SPC English Professor Trevor Herriot Honoured with Awards

Regina, SK

"This year's winners represent not only excellence, but perseverance for the time and effort they put towards their endeavours as most do so with very little financial gain. In my eyes they truly are ‘Stars in Their Own Write'," said Jackie Lay, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Book Awards.

Fourteen awards were presented, with the big winner of the evening being Dancing in my Bones written by Wilfred Burton and Anne Patton, published by the Gabriel Dumont Institute, which captured the Award for Publishing, the First Peoples' Publishing Award, and, new this year, the First Peoples' Writing Award. Both the Non‐Fiction and the Regina Book Award went to Trevor Herriot for Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds, while Legacy of Stone: Saskatchewan's Stone Buildings written by Margaret Hryniuk and Frank Korvemaker published by Coteau Books captured the coveted Book of the Year Award.

Other winners were: Fiction Award ‐ Connie Gault, Euphoria: A Novel (Coteau Books); Children's Literature Award ‐ Karen Edwards, One Cold Armpit (Art Department Saskatoon); First Book Award ‐ George Epp, Off Road (Xlibris Corporation); Award for Poetry ‐ Gerald Hill, 14 Tractors (NeWest Press); Saskatoon Book Award ‐ David Carpenter, Niceman Cometh (Porcupine's Quill); Scholarly Writing Award ‐ Joanne Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy, and Healing (University of Manitoba Press); Readers' Choice Award ‐ Marlene Millar, Dené Honϋ‐ Stories from the People (Birch Narrows Dené Nation); Publishing in Education Award ‐ Purich Publishing, Negotiating the Numbered Treaties: An Intellectual and Political Biography of Alexander Morris by Robert J. Talbot.

Before the awards, Rudy Wiebe, multiple‐award‐winning author delighted the crowd speaking about his connection to the Saskatchewan writing community and Poet Laureate Robert Currie spoke on the importance of writers and poets.