23 October 2007
Sean Johnston Shortlisted for Saskatchewan Book Award

Gaspereau Press is pleased to announce that Sean Johnston’s novel All This Town Remembers (2006) has been shortlisted for the 2007 Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction. The award is one of thirteen Saskatchewan Book Awards given annually. This year’s jurors selected 70 finalists from 210 submissions representing work by Saskatchewan authors and publishers in 2006. Fellow nominees for the fiction award are Bernice Friesen for The Book of Beasts (Coteau Books), Dave Margoshes for Bix’s Trumpet and other stories (NeWest Press), R.P. MacIntyre for Feeding at Nine (Thistledown Press) and Seán Virgo for Begging Questions (Exile Editions). The winners will be announced at the 15th annual awards gala to be held on November 24 at Regina’s Conexus Arts Centre. For more information about the awards, and for tickets to the gala, please visit www.bookawards.sk.ca

BACKGROUND
All This Town Remembers tells the story of a small town in Saskatchewan that suffers a tragedy when Joey Fallow, star of the high school’s hockey team, is killed in a bus crash. Twenty years later, when the CBC comes to town to make a movie about the event, it becomes clear that many residents haven’t moved on and that many don’t want to. Mired in the past, and at the same time acutely frustrated by the stagnancy he sees around him, is Adam, Joey’s best friend. Johnston’s debut novel gives distinction to the unassuming – the everyday dialogue of married life, the muffled hum of local goings-on and the quiet frustrations of winter. With sharp observations about small-town insecurities, condescension, authenticity and the subtleties of social interactions, All This Town Remembers is an understated, startlingly resonant portrait of a man and a town.

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, the Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Alberta Book Award, and numerous Alcuin Awards for excellence in book design.

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