One Book One Province
About One Book One Province
The Saskatchewan Library Association introduced One Book One Province Saskatchewan in 2017 to give the province’s residents an opportunity to engage with a shared experience around a book. Our aim is to create an experience that supports literacy, creates a reading culture, raises the profile of libraries and literacy organizations, and builds community engagement through a shared experience. Each year, the SLA selects a title by a Saskatchewan Author that builds awareness and understanding in topics such as diversity, reconciliation, or an aspect of our provincial history.
2025 Book Selection
The 2025 One Book One Province title is Bread & Water: essays by dee Hobsbawn-Smith. The program will see libraries, book clubs, and individuals all across Saskatchewan join together in April 2025 to read this book and share discussions about the story.
About the Author
Award-winning essayist, poet, fictionist, Red Seal chef, educator, and food writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith lives rurally on the remnants of her family’s farm west of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in Treaty Six Territory, with her husband, the writer Dave Margoshes. An ex-restaurateur and longtime freelance journalist, she has written ten books in several genres, and recently completed a new essay collection and a new poetry collection. She’s served as Saskatchewan’s 10th Poet Laureate, as Saskatoon Public Library’s 35th Writer in Residence, as a mentor and editor, and as leader of Slow Food Calgary and then Slow Food Saskatoon. Called an educator “blessed with whimsy and precision,” she has taught thousands of adults and kids to cook. Her most recent book is Among the Untamed, which received the 2024 Sask Book Awards’ Best Poetry Award. Her novel Danceland Diary was shortlisted for the 2023 Sask Book Awards Fiction Award and was a shortlisted finalist for the Glengarry Book Prize. Bread & Water: essays, won Sask Book Awards’ 2022 Nonfiction Award, and Taste Canada’s Gold Medal for Culinary Narrative. Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet, won three international awards for its portrayal of the politics and challenges of small-scale sustainable growers. In her spare time, dee gardens, grows orchids, cooks, quilts, writes, runs, reads, does crosswords, plays with her dog, and watches period movies and whodunnits. A lifelong learner, dee hopes to learn to play her guitar before she turns eighty.
Photo by Liane Faulder
Our 2025 Events
The 2025 events will be held in:
- April 2: Saskatoon, location TBA
- April 7 (1 pm): Regina – Innovation Place Rotunda;
- April 10 (7 pm): Humboldt | Reid-Thompson Public Library;
- April 16 (6 pm): Alex Robertson Public Library, Air Ronge;
- April 24 (2:30 pm): Rosetown Centennial Library;
- April 29 (7pm): North Battleford Library;
About the Book and Where to Find It
When chef and writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith left the city for rural life on a farm in Saskatchewan, she planned to replace cooking and teaching with poetry and prose. But—as begin the best stories—her next adventure didn’t quite work that way.
Food trickled into her poems, her essays, her fiction. And water poured into her property in both Saskatchewan and Calgary during two devastating floods.
Bread & Water uses lyrical prose to examine those two fundamental ingredients, and to probe the essential questions on how to live a life. Hobsbawn-Smith uses food to explore the hungers of the human soul: wilder hungers that loiter beyond cravings for love. She kneads themes of floods and place, grief and loss; the commonalities of refugees and Canadians through common tastes in food; cooking methods, grandmothers and mentors; the politics of local and sustainable food; parenting; male privilege in the restaurant world; and the challenges of aging gracefully.
It is an elegant collection that weaves joy into exploring the quotidian in search for larger meaning.
Find the book in your region:
- Palliser Regional Library
- Chinook Regional Library
- Southeast Regional Library
- Regina Public Library
- Parkland Regional Library
- Wapiti Regional Library
- Wheatland Regional Library
- Pahkisimon Nuyeʔáh Library System
- Saskatoon Public Library
- John M. Cuelenaere Public Library
- Lakeland Library Region
Resources
2025 OBOP: Bread & water Study Guide
For more information about One Book One Province, contact SLA Program Coordinator Milena Džordeski by emailing mdzordeski@saskla.ca.
Honorary Patron
His Honour the Honourable Russ Mirasty, Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan
Russ Mirasty was born and raised in La Ronge, Saskatchewan and is a member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band. His first language is Woodland Cree. His grandparents led a traditional life, fishing, hunting and trapping. His mother modelled a strong work ethic, and from her and his grandparents, he learned to value a connection to the land, and the importance of hospitality and community service.
Mr. Mirasty joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in 1976, and was one of only two Indigenous cadets in his troop. He served in various roles across the country, including as Director General of National Aboriginal Policing Services and as Commanding Officer of “F” Division (Saskatchewan).
Over his 36‐year career, Mr. Mirasty was posted to seven provinces, performed duties in every province and territory, and participated in an exchange with the Northern Territory Police Service in Australia. He retired from the RCMP as Assistant Commissioner in 2013.
Following his retirement, Mr. Mirasty continued to devote himself to the residents of Saskatchewan by helping lead the Student First Engagement process. The valuable perspectives shared during the process informed the development of a province‐wide education strategy.
Mr. Mirasty served as a member of the League of Educational Administrators, Directors and Superintendents, and as a board member on the Community Safety Knowledge Alliance. He was appointed to Saskatchewan’s Advisory Group on Poverty Reduction, and served on the board of the McDowell Foundation, which supports research, inquiry, and sharing of information for the K to 12 education system.
In recognition of his outstanding contributions, Mr. Mirasty received both the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and Diamond Jubilee Medals, as well as the Meritorious Service Medal.
His Honour leads a very active lifestyle and regularly participates in running and cross‐country skiing marathon events. He and his wife, Donna Mirasty, have a home in La Ronge, and they have two children and two grandchildren.
Past One Book One Province Title Selections
2024 – Miss G and Me by Jennifer S. Wallace
2023 – Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
2022 – Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead by Habeeb Salloum
2021 – Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun by Paul Seesequasis
2020 – A Geography of Blood by Candace Savage
2019 – Just Pretending by Lisa Bird-Wilson
2018 – Out of Old Saskatchewan Kitchens by Amy Jo Ehman
2017 – The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir by Joseph Auguste Merasty with David Carpenter