Last night, Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon and M. Travis Lane took home prizes at the New Brunswick Book Awards. MacKinnon’s national bestseller, Shadow of Doubt: The Dennis Oland Trial, won the NB Book Award for Non-Fiction. Lane’s collected long poems, The Witch of the Inner Wood, edited by Shane Neilson, won the poetry award.

Shadow of Doubt, the story of Richard Oland’s murder and Dennis Oland’s trial, was published in October 2016 and spent several weeks on the national bestseller list. The judges praised MacKinnon’s ability to take a complex story and transform it into a page-turner. Shadow of Doubt has also been shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Crime Writing.

The Witch of the Inner Wood, published to critical acclaim in September 2016, brings together the masterful long poems of M. Travis Lane. Critics have praised the “structural virtuosity of her poems” as well as her “inquisitive, musical, humane, and instantly recognizable voice.” M. Travis Lane was first published in 1973 by Fiddlehead Poetry Books, the predecessor of Goose Lane Editions. She won the Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for High Achievement in the Arts in 2016.

The New Brunswick Arts Board (artsnb) announced the winners of the Lieutenant-Governor’s Awards for High Achievement in the Arts in Fredericton on Monday evening. Presented annually, the awards  recognize and reward the outstanding contribution of artists to the arts in New Brunswick.