Book News Vol. 9 No. 33

BOOK NEWS

The Vancouver Writers Fest starts next week, with 88 events for readers of all interests. Discover your new favourite author Starting next week we’ll be sending out a daily hot sheet with up-to-the-minute event information.

Join us for some great conversations with writers from around the world:

Due to popular demand: an added event with Australian literary star Tim Winton (Event 87: Tim Winton in conversation with Hal Wake)

Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction winner Eimear McBride–one of Ireland’s most innovative voices (Event 10: An Intimate Evening with Eimear McBride)

Maylis de Kerangal, Cristina Henriques and Kate Pullinger on our interconnectedness (Event 25: A Community of Characters)

National Book Award short-listed author Rabih Alameddine (Event 55: Books Beget Books)

Saturday morning in a strange new world-with Sebastien de Castell, A.M. Dellamonica and William Gibson (Event 64: Probables and Impossibles)

Dionne Brand, Thomas King, Lee Maracle and Christos Tsiolkas on social and political engagement (Event 73: Rules of Engagement

Emma Donoghue, David Homel and Jane Smiley talk about cultural change, history and personal stories (Event 80: The Life and Times)

Special Events

Joseph Boyden & Friends
Spend an unforgettable evening with The Orenda author Joseph Boyden and Festival authors (Michael Crummey, Charles Foran, Steven Galloway, Anne Kennedy, Thomas King, Heather O'Neill, Carrie Snyder, Russell Wangersky) and support the Vancouver Writers Fest. Details at http://writersfest.bc.ca/events/boyden.

Special event tickets are also on sale for Bruce Cockburn (Nov 10), Alan Doyle (Nov 13) and Conrad Black (Nov 13).

More information at http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/events.

FESTIVAL AUTHORS

Jane Smiley owes much of her courageousness to her absent father. "A girl who is overlooked has a good chance of not learning what it is she is supposed to do...Sometimes, from the outside, my work and my life look daring, but I am not a daring person. I am just a person who was never taught what not to try."
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/absent-father

Dionne Brand recently dropped by the Winnipeg News Café to discuss her newest book, Love Enough. If you missed the interview, you can stream it here:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/278658241.html

According to Marthine Satris in this enlightening review of Eimear McBride's A Girl is a Half Formed Thing, the book is "not about the girl becoming a woman on her own, but about the family and her reaction to them."
http://therumpus.net/2014/10/a-girl-is-a-half-formed-thing-by-eimear-mcbride/

Karl Ove Knausgaard's vast autobiographic novel, My Struggle, "turns inner life into literature on a grand scale." It is also, in part, "a challenge to old notions about what is worthy of being recorded, a test of prose's power not just to describe the mundane, but to fill it with significance."
http://www.straight.com/life/744871/karl-ove-knausgaard-turns-inner-life-literature-grand-scale

In Kim Thúy's new novel, Mãn, the eponymous heroine, a Vietnamese chef in Montreal, has an affair with a married chef in Paris. For Thúy, food and love are often intermingled, since "in Asian culture, we don't necessarily verbalize our love or our affection for the people around...and so our best way to do it is through food."
http://www.straight.com/life/744876/kim-thuy-reflects-love-and-language-food

Ann-Marie MacDonald once declared that everything she writes is autobiographical. In Adult Onset, the protagonist could almost be herself, a woman with three names, "born on a German military base to a Cape Breton-born father and mother of Lebanese extraction," as well as a bestselling author, married to a theatre director, who "endured an agonizing coming out process."
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2014/10/10/adult_onset_by_annmarie_macdonald_review.html

Johanna Skibsrud is interested in "connecting history's dots." Even more specifically, it was her search for connections between the experience of veterans and society that led her to explore a piece of music, Messaien's Quatuor pour la fin du temps, which inspired the title of her newest work.
http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/books/johann-skibsrud

According to the CBC, there are five things to learn from reading Kathleen Winter's new work Boundless: "1. Say yes to adventure. 2. Embrace the unknown. 3. Appreciate beauty. 4. Everyone has something to learn–and to teach. 5. All land is sacred." That list is explained here:
http://www.cbc.ca/books/2014/10/5-things-you-learn-from-boundless-by-kathleen-winter.html

AWARDS & LISTS

Australian novelist Richard Flanagan has won the Man Booker prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a "magnificent novel of love and war" that tells the harrowing stories of prisoners and captors on the Burma railway.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/14/richard-flanagan-wins-man-booker-prize-2014

Festival author Rabih Alameddine has been shortlisted for the National Book Award for his novel An Unnecessary Woman.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/15/national-book-awards-shortlist-cartoonist-roz-chast

Naomi Klein is the winner of the Hilary Weston Prize for This Changes Everything.
http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/features/2014/10/15/naomi-klein-hilary-weston-prize/

November 1 is the deadline for the CBC Short Story Competition. Send your original, unpublished work for a chance to win $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a writing residency at the Banff Centre and publication in Air Canada's enRoute Magazine.
http://www.cbc.ca/books/canadawrites/literaryprizes/shortstory/

Want to experience a real world 'choose your own adventure' story that you can stroll through? The Active Fiction Project's newest walking story will launch shortly.
http://activefictionproject.com/

YOUNG READERS

What are the best culturally diverse children's books? Here's a list of the fifty best children's books published from 1950 to the present day that celebrate ethnic and cultural diversity.
http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/oct/13/50-best-culturally-diverse-childrens-books

NEWS & FEATURES

Do we read differently at different ages? Daniel Mendelsohn and Pankaj Mishra discuss how we interpret The Catcher in the Rye, Antigone, The Red and the Black and Kierkegaard at different stages of life.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/do-we-read-differently-at-different-ages.html

What would have happened if Kafka's books had been burned? "'Kafkaesque' would have a very different definition if Max Brod had consigned his friend's unpublished manuscripts to the flames as requested."
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/oct/14/reading-group-what-if-kafkas-books-had-been-burned

Censorship in China has become a boon to book sales. "Having a book banned in China is often a marketing coup for publishers selling copies abroad...'Smothering someone is as good as crowning that person... A 'smothering' order is a reading list.'"
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/10/13/rumors-of-book-ban-boosts-authors-in-china/

Is there such a thing as "office literature?" "If there is a politics of the white-collar novel in the United States, it is this: office fiction is deliberately and narrowly construed as being about manners, sociability, gossip, the micro-struggles for rank and status—in other words, 'office politics'—rather than about the work that is done in offices."
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/bartlebys-all

BOOKS & WRITERS

Ordinary Sins is the name of this week's New Yorker story. Written by Kirstin Valdez Quade, it's the tale of a young pregnant woman who works in the parish office of a Catholic church.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/fiction-this-week-kirstin-valdez-quade-2014-10-20

Brian Gilmore is a poet, public interest attorney and columnist whose newest collection of poetry, We Didn't Know Any Gangsters, is a counterpoint to the recent atrocity in Ferguson, Missouri. He discusses why it acts like a "companion text" to Michael Brown's murder and the resulting protests, and yet is also "his most personal collection," here:
http://therumpus.net/2014/10/the-rumpus-interview-with-brian-gilmore/

Last week the French writer Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize for Literature. In this piece, we learn about his "postwar world."
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/patrick-modianos-postwar

"Biographies, when they matter, can act as a kind of corrective to the subject's boorishness. All that the star could not achieve in life—tenderness, care, responsibility toward others—doesn't get vanquished in great studies so much as explained and folded into the grand story of the complicated, arresting self. " On that note, a new biography of Tennessee Williams has emerged.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/man-queered-broadway

COMMUNITY EVENTS

EMERGE 14
Emerge 14, the annual anthology from The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University, in which thirty-five emerging writers explore love, creation, death, regret, discovery and terror, will be launched in a special gala. Thursday, October 16 at 6pm. SFU Downtown Campus, Harbour Centre. More information at cormac_oreilly@hotmail.com.

STIGMA, SHMIGMA: WRITERS ON STUFF YOU SHOULDN'T TALK ABOUT
Chelsea Rooney, Dina Del Bucchia and Leah Horlick all write audaciously on subjects that make others nervous. Hear readings from their newest works and join the conversation, facilitated by feminist writer Meghan Murphy. Thursday, October 16 at 7:00pm, free. Alice MacKay room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia. More information at vpl.ca.

BOOK READING
Reading, Q&A, and Signing with Ian Weir, author of Will Starling and Aaron Bushkowsky, author of Curtains for Roy. Thursday, October 16 at 7:00pm. Book Warehouse, 4118 Main Street, Vancouver. More information at 604-879-7737.

POETRY READING
Susan McCaslin and Jane Munro will be reading from their recent volumes of poetry at the On Edge Reading Series, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, South Building 406, Granville Island, Thurs. Oct. 16, 2014, 7 pm. Jane reads from Blue Sonoma (Brick Books, 2014) and Susan from The Disarmed Heart (The St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2014).

WHISTLER READERS AND WRITERS FESTIVAL
Annual fall event celebrating the written word with renowned Canadian authors, speakers panels and workshops, and reading events. October 17-19, 2014. Complete details at whistler.com.

LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS
Vancouver writer Sam Wiebe reads from his latest book. Friday, October 17 at 7:00pm. Pulp Fiction Books, Main street.

THE BRIDGE GENERATION
The Queer Imaging and Riting Kollective for Elders (aka QUIRK-E) will be reading stories from their recently published anthology: The Bridge Generation. Friday, October 17 at 7:00pm, free. Alma VanDusen room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia. More information at vpl.ca.

MARIE-LOUISE GAY
The Vancouver Children's Literature Roundtable's Illustrator's Breakfast with Marie-Louise Gay. Saturday October 18, 2014 at the University Golf Club 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Includes breakfast. Book sales by KidsBooks. More information at www.vclr.ca.

VERONICA ROTH & TAHEREH MAFI
Bestselling teen authors are interviewed about their books. Saturday, October 18 at 2:00pm. Chapters Metrotown, Burnaby. More information at chapters.indigo.ca.

THE FUTURE OF CREATIVITY
The Artists' Legal Outreach and Books on the Radio present The Future of Creativity: Ideas for the Digital Age on October 18. A conversation with author Astra Taylor, The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, drawing from her recent work on the nature of the digital economy and its impact on creators and creative industries, followed by a panel with new media thinkers. http://www.eventbrite.com/e/astra-taylor-the-future-of-creativity-tickets-13140546729?aff=eorg.

EILEEN KERNAGHAN
Author reads from her new book Sophie, In Shadow. Sunday, October 19 at 1:00pm. Renaissance Books, 43-6th Street, New Westminster. More information at renaissancebookstore.com.

THE OUTER HARBOUR
Poet and writer Wayde Compton reads from his debut short-story collection The Outer Harbour, which explores themes of race, migration, home, colonialism, and gentrification. Sunday, October 19 at 2:00pm, Alice MacKay room, VPL, 350 W. Georgia.

NIGHTWOOD EDITIONS BOOK LAUNCH
Nightwood Editions is proud to present a Vancouver book launch with four B.C.-based authors: Kayla Czaga, Alex Leslie, Matt Rader, and Elaine Woo. Sunday, October 19 at 7:00pm. The Grande Luxe Hall, 303 8th Ave. E., Vancouver. More information at harbourpublishing.com.

JANE EATON HAMILTON
Author reads from her new book Love Will Burst Into A Thousand Shapes. Also features Susan Paddon. Thursday, October 23 at 7:00pm. Cottage Bistro, 4470 Main Street, Vancouver. More information at http://caitlin-press.com/event/vancouver-book-reading-jane-eaton-hamilton-love-will-burst-into-a-thousand-shapes/.

SURREY INTERNATIONAL WRITERS' CONFERENCE
The 21st annual writers' weekend features over 70 workshops and chances for one-on-one meetings with well-known authors, agents, and editors. October 24-26, 2014. Sheraton Guildford Hotel, 15269 104th Ave., Surrey. More information at siwc.ca.

AUTHORS UNBOUND
An evening of readings by five local authors/writers, who will be featuring a mix of novelists, poets, short story and non-fiction genres. Monday, October 27 at 7:00pm, free. Peter Kaye room, lower level, Central Library, 350 W. Georgia. More information at vpl.ca.

CANADIAN SPACEWALKERS
Join CBC Quirks & Quarks' Bob McDonald for an astonishing journey into the stars to celebrate Canadian Spacewalkers: Hadfield, MacLean and Williams Remember the Ultimate High Adventure. Tuesday, October 28 at 7:00pm. H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, 1100 Chestnut, Vancouver. Register by calling 604-738-7827.

ECHOES OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
Reading by Robert "Lucky" Budd from his new book Echoes of British Columbia. Tuesday, October 28 at 7:00pm, free. Book Warehouse, 4118 Main Street, Vancouver.

BOOK READING
Reading, signing, and siscussion on Writing with Cathy Ace, author of Corpse with the Platinum Hair. Wednesday, October 29 at 6:30pm. Book Warehouse, 4118 Main Street, Vancouver. More information at 604-879-7737.

AUTHORS IN OUR COMMUNITY
Reading by the author of The Towers of Tuscany, the story of a woman who dares to follow her own path in the all-male domain of the painter's workshop. Wednesday, October 29 at 7:00pm. Welsh Hall West, West Vancouver Memorial Library, 1950 Marine Drive, West Vancouver. More information at 604-925-7403.

SECOND GROWTH
Author Fabienne Calvert Filteau's launches debut collection of poetry. Also featuring local poets Jen Currin, Surya Govender and Daniela Elza. Wednesday, October 29 at 7:00pm. People's Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Dr Vancouver. For
more information: Co-op Books: (604) 253-6442 or daniela@livingcode.org.

BOOK LAUNCH
English and Creative Writing teacher Crystal Hurdle launches her latest book of poetry, Teacher's Pets. Thursday, October 30 at 11:30am. Fir 206, Capilano University. More information at capilanocreativewriting.blogspot.ca.

Upcoming

LAST OF THE INDEPENDENTS
Vancouver writer Sam Wiebe reads from his latest book. Saturday, November 1 at :00pm. Chapters, Strawberry Hill.

NOIR AT THE BAR
A night of crime fiction. Drink, mingle and hear eight talented mystery writers read: E.R. Brown, D.B. Carew, Dietrich Kalteis, Owen Laukkanen, Charlotte Morganti, Linda L. Richards, Robin Spano and Sam Wiebe. Tuesday, November 4 at 7:00pm, free. Shebeen Whisk(e)y House, behind 212 Carrall, Vancouver.

DEAD POETS READING SERIES
To mark Remembrance Day, five local writerers with extensive public reading experience will read from the work of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Keith Douglas and Denise Levertov on Sunday 9th November at 3 p.m. in the Alice Mackay Room, lower level, Vancouver Public Library., 350 West Georgia Street. Free.

TWISTED POETS LITERARY SALON
Features Elaine Woo with Jen Currin and Christine Leclerc. Wednesday, November 12, 7:00pm. The Cottage Bistro, 4470 Main Street, Vancouver. Suggested donation at the door: $5. More information at www.pandorascollective.com.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: A GALA FUNDRAISER
In support Pandora's Collective's Poetry Outreach Program at the BC Children's Hospital's Eating Disorder
Clinic for Youth under the age of 18. This 1920s themed event hosted by RC Weslowski features music by local songstress Sharon Bryson and visits from literary greats. Saturday, November 15 from 7-10pm at Vinci's Caffe and Gallery, 194 West 3rd Avenue. Tickets are only $45 (or $35 if you're a member of Pandora's Collective) and includes a glass of wine and canapes. Details and to purchase tickets: bit.ly/1qr0TLw.

JEWISH BOOK FESTIVAL
The 30th annual Jewish Book Festival featuring an exciting roster of writers from across Canada, the US, and Israel, including Yotam Ottolenghi, Zeruya Shalev, Steven Galloway, Dr. Brian Goldman, Bob Bossin, and Mark Leiren-Young. November 22-27, 2014. More information at jewishbookfestival.ca.