Manitoba Book Awards - Pleasant Surprises!

Last night my wife and I attended the 23rd Manitoba Book Awards where I got to hobnob and rub elbows with many wonderful Manitoba writers and publishers, enjoy some wine, and eat some nibblies, and of course take in the awards.

It was again held at the CCFM (the Franco-manitoban cultural centre) which is nice but a little squishy. Catherine Hunter was an excellent MC for the evening, and Kelly Hughes was co-MC. Oh wait...he wasn't? Well...he sure talked a lot! ;)
Mr Hughes presented three awards and made some jokes, most of which were funny, again reminding me of Classic Kelly, before the bitterness of crushing his enemies hardened his soul.

One of the awards he awarded was to my friend Ariel Gordon, for the Aqua Books Landsdown Prize for Poetry (yay Ariel!).

One of the nice surprises was seeing Maureen Fergus take home the McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award: Older Category for her book Ortega. I will definitely have to check out that book now!

Other highlights of the evening: Goofing around with Daria Salamon and Ariel, a great conversation with Tory McNally, chatting with many authors (like Maureen, my boss Charlene Diehl, David Bergen, Chandra Mayor, and this is the name dropping portion of our program if you hadn't guessed yet), and talking with Paul McNally about building a fence.

For full details on all the awards, check out the Manitoba Writers' Guild website, or the new CBC Manitoba Scene website.