Professor Emeritus’ Book Nominated for Award

Building Communities: The Changing Face of Manitoba Mennonites Up for Non-Fiction Award

Building Communities: The Changing Face of Manitoba Mennonites, by Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) Professor Emeritus, John J. Friesen, has been nominated for a Manitoba Writing and Publishing Award.

The book, published by CMU Press, is on the shortlist for the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award, given to the Manitoba writer whose book is judged the best book of adult non-fiction written in English. The award is sponsored by the Manitoba Writers’ Guild and the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers.

The winner will be announced April 26.

Building Communities, commissioned by the Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, is a comprehensive and accessible history of Manitoba Mennonites who emigrated from Europe in the nineteenth century. It also looks at Mennonites in Manitoba today, with all their cultural, ethnic, linguistic and theological diversity. It won the Manitoba Day Award from the Association for Manitoba Archives in 2007.

Other books nominated for the award, which is worth $3,500, are:

• Take Comfort: the Career of Charles Comfort by Mary Jo Hughes et al., published by the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
• Influenza 1918: Disease, Death and Struggle in Winnipeg by Esyllt W. Jones, published by University of Toronto Press.
• Paddling South: Winnipeg to New Orleans by Canoe by Rick Ranson, published by NeWest Press.
• Canada’s Wheat King: The Life and Times of Seager Wheeler by Jim Shilliday, published by the Canadian Plains Research Centre.
• Imagined Homes: Soviet German Immigrants in Two Cities by Hans Werner, published by the University of Manitoba Press.

In June Friesen will speak at the Believers’ Church Conference on the topic “Reflections on the Manitoba Mennonite Story.” Click here for more information about the Conference.

Building Communities: The Changing Face of Manitoba Mennonites is available from the CMU bookstore for $32.50 (plus shipping & taxes).

CMU Press is publisher of scholarly, reference, and general interest books at Canadian Mennonite University.

Posted April 1, 2008.

For more information contact the CMU Communications Director, 500 Shaftesbury Blvd., Winnipeg, Manitoba R3P 2N2, telephone: 204-487-3300 ext. 630, fax: 204-889-1694,(www.cmu.ca)