MAY 15, 2023
Turnstone Press is delighted to congratulate Di Brandt and Sarah Ens for their nominations at this year's Manitoba Book Awards.
Di Brandt's new and selected poetry collection, The Sweetest Dance on Earth is nominated for a Carol Shields City of Winnipeg Book Prize and Sarah Ens's Flyway is nominated for a McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award.
The winners of the Manitoba Book awards will be announced later in June 2023. The full list for nominees for this year's awards can be found here.
More about The Sweetest Dance and Flyway:
Since her internationally renowned debut collection questions i asked my mother, Di Brandt has remained curious, asking questions and pushing poetic bounds. Now for the first time, the diverse poetics of this celebrated prairie writer are showcased in one volume. From trailblazing intercultural and intergenerational engagements to revisionary explorations of gender, place and environmental consciousness, readers will get a chance to experience the breathtaking work of one of Canada’s most influential poets.
Di Brandt has published more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, creative essays and literary criticism, and has received numerous prestigious awards in several genres. She has held prestigious appointments at several Canadian universities, and has given literary readings and lectures at festivals, conferences and other venues around the world. She was honoured to serve as Winnipeg’s inaugural poet laureate for 2018-2019. In May 2023, Di Brandt was awarded the Manitoba Arts Council Award of Distinction.
This Meditation on the impact of human and ecological trauma explores the cost of survival for three generations of women living between empires. Writing from within the disappearing tallgrass prairie, Sarah Ens follows connections between the Russian Mennonite diaspora and the disrupted migratory patterns of grassland birds. Drawing on family history, eco-poetics, and the rich tradition of the Canadian long poem, Flyway migrates along pathways of geography and the heart to grapple with complexities of home.
Sarah Ens is a writer and editor based in Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg, MB). Her poetry has appeared in Prairie Fire, Arc Poetry Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Poetry Is Dead, Room Magazine, and SAD Mag. Her debut collection of poetry, The World Is Mostly Sky was shortlisted for the 2021 McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and the 2022 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. Flyway is her second book of poetry.
Turnstone Press Ltd.
