Crabapple collective members Elaine Morin and Lou Morin attended Alberta’s annual book publishing awards event, held this year in Calgary on September 16. We ate, drank and breathed book talk, and were reminded of the communal labour of love that’s involved in publishing.
We were thrilled to see CMC book designer Natalie Olsen sweep the Book Design award category. With three nominations, she took away the award for A Revision of Forward.
Keynote speaker Will Ferguson spun tall tales and described his path to getting published for the first time, divulging tips that tended to the unorthodox but were nonetheless effective. See where it got him.
The evening culminated with the announcement of the winning Alberta Reader’s Choice award title. In a David & Goliath move, self-published indie author Laurel Deedrick-Mayne accepted a giant-sized $10,000 cheque for A Wake for the Dreamland. She spoke to the importance of hybrid publishing channels in today’s book world, and brought home to us as Crabapple members what’s possible on this publishing path.
Calgary’s sparkling Freehand Press won the Publisher of the Year for among other things its commitment to producing high-caliber, ‘quirky’ literature.
All of this reinforces the great work being done by Alberta’s book publishing community. Read Alberta Books!