Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 16, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM ● C3 TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2025 Joy Reid, Percival Everett win American Book Awards NEW YORK — Former MSNBC host Joy Reid and authors Percival Everett and John Edgar Wideman are among this years’ recipients of the 46th annual American Book Awards, which celebrate diversity in American art and culture. The awards are presented by the Before Columbus Foundation, the non-profit that author-playwright Ishmael Reed helped found in 1976. Reid, who left MSNBC in February soon after the network cancelled her prime-time show The ReidOut, was awarded the foundation’s anti-censor- ship prize. Wideman, an acclaimed fiction and non-fiction writer since the 1960s, has won a lifetime achievement award. Honorees for current works include Everett for James, his Pulitzer Prize-winning retelling of The Ad- ventures of Huckleberry Finn; Kaveh Akbar for Martyr!; Danzy Senna for Colored Television and Claire Messud for This Strange Eventful History. Other recipients announced Monday ranged from Amy M. Alvarez for her poetry collection Makeshift Altar to Sarah Lewis’ non-fiction The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America. Penguin Random House editor Erroll McDonald, whose authors have include Wideman and Nobel laureates Toni Morrison and Wole Soy- inka, won the editor/publisher award. “The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence with- out limitations or restrictions,” the foundation’s announcement reads in part. “The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. There are no quotas for diversi- ty; the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process.” Previous winners include bell hooks, Dave Eggers and the new U.S. poet laureate, Arthur Sze. — The Associated Press HILLEL ITALIE Three past Giller winners make long list for fiction prize TORONTO — Three past Giller winners are among the 14 authors longlisted for the literary award. André Alexis, who won in 2015, made the list for his short story col- lection Other Worlds; Ian Williams, who took home the prize in 2019, is a finalist for his novel You’ve Changed; and 2020 winner Souvankham Tham- mavongsa is in contention for her novel Pick a Colour. Past nominees on the list include Mona Awad for her surreal dark ac- ademia sequel We Love You, Bunny and Emma Donoghue for her histori- cal novel The Paris Express. The other longlisted authors include Kirti Bhadresa for her short story collection An Astonishment of Stars, Eddy Boudel Tan for his novel The Tiger and the Cosmonaut and Fanny Britt for her novel Sugaring Off, which was translated from French by Susan Ouriou. Also on the long list are Joanna Cockerline for her novel Still, Holly Kennedy for her novel The Side- ways Life of Denny Voss, and Emma Knight for her novel The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus. Rounding out the contenders are Amanda Leduc for her novel Wild Life, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek for her novel We, The Kindling, and Bin- du Suresh for her novel The Road Between Us. The Giller Prize is Canada’s biggest award for a work of fiction, handing out $100,000 to the winner and $10,000 to the others on the short list. It came under scrutiny in 2023 for its now-severed ties to former naming sponsor Scotiabank, a sub- sidiary of which had a large stake in the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. Pro-Palestinian protesters jumped on stage during the televised ceremony that year, and five were arrested. Charges against four were dropped last year, and the group CanLit Responds announced Mon- day that charges against the final protester were dropped last week, nearly two years after the fact. That group also helped organized a boycott of the Giller, which it says will remain in place until the organization cuts ties with sponsor Indigo. They take issue with founder Heather Reisman’s ties to the HES- EG Foundation, which offers schol- arships to people with no immediate family in Israel who have served in the Israeli Defense Forces. Hundreds of book workers, includ- ing some past Giller winners, have joined that boycott. This year’s Giller Prize is set to be handed out in a televised ceremony on Nov. 17. The short list is due to be announced on Oct. 6. — The Canadian Press NICOLE THOMPSON CHRIS YOUNG/THE CANADIAN PRESS Ian Williams won the 2019 Giller for Reproduction; he is on the long list again this year. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Joy Reid THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Percival Everett WJT’s therapy-set two-hander plays with reality DIAGNOSIS: DISORIENTED T HE public and private perils of online engagement crash through the screen and into a therapist’s office in Job, a nervy drama that explores the power of posts and the ethical responsibilities inherent to our respective postings. Written by New York’s Max Wolf Friedlich and directed by Calgary’s Jack Grinhaus, the opening produc- tion of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s season heads to the races with the brandishing of a starter’s gun in the warped offices of Bay Area psycho- therapist Lloyd (Dov Mickelson). Lloyd’s description of his typical patient — young people who are “hope- less and beyond help” — isn’t exactly inspirational. Blundstone-booted Jane (Jada Rifkin) seems to have made the cut, having been placed on paid adminis- trative leave after a viral meltdown by her employer, an unnamed tech giant on whose campus she’s enrolled as an adjudicator. A “user care” specialist, Jane is the steel-mesh sieve in the social media sink, sifting through the internet’s most obscene, obscure and offensive content to prevent the pollution of social media’s waters. Just like her therapist’s, Jane’s career is supposedly grounded in protection. But in an industry where burnout is common, it was only a matter of time before she lost herself in the sludge. Though the work seems thankless, Jane is a voluntary enlistee, viewing her daily task as a protective privilege. “The internet is where we live. It’s our home, and I’m the frontline of defence,” she says with patriotic duty. As in any two-hander, the action is defined by the audience’s general ex- pectations of the characters’ inherent power dynamic. From the moment the patient pulls the gun, the playwright subverts those limitations, tilting the remainder of the production askew — a seismic shift that’s reflected in Shauna Jones’ set, a wall-less boomerang where the infrastructure collapses into itself. Jones’ set, which emphasizes the il- lusions of framing and forced perspec- tive, provides a solid foundation for the play’s investigation of the same ideas, successfully connecting environment to text. That skewing of the depth of field allows both Rifkin and Mickelson to produce considerable tension simply by virtue of relative location and choice of seating. Rather than plunk down on the sofa, Rifkin’s Jane initially perches on the armrest — an act of rebellion that doubles as a dare to Lloyd to not get too comfortable either. Both actors bring that sensibility to their performances: Mickelson’s vocal delivery is purposefully shaky, reflecting his character’s anxious real- ization that — even after the weapon is concealed — he’s in the firing path of a loose cannon. Rifkin’s reactions are aligned with her character’s chosen career, each nervous tick moderated by an internal censor: when she grimaces, she’s care- ful to prevent her cheeks from moving too much, and at times, it seems as though Jane can hardly bring herself to release her words into the world. As the session progresses, both actors are forced to confront their characters’ closely held secrets, which are intermittently hinted at through- out the play by startling flashbacks, each foreshadowed by either Siobhan Sleath’s well-concealed lighting design, Dan Petrenko’s appropriately discon- certing sound design, or both. It’s difficult to discuss the play’s late pivot point — is Lloyd who he says he is, or is he who Jane believes him to be? — without doing injustice to the shock it may provide. But while the twist is truly upsetting and perhaps narratively disorienting, the play- wright meekly refuses to tie it up, leav- ing the audience — which might crave neat resolution — to its own devices in considering whom to trust. “The therapy hour and the ther- apist’s stage become a social mi- crocosm,” wrote Dr. Irvin Yalom in his 1974 book Every Day Gets A Little Closer: A Twice Told Therapy, composed of post-session reports by both the therapist and his patient, an aspiring novelist named Ginny Elkin. “No need to take a history, no need to ask for descriptions of interpersonal behaviour. Sooner or later, the entire tragic behavioural scroll is unrolled in the office before the eyes of both therapist and patient.” With Job, the playwright considers what might happen should both par- ties’ scrolls intersect while an audience bears witness. The result is by definition a challeng- ing, heavy read. ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca BEN WALDMAN THEATRE REVIEW JOB By Max Wolf Friedlich ● Winnipeg Jewish Theatre ● Berney Theatre, 123 Doncaster St. ● To Sunday ★★★½ out of five JOHN WOODS / FREE PRESS Jada Rifkin (left) and Dov Mickelson play patient and therapist Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s psychological thriller Job. ARTS ● LIFE I ENTERTAINMENT Arthur Sze appointed U.S. poet laureate AT a time when its leadership is in question and its mission challenged, the Library of Congress has named a new U.S. poet laureate, the much-honoured author and translator Arthur Sze. The library announced Monday that the 74-year-old Sze had been appointed to a one-year term, starting this fall. The author of 12 poetry collections and recipient last year of a lifetime achievement award from the library, he succeeds Ada Limón, who had served for three years. Previous lau- reates also include Joy Harjo, Louise Glück and Billy Collins. Speaking during a recent Zoom in- terview with The Associated Press, Sze acknowledged some misgivings when Rob Casper, who heads the library’s poetry and literature centre, called him in June about becoming the next laureate. He wondered about the level of responsibilities and worried about the upheaval since U.S. President Don- ald Trump fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in May. After thinking about it overnight, he called Casper back and happily accepted. “I think it was the opportunity to give something back to poetry, to something that I’ve spent my life doing,” he explained, speaking from his home in Santa Fe, N.M. “So many people have helped me along the way. Poetry has just helped me grow so much, in every way.” Sze’s new job begins during a tumul- tuous year for the library, a 200-year- old, non-partisan institution that holds a massive archive of books published in the United States. Trump abruptly fired Hayden after conservative activ- ists accused her of imposing a “woke” agenda. Although the White House an- nounced that it had named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche as the acting librarian, daily operations are being run by a longtime official at the library, Robert Randolph Newlen. Newlen is identified in Monday’s announcement as acting librarian, a position he was in line for according to the institution’s guidelines. He praised Sze, whose influences range from an- cient Chinese poets to Wallace Stevens, for his “distinctly American” portraits of the southwest landscapes and for his “great formal innovation.” “Like Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Sze forges something new from a range of traditions and influ- ences — and the result is a poetry that moves freely throughout time and space,” his statement reads in part. Sze is a son of Chinese immigrants who in such collections as Sight Lines and Compass Rose explores themes of cultural and environmental diversity and what he calls “co-existing.” His many prizes include the National Book Award for Sight Lines and the Jackson Poetry Prize and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. — The Associated Press HILLEL ITALIE ;