BOOK NEWS
SPECIAL EVENTS
An Evening with Anthony Bourdain - 8pm, October 29, 2011
The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. Tickets: $47.50/$55.00/$62.50/VIP package: $152.50. Tickets now on sale at Ticketmaster. Support the Writers Festival: use the code "writers" when purchasing your ticket, a portion of the ticket proceeds will go to the VIWF and you will receive a $5 discount per ticket. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/bourdain.
An Evening with David Sedaris - 8pm, November 5, 2011
The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts. Tickets: $45.00/$50.00/$57.50. Tickets now on sale at Ticketmaster. Support the Writers Festival: use the code "writers" when purchasing your ticket, a portion of the ticket proceeds will go to the VIWF and you will receive a $5 discount per ticket. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/davidsedaris.
Wade Davis - November 10, 2011
An evening with scientist, anthropologist and bestselling author Wade Davis discussing his latest book Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest. Details: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/wadedavis.
Chuck Palahniuk - 7pm, November 30, 2011
The bestselling author of Fight Club, Choke and Snuff reads from his latest novel, Damned. Details: http://www.writerfest.bc.ca/events/palahniuk
AWARDS & LISTS
The 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to the Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, whose surrealistic works about the mysteries of the human mind won him acclaim as one of the most important Scandinavian writers since World War II. The Swedish Academy said it recognized the 80-year-old poet "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/10/06/nobel-prize-literature.html
Don't know Tranströmer's work? Slate offers a few good entry points.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2011/10/06/tomas_transtromer_what_should_i_read_first_.html
Vancouver poet and author Evelyn Lau has been named Vancouver's third poet laureate. The position is for three years.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Evelyn+named+Vancouver+third+poet+laureate/5553018/story.html
The PEN/Pinter prize is shared each year by two writers—one British, one international who, in Pinter's words, “cast an unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world”. The British prize went to David Hare, who was present at the ceremony. Not present was Italian author Roberto Saviano, the international prize-winner, who lives under a permanent death threat from the Neapolitan Mafia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/14/slovo-pen-prize-roberto-saviano
Gillion Slovo profiles Roberto Saviano.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/14/slovo-pen-prize-roberto-saviano
Julian Barnes has won the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/julian-barnes-wins-booker-prize-for-the-sense-of-an-ending/article2205315/
BBC News profiles Barnes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15366252
The names of the winners of each of the ten categories of Daggers' Awards for 2011 can be found here:
http://www.thecwa.co.uk/daggers/index.html
NEWS & FEATURES
Critical of opinions expressed by Man Booker Prize judges, a group of agents, publishers, writers and critics is launching a brand new literary award—The Literature Prize—to celebrate excellence in English-language fiction.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/10/13/literature-prize-booker-rival.html
What is the purpose of literary prizes and how do we determine the excellence of a book, asks Laura Miller, adding that arguments over literary prizes at home and abroad show how little we agree on what constitutes great literature.
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/19/what_makes_a_book_great/singleton/
Margaret Atwood is a long-term campaigner for the conservation of birds and is one of 112 contributors to The Ghost of Gone Birds, an exhibition about extinct birds, opening in London next week. It includes a Great Auk knit by Atwood while she was traveling in the Arctic. It is hoped that the exhibition will travel to America, especially for the 2014 International Convention Congress of Bird Life, in Ottawa.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/margaret-atwood-on-knitting-a-great-auk-in-the-arctic-2373978.html
Constance Brissenden and Larry Loyie recount the 40-year project of Jay Powell and Vickie Jensen to preserve Aboriginal languages.
http://www.geist.com/articles/life-in-language/index.html
The CBC has announced the 2012 Canada Reads: True Stories Top 40 List. The deadline for voting for the finalist of your choice is October 30, before midnight ET.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/2011/10/the-canada-reads-true-stories-top-40-revealed.html
Members of the public are invited to vote in the Globe and Mail online for their choice of the finalists for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. The Globe and Mail is printing an excerpt each day of one of the finalists' work. The prize-winner will be announced November 1.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/
Each day this week, the New Yorker's Book Bench features an excerpt from It Chooses You by Miranda July.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/10/it-chooses-you.html#ixzz1blYbBPGW
BOOKS & WRITERS
Julian Barnes' The Sense of An Ending is "succinct, rich and powerful" writes Martin Rubin. The book packs into so few pages so much that the reader finishes it "with a great sense of satisfaction,” says Rubin.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-et-1020-book-20111021,0,6993857.story
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, Yiyun Li's short stories of modern China, have the sparseness and impact of a Raymond Carver or Haruki Murakami, writes Alice Fisher. A wonderful talent, says Fisher.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/23/yiyun-li-gold-boy-review
In anticipation of the spooky season, The Globe and Mail includes an excerpt from Highly Inappropriate Tales For Young People, by Douglas Coupland and Graham Roumieu (reprinted with permission from Random House Canada).
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/a-story-for-the-spooky-season/article2209891/
Laura Miller writes that Haruki Murakami's new novel 1Q84: Love in an alternate universe is the international literary giant at his uncanny, mesmerizing best. Note that In Japanese, the title is a pun, ichi-kyu-hachi-yon: the "nine" sounds like "Q".
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/23/1q84_love_in_an_alternate_universe/singleton
Tracy Sherlock describes Ami McKay's second novel, The Virgin Cure, as both lovely and unforgettable, written in a style that is both clean and subtle. Readers will take to The Virgin Cure just as they did The Birth House, says Sherlock.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/lovely+unforgettable+second+novel/5598884/story.html
J.J. Lee's The Measure of a Man both chronicles the evolution of the men's suit and tells the story about a son's quest to understand his father's life, and their relationship, writes Carla Lucchetta. A beautiful, cleverly executed story, says Lucchetta.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-measure-of-a-man-by-jj-lee/article2209351/
During British rule, India-cultivated opium was shipped to Canton in massive amounts. In River of Smoke, Amitav Ghosh launches his cast toward China, as the first Opium War looms. Ghosh takes us places we never thought to go, writes Nancy Wigston.
http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/1073287--river-of-smoke-by-amatav-ghosh
Black Cat Bone is a deserving winner of this year's Forward Prize for best collection, writes Fiona Sampson. John Burnside's 12th volume adds to, and deepens, a body of poetry that is already exceptionally significant. But he is also simply one of the finest poets writing today, says Sampson.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/black-cat-bone-by-john-burnside-2373429.html
Ibi Kaslik writes that in Johanna Skibsrud's This will Be Difficult to Explain and Other Stories, Skibsrud comes at prose through the headiness of the intellectual, rather than the frank opacity of a storyteller.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/this-will-be-difficult-to-explain-and-other-stories-by-johanna-skibsrud/article2194827/
Readers of Alan Hollinghurst's work know that his characters like going to parties. While Margot Livesey craved a little more drama in The Stranger's Child, that's like complaining about the lack of cream puffs after a 10-course meal, she says.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-strangers-child-by-alan-hollinghurst/article2209337/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Susan McCaslin (Demeter Goes Skydiving) and Christopher Patton (Curious Memory). Thursday, October 27 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
AT THE WORLD'S EDGE
Author Claudia Cornwell discusses her new book At the World's Edge—Curt Lang's Vancouver: 1937–1998. Slideshow included. Registration required. Thursday, October 27 at 7:00pm. Lynn Valley Main Library, 1277 Lynn Valley Road, North Vancouver). More information at 604-984-0286 x8144.
MASHED POETICS #8
Musical and poetic collaboration features 10 poets interpreting Van Halen's self-titled debut album. Includes a live performance of the album by Van Halen cover band Eruption. Thursday, October 27 at 9:00pm. Tickets: $8. Cottage Bistro, 4470 Main Street. More information at weslowhiskey@shaw.ca.
MAUREEN JOHNSON
Book signing of The Name of the Starr, a new book by the author of The Last Little Blue Envelope and Scarlett Fever. Saturday, October 29 at 2:00pm. Chapters Surrey, 12101 72nd Avenue, Surrey. More information at 604-501-2877.
CROSS BORDER POLLINATION SERIES
Readings by Rob Taylor, Maureen Hynes, Peggy Shumaker, Rhea Tregebov, Joan Kane, and Sherry Simpson. Saturday, October 29 at 5:00pm. Room 1415, SFU Harbour Centre, 515 W. Hastings Street. More information at cbprs.wordpress.com.
GHOSTS IN THE HOOD
Author Robert C. Belyk gives a multimedia reading of true, local ghost stories. Saturday, October 29 at 6:00pm. Tickets: $10/$7. St. James Hall, 3214 10th Ave. W. More information at www.famousartists.ca.
ANNIE BARROWS
Two opportunities to meet the author of the popular Ivy + Bean series. North Vancouver: Tuesday, November 1 at 4:00pm, Lynn Valley Branch library. Vancouver: Tuesday, November 1 at 7:00pm, West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary, 4595 8th Ave. W. Tickets: $5. Information and tickets at www.kidsbooks.ca.
JOHN FLANAGAN
Meet the author of the popular series Ranger's Apprentice. Thursday, November 3 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $5. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Gymnasium, 2550 Camosun Street. More information and tickets at www.kidsbooks.ca.
Upcoming
CHRIS VAN ALLSBURG
Kidsbooks is hosting an evening presentation with two-time Caldecott Medal-winner. Wednesday, November 9 at 7pm. Tickets are $30.00 which includes the new hardcover book The Chronicles of Harris Burdick. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Gymnasium, 2550 Camosun Street, Vancouver.
AMI MCKAY
Ami McKay presents her second novel, The Virgin Cure, along with BC author Frances Greenslade, who will read from her first novel, Shelter. Wednesday, November 9 at 7:30pm, Alice MacKay Room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Reading by Michael V. Smith, author of Cumberland. Thursday, November 10 at 2:00pm. Rm 301, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall, UBC, Vancouver.
HOLD ME NOW
Freehand Books and Little Sisters present a special evening of literature and conversation with a reading by Stephen Gauer from his new novel. Facilitated discussion and reception to follow. Thursday, November 17 at 7:00pm, free. Little Sisters, 1238 Davie Street.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Book News Vol. 6 No. 41
BOOK NEWS
Governor General's Literary Awards
Four writers named this week as finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards will be appearing at the Vancouver International Writers Festival. Esi Edugyan, Marina Endicott, David Bezmozgis and Andrew Nikiforuk were all named as finalists for the award.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/author+Edugyan+Patrick+deWitt+score+literary+tricks/5532579/story.html
HAL'S FESTIVAL PICKS
Artistic Director Hal Wake's suggestions for the 2011 Festival
Event 21
There is no more inexpensive way to travel the world than through books. And no better way to travel through time. Rich with History brings together four fine writers who will take us from 1850's Paris to Sri Lanka at the turn of the last century, to the turbulent '70's in Cambodia and back home to Canada at the onset of the 20th century.
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
Event 6
On the opening night of the Festival we'll introduce you to names you will be hearing from for quite some time. And Introducing... features four fiction writers from around the world who have published a first novel or first collection of stories and are already making a splash with their work. A late edition to this group is Michael Christie whose book The Beggars Garden was longlisted for the Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize this year.
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/6-and-introducing
Event 40
The Bill in the event Conversations with Bill is Bill Richardson, a name that brings to mind surprise, laughter and insight. His guests at the Festival include cartoon phenomenon Kate Beaton, the quintessential man of letters Barry Callaghan, and the completely fascinating Helen Oyeyemi. Watch Bill bring out the best from a trio of smart folks.
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/40-conversations-bill
2011 FESTIVAL AUTHORS
In a solo event (62) and together with Alexandra Fuller (49) Aminatta Forna will bring to us insights into an Africa most of us don't know. In The Memory of Love (winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and shortlisted for the Orange Prize), Forna tells the story of a city and a nation whose every recollection is shadowed by grief and loss. Ancestor Stones reflects Forna's look at a society in transition. Her most recent book The Devil That Danced On The Water: A Daughter's Quest has been described as "a shining example of what autobiography can be: harrowing, illuminating and thoughtful".
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/62-intimate-evening-aminatta-forna
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/49-under-african-skies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/18/memory-of-love-aminatta-forna
Alexandra Fuller's experience of Africa is quite different than Aminatta Forma's, not least because Fuller grew up in South Africa, and Forma, in Sierra Leone. Different again is Gary Geddes's experience. In Truth and Storytelling, Fuller, together with Canada's Man of Letters, Barry Callaghan, Gary Geddes and writer, humanist and primatologist Andrew Westoll will talk about writing non-fiction that has personal significance. And possibly: personal repercussion. Ottawa's Ian Smillie describes Garry Geddes's book as: "Poignant, literature and sometimes just plan funny. Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer's Search for Justice and Redemption in Africa is a deeply textured journey without maps into the unexplored rifts of sub-Saharan Africa, the human experience and the psyche.” (events (43, 58)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/58-non-fiction-after-noon
http://www.villagebooks.com/village-books-gary-geddes-01/31/12
Linda Grant is a popular visitor to the Festival. Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000, she brought her novel, Still Here, in 2003, a powerful story of women and sex, men and war and miracle face cream. In 2008, her focus was the relationship between the individual and their clothes, reflected in The Thoughtful Dresser and The Clothes on their Backs (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize). This year, she brings We Had It So Good, which Tom Sandborn described as “one baby boomers will read with rueful recognition”. (events 9, 44)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/9-intimate-evening-linda-grant
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/44-my-generation
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/we-had-it-so-good-by-linda-grant/article2041666/
Alistair MacLeod considers David Adams Richards “one of the exceptional writers of our time”. And Donna Bailey Nurse writes that New Brunswick's David Adams Richards's Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul exposes Canada's rawest nerve. Between his solo event (50) and conversations with Lynn Coady, Nicole Lundrigan, and D.W. Wilson (event 56), Richards and his colleagues explore the challenge of living with and writing about violence and despair—and finding possibilities of hope.
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/50-intimate-evening-david-adams-richards
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/incidents-in-the-life-of-markus-paul-by-david-adams-richards/article2021437/
Giles Blunt writes that Lynn Coady's The Antagonist is a novel that is all about how it feels to be categorized, dismissed, reduced by the very people who should know you best, adding that “something approaching inner peace becomes possible.” (events 41, 56, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/41-culture-petri-dish
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-antagonist-by-lynn-coady/article2159310/
In Glass Boys, Nicole Lundrigan presents a full cast of broken characters and the ways they shape—and misshape—one another, writes Chad Pelley. It's a dark story carrying a consistently weighty tone, with enough funny and tender moments between characters to spare it from being heavy or maudlin. (events 56, 63)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/63-sunday-brunch
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-glass-boys-by-nicole-lundrigan/
"Once you break a knuckle...you will break it again," RCMP officer John Crease tells his son Will in the opening story of D.W. Wilson's collection, writes Steven W. Beattie. (The assertion is repeated, mantra-like, in the closing story.) This is at once John's personal philosophy and a statement of principle for Wilson's book, says Beattie. As announced last week, D.W. Wilson has won the £15,000 BBC National Short Story award with The Dead. (events 56, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-once-you-break-a-knuckle-by-d-w-wilson/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Johanna Skibsrud (This Will Be Difficult to Explain & Other Stories) and Martha Schabas (Various Positions). Thursday, October 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TWS READING SERIES
Featuring guest author Jude Neale, who has just published her second book of poetry, Only the Fallen Can see. Friday, October 14 at 7pm. Take 5 Cafe, 429 Granville Street (at West Hastings). For event details, please visit www.thewritersstudio.ca/readings.
HOT SONNET
Calendar poets read the work of Maxine Gadd, Fred Wah, Steve Collis, Kate Braid, Miranda Pearson, Warren Dean Fulton, Diane Tucker, Catherine Owen, Judith Copithorne, Sonnet l'Abbe, Heidi Greco, and George Bowering. Includes music by Jess Hill. Saturday, October 15 at 6:00pm. Tickets: $20. W2 Media Cafe, 111 W. Hastings. More information at www.creativetechnology.org.
JOHN GILMORE AND KEITH HARRISON
Readings by authors John Gilmore and Keith Harrison. John Gilmore's first novel is Head of a Man. Keith Harrison's recent work is The Missionary, The Violinist and the Aunt Whose Head Was Squeezed. Monday, October 17 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St.
PEN-IN-HAND POETRY/PROSE READING SERIES
Readings by Patricia Young, Arlene Paré, Julie Paul, Cynthia Kerkham, Claudia Haagan and Barb Henderson. Monday, October 17 at 7:30pm. Cost: $3. Serious Coffee, Cook Street Village, 230 Cook Street, Victoria.
VANCOUVER 125 POETRY CONFERENCE
Four-day literary event includes daytime seminars and discussions that explore the poetics of everything from the avant-garde to traditional poetic forms. October 19-22, 2011. SFU Woodward's, 149 W. Hastings. Complete information at www.v125pc.com.
CBC RADIO STUDIO ONE BOOK CLUB
On Sat Oct. 22, bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik will be the special guest in the CBC Radio Studio One Book Club. Adam is this year's Massey Lecturer (which is at the Chan Oct. 23) and his subject is winter - the season, the space, the cycle. The only way to get in, is to win! www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub.
Upcoming
JAMES DASHNER
Meet the author of The Maze Runner Trilogy. Wednesday, October 26 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $5. West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary, 4595 8th Ave. W. Information and tickets at www.kidsbooks.ca.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Susan McCaslin (Demeter Goes Skydiving) and Christopher Patton (Curious Memory). Thursday, October 27 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
ANNIE BARROWS
Two opportunities to meet the author of the popular Ivy + Bean series. North Vancouver: Tuesday, November 1 at 4:00pm, Lynn Valley Branch library. Vancouver: Tuesday, November 1 at 7:00pm, West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary, 4595 8th Ave. W. Tickets: $5. Information and tickets at www.kidsbooks.ca.
JOHN FLANAGAN
Meet the author of the popular series Ranger's Apprentice. Thursday, November 3 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $5. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Gymnasium, 2550 Camosun Street. More information and tickets at www.kidsbooks.ca.
Governor General's Literary Awards
Four writers named this week as finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards will be appearing at the Vancouver International Writers Festival. Esi Edugyan, Marina Endicott, David Bezmozgis and Andrew Nikiforuk were all named as finalists for the award.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/author+Edugyan+Patrick+deWitt+score+literary+tricks/5532579/story.html
HAL'S FESTIVAL PICKS
Artistic Director Hal Wake's suggestions for the 2011 Festival
Event 21
There is no more inexpensive way to travel the world than through books. And no better way to travel through time. Rich with History brings together four fine writers who will take us from 1850's Paris to Sri Lanka at the turn of the last century, to the turbulent '70's in Cambodia and back home to Canada at the onset of the 20th century.
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
Event 6
On the opening night of the Festival we'll introduce you to names you will be hearing from for quite some time. And Introducing... features four fiction writers from around the world who have published a first novel or first collection of stories and are already making a splash with their work. A late edition to this group is Michael Christie whose book The Beggars Garden was longlisted for the Giller Prize and shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize this year.
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/6-and-introducing
Event 40
The Bill in the event Conversations with Bill is Bill Richardson, a name that brings to mind surprise, laughter and insight. His guests at the Festival include cartoon phenomenon Kate Beaton, the quintessential man of letters Barry Callaghan, and the completely fascinating Helen Oyeyemi. Watch Bill bring out the best from a trio of smart folks.
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/40-conversations-bill
2011 FESTIVAL AUTHORS
In a solo event (62) and together with Alexandra Fuller (49) Aminatta Forna will bring to us insights into an Africa most of us don't know. In The Memory of Love (winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and shortlisted for the Orange Prize), Forna tells the story of a city and a nation whose every recollection is shadowed by grief and loss. Ancestor Stones reflects Forna's look at a society in transition. Her most recent book The Devil That Danced On The Water: A Daughter's Quest has been described as "a shining example of what autobiography can be: harrowing, illuminating and thoughtful".
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/62-intimate-evening-aminatta-forna
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/49-under-african-skies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/18/memory-of-love-aminatta-forna
Alexandra Fuller's experience of Africa is quite different than Aminatta Forma's, not least because Fuller grew up in South Africa, and Forma, in Sierra Leone. Different again is Gary Geddes's experience. In Truth and Storytelling, Fuller, together with Canada's Man of Letters, Barry Callaghan, Gary Geddes and writer, humanist and primatologist Andrew Westoll will talk about writing non-fiction that has personal significance. And possibly: personal repercussion. Ottawa's Ian Smillie describes Garry Geddes's book as: "Poignant, literature and sometimes just plan funny. Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer's Search for Justice and Redemption in Africa is a deeply textured journey without maps into the unexplored rifts of sub-Saharan Africa, the human experience and the psyche.” (events (43, 58)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/58-non-fiction-after-noon
http://www.villagebooks.com/village-books-gary-geddes-01/31/12
Linda Grant is a popular visitor to the Festival. Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000, she brought her novel, Still Here, in 2003, a powerful story of women and sex, men and war and miracle face cream. In 2008, her focus was the relationship between the individual and their clothes, reflected in The Thoughtful Dresser and The Clothes on their Backs (shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize). This year, she brings We Had It So Good, which Tom Sandborn described as “one baby boomers will read with rueful recognition”. (events 9, 44)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/9-intimate-evening-linda-grant
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/44-my-generation
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/we-had-it-so-good-by-linda-grant/article2041666/
Alistair MacLeod considers David Adams Richards “one of the exceptional writers of our time”. And Donna Bailey Nurse writes that New Brunswick's David Adams Richards's Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul exposes Canada's rawest nerve. Between his solo event (50) and conversations with Lynn Coady, Nicole Lundrigan, and D.W. Wilson (event 56), Richards and his colleagues explore the challenge of living with and writing about violence and despair—and finding possibilities of hope.
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/50-intimate-evening-david-adams-richards
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/incidents-in-the-life-of-markus-paul-by-david-adams-richards/article2021437/
Giles Blunt writes that Lynn Coady's The Antagonist is a novel that is all about how it feels to be categorized, dismissed, reduced by the very people who should know you best, adding that “something approaching inner peace becomes possible.” (events 41, 56, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/41-culture-petri-dish
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-antagonist-by-lynn-coady/article2159310/
In Glass Boys, Nicole Lundrigan presents a full cast of broken characters and the ways they shape—and misshape—one another, writes Chad Pelley. It's a dark story carrying a consistently weighty tone, with enough funny and tender moments between characters to spare it from being heavy or maudlin. (events 56, 63)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/63-sunday-brunch
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-glass-boys-by-nicole-lundrigan/
"Once you break a knuckle...you will break it again," RCMP officer John Crease tells his son Will in the opening story of D.W. Wilson's collection, writes Steven W. Beattie. (The assertion is repeated, mantra-like, in the closing story.) This is at once John's personal philosophy and a statement of principle for Wilson's book, says Beattie. As announced last week, D.W. Wilson has won the £15,000 BBC National Short Story award with The Dead. (events 56, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-once-you-break-a-knuckle-by-d-w-wilson/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Johanna Skibsrud (This Will Be Difficult to Explain & Other Stories) and Martha Schabas (Various Positions). Thursday, October 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TWS READING SERIES
Featuring guest author Jude Neale, who has just published her second book of poetry, Only the Fallen Can see. Friday, October 14 at 7pm. Take 5 Cafe, 429 Granville Street (at West Hastings). For event details, please visit www.thewritersstudio.ca/readings.
HOT SONNET
Calendar poets read the work of Maxine Gadd, Fred Wah, Steve Collis, Kate Braid, Miranda Pearson, Warren Dean Fulton, Diane Tucker, Catherine Owen, Judith Copithorne, Sonnet l'Abbe, Heidi Greco, and George Bowering. Includes music by Jess Hill. Saturday, October 15 at 6:00pm. Tickets: $20. W2 Media Cafe, 111 W. Hastings. More information at www.creativetechnology.org.
JOHN GILMORE AND KEITH HARRISON
Readings by authors John Gilmore and Keith Harrison. John Gilmore's first novel is Head of a Man. Keith Harrison's recent work is The Missionary, The Violinist and the Aunt Whose Head Was Squeezed. Monday, October 17 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St.
PEN-IN-HAND POETRY/PROSE READING SERIES
Readings by Patricia Young, Arlene Paré, Julie Paul, Cynthia Kerkham, Claudia Haagan and Barb Henderson. Monday, October 17 at 7:30pm. Cost: $3. Serious Coffee, Cook Street Village, 230 Cook Street, Victoria.
VANCOUVER 125 POETRY CONFERENCE
Four-day literary event includes daytime seminars and discussions that explore the poetics of everything from the avant-garde to traditional poetic forms. October 19-22, 2011. SFU Woodward's, 149 W. Hastings. Complete information at www.v125pc.com.
CBC RADIO STUDIO ONE BOOK CLUB
On Sat Oct. 22, bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik will be the special guest in the CBC Radio Studio One Book Club. Adam is this year's Massey Lecturer (which is at the Chan Oct. 23) and his subject is winter - the season, the space, the cycle. The only way to get in, is to win! www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub.
Upcoming
JAMES DASHNER
Meet the author of The Maze Runner Trilogy. Wednesday, October 26 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $5. West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary, 4595 8th Ave. W. Information and tickets at www.kidsbooks.ca.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Susan McCaslin (Demeter Goes Skydiving) and Christopher Patton (Curious Memory). Thursday, October 27 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
ANNIE BARROWS
Two opportunities to meet the author of the popular Ivy + Bean series. North Vancouver: Tuesday, November 1 at 4:00pm, Lynn Valley Branch library. Vancouver: Tuesday, November 1 at 7:00pm, West Point Grey United Church Sanctuary, 4595 8th Ave. W. Tickets: $5. Information and tickets at www.kidsbooks.ca.
JOHN FLANAGAN
Meet the author of the popular series Ranger's Apprentice. Thursday, November 3 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $5. Our Lady of Perpetual Help Gymnasium, 2550 Camosun Street. More information and tickets at www.kidsbooks.ca.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Book News Vol. 6 No. 40
BOOK NEWS
Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist Announced
Four authors participating in this year’s Festival—David Bezmozgis, Lynn Coady, Esi Edugyan, and Zsuzsi Gartner, along with Patrick deWitt and Michael Ondaatje, both of whom were presented by the Writers Festival earlier in 2011, have advanced to the shortlist of Canada's Scotiabank Giller Prize.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2011/10/04/giller-shortlist-includes-three-b-c-authors/
HAL'S FESTIVAL PICKS
Artistic Director Hal Wake's suggestions for the 2011 Festival
The Dish
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/10-dish
Doug Gibson is one of the best storytellers I have ever met. Combine that with his close friendship and working relationships with Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, Alistair MacLeod, W.O. Mitchell and many more and you have the makings for an entertaining evening event. Grab a glass of wine before you go into the theatre, and you'll feel like you are at an exclusive literary party.
The Tie that Binds
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
Marriage is one of the fundamental institutions of western society. But behind the institutional façade are personal stories of joy, grief, humour and drama. In The Tie that Binds three excellent novelists, Peter Behrens, Tessa McWatt and Rosemary Nixon explore the dynamics of marital relations, for better or for worse.
Possibilities of Hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
Newcomers Nicole Lundrigan and D.W. Wilson (winner of the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award) join veterans David Adams Richards and Lynn Coady (shortlisted for the Giller) in one of the most provocative panels at the Festival. In their fiction each of these writers tackles some pretty gritty stuff, with characters who aren't exactly sailing through life. Yet as the event title, Possibilities of Hope suggests, there is an essential struggle toward the light that is part of the human condition. Great writers, smart conversation.
2011 FESTIVAL AUTHORS
In The Law of Dreams, which won the 2006 Governor-General's Award for fiction, Peter Behrens imagined the journey his great-great-grandfather made to Montreal. In The O'Briens, he continues telling a story that is based in part on the true story of his own family, writes William Kowalski. The book is impressive in its scope and ambitious in its goals. Behrens's writing is always tight, and some of his descriptions are flat-out jaw-dropping, says Kowalski. (events 42, 64)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/42-land-plenty
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-obriens-by-peter-behrens/article2116141/
Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—heckles superheroes, scientists, and sellouts, writes Scott Thill. The smart, sharp Beaton casts a much wider cultural dragnet in her otherwise unassuming art, one which snatches up literary, historical and scientific icons without mercy, says Thill. Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—with dignity for few and cookies for all. (event 40)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/40-conversations-bill
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/09/kate-beaton-hark-vagrant/
Laura Miller interviews Beaton on making history, Jane Eyre and superheroes funny.
http://entertainment.salon.com/2011/09/22/kate_beaton/singleton/
Clark Blaise's The Meager Tarmac, a collection of short fiction, is a naked instance of appropriation of voice—a literary felony justified in this case by the results. If you're going to appropriate someone's voice, you better know how you want that voice to sound, writes Philip Marchand, and Blaise has spent his life and his career tuning his ear to foreign rhythms. (events 42, 54)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/42-land-plenty
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/54-clark-blaise-and-rudy-wiebe-conversation
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/05/27/open-book-the-meagre-tarmac-by-clark-blaise/
Kevin Chong's Beauty Plus Pity is a post-coming-of-age novel set during that time after university when a lot of twentysomethings have no idea who they are or what to do, and find themselves back in their hometowns, writes Zoe Whittall. This is not the typical son-of-immigrants tale; but the story itself is whipsmart, says Whittall. (events 8, 55)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/8-vancouver-seen
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/55-bamboo-lettering
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/beauty-plus-pity-by-kevin-chong/article2191000/
When it comes to toddler care, distractions happen. In most cases, tragedy is averted: parents pledge to keep a closer eye and then move on. But what happens when tragedy isn't averted and the guilt-ridden parent can't move on? This is the subject of Farzana Doctor's novel, Six Metres of Pavement. Resolution begins when a character has two chance encounters. (events 57, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/57-community-centred
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/six-metres-of-pavement-by-farzana-doctor/article1961849/
The narrative of Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues swings between the period around World War II and 1992, when the effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall are still being felt. The war period is particularly well-trod ground, but Edugyan makes fresh tracks in this richly imagined story, writes Barbara Carey. (events 21, 51)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/51-lovers-dangerous-time
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1051519
Martin Espada's The Trouble Ball counters the poetic trend to disconnect from what's happening in the world, writes Sunil Freeman. The first poem revisits a day in 1941, when Espada's 11 year-old father, the only brown boy at Ebbets Field, learned that Blacks were not allowed to play major league baseball. (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://thewriterscenter.blogspot.com/2011/04/book-review-martin-espadas-trouble-ball.html
Alexandra Fuller's Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is alternately a prequel and sequel to her first book Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, says Rachel Pulfer. Structured as a biography of her mother, Nicola Fuller “of Central Africa,” as she liked to introduce herself, Cocktail Hour is both Fuller's book-length salute to the woman who raised her, and a searing critique of the racist views her mother lived by. (events 43, 49)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/49-under-african-skies
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/cocktail-hour-under-the-tree-of-forgetfulness-by-alexandra-fuller/article2180547/
Ottawa's Ian Smillie describes Gary Geddes's book as: "Poignant, literature and sometimes just plan funny. Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer's Search for Justice and Redemption in Africa is a deeply textured journey without maps into the unexplored rifts of sub-Saharan Africa, the human experience and the psyche.” (events 43, 58)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/58-non-fiction-after-noon
http://www.villagebooks.com/village-books-gary-geddes-01/31/12
Charles Bainbridge says of John Glenday's Grain: “The sturdy, unabashed lyricism of this wonderful book offers a haunting music full of subtlety of thought and religious echoes. Glenday is fascinated by sudden changes and fallings away, but, most of all, by endings and beginnings.” (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/24/grain-john-glenday-kona-macphee
In Pauline Holdstock's Into the Heart of the Country, Molly Norton, native daughter of the Governor, recounts her travels north out of York with Samuel Hearne, her husband. Molly gives a voice to the Native women, who define much of the patchwork stories of Canada at the time, writes Brooke Ford. (events 36, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/36-wild-west
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/15/book-review-into-the-heart-of-the-country-by-pauline-holdstock/
Poet Fanny Howe, in a conversation with Leonard Schwarts about writing, says “I write in a sort of echo state where the sentence passes through me and around in a circle and hits something out there and then comes back in again. It's like the spiral that I keep talking about.” (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://jacketmagazine.com/28/schwartz-iv-howe.html
“Victor Hugo was a madman who believed he was Victor Hugo,” said Cocteau of his countryman. Seldom has a literary quip so accurately found its mark, writes Philip Marchand. No doubt the ghost of Hugo is upset with Ms. Humphreys for writing a novel about him that is not primarily about him, but about three other characters: his daughter, his wife, and her lover. An emotionally tumultuous drama follows fairly closely the known facts. Helen Humphreys' The Reinvention of Love is a triumph of lucid, vigorous, suspenseful narrative. (events 21, 59)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/59-when-then-was-now
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/09/open-book-the-reinvention-of-love-by-helen-humphreys/
The trouble with historical fiction, says Brett Alexander Savory, is that we know how the story ends. Savory notes that particular strengths of C.C. Humphreys' A Place Called Armageddon are its strong battle scenes and the portrayal of the fear of the ordinary people, and despite our assumption about the book's ending, there is the suggestion that the fall of Constantinople was actually a close call. (events 17, 32, 59)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/17-unknown
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/32-another%E2%80%99s-skin
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/59-when-then-was-now
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/a-place-called-armageddon-by-cc-humphreys/article2143261/
When Wayne Johnston's A World Elsewhere opens, it's the Gilded Age–Mark Twain's satirical coinage for the era of unrestrained greed and political corruption in late-19th-century America–in Manhattan and on Rhode Island. But on Dark Marsh Road in St. John's, Landish Druken lives in exile, writes T.F. Rigelhof. So he goes to live in Vanderland. Not surprisingly, Wharton and Henry James make cameo appearances at Vanderland, but the author most in evidence is Lewis Carroll. (events 52, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/52-coast-coast
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/a-world-elsewhere-by-wayne-johnston/article2128173/
In Glass Boys, Nicole Lundrigan presents a full cast of broken characters and the ways they shape—and misshape—one another, writes Chad Pelley. It's a dark story carrying a consistently weighty tone, with enough funny and tender moments between characters to spare it from being heavy or maudlin. (events 56, 63)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/63-sunday-brunch
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-glass-boys-by-nicole-lundrigan/
Vital Signs, by Tessa McWatt, is a story about a crisis in an ordinary family, and a mesmerizing read, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. Vital Signs is a work of literature, criticism and philosophy all at once: a formidable intellectual hat trick says Bailey Nurse. (events 64, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/07/29/book-review-vital-signs-by-tessa-mcwatt/
Sachiko Murakami's Rebuild questions the excesses of the real-estate market as it has morphed into the culture of Vancouver, writes Jacqueline Turner, and acknowledges a debt to the attention paid to the "Vancouver special" form of housing, Throughout the book, poetry itself is “rebuilt”, says Turner. (event 45)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.straight.com/article-472306/vancouver/rebuild
Andrew Nikiforuk's Empire of the Beetle is not just a primer on the bark beetles that have killed more than 30 billion trees in Canada and the American West, writes William Bryant Logan. It is "the pathology of resource management," the mistaken notion that any forest policy is better than learning from nature.” (events 24, 58)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/24-forest-and-trees
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/58-non-fiction-after-noon
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/empire-of-the-beetle-by-andrew-nikiforuk/article2186307/
Helen Oyeyemi's daring retelling of the Bluebeard story is a gripping tale writes Justine Jordan. Mr Fox is funny, deep, shocking, wry, heart-warming and spine-chilling. Oyeyemi breathes life into ideas like nobody else, says Jordan. (events 7, 40)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/7-grand-openings
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/40-conversations-bill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/11/mr-fox-helen-oyeyemi-review
Thomas Pletzinger's Funeral for a Dog, is about many good things—sex, love, a form of ménage-à-trois, children's books, dogs, New York. But more than anything else, it is about what happens when a thing is lost, writes Leland de la Durantaye. The Uwe-Johnson Prize-winning book centers on loss experienced as figurative and literal exile, and is bound to call to mind for readers of German fiction the haunting works of W.G. Sebald. (events 6, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/6-and-introducing
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/books/review/book-review-funeral-for-a-dog-by-thomas-pletzinger.html
Steven Price's Into That Darkness is many things, says Robert J. Wiersema: a novel of survival, a collection of post-apocalyptic quests, an account of loss in its myriad forms, and of hope at its most vital and true. It is, above all, compelling and real, a novel that will satisfy at every level. (event 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/22/book-review-into-that-darkness-by-steven-price/
In a stark, stunning and profound new novel, New Brunswick's David Adams Richards exposes Canada's rawest nerve, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul scrutinizes the lingering consequences of the country's brutal treatment of aboriginal peoples. For a white man, Richards has chosen the most controversial tack imaginable. With Richards, as with fictional journalist Max Doran, it matters who tells the story. (events 50, 56)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/50-intimate-evening-david-adams-richards
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/05/15/book-review-incidents-in-the-life-of-markus-paul-by-david-adams-richards/
For a reminder of why Peter Robinson is one of Canada's best storytellers, look no further than the opening of this brilliant stand-alone novel Before the Poison, writes Margaret Cannon. (events 35, 38)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/35-ian-rankin-and-peter-robinson-conversation
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/38-crime-time
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/new-in-crime-fiction-the-latest-thrillers-and-mysteries/article2186325/
Olive Senior is a prolific writer and respected poet. Dancing Lessons is her first novel. She will tango on and we will be warmly listening, says Anakana Schofield. (events 45, 48)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/48-literary-cabaret
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/dancing-lessons-by-olive-senior/article2181726/
"How are we going to survive unless we turn our hearts to stone?" a comrade warns the hero of Antanas Sileika's Underground, an example of the elegant thinking that characterizes this rare and compelling chronicle of Lithuanian partisans and their violent struggle against Soviet occupation, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. (events 51, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/51-lovers-dangerous-time
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/underground-by-antanas-sileika/article1976566/
Michael V. Smith is a talented writer who works in highly nuanced and painterly detail. His scenes are alive with sensory images that reveal mood and subtext and allusion, writes Lynda Grace Philippsen. In Smith's novel Progress, the city-based Power Authority's plans for increased energy push forward, although the issue divides the locals. (events 61, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/progress-by-michael-v-smith/article2069339/
In The Blue Light Project, Timothy Taylor addresses contemporary culture's bombardment by media and fame, the implications of art, the dwindling margin between entertainment and violence, and the clandestine networks of war, writes David Chau. A complex novel with the veneer of a thriller, The Blue Light Project examines the sociopolitical climate of a volatile age and the individual lives within its furor. (events 41, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/41-culture-petri-dish
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.straight.com/article-378965/vancouver/book-review-blue-light-project-timothy-taylor
Sharon Thesen's Oyama Pink Shale is dedicated to the memory of deceased poet Robin Blaser, writes Zoe Whittall. It's a very slim volume, but packs quite a punch. Thesen's careful, delicate use of language and deft handle on metaphor can shine brilliantly and Thesen keeps the personal or poetic at a distance. Oyama Pink Shale is both skilled and moving says Whittall. (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/three-poets-canadian-women-all-for-the-ages/article2091287/
Madeleine Thien's Dogs at the Perimeter is a modest-sized fiction with outsized ambitions, writes Chares Foran. The appetite for unfolding complicated stories is impressive, with revelations virtually right up to the last page. Madeleine Thien's voice is distinguished for its insight, compassion and quiet determination, says Foran. (events 7, 21)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/7-grand-openings
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/dogs-at-the-perimeter-by-madeleine-thien/article2012824/
In her review of two of Miriam Toews' books—Irma Voth and Swing Low—Maria Russo comments that Toews writes with an instinctive grasp of the adolescent point of view, in which concepts like personal freedom and self-determination have the highest emotional charge. Adults are powerful but slightly irrelevant beings. (events 48, 52)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/48-literary-cabaret
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/52-coast-coast
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/books/review/a-novel-and-a-memoir-of-the-mennonite-way.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3&pagewanted=all
Writer, humanist and primatologist Andrew Westoll describes the complicated nature of our closest relatives, through observation of chimps living at Fauna Sanctuary, where each chimpanzee is given a chance to form relationships of trust. Andrew Westoll tells a riveting story in The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, writes Linda Spalding. (events 3, 43)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/3-home-chimps
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-chimps-of-fauna-sanctuary-by-andrew-westoll/article2037211/
"Once you break a knuckle...you will break it again," RCMP officer John Crease tells his son Will in the opening story of D.W. Wilson's collection, writes Steven W. Beattie. (The assertion is repeated, mantra-like, in the closing story.) This is at once John's personal philosophy and a statement of principle for Wilson's book, says Beattie. As announced last week, D.W. Wilson has won the £15,000 BBC National Short Story award with The Dead. (events 56, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-once-you-break-a-knuckle-by-d-w-wilson/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
KRANKY READING SERIES
Readings by Rebecca Keillor, Kevin Spenst, and Jenn Farrell. Thursday, October 6 at 7:00pm. Kranky Cafe, 216-228 4th Ave. E., Vancouver. More information at http://talonbooks.com/events.
GAYLA REID
The Canadian author discusses her newest book Come From Afar. Thursday, October 6 at 7:00pm, free. McGill Branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert Street. More information at www.bpl.bc.ca.
PACIFIC ARBOUR SPEAKER SERIES
Presenting Dr. Marc Lewis with his book Memoirs of an Addicted Brain. Thursday, October 6 at 7:30pm. Tickets $12/$10. North Shore Credit Union Centre for the Performing Arts, Capilano University. Box office: 604-990-7810. Information at www.capilanou.ca/nscucentre.
TEENS GONE WIRED BOOK LAUNCH
The launch of Lyndsay Green's new book Teens Gone Wired: Are You Ready? features an excerpt from Out in the Open, Green Thumb Theatre's new touring play for teens. Friday, October 7 at 7:00pm, free. Creekside Community Recreation Centre, 1 Athletes Way. More information at www.lyndsaygreen.com.
ALCUIN AWARDS FOR CANADIAN BOOK DESIGN
The ceremonies for this year's presentation of the 29th Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada will precede an informal talk by New York graphic designer and Vintage Books' Artistic Director, John Gall. Wednesday, October 12 at 6:30pm, free. Room SB301, Emily Carr University, 1399 Johnston Street. More information at blog.alcuinsociety.com.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Johanna Skibsrud (This Will Be Difficult to Explain & Other Stories) and Martha Schabas (Various Positions). Thursday, October 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TWS READING SERIES
Featuring guest author Jude Neale, who has just published her second book of poetry, Only the Fallen Can see. Friday, October 14 at 7pm. Take 5 Cafe, 429 Granville Street (at West Hastings). For event details, please visit http://www.thewritersstudio.ca/readings/.
HOT SONNET
Calendar poets read the work of Maxine Gadd, Fred Wah, Steve Collis, Kate Braid, Miranda Pearson, Warren Dean Fulton, Diane Tucker, Catherine Owen, Judith Copithorne, Sonnet l'Abbe, Heidi Greco, and George Bowering. Includes music by Jess Hill. Saturday, October 15 at 6:00pm. Tickets: $20. W2 Media Cafe, 111 W. Hastings. More information at www.creativetechnology.org.
LITERATI GALA - BOLLYWOOD, BOOKS AND BILL!
Join the VIWF for the Literati Gala on October 17th at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel. CBC's Bill Richardson hosts the event that features Festival writers and dancers from the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration Society in a fundraising event for our Spreading the Word schools program. For more information and ticket purchase, http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/literatigala.
JOHN GILMORE AND KEITH HARRISON
Readings by authors John Gilmore and Keith Harrison. John Gilmore's first novel is Head of a Man. Keith Harrison's recent work is The Missionary, The Violinist and the Aunt Whose Head Was Squeezed. Monday, October 17 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St.
Upcoming
VANCOUVER 125 POETRY CONFERENCE
Four-day literary event includes daytime seminars and discussions that explore the poetics of everything from the avant-garde to traditional poetic forms. October 19-22, 2011. SFU Woodward's, 149 W. Hastings. Complete information at www.v125pc.com.
CBC RADIO STUDIO ONE BOOK CLUB
On Sat Oct. 22, bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik will be the special guest in the CBC Radio Studio One Book Club. Adam is this year's Massey Lecturer (which is at the Chan Oct. 23) and his subject is winter - the season, the space, the cycle. The only way to get in, is to win! www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Susan McCaslin (Demeter Goes Skydiving) and Christopher Patton (Curious Memory). Thursday, October 27 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlist Announced
Four authors participating in this year’s Festival—David Bezmozgis, Lynn Coady, Esi Edugyan, and Zsuzsi Gartner, along with Patrick deWitt and Michael Ondaatje, both of whom were presented by the Writers Festival earlier in 2011, have advanced to the shortlist of Canada's Scotiabank Giller Prize.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2011/10/04/giller-shortlist-includes-three-b-c-authors/
HAL'S FESTIVAL PICKS
Artistic Director Hal Wake's suggestions for the 2011 Festival
The Dish
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/10-dish
Doug Gibson is one of the best storytellers I have ever met. Combine that with his close friendship and working relationships with Robertson Davies, Alice Munro, Alistair MacLeod, W.O. Mitchell and many more and you have the makings for an entertaining evening event. Grab a glass of wine before you go into the theatre, and you'll feel like you are at an exclusive literary party.
The Tie that Binds
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
Marriage is one of the fundamental institutions of western society. But behind the institutional façade are personal stories of joy, grief, humour and drama. In The Tie that Binds three excellent novelists, Peter Behrens, Tessa McWatt and Rosemary Nixon explore the dynamics of marital relations, for better or for worse.
Possibilities of Hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
Newcomers Nicole Lundrigan and D.W. Wilson (winner of the 2011 BBC National Short Story Award) join veterans David Adams Richards and Lynn Coady (shortlisted for the Giller) in one of the most provocative panels at the Festival. In their fiction each of these writers tackles some pretty gritty stuff, with characters who aren't exactly sailing through life. Yet as the event title, Possibilities of Hope suggests, there is an essential struggle toward the light that is part of the human condition. Great writers, smart conversation.
2011 FESTIVAL AUTHORS
In The Law of Dreams, which won the 2006 Governor-General's Award for fiction, Peter Behrens imagined the journey his great-great-grandfather made to Montreal. In The O'Briens, he continues telling a story that is based in part on the true story of his own family, writes William Kowalski. The book is impressive in its scope and ambitious in its goals. Behrens's writing is always tight, and some of his descriptions are flat-out jaw-dropping, says Kowalski. (events 42, 64)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/42-land-plenty
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-obriens-by-peter-behrens/article2116141/
Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—heckles superheroes, scientists, and sellouts, writes Scott Thill. The smart, sharp Beaton casts a much wider cultural dragnet in her otherwise unassuming art, one which snatches up literary, historical and scientific icons without mercy, says Thill. Hark! A Vagrant takes readers on a romp through history and literature—with dignity for few and cookies for all. (event 40)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/40-conversations-bill
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/09/kate-beaton-hark-vagrant/
Laura Miller interviews Beaton on making history, Jane Eyre and superheroes funny.
http://entertainment.salon.com/2011/09/22/kate_beaton/singleton/
Clark Blaise's The Meager Tarmac, a collection of short fiction, is a naked instance of appropriation of voice—a literary felony justified in this case by the results. If you're going to appropriate someone's voice, you better know how you want that voice to sound, writes Philip Marchand, and Blaise has spent his life and his career tuning his ear to foreign rhythms. (events 42, 54)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/42-land-plenty
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/54-clark-blaise-and-rudy-wiebe-conversation
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/05/27/open-book-the-meagre-tarmac-by-clark-blaise/
Kevin Chong's Beauty Plus Pity is a post-coming-of-age novel set during that time after university when a lot of twentysomethings have no idea who they are or what to do, and find themselves back in their hometowns, writes Zoe Whittall. This is not the typical son-of-immigrants tale; but the story itself is whipsmart, says Whittall. (events 8, 55)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/8-vancouver-seen
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/55-bamboo-lettering
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/beauty-plus-pity-by-kevin-chong/article2191000/
When it comes to toddler care, distractions happen. In most cases, tragedy is averted: parents pledge to keep a closer eye and then move on. But what happens when tragedy isn't averted and the guilt-ridden parent can't move on? This is the subject of Farzana Doctor's novel, Six Metres of Pavement. Resolution begins when a character has two chance encounters. (events 57, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/57-community-centred
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/six-metres-of-pavement-by-farzana-doctor/article1961849/
The narrative of Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues swings between the period around World War II and 1992, when the effects of the fall of the Berlin Wall are still being felt. The war period is particularly well-trod ground, but Edugyan makes fresh tracks in this richly imagined story, writes Barbara Carey. (events 21, 51)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/51-lovers-dangerous-time
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1051519
Martin Espada's The Trouble Ball counters the poetic trend to disconnect from what's happening in the world, writes Sunil Freeman. The first poem revisits a day in 1941, when Espada's 11 year-old father, the only brown boy at Ebbets Field, learned that Blacks were not allowed to play major league baseball. (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://thewriterscenter.blogspot.com/2011/04/book-review-martin-espadas-trouble-ball.html
Alexandra Fuller's Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness is alternately a prequel and sequel to her first book Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, says Rachel Pulfer. Structured as a biography of her mother, Nicola Fuller “of Central Africa,” as she liked to introduce herself, Cocktail Hour is both Fuller's book-length salute to the woman who raised her, and a searing critique of the racist views her mother lived by. (events 43, 49)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/49-under-african-skies
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/cocktail-hour-under-the-tree-of-forgetfulness-by-alexandra-fuller/article2180547/
Ottawa's Ian Smillie describes Gary Geddes's book as: "Poignant, literature and sometimes just plan funny. Drink the Bitter Root: A Writer's Search for Justice and Redemption in Africa is a deeply textured journey without maps into the unexplored rifts of sub-Saharan Africa, the human experience and the psyche.” (events 43, 58)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/58-non-fiction-after-noon
http://www.villagebooks.com/village-books-gary-geddes-01/31/12
Charles Bainbridge says of John Glenday's Grain: “The sturdy, unabashed lyricism of this wonderful book offers a haunting music full of subtlety of thought and religious echoes. Glenday is fascinated by sudden changes and fallings away, but, most of all, by endings and beginnings.” (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/apr/24/grain-john-glenday-kona-macphee
In Pauline Holdstock's Into the Heart of the Country, Molly Norton, native daughter of the Governor, recounts her travels north out of York with Samuel Hearne, her husband. Molly gives a voice to the Native women, who define much of the patchwork stories of Canada at the time, writes Brooke Ford. (events 36, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/36-wild-west
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/15/book-review-into-the-heart-of-the-country-by-pauline-holdstock/
Poet Fanny Howe, in a conversation with Leonard Schwarts about writing, says “I write in a sort of echo state where the sentence passes through me and around in a circle and hits something out there and then comes back in again. It's like the spiral that I keep talking about.” (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://jacketmagazine.com/28/schwartz-iv-howe.html
“Victor Hugo was a madman who believed he was Victor Hugo,” said Cocteau of his countryman. Seldom has a literary quip so accurately found its mark, writes Philip Marchand. No doubt the ghost of Hugo is upset with Ms. Humphreys for writing a novel about him that is not primarily about him, but about three other characters: his daughter, his wife, and her lover. An emotionally tumultuous drama follows fairly closely the known facts. Helen Humphreys' The Reinvention of Love is a triumph of lucid, vigorous, suspenseful narrative. (events 21, 59)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/59-when-then-was-now
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/09/open-book-the-reinvention-of-love-by-helen-humphreys/
The trouble with historical fiction, says Brett Alexander Savory, is that we know how the story ends. Savory notes that particular strengths of C.C. Humphreys' A Place Called Armageddon are its strong battle scenes and the portrayal of the fear of the ordinary people, and despite our assumption about the book's ending, there is the suggestion that the fall of Constantinople was actually a close call. (events 17, 32, 59)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/17-unknown
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/32-another%E2%80%99s-skin
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/59-when-then-was-now
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/a-place-called-armageddon-by-cc-humphreys/article2143261/
When Wayne Johnston's A World Elsewhere opens, it's the Gilded Age–Mark Twain's satirical coinage for the era of unrestrained greed and political corruption in late-19th-century America–in Manhattan and on Rhode Island. But on Dark Marsh Road in St. John's, Landish Druken lives in exile, writes T.F. Rigelhof. So he goes to live in Vanderland. Not surprisingly, Wharton and Henry James make cameo appearances at Vanderland, but the author most in evidence is Lewis Carroll. (events 52, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/52-coast-coast
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/a-world-elsewhere-by-wayne-johnston/article2128173/
In Glass Boys, Nicole Lundrigan presents a full cast of broken characters and the ways they shape—and misshape—one another, writes Chad Pelley. It's a dark story carrying a consistently weighty tone, with enough funny and tender moments between characters to spare it from being heavy or maudlin. (events 56, 63)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/63-sunday-brunch
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-glass-boys-by-nicole-lundrigan/
Vital Signs, by Tessa McWatt, is a story about a crisis in an ordinary family, and a mesmerizing read, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. Vital Signs is a work of literature, criticism and philosophy all at once: a formidable intellectual hat trick says Bailey Nurse. (events 64, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/64-tie-binds
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/07/29/book-review-vital-signs-by-tessa-mcwatt/
Sachiko Murakami's Rebuild questions the excesses of the real-estate market as it has morphed into the culture of Vancouver, writes Jacqueline Turner, and acknowledges a debt to the attention paid to the "Vancouver special" form of housing, Throughout the book, poetry itself is “rebuilt”, says Turner. (event 45)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.straight.com/article-472306/vancouver/rebuild
Andrew Nikiforuk's Empire of the Beetle is not just a primer on the bark beetles that have killed more than 30 billion trees in Canada and the American West, writes William Bryant Logan. It is "the pathology of resource management," the mistaken notion that any forest policy is better than learning from nature.” (events 24, 58)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/24-forest-and-trees
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/58-non-fiction-after-noon
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/empire-of-the-beetle-by-andrew-nikiforuk/article2186307/
Helen Oyeyemi's daring retelling of the Bluebeard story is a gripping tale writes Justine Jordan. Mr Fox is funny, deep, shocking, wry, heart-warming and spine-chilling. Oyeyemi breathes life into ideas like nobody else, says Jordan. (events 7, 40)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/7-grand-openings
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/40-conversations-bill
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/11/mr-fox-helen-oyeyemi-review
Thomas Pletzinger's Funeral for a Dog, is about many good things—sex, love, a form of ménage-à-trois, children's books, dogs, New York. But more than anything else, it is about what happens when a thing is lost, writes Leland de la Durantaye. The Uwe-Johnson Prize-winning book centers on loss experienced as figurative and literal exile, and is bound to call to mind for readers of German fiction the haunting works of W.G. Sebald. (events 6, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/6-and-introducing
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/books/review/book-review-funeral-for-a-dog-by-thomas-pletzinger.html
Steven Price's Into That Darkness is many things, says Robert J. Wiersema: a novel of survival, a collection of post-apocalyptic quests, an account of loss in its myriad forms, and of hope at its most vital and true. It is, above all, compelling and real, a novel that will satisfy at every level. (event 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/04/22/book-review-into-that-darkness-by-steven-price/
In a stark, stunning and profound new novel, New Brunswick's David Adams Richards exposes Canada's rawest nerve, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul scrutinizes the lingering consequences of the country's brutal treatment of aboriginal peoples. For a white man, Richards has chosen the most controversial tack imaginable. With Richards, as with fictional journalist Max Doran, it matters who tells the story. (events 50, 56)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/50-intimate-evening-david-adams-richards
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/05/15/book-review-incidents-in-the-life-of-markus-paul-by-david-adams-richards/
For a reminder of why Peter Robinson is one of Canada's best storytellers, look no further than the opening of this brilliant stand-alone novel Before the Poison, writes Margaret Cannon. (events 35, 38)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/35-ian-rankin-and-peter-robinson-conversation
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/38-crime-time
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/new-in-crime-fiction-the-latest-thrillers-and-mysteries/article2186325/
Olive Senior is a prolific writer and respected poet. Dancing Lessons is her first novel. She will tango on and we will be warmly listening, says Anakana Schofield. (events 45, 48)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/48-literary-cabaret
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/dancing-lessons-by-olive-senior/article2181726/
"How are we going to survive unless we turn our hearts to stone?" a comrade warns the hero of Antanas Sileika's Underground, an example of the elegant thinking that characterizes this rare and compelling chronicle of Lithuanian partisans and their violent struggle against Soviet occupation, writes Donna Bailey Nurse. (events 51, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/51-lovers-dangerous-time
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/underground-by-antanas-sileika/article1976566/
Michael V. Smith is a talented writer who works in highly nuanced and painterly detail. His scenes are alive with sensory images that reveal mood and subtext and allusion, writes Lynda Grace Philippsen. In Smith's novel Progress, the city-based Power Authority's plans for increased energy push forward, although the issue divides the locals. (events 61, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/progress-by-michael-v-smith/article2069339/
In The Blue Light Project, Timothy Taylor addresses contemporary culture's bombardment by media and fame, the implications of art, the dwindling margin between entertainment and violence, and the clandestine networks of war, writes David Chau. A complex novel with the veneer of a thriller, The Blue Light Project examines the sociopolitical climate of a volatile age and the individual lives within its furor. (events 41, 61)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/41-culture-petri-dish
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/61-polyphony
http://www.straight.com/article-378965/vancouver/book-review-blue-light-project-timothy-taylor
Sharon Thesen's Oyama Pink Shale is dedicated to the memory of deceased poet Robin Blaser, writes Zoe Whittall. It's a very slim volume, but packs quite a punch. Thesen's careful, delicate use of language and deft handle on metaphor can shine brilliantly and Thesen keeps the personal or poetic at a distance. Oyama Pink Shale is both skilled and moving says Whittall. (events 45, 60)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/45-pure-poetry
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/60-poetry-bash
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/three-poets-canadian-women-all-for-the-ages/article2091287/
Madeleine Thien's Dogs at the Perimeter is a modest-sized fiction with outsized ambitions, writes Chares Foran. The appetite for unfolding complicated stories is impressive, with revelations virtually right up to the last page. Madeleine Thien's voice is distinguished for its insight, compassion and quiet determination, says Foran. (events 7, 21)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/7-grand-openings
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/21-rich-history
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/dogs-at-the-perimeter-by-madeleine-thien/article2012824/
In her review of two of Miriam Toews' books—Irma Voth and Swing Low—Maria Russo comments that Toews writes with an instinctive grasp of the adolescent point of view, in which concepts like personal freedom and self-determination have the highest emotional charge. Adults are powerful but slightly irrelevant beings. (events 48, 52)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/48-literary-cabaret
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/52-coast-coast
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/books/review/a-novel-and-a-memoir-of-the-mennonite-way.html?_r=1&nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3&pagewanted=all
Writer, humanist and primatologist Andrew Westoll describes the complicated nature of our closest relatives, through observation of chimps living at Fauna Sanctuary, where each chimpanzee is given a chance to form relationships of trust. Andrew Westoll tells a riveting story in The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, writes Linda Spalding. (events 3, 43)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/3-home-chimps
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/43-truth-and-storytelling
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/the-chimps-of-fauna-sanctuary-by-andrew-westoll/article2037211/
"Once you break a knuckle...you will break it again," RCMP officer John Crease tells his son Will in the opening story of D.W. Wilson's collection, writes Steven W. Beattie. (The assertion is repeated, mantra-like, in the closing story.) This is at once John's personal philosophy and a statement of principle for Wilson's book, says Beattie. As announced last week, D.W. Wilson has won the £15,000 BBC National Short Story award with The Dead. (events 56, 67)
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/56-possibilities-hope
http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/2011festival/event/67-afternoon-tea
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/02/book-review-once-you-break-a-knuckle-by-d-w-wilson/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
KRANKY READING SERIES
Readings by Rebecca Keillor, Kevin Spenst, and Jenn Farrell. Thursday, October 6 at 7:00pm. Kranky Cafe, 216-228 4th Ave. E., Vancouver. More information at http://talonbooks.com/events.
GAYLA REID
The Canadian author discusses her newest book Come From Afar. Thursday, October 6 at 7:00pm, free. McGill Branch, Burnaby Public Library, 4595 Albert Street. More information at www.bpl.bc.ca.
PACIFIC ARBOUR SPEAKER SERIES
Presenting Dr. Marc Lewis with his book Memoirs of an Addicted Brain. Thursday, October 6 at 7:30pm. Tickets $12/$10. North Shore Credit Union Centre for the Performing Arts, Capilano University. Box office: 604-990-7810. Information at www.capilanou.ca/nscucentre.
TEENS GONE WIRED BOOK LAUNCH
The launch of Lyndsay Green's new book Teens Gone Wired: Are You Ready? features an excerpt from Out in the Open, Green Thumb Theatre's new touring play for teens. Friday, October 7 at 7:00pm, free. Creekside Community Recreation Centre, 1 Athletes Way. More information at www.lyndsaygreen.com.
ALCUIN AWARDS FOR CANADIAN BOOK DESIGN
The ceremonies for this year's presentation of the 29th Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada will precede an informal talk by New York graphic designer and Vintage Books' Artistic Director, John Gall. Wednesday, October 12 at 6:30pm, free. Room SB301, Emily Carr University, 1399 Johnston Street. More information at blog.alcuinsociety.com.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Johanna Skibsrud (This Will Be Difficult to Explain & Other Stories) and Martha Schabas (Various Positions). Thursday, October 13 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
TWS READING SERIES
Featuring guest author Jude Neale, who has just published her second book of poetry, Only the Fallen Can see. Friday, October 14 at 7pm. Take 5 Cafe, 429 Granville Street (at West Hastings). For event details, please visit http://www.thewritersstudio.ca/readings/.
HOT SONNET
Calendar poets read the work of Maxine Gadd, Fred Wah, Steve Collis, Kate Braid, Miranda Pearson, Warren Dean Fulton, Diane Tucker, Catherine Owen, Judith Copithorne, Sonnet l'Abbe, Heidi Greco, and George Bowering. Includes music by Jess Hill. Saturday, October 15 at 6:00pm. Tickets: $20. W2 Media Cafe, 111 W. Hastings. More information at www.creativetechnology.org.
LITERATI GALA - BOLLYWOOD, BOOKS AND BILL!
Join the VIWF for the Literati Gala on October 17th at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel. CBC's Bill Richardson hosts the event that features Festival writers and dancers from the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration Society in a fundraising event for our Spreading the Word schools program. For more information and ticket purchase, http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/literatigala.
JOHN GILMORE AND KEITH HARRISON
Readings by authors John Gilmore and Keith Harrison. John Gilmore's first novel is Head of a Man. Keith Harrison's recent work is The Missionary, The Violinist and the Aunt Whose Head Was Squeezed. Monday, October 17 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St.
Upcoming
VANCOUVER 125 POETRY CONFERENCE
Four-day literary event includes daytime seminars and discussions that explore the poetics of everything from the avant-garde to traditional poetic forms. October 19-22, 2011. SFU Woodward's, 149 W. Hastings. Complete information at www.v125pc.com.
CBC RADIO STUDIO ONE BOOK CLUB
On Sat Oct. 22, bestselling author, essayist, cultural observer, and famed New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik will be the special guest in the CBC Radio Studio One Book Club. Adam is this year's Massey Lecturer (which is at the Chan Oct. 23) and his subject is winter - the season, the space, the cycle. The only way to get in, is to win! www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub.
ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Susan McCaslin (Demeter Goes Skydiving) and Christopher Patton (Curious Memory). Thursday, October 27 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, Plaza level, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.
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