Lisa Pasold, author of the recent Enfield & Wizenty title Rats of Las Vegas, is one of the eight panelists on the National Post’s Canada Also Reads book competition. The event was created as a counterpoint to CBC’s Canada Reads and focuses on lesser-known but deserving titles. Pasold will be defending Jocelyne Allen’s You and the Pirates.

After only a few months in print, Richard Van Camp’s The Moon of Letting Go is now available in paperback! Not only is this the first Enfield & Wizenty title to make the transition from hardcover to softcover, but it among the few Canadian short story collections to do so.

Richard’s book has won some well-deserved praise from reviewers across the country. Read all about it here.

Acclaimed Peterborough author Michelle Berry is the winner of Enfield & Wizenty’s inaugural $5,000 fiction prize for her novel This Book Will Not Save Your Life. The $5,000 advance will lead to a fall 2010 publication and was awarded after the company’s editors reviewed dozens of manuscripts from around the country. Michelle Berry describes her novel as being about “morbid obesity, arson, attempted murder, magicians and Dr. Benjamin Spock.” Berry is represented by Hilary McMahon of Westwood Creative Artists.

Two other finalists for the Enfield & Wizenty contest will be published in 2010. These finalists are: Jeff Bursey’s debut, Verbatim: A Novel, and veteran short story writer Richard Cumyn’s The Young in Their Country.

Jeff Bursey, who is from St. John’s, Newfoundland, has written a political satire that uses the double-column Hansard format to depict the rollicking politics and bureaucratic in-fighting in a fictional province. Bursey now lives in Charlottetown where he is a Hansard editor for the provincial legislature.

In his first book in eight years, Richard Cumyn takes us deep into the lives of his characters, from the fringe of the tar sands to the rarefied world of drag burlesque. Cumyn lives in Kingston, Ontario. His previous books include the collections Viking Brides and The Obstacle Course, which were shortlisted for the ReLit Award for Short Fiction in consecutive years.

Maurice Mierau, editor of the fledgling imprint of Great Plains Publications, was overwhelmed by the number of high quality submissions for E & W’s 2010 list. “More work came in from professionals than ever before,” Mierau says. “It was very tough for us to decide on the final list.”

Enfield & Wizenty remains committed to producing beautifully designed, collectible hardcover books. “Readers buy these kinds of books both for the quality of the fiction and because they want to own the physical object, something you can’t get in an e-book,” says publisher Gregg Shilliday. “We are proud to present these fine authors in a form that matches their talent.”

As part of the celebration of Canada’s centenary of flight, Great Plains is donating 25% of the list price of Jim Shilliday’s A Memory of Sky, purchased through our website, to the Canadian Air Cadet programme. Jim’s book is available through our website and at bookstores across the country.

Congratulations to Gail Sidonie Sobat, whose book Gravity Journal has won a gold medal at the 2009 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards in the US. Gravity Journal beat out books submitted from around North America in the mature category. It is also a 2009 Ontario Library Association White Pine Award Honour Book, and a Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Best Book for Teens selection.

Two of our titles now have book trailers. Check them out!

VIEW THE RATS OF LAS VEGAS TRAILER HERE

VIEW THE GRAVITY JOURNAL TRAILER HERE

In a major new acquisition, the People’s Literature Publishing House in Beijing has purchased the Chinese rights to all three of Rae Bridgman’s juvenile MiddleGate books: The Serpent’s Spell, Amber Ambrosia, and Fish & Sphinx. The deal was arranged through Creative Work Ltd. The books will be translated and published for the Chinese market in 2011.

This year Enfield & Wizenty launches a fiction contest to celebrate our own survival, as we go into our third season as a national fiction imprint of Great Plains Publications. For this champagne-soaked third year, Enfield & Wizenty is offering a $5,000 advance for the most outstanding submission of literary fiction that we receive. We will be reading fiction submissions (novels and collections of short stories) from now until December 2009. Short story collections should have appeared extensively in Canadian literary magazines.

For information on our first two seasons click on the Enfield & Wizenty tab above; please note that we’re not interested in genre novels–crime, science fiction, romance etc. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but do let us know.

DEADLINE: Dec. 18, 2009.

Please submit sample and query letter to:
Enfield & Wizenty
Maurice Mierau, Associate Editor
345-955 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, MB R3G 0P9
OR by email to info@greatplains.mb.ca

Congratulations to Nicole Luiken whose young adult novel Frost has been shortlisted for the 2009/2010 British Columbia Young Readers’ Choice Award (Stellar category). Frost is already a 2008 Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Best Book selection, a winner of the Golden Eagle Award, and a 2009 OLA Forest of Reading Red Maple Honour Book.

Susan Riley, author of We Watch The Waves, was one of the presenters at the recent Carol Shields Symposium on Women’s Writing at the University of Winnipeg. Susan participated in several panel discussions, answered questions about her well-received family memoir and talked about the affirming quality of contributing to the bestselling Dropped Threads 3 anthology.

Enfield & Wizenty is pleased to announce the signing of two fiction titles for fall 2009: Vancouver writer Richard Van Camp’s The Moon of Letting Go is a collection of stories about Aboriginal Canadians in the north and the big city, and Toronto writer Lisa Pasold’s debut novel is Rats of Las Vegas, an affecting story of a tomboy poker prodigy in the pre-war years.

After seven years in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, we’ve moved to bigger digs in the funky Wolseley area. Our new mailing address is 345-955 Portage Avenue but our phone number and email remain the same.

Congratulations to Duff Roblin, author of Speaking for Myself: Politics and Other Pursuits, who was selected as the Greatest Manitoban by readers of the Winnipeg Free Press. Read all about it here.

It was a full house for the launch of Enfield & Wizenty and our first titles; Widows of Hamilton House by Christina Penner, 10 Things to Ask Yourself in Warsaw, by Barbara Romanik, and The Tristan Chord, by Bettina von Kampen on September 18th at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg. All three authors were in fine form and E & W editor Maurice Mierau was an able host. For those of you who missed the event, we will soon be posting video highlights.

Great Plains welcomes back Anita Daher. Anita, who was the Marketing Director in 2005 and 2006, joins us as Associate Editor Teen Fiction. She has worked in the book publishing industry for more than a decade, reviewing books, leading workshops, and writing young adult novels. Her fifth book, Two Foot Punch, was released in October. 

People are talking about Enfield & Wizenty! The imprint was featured in both the Quill & Quire and in the Winnipeg Free Press this month. You can read all about it here.

WINNIPEG- Congratulations to Great Plains author Alfred Silver, who was honoured with the Manitoba Historical Society’s Margaret McWilliams Award for Local History on Sunday! The Margaret McWilliams Award, one of Canada’s oldest literary prizes, was instituted in 1955 as a memorial to Margaret S. McWilliams by her husband, former Lieutenant Governor Roland F. McWilliams. The purpose of the award is to encourage the study and interpretation of the history of Manitoba.

Silver’s A Place Out of Time is a gripping historical fiction set in the last days of the Red River Settlement. Told from the point of view of ordinary citizens, the story also brings to life key historical figures such as Louis Riel, Dr. John Christian Schultz, and Joseph Howe.

WINNIPEG — On November 5, 2007, Great Plains Publications unveiled the largest and most detailed book project ever undertaken in this province. More than three years in the making, and with a quarter-million dollar budget, the Encyclopedia of Manitoba is an 814-page information extravaganza.

All aspects of the province’s history, arts, politics, geography, business, nature and sports are explored in 2,000 entries and essays, each written by an expert Manitoban. From Cindy Klassen to K-Tel, Lord Selkirk to Louis Riel, Bothwell Cheese to Chip & Pepper…anything & everything of importance to Manitobans is celebrated within the Encyclopedia’s pages.

“What a great idea, an encyclopedia on just Manitoba,” says Corey Koskie, major league ballplayer and pride of Anola, Manitoba. “This will be a terrific resource for kids to learn about our province and for people who proudly call themselves Manitobans.”

Publisher Gregg Shilliday says there is still room for big reference books in this era of on-line resources. “Unlike Wikipedia, our articles are written by experts and signed by them. Our editors went through a difficult process deciding what makes it into the book and our writers were proud to sign their names to the pieces.”

The Encyclopedia of Manitoba is full-colour, hardcover, 814 pages and features more than a thousand photographs, paintings and maps.