1 April 2005
Gaspereau Press Shortlisted
for Three Atlantic Book Awards

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) announced this week the finalists in the 2005 Atlantic Book Awards. Gaspereau Press titles have been shortlisted for three awards. David Helwig’s The Year One was shortlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Fellow nominees are Sue Goyette for Undone (Brick Books) and John Smith for Fireflies in the Magnolia Grove (Acorn Press). Jonathan Campbell’s Tarcadia was shortlisted for both the Dartmouth Book Award-Fiction and the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award. Fellow nominees for the first award are Sue Goyette for Undone (Brick Books) and Bruce Graham for Ivor Johnson’s Neighbours (Pottersfield). Fellow nominees for the second award are Leo Furey for The Long Run (Key Porter) and Genevieve Lehr for The Sorrowing House (Brick Books).

The winners of the nine Atlantic Book Awards will be announced in a ceremony to be held on 29 April 2005 at Alderney Landing Theatre in Dartmouth. The event will cap this year’s Atlantic Book Festival, to take place April 18–29. For more information about the awards, please visit www.writers.ns.ca

BACKGROUND
Gaspereau Press is a literary publisher and printer based in Kentville, Nova Scotia. The press is committed to literature and the book arts, incorporating a range of modern and antique forms of printing and binding to create books that are distinctive in manufacture and design. Its publications have won numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Evelyn Richardson Prize and the Alcuin Award for excellence in book design.

The Year One is David Helwig’s latest poetry collection. In twelve long poems, spanning January through December, he combines gradual changes of season with daily goings-on and memories. Helwig has arrived at an unusual form that fuses the detail and scope of short fiction with the musicality of lyric verse, showing a gift for characterizing time and place, fitting old memories into the present tense with ease.

Tarcadia is Jonathan Campbell’s first novel. It tells the story of the Chisholms, a rollicking, unpredictable family living in the north end of Sydney, Nova Scotia. At the start of the summer, fourteen-year-old Michael, his older brother Sid and two of their friends find a raft on the tar ponds. It seems the ideal start to the holidays, but over the course of the summer, Michael’s family gradually stops making sense. Tarcadia is a thrilling first novel, bristling with humorous encounters, witty family banter, camaraderie and a boy’s response to overwhelming uncertainty and loss.

For more information contact
Beth Crosby at Gaspereau Press
47 Church Avenue, Kentville, NS, B4N 2M7
902-678-6002, info@gaspereau.com