The 25th annual Trillum Book Award nominees were recently released by the Ontario Media Development Corporation. The Trillium Awards honour literary excellence by Ontario authors and foster public awareness of the quality of Ontario writing. The Trillium Book Award is open to books of any genre while the Trillium Poetry Award is open to new and emerging poets.

Our congratulations to:

English Language Finalists for the Trillium Book Awards

ECW Press for Idaho Winter, written by Tony Burgess, author of Pontypool Changes Everything and Ravenna Gets.

The Literary Press Group is teaming up with almost two dozen independent bookstores across the country this spring to highlight LPG member publishers' books in their stores. The booksellers have curated a list for their customers from our wide selection of Canadian independently published books that they will feature in their store in a special "Think Indepedent: Independent Books for Independent Minds" display for a month.

This month Mosaic Books in Kelowna, BC has set up their display of new LPG titles! Check out their website for all the titles they are featuring or, if you're in the area, check them out in person!

Congratulations to Invisible Publishing and Jonah Campbell on the Taste Canada nomination for Food & Trembling in the Culinary Narratives category!

Food & Trembling approaches eating not with a four-figure expense account, but a rare insight and fierce appetite for the pleasures of the table. Also chips. Too many chips. This collection of writing by Jonah Campbell—metalhead, misanthrope, unrepentant good eater—explores the both the finest and most furtive of culinary pleasures.

Check out the Taste Canada website for a full list of the nominees or the Invisible Publishing website for more info on Food & Trembling.

The 2012 International and Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize shortlists were announced on April 10th in Toronto. With four international nominees and three Canadian nominees, two of our members have had books make the cut.

Our congratulations go out to BookThug and Phil Hall for Killdeer and Gaspereau Press and Jan Zwicky for Forge, for making the Canadian shortlist.

All seven finalists will be reading at The Royal Conservatory in Toronto on June 6th. The winners will be announced on June 7th at the Griffin Poetry Prize Awards evening. For a full list of the nominees please visit the Griffin Poetry Prize website.

Congratulations to Judy Schultz and LPG member Brindle & Glass on winning the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize for Freddy's War.

The prize was recently given out at the Mayor's Celebration for the Arts gala in Edmonton. Also nominated for the award were Wendy McGrath for Santa Rosa, published by NeWest Press, and Dawn Dumont for Nobody Cries at Bingo, published by Thistledown Press. Please visit the Writers Guild of Alberta website for full details.

As part of their Poetry Month celebrations, the League of Canadian Poets has announced the 2012 shortlists for the Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther Memorial Awards. The Gerald Lampert Award recognizes a first book of poetry by a Canadian poet, and the Pat Lowther Award recognizes a book of poetry by a Canadian woman.

Congratulations to LPG member publishers with nominations this year:

Gerald Lampert Award

Paramita, Little Black by Suzanne Robertson, published by Guernica Editions
Do Not Call Me By My Name by Lisa Shatzky, published by Black Moss Press

Pat Lowther Award

Congratulations to Shari Lapena and Brindle & Glass Publishing for the nomination of Happiness Economics for the 2012 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

Awarded since 1947, the medal is given to the best book of humour written by a Canadian in the previous year. The shortlist was reached by an anonymous panel of national judges as well as a group of readers in Orillia, where Leacock had his lakeside retreat.

The winner will be announced on April 26 at the Mariposa Inn in Orillia. To see a full list of the nominees please visit the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour website.

The Atlantic Book Awards Society recently announced the shortlists for their 2012 awards at a fundraising event featuring Alexander MacLeod (Light Lifting, Biblioasis). Atlantic members of the LPG were well represented among the nominees.

Congratulations to the following publishers on the nominations:

Breakwater Books, Creative Book Publishing, Roseway Publishing, Goose Lane Editions, and Gaspereau Press.

The Manitoba Writers Guild and the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers recently revealed the nominees for their 2012 Book Awards and it's a banner year for LPG member publishers with over twenty honours in the dozen categories.

Congratulations to the following publishers on the nominations:

Brick Books, Coteau Books, Turnstone Press, The Porcupine's Quill, Signature Editions, J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing, and Coach House Books.

The 2012 finalists for the BC Book Prizes were announced recently by the West Coast Book Prize Society.

Congratulations to LPG member publishers on their nominations:

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize

Mnemonic: A Book of Trees by Theresa Kishkan, published by Goose Lane Editions

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

Discovery Passages by Garry Thomas Morse, published by Talonbooks

Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize

The Life and Art of Mildred Valley Thorton by Sheryl Salloum, published by Mother Tongue

The winners will be announced on May 12th in Vancouver. For more details visit the BC Book Prizes website.