Copyright 2000 by Edward Willett

Each year, the best books published in Saskatchewan are honored at the Saskatchewan Book Awards.

This year's celebration will be (or was, depending on when you read this) held at the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts on Friday, November 24. That's a change in venue--until now the awards ceremony has been held at the Hotel Saskatchewan Radisson Plaza--and proof of just how popular the Book Awards have become.

The complete shortlist is available online here, so I won't bother repeating it. Suffice it to say that there is a vast and varied collection of books vying for honors in 12 categories.

Of course, the Saskatchewan Book Awards aren't the only awards that have been in the news recently. First the Giller Prize was announced, then the Booker Prize, and just recently, the Governor General's Awards.

This plethora of publishing prizes (never avoid alliteration, I always aver) has also prompted a number of commentators to wonder if, perhaps, there are too many prizes, and if too many of the same people win them all the time. After all, sure, Margaret Atwood is a wonderful novelist (although not everyone thinks as highly of The Blind Assassin as the Booker Prize judges did), but how many prizes does she really need?

Some of those commenting on book prizes have mentioned regional awards such as the Saskatchewan Book Awards in somewhat disparaging terms, as both insignificant and uneccessary.

Well, I can't speak as a Saskatchewan Book Award winner, but I have been shortlisted twice, once for First Book, in 1997, for my young adult fantasy novel Soulworm, and again last year for Children's Literature for my young adult fantasy novel The Dark Unicorn. My most recent novel, the YA science fiction story Andy Nebula: Interstellar Rock Star, has been shortlisted for the Manitoba Young Readers Choice Award --another regional award. So, speaking for myself and other writers nominated for regional awards, I say they're great--and, if anything, more necessary to the health of the writing community in Canada than the big national awards.

Very few writers achieve the kind of national recognition that even gets them nominated for a major award. Most of those that do are published by one of the major publishing houses, which have the money and clout to promote the books anyway. Meanwhile, those of us published by smaller houses scramble for every scrap of publicity we can get.

A regional award won't make a writer rich, though it may help keep the wolves from the door a few weeks longer. What's more important is that it gets the book more readers--and much as some authors talk about "writing only for themselves," writing is a form of communication, and it's not complete until it is read. Book awards help books find readers. That makes them of benefit not only to the writer, but also to the reader.

As well, many regional book awards honor books that are closely tied to that particular region. Readers love to find books that are about themselves, their friends and their community. Regional book awards point them to those books.

There's another way in which regional book awards are valuable to writers, though--a more personal way.

Writing is a lonely business. As I'm writing this column, I'm sitting alone in my office, the same office in which I sit alone for several hours every day. I'm typing words into a computer with no real sense of who may eventually read them--and no certainty that anyone will read them at all.

Writing a book takes many days of such lonely work. Finally, if you're lucky, the book is published...and then it seems to drop off the face of the Earth. Is anyone reading it? Is anyone enjoying it? Does anyone care?

Being shortlisted for a Saskatchewan Book Award lets you know that at least the judges have read your book--and have found value in it. Going to the Saskatchewan Book Awards ceremony is a wonderful opportunity to talk to writers, publishers--and readers. Signing copies of your books afterwards is a great spirit-lifter. And actually winning an award--

Well, I don't know what that feels like--not yet. But as of Friday night, 12 other Saskatchewan writers will--and 12 more books will find more of the readers they so richly deserve.

Posted September 22, 2004