Two Saskatchewan Book Award nominees!

The Saskatchewan Book Award nominees were announced on March 6, and I’m pleased to say that two Shadowpaw Press titles made the shortlists!

Founded in 1993, the Saskatchewan Book Awards is the only provincially focused book awards program in Saskatchewan. According to its website, “It serves as an ambassador for the province’s vibrant literary community and has earned national recognition for celebrating excellence in writing. The thirteen award categories offered this year are diverse, reflective of Saskatchewan’s literary output, and responsive to emerging areas of interest. Award winners are selected through a rigorous adjudication process involving thirty-nine jurors from across Canada.”

This year, forty‑five books were shortlisted from eighty-eight books entered across thirteen award categories. Each award carries a $2,000 prize, except for Book of the Year, which offers a $3,000 prize. All awards will be presented by their respective sponsors at the annual awards ceremony on Friday, May 1, in Regina.

The two Shadowpaw Press titles shortlisted were First Light, Last Light by Glen Sorestad (for the Poetry Book Award, sponsored by SK Arts), and Theories of Everything by Dwayne Brenna (for the Fiction Award, sponsored by Worby Worth Management).

More about these titles below!

ISBN: ‎ 978-1998273461, 150 pp.

Indigo | Amazon.ca | Shadowpaw Press

First Light, Last Light is the first book in six years by Sorestad, who was Saskatchewan’s first poet laureate, serving two terms. As might be expected from a poet now in his 80s, the work in this volume is a mix of reflections on family, memories of youth and friends, and the not-always-pleasant aging process, all viewed with compassion, wisdom and, often, humour.

Sorestad is also a keen observer of the wildlife around him, from the birds who come to the feeder outside his window – damn those bully crows! – to the foxes and other wildlife he and his wife sometimes encounter on their morning walks.

The other books shortlisted for the Poetry Book Award are:

• How I Bend Into More (Palimpsest Press) by Tea Gerbeza

• Green (Radiant Press) by Zachari Logan

• Walking Upstream (Thistledown Press) by Lloyd Ratzlaff

ISBN: ‎ 978-1998273294, 196 pp.

Indigo | Amazon.ca | Shadowpaw Press

In this finely honed collection of short fiction, Dwayne Brenna creates a series of unforgettable characters, from academics and street people to musicians, movie stars, videogame players and their mothers, cooks, actors, boxers, and even a parrot, and, with compassion and affection (and sometimes laugh-out-loud humour) tests their mettle in a variety of fascinating locations, from Saskatoon to Victoria to Libya to Los Angeles to London to Hawaii and beyond, with familiar and homey details and a fidelity to mood and atmosphere.

Along the way, Brenna tackles a wide selection of conflicts and social ills—good versus evil, scruples and the lack of them, doing or not doing the “right thing,” yielding or not yielding to temptations, and the many other struggles of the human heart—all without being didactic or preachy, but simply by addressing the very human circumstances his characters find themselves in, and how they manage to escape, or not escape, the predicaments arising because of who they are, who they’ve been, and who they could be.

The other books shortlisted for the Fiction Award are:

• She’s A Lamb: A Novel! (ECW Press) by Meredith Hambrock

• The Paper Birds (HarperCollins Press Ltd.) by Jeanette Lynes

• The Chorus Beneath Our Feet (Radiant Press) by Melanie Schnell

• Everything is Fine Here (House of Anansi Press) by Iryn Tushabe

Congratulations to Glen and Dwayne and all of the other nominees!

The Kickstarter campaign for On Spec 2026: New Canadian Literature of the Fantastic went live Tuesday at 12 noon EDT, and as of this afternoon (March 21), it’s already more than two-thirds funded, standing at $6,826 of a goal of $10,000.

The easiest way to find it is with the link https://tinyurl.com/onspec2026, which is also a great link to use when you are emailing everyone you know and urging them to kick in (just a suggestion, no pressure). We’re entering the well-known mid-campaign doldrums, when the initial rush slows way down, so this is a great time to back and promote it.

Here’s the cover, which features “The Sentinels” by Calgary artist James Beveridge. You’ll see who all the great anchor authors are there. There are lots of terrific backers’ rewards still available, from print books to ebooks to artwork to author chats to short-story critiques. Something for everyone. Many of the rewards are also available as add-ons, so you can pick the backers’ level you like, and then add, say, some ebooks from another level or extra copies of the print book. It’s a bit of “design your own reward.”

Anyway, hope you’ll check it out and kick in if you haven’t!