Book News Vol. 6 No. 45

BOOK NEWS

Incite - Complete details here: http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/incite
Incite, our free reading series is back! Join us Wednesdays at 7:30pm in the Alice MacKay Room at VPL Central Library.

November 23: Three exciting voices from Biblioasis, one of Canada's finest independent publishers, take to the stage. Ray Robertson, Cathy Stonehouse and Rebecca Rosenblum read from their latest works; http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/incitenovember23
December 7: Two writers bring their debut books to Incite. JJ Lee and Heather Jessup read from their work and discuss the writing process; http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/incitedecember7

SPECIAL EVENT

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

Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers has won the $25,000 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. Charles Foran's Mordecai: The Life & Times, won the Governor General's non-fiction prize and the Governor General's children's literature award went to Christopher Moore for From Then to Now: A Short History of the World. Phil Wall has won the award for poetry and Erin Shields, for drama. Governor General David Johnston will present the awards November 24.
http://987321654.canadacouncil.net/en/archives/2011/Winners.aspx

Phil Wall's Killdeer is one of three nominees submitted by the small press Book Thug.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/bookthug-lives-up-to-its-name-in-poetry/article2234899/

Veteran Quebec poet, teacher and editor Endre Farkas, who fled to Canada after the failed Hungarian uprising of 1956, has been honoured by the Quebec Writers' Federation with its 2011 Community Award.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/endre-farkas-lauded-by-quebec-writers/article2233514/

Emma Donoghue's novel Room has won the 2011 Evergreen Award to be presented in February, 2012, in Toronto. The Evergreen Award is administered by the Ontario Library Association as part of the Forest of Reading program.
http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/index.php/2011/11/11/emma-donoghues-room-wins-evergreen-award/

The Guardian First Book shortlist consists of Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English, The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Down The Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos, Mirza Waheed‘s The Collaborator, and Amy Waldman's The Submission. The winner of the prize will be announced next month.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/11/guardian-first-book-award-shortlist

The £30,000 Costa Awards short list includes a debut novel from intensive care nurse Christie Watson and "big hitters" Julian Barnes, Carol Ann Duffy and Claire Tomalin. Category winners will be named 4 January; overall winner will be announced later in January.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/15/costa-book-awards-shortlists

Italian historian Sergio Luzzatto has won the Cundill Prize, a $75,000 award from McGill University for historical literature. for his book Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age. The book concerns Padre Pio, a controversial 20th century saint.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/11/15/cundill-prize.html

Joel Yanofsky's memoir Bad Animals: A Father's Accidental Education in Autism is among 10 books long listed for the 2012 British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. The shortlist will be announced in early December.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/Joel+Yanofsky+longlisted+Fiction+Prize/5669928/story.html

Pen Centre USA honoured past U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky with the lifetime achievement award and Dave Eggers, the Award of Honor.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/11/pen-center-usa-dave-eggers-robert-pinsky.html

Geist has announced its 2011 Erasure Poetry Contest Short List of ten poets. The three winners will be announced in January 2012.
http://www.geist.com/erasure-shortlist

NEWS & FEATURES

Greg Quill describes the man Wade Davis, beginning with Davis's 20-hour Peruvian tribal run that involved scaling several mountainsides and descending into deep jungle valleys as fast as his legs could carry him. A life jam-packed with quests, says Quill.
http://www.thestar.com/news/books/article/1085960--author-s-life-jam-packed-with-quests

The internationally acclaimed Nigerian author Chinua Achebe has declined the Nigerian government's attempt to name him a Commander of the Federal Republic for the second time. He initially refused it in 2004, saying corruption remains unaddressed. "The reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed let alone solved. It is inappropriate to offer it again to me", said Achebe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/14/chinua-achebe-refuses-nigerian-national-honour

A speaking event in Auckland, N.Z. featuring controversial Chinese author Liao Yiwu has been cancelled. Some blame low ticket sales; others, political pressure.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/books/news/article.cfm?c_id=134&objectid=10766576

The short-story writer Dagoberto Gilb is still recovering from a serious stroke in 2009, but he has returned to top form with his writing. Or, as Christopher Kelly puts it, "Writer's Body Is Weaker, but Voice Remains Strong".http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/us/writers-body-is-weaker-but-voice-remains-strong.html?_r=1&ref=books

German theologian Dr. Eske Wollrad argues that the trilogy of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking books together contain 'colonial racist stereotypes'. Lindgren's daughter Karin Nyman emphatically rejected the charge.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/09/pippi-longstocking-books-racism

Based on her reading of Austen's letters, crime writer Lindsay Ashford claims that Jane Austen 'died from arsenic poisoning'. Murder cannot be ruled out, says Ashford, but Professor Janet Todd disagrees.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/14/jane-austen-arsenic-poisoning

Malcolm Gladwell writes in The New Yorker of the real genius of Steve Jobs.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_gladwell

Ahmed Mourad speaks with Mark Seacombe about his being Hosni Mubarak's personal photographer at the same time as he wrote Vertigo, a bestselling thriller about Egypt's corruption, the anger that drove him to write the book and his hopes for Egypt's future.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/13/hosni-mubarak-ahmed-mourad-egypt

Novelist Ann Patchett adds "independent bookstore owner" to her list of accomplishments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/us/ann-patchett-bucks-bookstore-tide-opening-her-own.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28

The Writers' Trust of Canada is accepting submissions for the Bronwen Wallace Emerging Author Award, which is awarded to authors under the age of 35 whose work has been published in a magazine or anthology. The deadline for submissions is January 30, 2012. Full submission guidelines here:
http://www.cbabook.org/files/RBC_BWA_Call%20for%20Submissions.pdf

BOOKS & WRITERS

The collected writings of Chinese Nobel prizewinner Liu Xiaobo have been translated into English, to be published as No Enemies, No Hatred in 2012, with a foreword by Václav Havel. The author remains incarcerated in a Chinese jail and is unaware of the English translation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/12/liu-xiaobo-book-lifts-gag

Liu Xiaobo's poem Your Lifelong Prisoner, a tribute to his wife, poet Liu Xia, can be found here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/12/your-lifelong-prisoner-liu-xiaobo

The historian Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy that awards the Nobel for literature, has written The Beauty and the Sorrow, which Ian Jack describes as "an unusual history of the first world war".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/11/beauty-and-sorrow-peter-englund-review

W.P. Kinsella wrote about 90 baseball short stories and novels, until an accident affected his writing. Now, writes Steven Hayward, Kinsella is back in the batter's box with Butterfly Winter, a novel that is unmistakably his in both conception and execution.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/butterfly-winter-by-wp-kinsella/article2229537/

Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery traces the life and career of the half-Italian, half-French ­Simone Simonini, neatly linking together most of the conspiracy mythologies of the era. It's engrossing and cautionary and only partly historical, writes Michael Dirda.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/umberto-ecos-the-prague-cemetery-reviewed-by-michael-dirda/2011/11/03/gIQAvJxT6M_story.html

Don DeLillo's books make some people's brains ache, writes Steven Poole, but in The Angel Esmeralda, the richly compressed short stories are the work of a true master, says Poole.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/09/the-angel-esmeralda-delillo-review

In Ami McKay's The Virgin Cure "girls sold matches, then themselves", writes Elaine Kalman Naves, because of the belief that syphilitic blood could be "cleansed" by having sex with a virgin. "A dark tale shot through with some bright threads."
http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/books/McKay+novel+girls+sold+matches+then+themselves/5697833/story.html

Although this is the fifth in the series featuring Arthur Beauchamp, William Deverell's I'll See You In My Dreams takes Beauchamp back to his first murder trial, writes Tracy Sherlock—involving a young native whom Beauchamp feared had been framed.
http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/Deverell+travels+back+past/5697710/story.html

David Guterson's latest novel, Ed King, is his version of the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex. It's more tongue-in-cheek than the Greek original. Despite readers' assumptions, Guterson insists that his interest is in blindness, blindness to self, writes Louis Peitzman.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/27/NSA21LJSPH.DTL&type=books

A compulsion to explore forbidden territory leads a woman to a nuclear power station in Trespassing, a specially commissioned short story by Margaret Drabble.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/07/short-story-margaret-drabble

COMMUNITY EVENTS

ROBSON READING SERIES
Carmen Aguirre reads from her book Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter and Rishma Dunlop reads from her book of poetry Lover Through Departure. Thursday, November 17 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore Robson Square, Plaza Level, 800 Robson. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

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.

JUDY COLLINS
Kidsbooks is hosting Judy Collins, one of America's greatest folk/rock performers, at the West Broadway store on Friday, November 18, 6:30 to 8pm. Two free, timed tickets for the signing line are available with each purchase (by November 17) of either book--When You Wish Upon a Star or Over the Rainbow.

DEAD POETS READING SERIES
Newly revived series featuring poetry by Thomas Hardy, Cesar Vallejo, Marianne Bluger, Ron Johnson and Frank Stanford, read by David Zieroth, Fiona Lam, Russell Thornton,Sonnet L'Abbé and Raoul Fernandes. Sunday, November 20 at 3:00pm. Admission by donation. Project Space, 222 East Georgia Street. More information at www.deadpoetslive.com.

CBC BOOKCLUB
Linwood Barclay is one of Canada's most successful thriller writers and his new novel The Accident is already an international hit! The Globe and Mail review said "Barclay knows how to tell a story, knows how to pace it, knows how to make those pages keep turning."Come meet
Linwood in the CBC Studio One Book Club on Monday November 21, at 6:30 pm. Win free tickets at www.cbc.ca/bc/bookclub.

GARY GEDDES
Internationally acclaimed author Gary Geddes reads from his much-anticipated book Drink the Bitter Root: A Writers Search for Justice and Redemption in Africa. Monday, November 21 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level. Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.

JAMES TRACY
The American author reads from his book Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power, a narrative history about the work of JOIN Community Union, the Young Patriots, Rising Up Angry, October 4th Organization, and White Lightning. Monday, November 21 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, VPL, 350 W. Georgia. More information at sonnieandtracybook@gmail.com.

PEN-IN-HAND POETRY/PROSE READING SERIES
Featuring Deborah Willis, Sandy Pool, Hollie Adams. Monday, November 21 at 7:30pm. Cost: $3. Cook Street Village Serious Coffee, 230 Cook Street, Victoria.

ARCHIVAL INTERVENTION AND RETRO-SPECULATION
Vancouver Public Library Writer-in-Residence Wayde Compton leads two dynamic workshops for emerging writers. Tuesday, November 22 at 6:30pm. Free but registration is required. Morris J. Wosk board room, level 7, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. For more information please contact Vancouver Public Library at 604-331-3603.

BOOK EXCHANGE
Join CBC host and author Bill Richardson and a celebrity panel including Simi Sara and Veda Hille for the first annual Book Exchange, where books are the only acceptable currency for the evening. Tuesday, November 22 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street.

MEET THE AUTHOR SERIES
Join author Roberta Rich for a discussion about her novel The Midwife of Venice. Part book club, part literary reading, the event also includes wine and light refreshments. Thursday, November 24 at 7:00pm. Tickets: $20. Christianne's Lyceum, 3696 8th Ave. W. More information is available at www.christiannehayward.com. Call 604.733.1356 or email lyceum@christiannehayward.com to register.

REMEMBERING OUR CHINATOWNS
Evening of fiction, remembrance, and intercultural dialogue features authors Rebecca Lau, Chad Reimer, and Larry Wong. Also includes a Q&A session, light refreshments, and a reception. Thursday, November 24 at 7pm. Tickets: $12/members get in for free. Museum of Vancouver, 1100 Chestnut Street. More information at www.museumofvancouver.ca.

SARAH ELLIS AND JULIE LAWSON
Welcome aboard the White Star Line Titanic! Safe passage guaranteed. Lifesavers for all. Sarah Ellis and Julie Lawson will be at Kidsbooks, at the West Broadway store on Thursday, November 24. RSVP by email to general@kidsbooks.ca. Tickets are not required.

JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL
Authors from across Canada, the U.S., and Israel participate in the six-day event that includes meet-the-author opportunities, literary readings and panel discussions, a literary cocktail evening, a book-club event, writing and self-publishing workshops, children's authors, film screenings, and bookstores. November 26-December 1, 2011. Jewish Community Centre, 950 41st Ave. W. More information at www.jewishbookfestival.ca.

JANN ARDEN
Award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter signs her new biography Falling Backwards and her new album Uncover Me 2. Monday, November 28 at 12:30pm at Chapters Robson, 788 Robson Street. Also at 7:00pm at Chapters Metrotown. More information at www.chapters.indigo.ca.

Upcoming

POETRY READING
An evening of poetry featuring Jennifer Still, Meira Cook and Daphne Marlatt. Wednesday, November 30 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia Street. More information at www.vpl.ca.

NOWHERE ELSE ON EARTH
Book launch and reading by Caitlin Vernon from her new book Nowhere Else on Earth: Standing Tall for the Great Bear Rainforest. Thursday, December 1 at 7:00pm. Rhizome Cafe, 317 East Broadway. For more information, visit http://www.sierraclub.bc.ca/events/nowhere-else-on-earth-2.

THE TIME WE ALL WENT MARCHING
Arley NcNeney launches her new novel set during the 1930s and 1940s in the BC interior. Thursday, December 1 at 7:00pm, free. Meeting room. level 3, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia St. More information at www.vpl.ca.

ROBSON READING SERIES
Readings by Michael Christie (The Beggar's Garden), Kim Clark (Attemptations) and Ashley Little (PRICK: Confessions of a Tattoo Artist). Thursday, December 1 at 7:00pm, free. UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square, 800 Robson Street. More information at www.robsonreadingseries.ubc.ca.

BOOK LAUNCH
Join journalist Allen Garr, publisher Howard White, broadcaster Red Robinson and others to celebrate the launch of The Chuck Davis History of Metropolitan Vancouver. Tuesday, December 6 at 7:00pm, free. Central Branch, VPL (350 West Georgia Street, Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye Rooms). More information at www.harbourpublishing.com.