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CURRENT EVENTS
274 Garry St. OPEN EMAIL
What people are saying: Kelly, you were so funny. I peed myself. - Shelagh Rogers, CBC Radio One's The Next Chapter (on Kelly Hughes singing a song at the 2009 Manitoba Book Awards)
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THE STOREWriter (and famous son of a famous son) Noah Richler anointed Aqua Books "one of the craziest, most amusing and
well-ordered second-hand bookstores I have ever frequented" in the Toronto Star. And truly, over the last decade, Aqua Books has become Winnipeg's most beloved used bookstore.
THE BOOKSSince our modest beginning on Notre Dame Avenue in 1999, we have strived to maintain the cleanest, most organized and most affordable used bookstore in Winnipeg. Our sprawling location at 274 Garry Street features 40,000 books in a space ten times the size of our old Notre Dame cubbyhole. (And we have more books than McNally Robinson had over at their old Portage Place location.) Over 85% of our ever-changing stock is priced under $10. Aqua Books features one of the city's largest selections of literary fiction, kids' books and cookbooks, plus 2500 titles in faith and theology and Manitoba's largest selection of poetry and theatre books. (But if you don't like any of those things, don't despair. We have a healthy assortment of titles in many areas.) Just like Nabob and their beans, we reject thousands of books a year that don't measure up. All the books we do choose are cleaned (and repaired if necessary) before they are put on the shelves. We put out 500-1000 books weekly, and put the most interesting and sought-after titles on our new books page. Our books are joined by 300 in-store produced fridge magnets, hundreds of vintage postcards and a thousand vintage photographs. THE CULTURAL HUBAqua Books is Winnipeg's premiere spoken word venue, seeing an audience of over ten thousand people at two hundred and fifty readings, book launches, meetings, workshops, concerts, plays, film screenings and lectures every year. Our regular series schedule of storytelling (Stone Soup, Telling Tales), readings (Aqua Books Lansdowne series, Mondo!Poetry, Bons mots serie litteraire, Anthology), open mic (Speaking Crow, Soapbox), lectures (ideaExchange, Aqua U.), and interviews (Kelly Hughes Live!, An Evening With...), is filled out by participation in larger events like the Winnipeg International Writers Festival and the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. We also work with small theatre groups, arts organizations and multicultural associations. Our partners include the Manitoba Writers' Guild, the Writers' Collective, the Manitoba Editors' Association, the Manitoba Association of Playwrights, and the U of M's Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture. Aqua Books is truly Winnipeg's Cultural City Hall. In keeping with our commitment to Winnipeg's creative spirit, we also sponsor the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. (Le Prix de poésie Lansdowne de Aqua Books) Our poetry award is one of the few bilingual honours at the Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards, and carries a $1000 cash prize. The new Aqua Books also has writers' studios for rent (all filled up at the moment), plus two writers in residence. Our current writers in residence are Carolyn Gray and film writer-in-residence Kier-La Janisse. THE HYPEThe aforementioned Noah Richler Toronto Star article plus some of the other press coverage on Aqua can be found here. Additionally, Aqua Books has been one of Winnipeg's top used bookstores according to Uptown Magazine's Readers' Choice Awards for three years running. Aqua Books is also the winner of a 2005 Exchange BIZ Award of Excellence for developing ideaExchange (in conjunction with st. benedict's table) and BookWalk. The award was for promoting Winnipeg's Exchange District National Historic Site through marketing and event programming. THE BOTTOM LINECome visit us. |
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