Literary Awards and the Spurned Writer
9 January 2012
Writers love literary awards when they win them, and they hate them when they don’t.
From Mark Tredinnick, Montreal Prize winner: Feeling Great
16 December 2011
To win it feels, still, completely improbable. It's a huge delight and a big break and an honour I'll try to keep living up to in my writing.
Australian Poet Wins $50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize
15 December 2011
Annie Ernaux: from L’Autre Fille (The Other Daughter)
14 December 2011
When French author Annie Ernaux was ten years old, she overheard her mother conversing with a customer outside the family-run small grocery. The mother confided that there was a daughter before Annie, a six-year old girl who contracted diphtheria and who “died like a little saint.” L’Autre fille (The Other Daughter) is Annie Ernaux’s letter to the departed.
Annie Ernaux [Photo: Catherine Hélie, Gallimard]
$50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize update
9 December 2011
The winner of this extravagant prize will be announced on December 15th, 7 p.m. EST.
From Guy Tiphane: Letter from San Francisco
28 September 2011
Berkeley Poetry Walk: For Jack Spicer
Photo: Guy Tiphane
And now a message for all the writers who did not win awards this fall
1 December 2011
"If only I had won the Giller I would be irresistible.”
No. That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve got it backwards. You have to be irresistible in order to win the Giller.
2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Esi Egugyan www.http://www.esiedugyan.com/
To Isaac Babel from his daughter
30 November 2011
"Well, here you are at last. We've been puzzled about you for so long;
although you left behind much love and devotion, you bequeathed us very
few facts." -- Nathalie Babel, 1964
From Yan Liang: Q & A with JJ Lee
21 November 2011
JJ Lee is the author of GG-award nominated non-fiction book The Measure of a Man: A Father, A Son, and a Suit.
From Sophie Legrand: Q & A with Katherine Govier
15 November 2011
I think landscape forms character. The people I write about are formed by a particular landscape. Maybe it’s harsh, maybe it’s dangerous, it affects what they are and who they are. I like to go and place myself in those landscapes.
Katherine Govier in Matsumoto, Japan
From Judith Fitzgerald: Winning ReLits & Righteous Fitz Bitz
11 November 2011
ReLit winners show off their rings: (L-R) Craig Francis Power, Tony Burgess, Dani Couture, and ReLit founder Kenneth J. Harvey. (Photograph of ReLit Award recipients © 2011 John W. MacDonald. Used by written permission. All rights reserved. Duplication, reproduction, storage, or transmission of this work in whole or in part in any medium without the express written permission of its copyright holder is strictly forbidden. Just so you know, y'know?)
The Quebec “Nobel” goes to novelist Victor-Lévy Beaulieu
9 November 2011
Now 67, VLB is in the process of reissuing his complete works. His plan is to publish 666 copies of each work, seeing that as the number of real readers he can count on in Quebec.
From Helen Lyttelton: Film review – Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive
9 November 2011
Ambiguous, evocative and sometimes terrifyingly violent, Drive is worth the watch.
From Ruth Gruenthal: Emma Bovary, Bourgeois Heroine
9 November 2011
It is one of my principles that one must not write about oneself. The artist should be like God in creation, invisible and all-powerful; so that one can feel him everywhere, but see him not at all. -- Gustave Flaubert
Of Shakespeare, Anonymous, and Muriel Spark
4 November 2011
"Shakespeare is – let us put it this way – the least English of English writers. The typical quality of the English is understatement, saying a little less than what you see. In contrast, Shakespeare tended toward the hyperbolic metaphor, and it would come to us as no surprise to learn that Shakespeare had been Italian, or Jewish, for instance." -- Jorge Luis Borges 1979
The Chandos portrait, artist and authenticity unconfirmed. National Portrait Gallery, London.
From Yoko Morgenstern: A Blue Fish
1 November 2011
Literary non-fiction from Yoko Morgenstern.
Photo: Danny Stoeker
Poet and psychiatrist Joël des Rosiers wins Quebec’s national literary prize
1 November 2011
In addition to being a gifted poet and a practicing psychiatrist, Des Rosiers is a courageous and open-minded gentleman for whom I have great respect. This, as we all know, has nothing much to do with literary merit, most of the time. I mention it because it gives me even more reason to rejoice that Quebec has chosen to celebrate Joël des Rosiers and his work with its highest literary honour.
Doug Gibson's Stories about Storytellers, reviewed by Linda Leith
28 October 2011
My review of Doug Gibson's Stories about Storytellers has just appeared on the Globe Books site and no doubt in the paper tomorrow.
From Yan Liang: Q & A with Norwegian Wood director Tran Anh Hung
26 October 2011
"I am a guy who is Vietnamese, living in France, making a Japanese movie. But Vietnamese culture is really deep inside me. Let’s say I enjoy watching Vietnamese women more than others. It’s something like that. I feel that I am a different man when I am in Vietnam compared with France. I feel that I’m not living my life fully in France, I feel as though my life is in suspension. It is not something I dislike, that’s just how it is."
Much outcry as Australian broadcaster kills popular radio book show
3 October 2011
I will take this opportunity to point to the spectacular example that Australia’s Book Show has set in books coverage on radio – and to lament that fact that we don’t have anything that comes even close to daily books coverage here in Canada.
Ramona Koval, presenter of
The Book Show
Ramona Koval, presenter of
The Book Show
Montreal BookCamp
2 October 2011
Questions about the future of bookstores and libraries soon resulted in bold statements to the effect that “Bookstores will die. It’s a pity, but that’s the reality.” Booksellers fared better in this imagined future, but not by much. To the suggestion that booksellers can continue to play a role in providing advice on books, one participant cracked, “you might have difficulty living on that.” Publishers came in for some dismissive comments, as well, and radio and television got it in the neck.
