News

   David Carpenter was nominated for a record six awards at the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Awards.

   His book of novellas and short stories, Welcome to Canada, already awarded the silver medal for short fiction in the Fore Word Book of the Year Awards (Michigan) and the gold medal for Western Canadian Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards (New York), it was nominated for the Fiction Prize, the Book of the Year, and the City of Saskatoon Book Prize.

   David Carpenter's other book this year is A Hunter's Confession, a study of hunting culture from the late Paleolithic Age to his own experiences with hunting in the present day.

   It was nominated for the Nonfiction Prize, but also for the Book of the Year and the Saskatoon Book Prize, thus giving new meaning to the writer's tortured conflict with himself.

A Hunter's Confession was declared the winner of the 2010 Book of the Year award.

Carpenter was a little surprised that A Hunter's Confession, a memoir about his pledge to give up hunting, took the top honour.

"It's a moment of culmination where hundreds of people pay homage to that lonely art of writing books."

After a prolific year, he's taking it easy for now.

"I'm creatively exhausted, I'm just doing a lot of reading right now and writing the odd poem. It'll be a year of non-writing. I have virtually nothing to say to anybody. It's kind of a delicious feeling."

Welcome to Canada has just won the IPPY (Independent Publishers of North America) gold medal for Canada-West – Best Regional Fiction.

This collection also won a second award, bestowed by the American judges in New York, May 26, 2010, for the Short Story category.

Upcoming Events

Look for Carpenter to hit the road again to do readings in the new year.

He will be reading at the Lyric Theatre in Swift Current, SK on April 28th.

He will be reading at the Ottawa Arts Centre, Ottawa, ON on April 29th.

He will be giving readings at the Moose Jaw Festival of Words, mid-July, specific times and locations to follow.

David Carpenter recently released a nonfiction book, A Hunter's Confession, about the rise and fall of hunting as a pastime in North America.

"You don't have to be a hunter or an anti-hunter to appreciate this book. You only need to love fine writing."
- Jake MacDonald, author of Grizzlyville.

"The most thoughtful and gracefully modulated yet deliciously ambivalent apologia in defense of hunting I have seen in print."
- Trevor Herriot, author of Grass, Sky, Song.

In addition to the non-fiction book on hunting, Carpenter is working on a collection of essays for which he is the editor entitled The Literary History of Saskatchewan.