Book News Vol. 9 No. 13

BOOK NEWS

SPECIAL EVENT

A Dram Come True
There are a handful of tickets left for A Dram Come True Scotch tasting and the VIP pre-event tasting (tickets will not be available at the door).

Friday, May 30, 2014
7:30–9:30pm
Tickets: $120
VIP Tasting 6:30–7:30pm; Tickets: $75 (limited quantities, only available with a main event ticket)

Hycroft
1489 McRae Avenue, Vancouver

Click here for details and to purchase tickets, http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events/dram-come-true.

A Dram Come True is a fundraiser for the Vancouver Writers Fest.

AWARDS & LISTS

The results of the Atlantic Book Awards have been announced. The winners come from all over the Maritime provinces, with books about Mi'kmaq culture, Black Loyalists, the Halifax Explosion, and (of course) the fishing industry!
http://www.quillandquire.com/awards/2014/05/22/atlantic-book-award-winners-announced-2/

Hassan Blasim, an exiled Iraqi writer, is the first Arab winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the UK's top prize for foreign fiction. His book, The Iraqi Christ, is a collection of short stories that portray Iraq as a "surrealist inferno."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/22/exiled-iraq-first-arab-winner-uk-foreign-fiction-prize

PEN Canada has nominated poet Emily Izsak for the PEN International New Voices Award. The award "aims to encourage new writing and to provide a space where young, unpublished writers can submit their work."
http://pencanada.ca/news/pen-canada-announces-2014-new-voices-award-nominee/

Jan and Crispin Elsted, founders of Barbarian Press, are the the winners of the seventh Robert R. Reid Award and Medal for lifetime achievement in the book arts in Canada.
http://alcuinsociety.com/jan-and-crispin-elsted-recipients-of-the-7th-robert-r-reid-award/

Erin Frances Fisher, a 31-year-old author from Vancouver, has won the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers for her short story Girl.
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2014/05/28/erin_frances_fisher_wins_rbc_bronwen_wallace_award.html

YOUNG READERS

How does Jo Nesbø decide whether to write crime or children's fiction? The Writers Fest author was recently interviewed about his Doctor Proctor books, how he dealt with bullies as a child, how to pronounce his name, and why he enjoys writing children's books more than writing books for adults!
http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/audio/2014/may/21/jo-nesbo-doctor-proctor-podcast

NEWS & FEATURES

Celebrated American poet, author and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, the cultural force known for her autobiographical book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, has died at the age of 86.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/maya-angelou-poet-author-and-activist-dead-at-86-1.2656694

Should literature come with "trigger warnings"? Some universities are considering placing them "in front of works of art and literature that may cause a student to relive a traumatic experience."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/trigger-warnings-and-the-novelists-mind.html

Remember that old adage about not judging a book by its cover? A new exhibition of First Editions at the Morgan Library in New York is reminding us that sometimes judging a book by its cover can be a truly joyful experience.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/books/gatsby-to-garp-a-feast-of-first-editions-at-the-morgan.html

Are the demands of book promotion frivolous or necessary? James Parker and Anna Holmes discuss the place of author photos, Twitter feeds and media campaigns in selling books.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/books/review/the-demands-of-book-promotion-frivolous-or-necessary.html

Who are today's literary bad girls? "Goodbye Carrie Bradshaw...this is an age of man-chasing, full-blooded heroines in the same vein as Lena Dunham's Girls."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/25/books-literary-bad-girls-lena-dunham

What are the best gardens in literary history? From Ovid's The Art of Love to Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, here are ten literary texts that will enliven your botanical senses.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/24/ten-best-literary-gardens

Philip Roth's recent announcement of retirement has left many asking: "Why are literary novelists so bad at killing off their careers?" "When novelists say they are retiring, experience suggests it's best to nod politely and not believe them."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/23/why-literary-novelists-bad-killing-off-careers

If your idea of a hot night out involves reading a book and not having to talk to anyone else, then you might be interested in this new nightlife trend: silent reading, in a bar!
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/readers-night-out.html

Giovanni's Room, America's oldest gay bookstore has closed. "For more than 40 years, Philadelphia's Giovanni's Room has been a focal point of LGBTQ life. What does its closure mean for the future of the community?"
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-last-day-at-giovannis-room-americas-oldest-gay-bookstore-20140521#ixzz32fpJ3FVg

Many authors claim to never read reviews. "And then there's Jane Austen. Who not only, it turns out, listened to what her friends and acquaintances had to say about her books, both positive and negative, but also took notes on it."
http://www.mhpbooks.com/jane-austen-read-her-reviews-and-kept-notes-on-them/

Is the short story the perfect literary form for the 21st century? "There's no doubt about it, the short story is having ‘a moment.'"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10831961/The-irresistible-rise-of-the-short-story.html

That doesn't mean that novels are any less important, however. In fact, this piece puts forward the argument that novels made the modern world!
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/how-the-novel-made-the-modern-world/361611/

Margaret Atwood's prolific creativity has reached out in a new direction: beer! She's teamed up with Beau's Brewing Company to create a new gruit ale. Sales will raise funds for the Pelee Island Bird Observatory.
http://vimeo.com/95970832

Why do some authors use pen names? According to writer John Wray, "I'd recommend a pseudonym to everyone, if only temporarily, as a kind of exercise in self-escape."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/whats-in-a-pen-name.html

BOOKS & WRITERS

Jack Kerouac kept a journal for almost all his life–from the age of fourteen until his death at forty-seven. Here's a chance to read two entries written during the years in "which Kerouac first conceived of "On the Road"—and they are delightful. They reveal an uncertain, ambitious, restless, naïve, and funny Kerouac."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2014/05/letter-from-the-archive-jack-kerouacs-journals.html

City Lights is reprinting Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems in a 50th anniversary edition. The book was recently chosen as one of the 10 objects that "best tell New York's story," and despite its age, can be read as a "very 21st-century book."
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/05/frank-oharas-lunch-poems-21st-century-poetry-written-in-1964/371276/

Steven Galloway's new novel, The Confabulist, is a "tale of two men separately longing for affirmation while ensnared by their own recklessness and imagination." The first is the Harry Houdini, and the second, a man who believes he has killed the famed magician.
http://www.straight.com/life/647896/illusion-and-reality-mingle-confabulist

In this month's New Yorker Poetry Podcast, Anna McDonald reads Kathleen Graber's ‘The Magic Kingdom.' "Spanning a diverse range of subjects and images—from children's snacks to medical terms to fairy-tale references—"The Magic Kingdom" charts the disorienting experience of outliving the people and objects that constitute a life."
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/poetry-podcast-anna-mcdonald-reads-kathleen-graber.html

This week's New Yorker short story is also available online. It's called ‘Ba Baboon', and can be read along with an author interview, here:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/05/this-week-in-fiction-thomas-pierce-1.html

The time for summer reading is fast approaching! Here's a list of recommended books (and a collection of mini reviews) by the Daily Climate, all with environmental themes:
http://www.straight.com/life/650896/summer-reading-climate-crowd

Rivka Galchen may have been born in Canada, but her story collection American Innovations is all about life south of the border. "American Innovations has a literary genealogy traceable from U.S. short-story doyenne Ann Beattie through Lorrie Moore...add a splash of David Foster Wallace, shake well (don't stir), and you have a thoroughly Galchean concoction–funny, intellectual, and playfully dark."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/american-innovations-canadian-born-rivka-galchen-hits-it-out-of-the-park-again-and-again/article18720362/

Speaking of border crossings, Nadia Bozak's second novel, El Nino, takes place worlds away from the Ontario backwoods setting of her first novel, Orphan Love. Set in the American southwest, its dreamlike geography is "rooted in the real but situated between realism and myth, between naturalism and allegory."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/el-nino-nadia-bozaks-second-novel-leaves-the-ontario-backwoods-for-the-american-southwest/article18830255/

The Snow Queen, by Michael Cunningham, has several questions at its heart (none of them easy): "What if you saw a light in the sky? What if, on a normal night, out for a jog, the eye of God opened and saw you? Would you change your life? How?"
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/michael-cunninghams-the-snow-queen-and-the-varieties-of-religious-experience/article18830344/

David Adams Richards' new novel, Crimes Against My Brother, also tackles religious themes. It tells the story of "three impoverished young men in rural New Brunswick, who 'cut for blood' and scoff at divine law", and their link to the destruction of land on which their families have lived for generations.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/crimes-against-my-brother-a-powerful-work-that-issues-a-call-to-spiritual-brotherhood/article18829273/

Tom Robbins has written a new memoir, called Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life. It details his early life growing up in the south, and the escape he made to the Pacific Northwest, "where he slowly morphed into a moonbeam of the counterculture."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/books/tibetan-peach-pie-a-tom-robbins-memoir.html

Robbins' has also been interviewed by The New York Times. "Like many, if not most, of the follies I've committed in my life," he claims he wrote Tibetan Peach Pie to "please women."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/magazine/tom-robbins-cosmic-lounge-lizard.html

COMMUNITY EVENTS

GEORGE BOWERING
George Bowering reads from bill bissetts's groundbreaking body of work in prose and poetry. Thursday, May 29 at 6:30pm, free. The Reach Gallery Museum, 32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford. More information at 604-864-8087.

DIANE TUCKER
Author reads from her new poetry collection, Bonsai Love. Sunday, June 1 at 3:00pm. The Heritage Grill, 447 Columbia Street, New Westminster.

KELLEY ARMSTRONG
Meet the author of the teen series Darkest Powers and Darkness Rising. Friday, June 6 at 1:00pm. Cloverdale Library, 5642 - 176A Street, Surrey. More information at surreylibraries.ca.

PAULA WILD
Author presents her latest book, The Cougar: Beautiful, Wild and Dangerous. Saturday, June 7 at 7:00pm, free. Village Books, 1200 11th Street, Bellingham. More information at villagebooks.com.

A GATHERING OF POETS
The winner and finalist for the 2014 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize read from their nominated works. The evening will be hosted by Heidi Greco, Surrey's 2012 Resident Poet. Monday, June 9 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street. More information at vpl.ca.

TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features poets Yvonne Blomer and Onjana Yownghwe plus open Mic. Wednesday, June 11, 7-9:30pm, at The Cottage Bistro, 4468 Main Street, Vancouver. Suggested donation at the door: $5. Sign up for open mic at 7pm. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.

Upcoming

LUNCH POEMS AT SFU
Featuring Billeh Nickerson and Heather Haley. Wednesday, June 18 at 12:00 noon, free. Teck Gallery in SFU's Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver. More information at sfu.ca/publicsquare/lunchpoems.

GEORGE WOODCOCK LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
A Proclamation and Reading honoring Jean Barman, B.C.'s most active historian, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, as the 21st recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award. Thursday, June 19 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street. More information at vpl.ca.

EUROPEAN BOOK CLUB
Features Portuguese novel The True Actor (O verdadeiro ator) by Jacinto Lucas Pires. Saturday, June 21 at 4:00pm. Free but register at eubookclub.vancouver@shaw.ca. Istituto Italiano di Cultura, 500-510 West Hastings Street, Vancouver. More information at www.alliancefrancaise.ca.

POETIC FORM AND THE MYSTICAL MUSE
Readings by poets Lee Johnson and Susan McCaslin. Tuesday, June 24 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level, Central Library, 350 West Georgia Street. More information at vpl.ca.

GEOFFREY TIGG
The Painting is the second book in the Detective Kelly O'Brian series by Geoffrey Tigg. Wednesday, June 25 at 7:00pm. Welsh Hall West, West Vancouver Memorial Library, 1950 Marine Drive, West Vancouver. More information at westvanlibrary.ca.