Notes from the Editor

THE FIRST ISSUE OF WRITERS NEWS MANITOBA was published in July 1978. A few years later this news-letter-become-lit-mag was renamed Prairie Fire. Nobody thought at the time that it would last forty years, yet here we are!

Our fortieth anniversary celebration is Janus-headed. One face looks back to our beginnings and features a few of the many writers who published in WNM/PF in the early days. The other face looks to the future and includes work by Winnipeg-based writers who’ve never published in PF before. Even with extra pages, we didn’t have room for all the interesting and insightful work that we received in response to this occasion. Please visit our website for memoirs of WNM/PF by Carolyn Creed, Patrick Friesen, Rory Runnells and Armin Wiebe.

Of course, no summer issue of PF would be complete without the winning entries to our Prairie Fire Press / McNally Robinson Booksellers Writing Contests. We are grateful to our judges, George Murray, Corey Redekop and Betsy Warland, for their hard work in selecting the winners and to our sponsors, McNally Robinson Booksellers and The Banff Centre for their ongoing financial support. Look for Tammy Armstrong, this year’s winner of The Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award, at THIN AIR in September.

The two special sections and many extra pages in this issue are made possible by generous funding from the W.H. & S.E. Loewen Foundation and The Winnipeg Foundation. The Winnipeg Foundation has also enabled us to hire practicum student Joel Ferguson for three months this summer.

We hope you enjoy this special anniversary issue. Here’s to our next forty years!