WINNIPEG, MB – Three UWinnipeg faculty members and noted writers have been short-listed for The Manitoba Book Awards 2010. Debra Schnitzer (an unexpected break in the weather) and Margaret Sweatman (The Players) were short-listed for the McNally Book of the Year.
Royden Loewen’s Immigrants in Prairie Cities: Ethnic Diversity in Twentieth-Century Canada is short-listed for the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Awards for Non-Fiction. Royden co-wrote the book with Gerald Friesen.
Neil Besner Hosts Gala
The winners will be announced at the Manitoba Book Awards Gala, hosted by Neil Besner, UWinnipeg’s Vice-President (Students and International) and former Dean of Arts on Sunday, April 25, 2010, at the Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain, 340 boulevard Provencher. A pre-awards reception begins at 7:00 pm and the ceremony begins at 8:00 pm. Admission is free and the event is open to the public.
Debra Schnitzer
She completed her PhD at the University of Manitoba exploring inter-arts correspondences between visual and verbal systems of representation in Modernist visual art and narratives. She currently teaches English Literature at The University of Winnipeg and specializes in Modernist literature, most particularly in the writing of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein. She has developed courses in gay and lesbian literatures, Aboriginal literatures, peace and war making in literature, picture books for children as well as Practicum courses that explore literacy and culture, community-based learning and activism.
Margaret Sweatman
Sweatman was born in Winnipeg, and currently makes the city her home. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and History from The University of Winnipeg, studied Communication Arts at Concordia University, completed a Master of Arts degree at Simon Fraser University and has since done independent post-graduate studies. She teaches literature and creative writing and performs with the Broken Songs Band. She is a novelist and playwright who works with poetry, song and performance.
Royden Loewen
Loewen grew up on a farm in the Blumenort district, near Steinbach, Manitoba and is a descendant of the Low-German speaking Mennonites who arrived here from the Russian Empire in 1874. He is also a UWinnipeg graduate. Throughout the 1980s Royden farmed in the summer and worked on his MA and PhD degrees in history during the winter months. In 1990 he completed his PhD at The University of Manitoba. Loewen has been a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Chicago, a Research Fellow at the University of Victoria, a Sawatsky Visiting Scholar at Conrad Grebel College University.
