A few posts back, I mentioned that my book (This Hidden Thing) had been nominated for a couple of this year’s Manitoba Book Awards, and even more recently suggested that very soon, when the excitement of the shortlists and gala was over, we’d all be able to slip back to our quiet desks or reading chairs. Well, let me conclude this matter, since I brought it up, by saying I’m almost there, almost solid again after the emotional pudding I turned into for a couple of days, but still very happy and more grateful (in so many directions) than I can possibly express. Of the categories I was nominated in, David Bergen won the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and I took home the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award. If you’re interested in news of the event, photos, or the jurors’ comments on the book, all of it is at the THT page or Events. Off to my cozy corner now, where I’m reading last year’s Pulitzer winner, Tinkers, by Paul Harding, a slow and evocative book about an old man returning to his childhood, via memory, in the days before he dies.
Borrowing Bones
The occasional weblog of writer Dora Dueck
Borrowing Bones 
Congratulations, Dora!
Wonderful news! Congratulations, Dora! I really like the expression, “emotional pudding” … I can actually feel it.
Congratulations again, Dora, on winning the McNally Book of the Year Award! It is a wonderful affirmation of what I (and many others!) knew right away was a very finely written book with a “living character,” Maria, who remains with us long after first reading. My only regret is that I wasn’t able to be there when you received the award as I intended. It would have been lovely to see the amazed & astonished joy on your face as your name was announced and you became an “emotional pudding!” What a great way to enter the Easter season when tears of joy over glorious surprises in a garden brimming with new life & vision, were experienced by another “Maria” whose story also continues to inspire us. So enjoy & be glad! Leona
Thanks Mary Anne, Tracey, Leona. @ Leona, it’s kind of funny but I find myself so happy that people are hearing Maria’s story, that she is becoming un-hidden. As if she was a real person or something! 🙂
I, too, love the “emotional pudding” description.