Awards

Our authors are winners! We are pleased to announce that our book, Twin Cities Picture Show: A Century of Moviegoing by Dave Kenney and the Minnesota History magazine article, “Constructing Suburbia: Richfield in the Postwar Era” by Lisa Plank and Thomas Saylor are winners of the 2010 David Gebhard Award from the Minnesota Chapter of the Society for Architectural Historians.

In addition to being a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award, N. M. Kelby’s A Travel Guide for Restless Hearts won the Florida Book Award  Gold Medal for best general fiction.

And finally, today you can vote for your favorite book nominated for a Minnesota Book Award in the Reader’s Choice category. Click on the link and vote!

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Well, they may not be the Grammy Awards, but the announcement this past weekend of the finalists for the Minnesota Book Awards  is cause for celebration for Borealis Books and Minnesota Historical Society Press and our authors! Five of our titles made the finalist list:

General Nonfiction:
I Go to America: Swedish American Women and the Life of Mina Andersonby Joy K. Lintelman

Memoir & Creative Nonfiction:
Kevin Kling’s Holiday Inn

Minnesota:
Minneapolis in the Twentieth Century: The Growth of an American City by Iric Nathanson
Opening Goliath: Danger and Discovery in Caving by Cary J. Griffith

Novel & Short Story:
A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts by N. M. Kelby

Winners will be announced at the Minnesota Book Awards Gala on April 17, presented by the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library.

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You may be returning to work this chilly Minnesota morning after a long holiday break away. The start of a new year for those in the north ought to be moved to the Ides of March, so that we can ring in this fresh start without frostbite and windchills. But no matter. While February may be for lovers, we think January is for readers. What better way to come home from long work days this week than with plans to curl up with a bowl of hot soup and a good book?

We recommend two groundbreaking memoirs for the month, both award winning and heavily praised, and both focused on the people, their work, and a way of life in the communities of Sleepy Eye and Albert Lea in the state’s southern region. Nicole Helget’s The Summer of Ordinary Ways: A Memoir (Borealis Books) is a controversial but brilliantly written “lyrical story of growing up on a Minnesota farm in the 1980s, where her mother verges on insanity, her five unruly younger sisters get underfoot, and death is a familiar part of life . . . The amalgamation of reminiscences appears random until the final piece, in which Helget weaves an account of her child self with that of her adult self, providing context for the previous memories. Pregnant and married at 19, lonely and isolated, Helget tantalizes with a brief peek at her adulthood, but it’s enough, because the glimpses into her younger life so satisfyingly explain who she has become.”— (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

The second is a tour de force, winner of the American Book Award and the Minnesota Book Award: Cheri Register’s Packinghouse Daughter: A Memoir (MHS Press). Register is a master at revealing the complexities of her past, as the daughter of a Wilson & Co. packinghouse worker in Albert Lea and the first generation of her family to attend college. Her journey reflects the inner conflict felt by a generation propelled into the middle class but who feel “caught between the blue color values of the communities we left behind and our new status as the ‘rich people’ we used to scoff at.” Register writes in the Prologue, after a scene with her father on her Christmas break home from the University of Chicago: “All I know for certain is that at this moment I realized I had truly left home. I would never have to take a job on the sliced bacon line, which was women’s work in the meatpacking industry, nor would I live in dread of a phone call telling me that my husband was on his way to the hospital in an ambulance, having been hit in the head with a carcass or wounded by an errant blade sharp enough to sever joints and slice through bone. But neither could I leave home behind me entirely. . .”

“Cheri Register, in her lovely, deeply moving memoir, has done more than resurrect a buried history of America’s laboring people; in this instance, the bitter 1959-60 Wilson & Co. packinghouse strike in Albert Lea, Minn. At a time in which the two major party candidates for President appealed to the ‘middle class,’ as though there were no other, Register gives rebirth to an old honored phrase in our daily vocabulary: working class.Yes, she is a Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy), but to me and, I hope, scores of thousands of readers, she is a Ph.D. (Packinghouse Daughter). This is must reading, especially for the young who have so long been short-changed in the knowledge of labor history.” — Studs Terkel

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The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial nonprofit foundation has won a well-deserved  Nonprofit Mission Award for its role in fighting racism.

The memorial, dedicated to the victims of the 1920 lynchings in Duluth, was unveiled in 2003, but since then, the organization has remained active in developing programs for community education and school curriculum.

If you would like to read the history of the lynchings in Duluth, check out Michael Fedo’s The Lynchings in Duluth or try Warren Read’s memoir The Lyncher in Me about his being the great-grandson of one of the men responsible for the crime.

Minnpost ran an article yesterday about all of the Nonprofit Mission Award winners.

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We’re thrilled that the Southern Independent Booksellers Association (SIBA) has chosen N. M. Kelby’s  A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts as an Okra Pick this fall! Okra Picks are titles chosen by Southern indie stores that they want to handsell–the selections include both non-fiction and fiction in various genres.

A Travel Guide for Reckless Hearts is a collection of stories rooted in the Midwest and cultivated in the Deep South, for those of us who suddenly find ourselves tourists in our own lives. N. M. lived in the Twin Cities for several years before moving to Sarasota, Florida. We’re delighted to be working with her on a book tour and look forward seeing her back in the Twin Cities in October for a few readings and signings.

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Cathy Wurzer’s Tales of the Road: Highway 61 documentary that aired on TPT is nominated for regional Emmy Awards in the following categories:

Best Historical Documentary
Best Editing-Non News (Lisa Blackstone/Robert Hutchings)
Best Videography-Non News (Denny Behr/Joe Berglove)

The book features more stories from Highway 61.

Congratulations to Cathy and her documentary team!

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Take eating local to the next level. Visit a regional winery today.

With the development of hardier, cold-weather grapes spearheaded by the University of Minnesota, wineries across Minnesota have been thriving.

Here are a few ideas for your weekend pleasure. Also, just so you know, in Minnesota you can buy wine from the wineries on Sundays.

Alexis Bailly Vineyard: Hastings, MN; open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 11-5:30. Recommended wine: Voyageur.

Cannon River Winery: Cannon Falls, MN; open Monday through Thursday 11-7, Friday and Saturday 11-9, and Sundays 12-6. Recommended wine: St. Pepin.

Morgan Creek Vineyards: New Ulm, MN; Friday and Saturday 12-9, Sundays 12-5. Recommended wine: Puck’s Pride.

Winehaven Winery: Chisago City, MN; Thursday through Saturday 10-5, Sundays 12-5. Recommended wine: Marchel Foch.

Many more wineries and recommendations can be found in the MHS Press book Wineries of Wisconsin and Minnesota by Patricia Monaghan. You can also find more information at the Minnesota Grape Growers Association site.

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