Debut memoir from Winnipeg-born author shortlisted for national culinary book award

Heritage House Publishing is delighted to announce Cooking Tips for Desperate Fishwives: An Island Memoir by Margot Fedoruk is shortlisted for the 2023 Taste Canada Awards in the Culinary Narrative category. The winners will be announced at the Taste Canada Awards Soirée on October 30, 2023.

Part love story, part survival story, part meditation on family dysfunction, Fedoruk’s offbeat memoir chronicles the unpredictable life of a young wife and mother on a tiny BC island. 

True to its title, Cooking Tips for Desperate Fishwives is a memoir infused with recipes, from the hearty Eastern European fare of Margot’s childhood to more adventurous coastal BC cuisine.

The memoir follows twenty-three-year-old Margot when she left Winnipeg and her volatile Slavic-Jewish family for the wilds of BC and fell in love with a sea urchin diver. 

Determined not to repeat the same mistakes as she had witnessed during her parents’ marriage made in hell, Margot paints an unforgettable portrait of a modern-day fishwife left behind to keep the home fires burning.

Margot Fedoruk is a writer, book reviewer, and entrepreneur, whose work has been published in the Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire, BC BookWorld, Ormbsy Review, and Portal. She holds a BA from the University of Winnipeg and a BA from Vancouver Island University where she majored in Creative Writing. She was awarded the Barry Broadfoot Award for creative nonfiction and journalism and a Meadowlarks Award for fiction, both from Vancouver Island University.