Encounters, a collection of short stories by Michael Trussler, was chosen as the book of the year at the Saskatchewan Book Awards gala on the weekend.

"I'm completely overwhelmed," said the author, who also captured the Regina Book Award at the gala.

Trussler's book, which beat out more than 200 other entries for the top prize, is made up of stories that centre on characters who encounter something larger than themselves — a situation or another character — around which they must navigate.

Trussler said the time he spends studying short stories as an English professor at the University of Regina helped him craft Encounters.

"I'm a lucky person … I'm thinking about books all the time," said Trussler, who is working on a second book, a poetry collection he expects will be released next fall.

Other winners at this year's Saskatchewan Book Awards included:

• Martha Blum for fiction for The Apothecary, a follow-up to her 1999 winning novel The Walnut Tree.
• Marie Elyse St. George for non-fiction for Once in a Blue Moon: An Artist's Life.
• Daniel Scott Tysdal for poetry for Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method.
• Jim Warren and Kathleen Carlisle for scholarly writing for On the Side of the People: A History of Labour in Saskatchewan. Their publisher, Coteau Books, also won an award with their title for publishing in education.
• Arthur Slade for children's literature with Megiddo's Shadow.
• Annette Lapointe for first book and Saskatoon Book Award with Stolen.
• The Gabriel Dumont Institute for First People's publishing with The Metis Alphabet Book by Joseph Jean Fauchon.
• Coteau Books for publishing with Reading The River by Myrna Kostash with Duane Burton.

With files from the Canadian Press