Gaspereau Press books up for two awards

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

welliott@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

Gaspereau Press in Kentville has books nominated for two awards this spring.

Tim Bowling’s recent novel The Bone Sharps has been shortlisted for the City of Edmonton Book Prize, one of nine arts awards presented by the city.

The City of Edmonton Book Prize was established by Edmonton City Council in 1995 and is awarded to titles addressing some aspect of the city or written by an Edmonton author. The prize is co-sponsored by Audrey’s Books. The winners will be announced at the Mayor’s Evening for the Arts to be held April 7.

The Bone Sharps is a fictionalized account of the life and work of Charles Sternberg (1850–1943), who was a student of the renowned American proto-paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope.

Contrasting the astonishing discoveries made in the bone fields of the Alberta badlands and the American plains with the chaos and destruction of the First World War, The Bone Sharps evokes the pivotal transition from the 19th-century world of order and faith to the uncertainties of the modern era.

With sun-drenched flats, violent skirmishes and the lantern light of tents, Bowling brings readers into the realm of early paleontology through the life of one of its most prolific forerunners.

Robert Bringhurst’s Everywhere Being is Dancing has been shortlisted for the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize, one of seven BC Book Prizes award annually. The BC Book Prizes, administered by the West Coast Book Prize Society, have celebrated the achievements of British Columbian writers and publishers since 1985. The winners of the 2008 awards will be announced at the Lieutenant Governor’s BC Book Prize Gala to be held April 26 in Vancouver.

In Everywhere Being is Dancing, the companion volume to The Tree of Meaning, Bringhurst collects 20 pieces of thinking under the subversive principle that "everything is related to everything else." His studies build upon this sense of basic connection, involving the work of varied poets, musicians, artists and philosophers.

Gaspereau Press has captured numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Evelyn Richardson Prize, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Alberta Book Award for short fiction, and numerous Alcuin Awards for excellence in book design.

In addition, Gaspereau Press has two new books of poetry that are hot off the press. The first is Late Nights With Wild Cowboys by Johanna Skibsrud. Originally from Scotsburn, N.S., Skibsrud currently lives in Toronto, where she works for the Canadian Scholars' Press.

The second is called During by Karen Houle. She’s an associate professor in philosophy at the University of Guelph. Houle’s first collection of poetry, Ballast, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award in 2001. Her essay ‘Double Arc’ was published in Dropped Threads 2.