English Department members win Sask Book Awards

We are delighted to announce that English faculty member Dr. Jeanette Lynes earned the Fiction Book Award at the 33rd annual Saskatchewan Book Awards May 1, 2026, for her 2025 novel The Paper Birds.

Dr. Lynes is director of the MFA in Writing program. Since her arrival at USask in 2011, she has authored or edited six books, including the 2018 novel The Small Things That End the World, which also won the Saskatchewan Fiction Book Award. The Paper Birds focuses on women code-breakers during the Second World War. It has been described as “a love story that reveals the struggles and sacrifices of everyday working women during the war and highlights the previously unknown codebreaking work undertaken by women in Canada.”

Congratulations also to MFA in Writing alumna Tea Gerbeza, who won the SK-Arts Poetry Award Honouring Anne Szumigalski for How I Bend into More (2025). As the publisher’s description notes, "Meditating on pain, consent, and disability, this long poem builds a body both visually and linguistically,” serving as "a distinctive poetic debut that challenges ableist perceptions of normalcy.”

For more news about USask award winners, see the article in Green and White.