2 May 2005
Gaspereau Press Authors Win
Three Atlantic Book Awards

Gaspereau Press congratulates Jonathan Campbell and David Helwig, both winners in the 2005 Atlantic Book Awards. Jonathan Campbell has won the Dartmouth Book Award and the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award for his novel, Tarcadia. David Helwig has won the Atlantic Poetry Prize for his poetry collection, The Year One. Both books were published in 2004 by Gaspereau Press. The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia presented the awards in a ceremony on Friday, 29 April 2005 at Alderney Landing Theatre in Dartmouth. The event capped this year’s Atlantic Book Festival. 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