Saskatoon author David Carpenter won the top award at the Saskatchewan Book Awards on the weekend, up against some formidable competition.

Carpenter's non-fiction work, A Hunter's Confession, won the Book of the Year Award at the gala ceremony in Regina Saturday night.

Winning the Regina Book Award was Dianne Warren, whose Cool Water won the Governor General's Award for fiction earlier this year.

Governor General's Award nominee Sandra Birdsell won the Fiction Award for her novel Waiting for Joe.

The Non-fiction Award winner was Alexandra Popoff, whose Sophia Tolstoy: a Biography, also captured the Saskatoon Book Award.

More than 100 titles were submitted for the event, which Carpenter said was cause for celebration.

"It's a moment of culmination where hundreds of people pay homage to that lonely art of writing books," he said.

Carpenter, who also had two novels nominated for awards, said he was a little surprised that A Hunter's Confession, a memoir about his pledge to give up hunting, took the top honour.

After a prolific year, he said, he's taking it easy for now.

"I'm creatively exhausted, I'm just doing a lot of reading right now and writing the odd poem," he said. "It'll be a year of non-writing. I have virtually nothing to say to anybody. It's kind of a delicious feeling."

Other winners (followed by their books and awards) include:

  • Arthur Slade, The Dark Deeps: The Hunchback Assignment, Young Adult Literature Award.
  • Amy Jo Ehman, Prairie Feast: A Writer's Journey Home for Dinner, First Book Award.
  • Dave Margoshes, Dimensions of an Orchard, Award for Poetry.
  • Jo-Ann Episkenew, Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy and Healing, First Peoples' Writing Award.
  • Margaret Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations and Contexts, Scholarly Writing Award.
  • Martine Noël-Maw, Dans le pli des collines, Prix du livres français.
  • Purish Publishing Ltd., Indigenous Diplomacy and the Rights of People: Achieving UN Recognition, First Peoples' Publishing Award.
  • Purish Publishing Ltd., The Duty to Consult: New Relationships with Aboriginal Peoples, Publishing in Education Award, and
  • Hagios Press, Fallout, Award for Publishing.

Fourteen awards were given out at the 18th Annual Saskatchewan Book Awards.