Geoffrey Ursell, recipient of Publishing Recognition Award, co-founder of Coteau Books, author, playwright, composer, producer, editor, and publisher.
Join SaskBooks at 7pm on Thursday 22 November at McNally Robinson Saskatoon for the launch of One-Way Ticket (Coteau Books) by Robert Currie and a special presentation recognizing Geoffry Ursell, publisher emeritus and co-founder of Coteau Books, who received the inaugural Recognition of the Advancement of Book Publishing in Saskatchewan. There will also be cake to celebrate SaskBooks 30th anniversary!
In One-Way Ticket, Currie expertly combines seemingly innocuous poems – catching fish, discovering false breasts in a dresser – with more sinister and somber poems – murder, hiding from a gunman outside of a grocery store, bearing witness to the death of loved ones – with poignant candor.
Robert (Bob) Currie is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, where he taught for thirty years at Central Collegiate. His books have been finalists for the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Award, the Poetry, Fiction, and Book of the Year Awards at the Saskatchewan Book Awards, and the High Plains Book Award for Poetry. A group of his poems won the 1980 CBC Literary Competition. A founding board member of the Saskatchewan Festival of Words and a former chairman of the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild, Currie served two terms as Saskatchewan Poet Laureate.
Geoffrey Ursell has been a full-time writer, composer, producer, publisher, and editor for over thirty years. During Geoffrey’s time at Coteau as its managing publisher, its writers won many provincial and national awards, including three Governor General’s Awards – for Poetry (Anne Szumigalski), Fiction (Gloria Sawai), and Children’s Literature (Wendy Phillips). Geoffrey edited several anthologies for the press, as well as a number of single-author titles, many of them award-winners. He is himself a winner of the Vicky Metcalfe Editor’s award for his work on the children’s anthology Jumbo Gumbo. Geoffrey’s work in publishing was an exciting and productive part of his life. But in 2013, at the age of 70, he gave up the publishing side of his life to concentrate on his own creative writing. Geoffrey lives in Saskatoon with his partner and fellow writer, Barbara Sapergia.
View the full media release here.
