A Quick Look Back at 2017!
Happy New Year, everyone! We at U of R Press wish all of you a happy and prosperous 2018.
Before we get into the swing of the year, let’s take a look at some of the Press’s 2017 highlights!
January
Speaking in Cod Tongues: A Canadian Culinary Journey burst onto the scene last year with blanket media coverage from coast to coast to coast! Read the Globe and Mail piece on climate change and Canadian food, or check out a few of Lenore Newman’s many interviews, including this documentary from CBC’s The Current!
February
Trevor Herriot, author of Towards a Prairie Atonement, advocates for Canada’s grasslands—our most endangered and least protected ecosystem—on The Current. Harold Johnson, author of Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing My People (and Yours) appears on The Next Chapter--an interview which Shelagh Rogers will later call one of her Top 10 Favourites of 2017!
March
Author Joseph Auguste Merasty passes away at age 87, just before the release of the updated edition of his unforgettable story The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir. A province-wide library book club event (One Book, One Province Saskatchewan) becomes an impromptu memorial for Augie, and the National Post, CTV, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, and the Leader Post all pay tribute to the man and his work.
To cap off the month, U of R Press is profiled in Publishers Weekly! Dontcha know.. we are “more than the little publisher on the prairie”!
April
Memoirs of a Muhindi: Fleeing East Africa for the West is reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press (and will later be profiled on CBC Books). CBC releases a reading list of books on reconciliation, treaties, and Indigenous history, with Children of the Broken Treaty: Canada's Lost Promise and One Girl's Dream, #IdleNoMore and the Remaking of Canada, Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life, and The Education of Augie Merasty included.
May
Whitney French, editor of our forthcoming collection Black Writing Matters, pens a timely piece in Quill & Quire on cultural appropriation. Other U of R Press titles continue to hit Indigenous books lists!
Summer
Mary Soderstrom, author of Road Through Time: The Story of Humanity on the Move, is interviewed on CTV Montreal. The Montreal Review of Books writes a piece with an opening line that every author wants to hear!
Firewater makes CBC’s Canada 150 list. Mudeater: An American Buffalo Hunter and the Surrender of Louis Riel—the story of the man who brought Louis Riel into custody--is featured in the Globe.
September
Just before the Kurdish independence referendum in Iraq, which influences the fates of millions in the region, Being Kurdish in a Hostile World is published. Its author Ayub Nuri is covered on Public Radio International, TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin, the Globe and Mail, and more. The Globe profiles Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead with an article on immigration and Canada’s Syrian food experience.
October
Not to be outdone, our other food gem of 2017—Speaking in Cod Tongues—pops up on CBC’s Unreserved. Mapmaker: Philip Turnor in Rupert’s Land in the Age of Enlightenment sells out its inaugural launch in Winnipeg and is also reviewed in the Globe.
November
Lynn Gehl, author of Claiming Anishinaabe: Decolonizing the Human Spirit gives a moving interview to Anna Maria Tremonti on The Current. A Hero for the Americas: The Story of Gonzalo Guerrero is published to praise in Foreword Reviews. Serge Cipko, author of Starving Ukraine: The Holodomor and Canada’s Response, makes sure the world doesn’t forget this atrocity by appearing in the pages of the Edmonton Journal and Regina’s Leader Post.
December
It’s the month of lists and roundups, with Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead and Claiming Anishinaabe given nods on Eat North and The Hill Times!
Clearing the Plains, The Education of Augie Merasty, and Firewater land back on McNally Robinson’s bestseller list!
Just in time for Christmas, Ramin Jahanbegloo, author of On Forgiveness and Revenge: Lessons from an Iranian Prison, appears in the Globe’s new section, “Discuss,” with a conversation with author Carys Cragg on the nature of forgiveness. “Maybe we change the despair of the past into a hope for the future,” writes Ramin. Now that’s a thought to carry with us into 2018!
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