Chantal Fiola the big winner at the 2016 MBAS

The Manitoba Book Awards took place on Saturday, April 30.

UMP was thrilled to receive eleven nominations in eight categories at the 2016 MBAs. On Saturday night, UMP books won in three categories.

For the second time in two years, UMP won the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher, this time for Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman. LATQ was edited and with an afterword by Keavy Martin and Julie Rak, with Norma Dunning, with cover design by Mike Carroll and interior design by Jess Koroscil.

“Part of the University of Manitoba Press’ First Voices, First Texts series, Freeman’s tale of growing up in the James Bay Inuit community and subsequent move to Ottawa to work as a translator is told in an inimitable voice with remarkable candour.” – judges Melanie Brannagan Frederiksen, Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson, and Dave Reynolds.

Chantal Fiola, the author of Rekindling the Sacred Fire, took home two awards, Beatrice Mosionier ‪‎Aboriginal‬ Writer of the Year Award and the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer.

Rekindling the Sacred Fire: Metis Ancestry and Anishinaabe Spirituality is a clear work of scholarship. It connects us and it resolves the mystification of colonialism that we labour under.” – Marilyn Dumont, Lee Maracle, and Garry Thomas Morse, judges, Beatrice Mosionier ‪‎Aboriginal‬ Writer of the Year Award.

“Chantal Fiola’s first published work, Rekindling the Sacred Fire: Metis Ancestry and Anishinaabe Spirituality, is a pathbreaking work of scholarship that delves into the sorely underexplored relationship between Metis identity and Indigenous spirituality. Both deeply personal and steeped in the experiences of others, this book deftly sidesteps academic obscurantism to emphasize the importance of dialogue and communal relations in defining a path to the sacred.” – Joanne Kelly, Marjorie Poor, and John Toews, judges, John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer.

Congratulations to all the other nominees and winners, writers and publishers!