The shortlist for the Saskatchewan Book Awards includes two books written by authors who live in the La Ronge region.
Firewater author Harold Johnson made the cut for the University of Saskatchewan Non-Fiction Award shortlist, and Yellow Dog author Miriam Korner is nominated for the Young Adult Literature Award.
Johnson’s book takes a blunt approach to the issue of alcohol and Indigenous people, while Korner’s book is about dog sledding.
There are many other Indigenous-focused books on the book awards shortlist, including Wilfred Burton’s children’s book Road Allowance Kitten, 100 Days of Cree by Neal McLeod, and The Red Files by Lisa Bird-Wilson. The full list can be accessed here.
Korner is an avid dog-sledder who is originally from Germany.
Yellow Dog was inspired by conversations she’s had while out on the trail. She said she was often stopped by northerners who reminisced about “what life was like on the trapline when they grew up with dogs.” Korner spent a long time collecting those stories and piecing together the history of the region before she started writing.
Korner said the La Ronge region is creatively inspiring.
“There’s so much beauty in there, and there’s so many people that care about their community and I think it’s good that the media maybe also gets a different look on who we are and what we do. And of course Harold Johnson’s book and my book are very different, but I think both show that we care about the place where we are and we are trying to make positive changes,” she said.
Her book was published in October, and even before that she was nominated for a national honour. Overall, Korner said the local feedback has been positive.
“The high schools have picked it up and are doing a novel study on it right now, so that’s really rewarding, but I wasn’t too sure how people in the south would respond to that, because originally I wrote it for the kids up here in the north so that they have a story they can identify with,” she said.
Award winners will be announced at a ceremony in Regina on April 29.