/Suspense. Moncrieff began her writing career as a journalist, tracking down snipers and canoeing through crocodile-infested waters. Her articles have appeared in many publications, including Chatelaine, FLARE, Writer’s Digest, and The Globe and Mail.

Jonathan Dyck Hybrid Book Launch

Thursday May 19 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join us as we celebrate the launch of Shelterbelts (Conundrum Press), the debut graphic novel from Jonathan Dyck. Featuring a conversation hosted by Seyward Goodhand.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

Once set apart by a narrative of piety, prosperity and peace, the fictional town of Hespeler, MB is changing. Pressing questions around inclusion, pipeline development, and historical complicity stir up old conflicts while creating new ones. Through a series of interconnected stories, Shelterbelts presents a Mennonite community in the midst of defining its future as it reckons with its past.

Jonathan Dyck is an award-winning illustrator and cartoonist whose work has appeared in The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, Broadview, and Reader's Digest Canada.

Host Seyward Goodhand's stories have been shortlisted for the Journey Prize and a National Magazine Award, among other prizes. Her first book, Even That Wildest Hope, was a finalist for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the Eileen McTavish Sykes Awards for Best First Book, and longlisted for the 2020 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. 

Colleen Nelson Book Launch

Tuesday May 24 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Winnipeg

Join Colleen Nelson for the launch of Harvey Takes the Lead (Pajama Press), the third book in her award-winning series ‘The Harvey Stories’. This in-person launch will be hosted by grade 8 students from Linden Meadows School.

The launch will be hosted live as an in-person event in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park. It will not be available for viewing via YouTube. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

There’s nothing quite like the loving companionship of a loyal dog. When Harvey’s status as Brayside’s comfort dog comes into question, the elderly residents are quick to stand up for him. The Harvey Stories are back with a new story of acceptance, understanding, and the loving comfort of everyone’s favourite Westie.

Award-winning author Colleen Nelson and illustrator Tara Anderson team up once again to deliver another engaging story where Harvey’s exceptional nose leads Maggie and Austin to find resolution to the many challenges they face.

Colleen Nelson is a teacher and author from Winnipeg. Her novels include Saskatchewan Young Readers Choice Award and McNally Robinson Book of the Year for Young people winner Harvey Comes Home, and Governor General’s Award finalist Harvey Holds His Own. Her most recent middle grade title, The Undercover Booklist was selected as one of CBC Books Best Books of 2021. Colleen writes daily in between appearances at hockey rinks and soccer fields in support of her two sports-loving sons. The family’s West Highland Terrier Rosie adds an extra-lovable dose of liveliness, squirrel-chasing, and shoe-chewing to their lives.

Raye Anderson Hybrid Book Launch

Wednesday May 25 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join Raye Anderson for the launch of Down Came the Rain (Signature Editions) featuring a reading and conversation hosted by Gerald Brown.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

After a life-threatening incident, Sergeant Roxanne Calloway left the RCMP's Major Crimes Unit and is now the Team Commander of the RCMP detachment in quiet little Fiskar Bay. Roxanne is adjusting to her new job when the body of retired Sergeant Bill Gilchrist, her predecessor, is discovered in a country ditch. When another local law enforcement official meets an untimely end, it’s clear that there is a cop killer on the loose.

Raye Anderson is a Scots Canadian who now calls Manitoba's Interlake home. Her first book, And We Shall Have Snow, was shortlisted for the CWC Best Crime First Novel and a WILLA Literary Award in 2021. Raye spent many years running theatre schools and presenting creative arts programmes for arts organizations, notably at the Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg.

Gerald Brown was the chief librarian for the Winnipeg School Division for many years. After retiring from the WSD, he took on consulting work for the World Bank, which took him to 49 countries around the world. He is now the Library Program Co-ordinator at Lions Place, Winnipeg.

A Virtual Evening with Elamin Abdelmahmoud

Thursday May 26 2022 7:00 pm - Online via Zoom & YouTube, Virtual

Spend an evening with Elamin Abdelmahmoud as he discusses his new book Son of Elsewhere: A Memoir in Pieces (McClelland & Stewart). Featuring a reading and conversation. Hosted by Ify Chiwetelu. Co-presented by the Winnipeg International Writers Festival.

Registration is required to directly participate in the Zoom webinar. It will be simultaneously streamed on YouTube and available for viewing thereafter.

From one of the most beloved media personalities of his generation comes a one-of-a-kind reflection on Blackness, faith, language, pop culture, and the challenges and rewards of finding your way in the world.

In this extraordinary debut collection, the process of growing—of trying, failing, and trying again to fit in—is cast against the backdrop of the memory of life in a different time, and different place. Taken together, these essays explore how we pick and choose from our experience and environment to help us in the ongoing project of defining who we are. With the perfect balance of relatable humor and intellectual ferocity, Son of Elsewhere confronts what we know about ourselves, and most important, what we’re still learning.

Elamin Abdelmahmoud is a culture writer for BuzzFeed News and host of CBC’s pop culture show Pop Chat. He was a founding co-host of the CBC Politics podcast Party Lines, and he is a contributor to The National’s At Issue panel. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Globe and Mail, and others. When he gets a chance, he writes bad tweets.…

Morwenna Trevenen Hybrid Book Launch

Friday May 27 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join Morwenna Trevenen for the launch of Chasing Baby: An Infertility Adventure (Great Plains Publications) featuring a reading and conversation hosted by Sam Thompson.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

Grow up, get a job, find a partner, have a family, live the dream. This was always the plan…with some deviations along the way. Using sarcasm and vulnerability, Morwenna speaks about growing up, finding love, and then struggling when the rest of “the plan” isn’t meant to be. This is the raw and real story of one couple’s rollercoaster ride as they discover infertility, try various treatments, suffer an adoption reversal, and learn to make new plans and find the funny moments.

Morwenna Trevenen was born and raised in Winnipeg and, while she loves to travel, and has lived in other places, she is proud to make Winnipeg her home with her husband, son, and Charlie – the very best dog. She has always fancied herself an artist, living as an actor, musician, dancer, and now is thrilled to get to add “writer” to the list. She is a licensed REALTOR® and decorator in Manitoba, and gets her arts “fix” whenever she can. She can usually be found out for forest walks, at live shows, with her friends and family, and/or wherever there is cake or ice cream.

Host Sam Thompson is a Winnipeg journalist (Global News/680 CJOB) and host of the acclaimed Witchpolice Radio podcast, which has featured interviews with Manitoba musicians from all walks of life for the past nine years. He has also appeared on television, radio and podcasts in Manitoba and across Canada talking about independent music and arts.

Broken Circle: The Launch of a Commemorative Edition of Theodore Niizhotay Fontaine's Memoir

Tuesday May 31 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join the friends, family, and community of Theodore Niizhotay Fontaine to launch a new, commemorative edition of Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools (Heritage House Publishing). Co-presented by the Winnipeg International Writers Festival.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

In this ground-breaking memoir, first published in 2010, Fontaine chronicles his twelve years of incarceration in two residential schools and infuses his remembrances with insights gained through his long healing process. His heartbreaking honesty, hard-earned wisdom, and unflagging determination has served as a pathway for survivors of Indian Residential Schools to share their experiences and support their own healing journeys. 

This expanded, commemorative edition of Broken Circle pays tribute to the remarkable life and spirit of Theodore Niizhotay Fontaine. With a foreword by Andrew Woolford, professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Manitoba, an introduction by Charlene Diehl, director of the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, and dozens of photographs from Fontaine’s life, this important memoir will continue to serve as a powerful testament to survival, self-discovery, and reconciliation. 

Join Theodore’s beloved wife Morgan Fontaine, along with Andrew Woolford, Charlene Diehl, Rosa Walker, president and CEO of the Indigenous Leadership Development Institute, and Mitch Bourbonniere, MSW, MSM, MB, OM, CMHW (C/A) award-winning social worker, educator and community builder, to commemorate Theodore’s lifelong journey of reconciliation and honour his candour, courage, and compassion.

Amanda Gebhard, Sheelah McLean and Verna St. Denis virtual book launch

Tuesday May 31 2022 7:00 pm - Zoom + YouTube, Virtual

Join editors Amanda Gebhard, Sheelah McLean and Verna St. Denis and a panel of contributors for the virtual launch of White Benevolence: Racism and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions. The event will be moderated by Dr. Raven Sinclair.

Registration is required to directly participate in the Zoom webinar. It will be simultaneously streamed on YouTube and available for viewing thereafter.

When working with Indigenous people, the helping professions —education, social work, health care and justice — reinforce the colonial lie that Indigenous people need saving. In White Benevolence, leading anti-racism scholars reveal the ways in which white settlers working in these institutions shape, defend and uphold institutional racism, even while professing to support Indigenous people. In this uncompromising and essential collection, the authors argue that white settler social workers, educators, health-care practitioners and criminal justice workers have a responsibility to understand the colonial history of their professions and their complicity in ongoing violence, be it over-policing, school push-out, child apprehension or denial of health care. The answer isn’t cultural awareness training. What’s needed is radical anti-racism, solidarity and a relinquishing of the power of white supremacy.

Joe Mackintosh Hybrid Book Launch

Wednesday Jun 01 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join Joe Mackintosh for the Winnipeg launch of Briar Cottage: My Summers in a Town Called Gimli.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

Briar Cottage is a non-fiction account of the author’s experiences spending childhood summers at the cottage in Gimli between the years 1943 and 1958. He writes with humour and affection telling us why Gimli has always been a magical place especially in the section devoted to a walking tour of the town and the memories rekindled along the way. It’s a heartfelt and beautifully written memoir that brings a bygone era to life.

The book’s reading audience will be both permanent and summer residents of the town, friends of the author and all those who want to learn about the past in Gimli. This is Joe Mackintosh’s third book. His first, Andy DeJarlis: the Life and Music of an Old-Time Fiddler was published in 2010 and his second biography, Chris McCubbins: Running the Distance came to our store in 2013.

Joe and his wife Carole live just north of the town of Gimli on the shores of Lake Winnipeg.

Dora Dueck Hybrid Book Launch

Thursday Jun 02 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join author Dora Dueck, in conversation with Mary Ann Loewen, for the launch of Return Stroke: essays & memoir (CMU Press).

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

These personal essays lyrically engage with a wide range of ideas, from the ethical quandaries of biography to early experiences of reading to a child’s coming-out. The collection’s final section is a probing and moving memoir of the author’s time in Paraguay in the 1980s. Whether examining the limitations of remembering or telling beautifully of her late husband’s final days, Dora Dueck’s creative non-fiction seeks to do the very most that can be asked of any book: tell the truth, and tell it well.

Dora Dueck is the author of four books of fiction, All That Belongs (2019), What You Get At Home (2013), This Hidden Thing (2010), and Under the Still Standing Sun (1989). This Hidden Thing was Book of the Year at the Manitoba Book Awards, while What You Get at Home won the High Plains Award for short fiction. A lay historian and former editor, Dueck grew up in Alberta, resided later in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Paraguay, and has retired to British Columbia. She and her late husband Helmut have three children and ten grandchildren.

Mary Ann Loewen has edited two life writing anthologies: Sons and Mothers and Finding Father. She has taught Academic Writing at University of Winnipeg and Canadian Mennonite University. Three of the things she loves most things these days are words, time spent in the kitchen, and her grandkids.

Guy Gavriel Kay in conversation with Judith Pereira #IndieEventsWith

Thursday Jun 02 2022 7:00 pm - Online via Zoom, Virtual

Join international bestselling author Guy Gavriel Kay in conversation with Judith Pereira about his new novel All the Seas of the World as part of the Penguin Random House Canada #IndieEventsWith series hosted by independent bookstores across Canada.

Pre-order or purchase a copy of All the Seas of the World and register to secure your access to this exclusive event. For more information on this series, visit the #IndieEventsWith site.

7 PM CDT (MB) // 6 PM CT (SK).

On a dark night, along a lonely stretch of coast, a small merchant ship sends two people ashore: their purpose is assassination. They have been hired by two of the most dangerous men alive to alter the balance of power in the world. The consequences of that act will affect the destinies of empires as well as lives both great and small.

Guy Gavriel Kayis the international bestselling author of many novels and a book of poetry. He has been awarded the International Goliardos Prize for his work in literature of the fantastic and won the World Fantasy Award for Ysabel in 2008. In 2014, Kay was named to the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honor. 

Georgia Toews Hybrid Book Launch

Thursday Jun 09 2022 7:00 pm - Grant Park in the Atrium, Streaming on YouTube, Winnipeg

Join Georgia Toews for the Winnipeg launch of her debut novel Hey, Good Luck Out There (Doubleday Canada), hosted by Jen Zoratti.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream. The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

Vividly attuned to both the extraordinary and the mundane, Georgia Toews’ debut novel Hey, Good Luck Out There is a furious and hilarious journey through the relentless world of addiction and recovery as well as a striking portrait of a young woman in search of herself within the wreckage of her youth.

Georgia Toews has written for film and TV. Born and raised in Winnipeg, she now lives in Toronto.

Host Jen Zoratti is a Winnipeg Free Press columnist and the author of NEXT, a weekly newsletter looking toward a post-pandemic future. As a member of the Arts & Life department at the paper, Jen writes about how we live -- and the things that make life worth living. A fourth-generation Winnipegger, she lives in the city with her husband and dog.