Last week in Edmonton, the Grant MacEwan Author’s Award was handed out as part of the grand arts festival known as Alberta Scene. But those in attendance could be forgiven for having missed the awards ceremony, competing as it was with an orchestra, a blues show, a cowboy music performance, and several other distractions. It does seem to be a truism that writing is the branch of the arts least likely to draw a crowd, and “every serious writer knows what it’s like to read her words to an organizer, her smiling husband, that lost hobo with a crinkly Safeway bag and the other bestselling author on the bill.”