Jessica Grant is riding a tidal wave of recognition this month: she was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca first novel award a few weeks ago, won The National Post’s Canada Also Reads Competition last week, and this week she won the prestigious Winterset Award. And might I point about that before any of this: Salty Ink made Come, Thou Tortoise its featured book of the month. In other words: Salty Ink saw all of this month’s hype coming (i.e trust Salty Ink’s featured books). Read that feature article here.

If the Winterset award isn’t the most flattering award a Newfoundlander can win, it’s at least a career-affirming pat on the back, not only because the mandate states “the over-riding consideration will be excellence in writing,”  but because all genres are considered. In other words, whoever wins the Winterset award wrote THE best book by a Newfoundlander that year, according to a well-diversified jury.

On March 24th, Grant was awarded the five thousand dollar award, and the two other shortlisted authors – Michael Crummey for Galore and Lisa Moore for Febraury — recieved a thousand dollars each. Mega novels. All three of them. An amazing year to have won the Winterset, and my God does Jessica deserve such recogniton. As mentioned in last week’s post about Jessica: unique and original are over-used adjectives, and yet in Grant’s case, don’t quite do her justice. Come, Thou Tortoise is a book you’ll never forget and nothing like anything you’ve ever read. How many books can you honestly say that about? Again, click here to read Salty Ink’s feature article on Come, Thou Tortoise.