WINNIPEG – Turnstone Press is bristling with pride in the wake of the Manitoba Book Awards shortlist announcement. Five of the independent literary publisher’s eight titles from 2009 were chosen as finalists for eight awards to be given out at the Province’s literary version of the Oscars. This is the most number of titles from the same publisher to make the shortlist this year. The winners will be announced at a gala ceremony on Sunday, April 25, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. at the Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain, 340 Provencher.

Winnipeg poet, John Toone, was nominated for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer, after the publication of his first full poetry collection, From Out of Nowhere (Turnstone). The collection itself was nominated for the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, and the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/ Prix Lansdowne de poésie.

Other shortlisted Turnstone titles include:

An Unexpected Break in the Weather by Deborah Schnitzer – McNally Robinson Book of the Year, The Margaret Lawrence Award for Fiction

Pale Blue Hope: Death and Life in Asian Peacekeeping by Ronald Poulton – Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher

Mama Dada: Songs of the Baroness’s Dog by Jan Horner – McNally Robinson Book of the Year, Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry

Meteor Storm by Wayne Tefs – Margaret Lawrence Award for Fiction

Turnstone Press is one of Manitoba’s most decorated literary publishers. Over its 30+years history Turnstone has won, been shortlisted and nominated for numerous regional and national awards including the Governor General’s Award, The Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize, The Commonwealth Writers Prize and of course the Manitoba Book Awards. With a mandate to publish Canadian and Manitoban authors, Turnstone Press continues to produce quality literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.