On book blogging

A few days ago, Rebecca Schinsky (an American book blogger and very activer Twitterer) tweeted about a letter she and other book bloggers received from HarperCollins U.S. imprint William Morrow that stated a change in their policy regarding review copies. Essentially, the letter (as discussed in the L.A. Times and The Guardian) laid down the law: no more unsolicited review copies; reviews are expected to be written and posted in a timely manner (within weeks of publication); and if bloggers won't play by these rules, no more review copies. But! William Morrow loves book bloggers, the letter assures recipients. So no worries.

Certainly, this letter may not have been worded to the greatest affect, and it seems William Morrow was taken aback by the angry response the missive received and has since tried to explain that the change in policy isn't meant to be punitive. Be that as it may, the wider response has been interesting. On the one side, bloggers are angry at being treated like free marketing labour – most don't get paid and look at free books as a way to help justify a sometimes very time-consuming endeavour; on the other side are those who see this letter and its response as further evidence of the entitlement of the blogosphere – hacks who think they're real journalists and should be treated accordingly. It's messy and ugly, and I'm not sure either side has it right, but rather than wade into the wider debate, I'll simply explain how it all works here.

Giller Prize + Q Debate

I know I said I was going to be more on the ball, but I'm still a week late on this. So, without any preamble, congratulations to Esi Edugyan, who won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel Half-Blood Blues (Thomas Allen Publishers). She, like Patrick deWitt, was nominated for all the big awards this year and I am delighted to see she (also like deWitt) has won at least one of them. Too often we see authors nominated for at least the Canadian big-three and then not win any of them (last year it was Kathleen Winter, previously it was Annabel Lyon, etc.). 

But that isn't what I really want to talk about here. Last week, after the Giller was handed out, Jian Ghomeshi, host of the CBC radio show Q, host a "Q Debate" about whether Canadian literature was too international in scope, and if so, if that means we're missing out on some quintessentially Canadian stories. He held up both Edugyan (whose novel is set in the U.S. and Berlin) and deWitt (whose novel is set in on the American west coast during the California gold rush) as examples of Canadian writers being praised for novels set outside of Canada. Because it was Giller week, attention was also paid to David Bezmozgis, whose novel The Free World is set mostly in Rome, and Michael Ondaatje, whose novel The Cat's Table was mostly set on a ship steaming from Sri Lanka and England. Of the six books on the this year's Giller shortlist, only two were set in Canada: Lynn Coady's The Antagonist and Zsuzsi Gartner's Better Living Through Plastic Explosives.

So, what does that say about the state of Canadian writing? Are we ignoring "Canadian stories" in favour of exotic, cosmopolitan ones? Personally, I say no. Of course, I can't know what these authors are thinking when they come up with an idea and set out to write it, but when the results are as well crafted and interesting as these six books, I'm not worried about it (just for comparison, last year's shortlist was made up of almost exclusively Canada-specific books).  I would far rather have a Canadian author (or an author who identifies as such because of birth or immigration) write about something that they find compelling than feel boxed in by the notion that to win an award they must confine their writing to something Canadian. Of course, the other side of the argument is that there is nothing confining about Canadian stories because the country is vast and the population is diverse; certainly, there are an infinite number of stories to be told. However, if what you want to write about is related to the jazz scene in Berlin under Nazi Germany, being told to stick to Montreal would feel confining. 

It's tricky though, because I love reading stories set in the places I know. Seeing Toronto or Montreal or Nova Scotia or wherever pop up in a novel is exciting in strange way because I'm so used to reading about elsewhere. If I thought that books set in Canadian locales were truly becoming endangered, I'd be up in arms. But I don't think they are, so I'm not. Canadians have a lot of interesting stories to tell, and if they're set in diverse places, so much the better, I say.

Writers' Trust Fiction Prize finalists

The finalists for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize were announced in Toronto this morning and, since the Writers' Trust doesn't do longlists, this is the first fiction shortlist of the Can Lit awards season (the Man Booker shortlist came out earlier this month and the Giller shortlist doesn't come out until next week). Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt are on this list – they've been on all of them so far – but strangely, Edugyan is the only female author up for the Writers' Trust's $25,000 fiction prize.

Here's the full list of nominees:

• Clark Blaise, The Meagre Tarmac (Biblioasis)
• Michael Christie, The Beggar's Garden (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi Press)
• Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• Dan Vyleta, The Quiet Twin (HarperCollins Publishers)

Blaise and Christie are both also on the Giller longlist with DeWitt and Edugyan, but Vyleta has yet to come up on any of the lists so far. That's one thing I love about the Fall books season. Not only do a ton of great titles come out, but all the awards spring up to remind you of books you might have missed previously, or that might have been launched more quietly than some of the buzzier books of the season.

The winner of the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, as well as the winner of the Journey Prize and four other awards for a writer's body of work, will be announced on Nov. 1.

Giller Prize longlist

Well, Tuesday morning are usually much less eventful. But, this is Sept. 6 and that means not only the Man Booker Prize shortlist, but also the Giller Prize longlist. It's a good day to be a reader, is what I'm saying. So, without further ado, here are the longlisted titles for Canada's largest fiction prize:

• David Bezmozgis, The Free World (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Clark Blaise, The Meagre Tarmac (Biblioasis)
• Michael Christie, The Beggar's Garden (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Lynn Coady, The Antagonist (House of Anansi Press)
• Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi Press)
• Myrna Dey, Extensions (NeWest Press) – Readers' Choice Winner
• Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• Marina Endicott, The Little Shadows (Doubleday Canada)
• Zsuzsi Gartner, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
• Genni Gunn, Solitaria (Signature Editions)
• Pauline Holdstock, Into the Heart of the Country (HarperCollins Publishers)
• Wayne Johnston, A World Elsewhere (Knopf Canada)
• Dany Laferrière, The Return (Douglas & McIntyre)
• Suzette Mayr, Monoceros (Coach House Books)
• Michael Ondaatje, The Cat's Table (McClelland & Stewart)
• Guy Vanderhaeghe, A Good Man (McClelland & Stewart)
• Alexi Zentner, Touch (Knopf Canada)

Having just looked at the Man Booker shortlist, there are two repeating titles: congrats on the double nominations for both Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan, both of whom are from British Columbia. Congratulations are also due to the small publishers on the list: House of Anansi Press has two nominated titles (deWitt's being one of them), Coach House Books, and NeWest Press. Many of these books have been on my to-read list for a while, so now it's time to move them up to the top, I suppose.

The shortlist of five books will be announced on Oct. 4 and the winner will be named on Nov. 8. Besides getting a whole lot of prestige, the winner of the Giller receives $50,000 and each of the other four finalists receive $5,000.

Man Booker Prize Shortlist

The Man Booker shortlist came out today and features two novels by Canadians – Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers, which I loved, and Esi Edugyan's Half Blood Blues, which I have not yet read – which is always exciting. The Booker winner will be announced on Oct. 18, but until then, we'll have six books to be in suspense about.

• Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape - Random House)
• Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie(Canongate Books)
• Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers (Granta)
• Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail)
• Stephen Kelman Pigeon English (Bloomsbury)
• A.D. Miller Snowdrops (Atlantic)

Each of these authors has won £2,500 by virtue of making the shortlist, and the winner receives and additional £50,000.

Why that book changed your life

When people ask me what my favourite book is, I'm a little proud not to have an answer. There are a lot of books that I reread annually, and there are many more that greatly affected me while I was reading them, and continued to afterwards. I like to think I'm lucky that no one specific book stood out. The question, though, of our favourite book(s) is implicitly tied to the bigger idea that a book can change you somehow. I looked into that question for the National Post and here's what I found:

The claim that a book can change someone’s life is one that’s made over and over again. Usually, we brush it aside as a cliché, but what if it was actually possible?

“The idea was to say, ‘OK, now what really are the psychological effects of reading?’ ” Oatley says. To try and work out an answer, he and Maja Djikic put together a study to measure how personalities can be changed by literature. Participants were given either Anton Chekhov’s story “The Lady with the Little Dog” or a version of the story rewritten in a nonfiction style by Djikic, which included all the same information, was the same length and at the same reading level. Participants did personality tests before and after reading. 

The question of the psychology of fiction is one that Keith Oatley, professor emeritus in the department of human development and applied psychology at the University of Toronto, has been working on for 20 years. He and some colleagues started the website On Fiction in 2008 to track work related to the psychology of fiction.

“The people who read the Chekhov story, their personalities all changed a bit,” Oatley says.

Read the rest on The Afterword...

Sex on the Moon

We often ooh and ahh over novels that ring so true we can't believe they're fiction. The characters are so perfect, the (often) period is rendered just so, and we get caught up in everything that happens. That's as close to non-fiction as a lot of readers get. But, for all our admiration of these hyper-realistic novels, we rarely talk about the non-fiction that reads like fiction – stories so crazy with such a strange cast of characters that we think it must be made up. Of course, it isn't (usually, anyway), and that just seems to heighten how surreal the story it. Sex on the Moon, Ben Mezrich's latest non-fiction thriller, is just like that.

On the surface, Sex on the Moon is the story of a heist, specifically, the theft of a 600-pound safe filled with moon rocks from NASA. But, because that crime is so huge and so ridiculous, as much as this is a book that came about because of the crime, it is really the story of the man who committed it. Thad Roberts was a co-op student at NASA on his third of three tours when he carried out the audacious plan he'd been formulating in his head for months. He was on his way to becoming an astronaut – his dream – and he decided to steal from NASA. For a smart guy, Thad spends a lot of the book being incredibly stupid.

But we should back-up, as Mezrich does, and look at who Thad is. To be honest, I spent the majority of the book really frustrated by him. Thad is a strong central character, and it's clear that Mezrich had lots of access to him while he was putting the book together, but he's a hard guy to like. Early in the book we learn that Thad has been disowned by his Mormon parents for having premarital sex with his girlfriend, who he later marries. They're a very young couple and without financial support from home, Thad ends up dropping out of college for a while to help make ends meet. It's unfulfilling, though, and when he decides to go back to school and is casting around for a goal, he settles on astronaut.

In Other's Words: When iconic literary characters outlive their creators

I wrote a feature for the National Post's summer Books Extra about writers who write about another author's characters. Sometimes these are one-off deals, sometimes authors make a career out of it. I talked to Jeffrey Deaver about writing the new James Bond novel, Budge Wilson about write a prequel to Anne of Green Gables, and Max Allen Collins about his posthumous collaborations with Mickey Spillane. You can read the piece in this weekend's Post or online.

Here's a preview:

In art, tributes are pretty much de rigueur. As consumers we’re accustomed to cover songs, tribute bands and flawless copies of famous paintings. In literature, though, that expression of adulation is less common. Certainly, there is a wealth of fan fiction and series written under a common nom de plume, but perhaps for fear of accusations of plagiarism, writers tend to steer clear of writing too much like one another.

Nonetheless, some series and characters take on a will of their own — or rather, the fans do. This sometimes leads to the publication of unfinished novels, or, as the latest James Bond novel indicates, to continuations of an author’s work.

The latest Bond is Carte Blanche, which essentially describes the conditions under which American crime novelist Jeffrey Deaver worked when writing it. Deaver is the fifth author to write about Bond since Ian Fleming died in 1964, and the first to fully embrace a contemporary version of the famous spy.

Read the rest...

Orange Prize for Fiction goes to Téa Obreht

Téa Obreht, at 25, is the youngest ever winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, now in its 16th year. She won this year's prize for her novel The Tiger's Wife, which is also her debut novel. This is a bit of an upset, since Emma Donoghue's Room had been bandied about as the favourite.

The Serbian/American writer beat out Irish/Canadian Donoghue (Room), Canadian Kathleen Winter (Annabel), British/Sierra Leonean Aminatta Forna (The Memory of Love), American Nicole Krauss (Great House), and British Emma Henderson (Grace Williams Says it Loud). (The Orange Prize is awarded exclusively to women writers.)

Really, though, this is one of those awards where just being nominated can give you a huge boost in sales. So congratulations to Téa and to everyone else who was shortlisted.

Image shown the cover of the Random House edition of The Tiger's Wife.

Second thoughts: Anne Enright on a first marriage interrupted by new love

Anne Enright is a so lovely. We sat and had coffee in a downtown Toronto hotel two weeks ago and she told me all about what it’s like to write a new novel after winning the Man Booker prize, how having kids changes you, and what’s wrong with Vivian Westwood’s clothes. We also talked about The Forgotten Waltz, which has just been released in Canada. Here’s a bit from the profile of her that was in Saturday's National Post:

In 2007, Irish author Anne Enright was handed a second job. She won the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering and spent 2008 touring around as an award-winner, not writing.

It was a lot of work, she says, and when she was finally relinquished to her desk, she had a new novel already churning in her mind. Enright wrote The Forgotten Waltz in 2009, the year in which the novel takes place and the year Ireland’s economy imploded.

“There’s nothing I can say about Ireland that’s uplifting or fine or, you know, redeeming,” Enright says. “The situation is astonishingly bad.”

With that as a backdrop, Enright’s novel about an affair is worlds apart from gossipy tabloid culture. In the context of financial disaster, Gina and Seán’s betrayals seem both insignificant in scale and even more hurtful to their families — one more element of their lives that was not as stable as it looked — and The Forgotten Waltz is Gina’s attempt to understand and piece together everything that happened over the six years since she first met Seán Vallely.

Read the rest on The Afterword.

Griffin Poetry Prize 2011

Congratulations to Dionne Brand, Toronto's Poet Laureate, who won the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize for her 2010 collection Ossuaries. With the award, Brand also takes home the award's $75,000 purse – the richest in Canadian literature. 

The two other finalists for the Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize were former Parliamentary Poet Laureate John Steffler for his collection Lookout and Montreal's Suzanne Buffman for her collection The Irrationalist.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg, born in Tacoma, Washington, on the Griffin's international prize for her first collection of poetry, Heavenly Questions.

Other finalists in the international category were Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney for Human Chain, Khaled Matawa for his translation of Adonis' Selected Poems, and Philip Mosely for his translation of The Book of Snow by the late Belgian poet François Jacqmin.

All the finalists received $10,000 at the reading they gave last night and both winners then received an additional $65,000 in tonight's ceremony. 

Cover image shown from Dionne Brand's Ossuaries, published by McClelland and Steward

Philip Roth wins the Man Booker International Prize

The fourth edition of the Man Booker International Prize – it's given out only every two years – was awarded to Philip Roth last night. The prize is worth £60,000 and honours a writer's body of work. Roth, and American novelist, has been writing since the 1960s and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for his novel American Pastoral, among other big awards.

That sort of literary pedigree may make him sound like an good choice for the award, but Man Booker judge Carmen Callil has withdrawn from the panel because of it. Callil, an author and publisher, said "he goes on and on about almost the same subject in every single book." Not having read any Roth, I can't weigh in, but it is interesting to see some of the controversy that exists on a judging panel come to light.
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Image shown a photo of Philip Roth from The Telegraph.

The Books Everyone Should Read?

Click to enlarge.

Lists like 'The Top-100 Books Everyone Should Read' come out every year, and often feature more-or-less the same sets of (mostly) novels. Sometimes they're in a different order, sometimes they spice it up a little (Sense and Sensibility instead of Pride and Prejudice, of 1984 instead of Animal Farm, etc.). I tease mostly because these lists make me feel a little inadequate – and I have an English degree, which feels like it should mean I've read most of these books.

Anyway, The Guardian has put together a word cloud (see above) featuring the titles of the must-read books from "over 15 notable book polls" and arranged them so that the titles that appear most frequently appear largest and boldest (essentially the same idea as my tag cloud, to the right of this post). Seeing the titles arranged like this makes me feel like maybe the lists are a bit less repetitive than I thought, and also that some stories are widely considered necessary reads. To Kill a Mockingbird is the clear winner, which is interesting because, compared to some of the other titles, it is relatively contemporary. I also find it rather amazing that Le Petit Prince (or The Little Prince) has made so few lists, as well as the fact that Twilight shows up at all. It is so interesting to examine what other people/organizations deem to be must-reads.

What makes this data extra-interesting is that The Guardian also provides a spreadsheet with all the lists on it, which means that if you wanted to read your way through one of them, you certainly could.

Canadian Copyright and Bill C-32

The Canadian government is looking to change copyright exceptions for education. Basically, what they want to do is make it so that schools (which comprises everything from elementary schools to universities to any kind of scholarly research, if I'm understanding this correctly) do not have to pay to use and distribute copyright material. What does this mean? Well, on the one hand it means that schools would suddenly have all kinds of free teaching material; on the other hand, it means that the writers who put in all the hard work to produce that material will see no payment for it.

Let me just say that my mum is an author, and her work is often used in schools. Is this a conflict of interest? Well, I'm also a student with an English degree, so I think perhaps those two things cancel each other out. As much as it annoyed me to spend thousands of dollars on books each year, I never begrudged the authors their measly share of that money (and trust me, unless you're a pretty major author you're probably not making a ton of money). 

As author Erna Paris says in the video posted below: "No one else is being asked to subsidize education this way. Principals get paid for their work. ... Computer companies aren't being forced to hand over free machines."And no, that isn't a crazy comparison.

What's at stake her is more than the idea of copyright and intellectual property, though. Authors' abilities to produce the wonderful literature that we celebrate is being threatened, because if their pay cheques are cut any further, they won't be able to dedicate the time to creating the kind of work we want to study in schools, or read, period. Bill C-32 not only cripples authors financially, but it tells them that their work isn't worth anything. That kind of blatant disrespect for our national literature and those who create it is outrageous. 

Canada Reads... The Best Laid Plans

In quite a turnaround, Terry Fallis' novel The Best Laid Plans won this year's Canada Reads, beating The Birth House by Ami McKay in the final round, 4-1. I have to say, I'm pretty surprised, but after a rather predictable start I'm glad to see that Canada Reads can still keep things interesting.

On the other hand, I am not convinced that The Best Laid Plans is the "essential book" of the last decade.  I'm not entirely sure we're quite removed enough from the past decade to go about declaring what the essential book was (it seems like the sort of thing some serious hindsight is needed for). However, I do think it's telling that the debates became about which novels would promote societal change and how they presented the role of women. If this is how we see the legacy of the last decade, then I think I'm okay with that.

In the past, Canada Reads has been about recommending a novel to the country, but the form was spiced up this year and I'm not sure I totally agree with this format (I mentioned this earlier). But, that isn't to take about from Fallis' win. He self-published the novel, won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, got a publishing deal from McLelland & Stewart, and has now won Canada Reads. Any way you look at it, that's a spectacular run and it says a lot of good things about Canadian literature.

So, congratulations to Terry Fallis – and Ali Velshi, who did a great job defending the novel – and all the other novelists and defenders on the panel this year. These were the most interesting Canada Reads debates in quite some time, a trend that I sure hope will continue.

Canada Keeps Reading

Last week, CBC's Canada Reads announced the finalists for this year's literary showdown, to take place in the February. In previous years, CBC has announced the panelists and they in turn have announced the Canadian novel they wish to champion.

But, for the 10th anniversary, CBC decided to spice things up. They had booksellers and writers and critics assemble a longlist that was then voted on by the public. This led to a shortlist of 10 books, from which this year's panelists would choose they novel they wanted to defend. Problems with this method have been pointed out, but nonetheless, this year's top-5 (supposedly the top-5 novels of the decade, although I'm not so sure about that) are a more interesting assortment than last year's.

So, here are the five novels that will be debated on this year's Canada Reads, along with their defenders:

The Birth House by Ami McKay - defended by Debbie Travis 
The Best Laid Plans by Terri Fallis - defended by Ali Velshi
The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou - defended by Georges Laraque
Essex County by Jeff Lemire - defended by Sara Quin 
Unless by Carol Shields - defended by Lorne Cardinal 

But, if you're looking for something a little more off the beaten track, Pickle Me This has posted her panelists (and their picks) for the 2011 Canada Reads Indies:

Play the Monster Blind by Lynn Coady - championed by Sheree Fitch
Truth & Bright Water by Thomas King - championed by Nathalie Foy
Still Life With June by Darren Greer - championed by Chad Pelley
Home Truths by Mavis Gallant - championed by Carrie Snyder
Be Good by Stacey May Fowles - championed by Robert J. Wiersema

Now, if The Afterword would just announce its picks for Canada Also Reads (and I'm hoping and assuming there will be another round this year) the season of the literary cage match would be all set to get going.

Pitouie is landing

Two months ago, The Workhorsery's Todd Ferguson inexplicably recognized me at Word on the Street and asked me to be part of the blog tour for the press's forthcoming novel Pitouie, by Derek Winkler. Of course, I said yes. So far, Winkler has been to The Afterword and The Book Mine Set, and today he's coming to Books Under Skin.

In the author notes at the end of the novel – which has such a twist in the middle I'm reluctant to describe it to you, suffice to say, I look for these things when I read and did not see it coming; also, the narrative is layered, and I love that – Derek Winkler is described thusly:

Derek Winkler is the editor of an obscure trade publication that you have almost certainly never heard of. He also performs any number of dark and arcane tasks for Broken Pencil magazine. He has done just enough freelance journalism to be able to make that claim with a straight face.

His two most prized possessions are a broken motorcycle and his grandfather's 1926 edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

Well, the first paragraph ties back to the novel, which features a sort-of journalist (that is, he works at a trade magazine, Waste Insight, essentially rewriting press releases for publication). I'm in no way saying that Winkler himself is a "sort-of journalist," but that section of his bio is relevant to the novel. The second half, however, is related to his contribution to Books Under Skin: all about motorcycle memoirs. It's funny, it's interesting, and it might just make you want to read some more of Winkler's writing.

Here's Winkler's full blog-touring schedule:
Nov. 15-19: The Afterword
Nov. 20: The Book Mine Set
Nov. 21: Books Under Skin
Nov. 22: Hoodie Ripper
Nov. 23: rob mclennan’s blog
Nov. 24: Books on the Radio
Nov. 25: Maisonneuve Magazine
Nov. 26: Open Book Toronto

Here are your GG winners

I gave a truncated version of the shortlists (for space) but here is the full list of winners for this year's Governor General's Literary Awards - English and French winners in each category. For 11 of the 14 winners this is their first literary award, which says great things about the Can Lit scene at the moment.

Fiction:

Cool Water by Dianne Warren
Ru by Kim Thuy

Non-Fiction:

Lakeland: Journeys into the Soul of Canada by Allan Casey
C'est ma seigneurie que je réclame: la lutte des Hurons de Lorette pour la seigneurie de Sillery, 1650-1900 by Michel Lavoie

Poetry:

Boxing the Compass by Richard Greene
Effleurés de lumière by Danielle Fournier

Drama:

Afterimage by Robert Chafe
Porc-épic by Daniel Paquet

Children's literature, text:

Fishtailing by Wendy Phillips
Rose: derrière le rideau de la folie by Élise Turcotte

Children's literature, illustration:

Cats' Night Out illustrated by John Klassen
Rose: derrière le rideau de la folie illustrated by Daniel Sylvestre

Translation - French to English:

Forests (Forêts by Wajdi Mouawad) translated by Linda Gaboriau

Translation - English to French:

Le cafard (Cockroach by Rawi Hage) translated by Sophie Voillot

All 14 winners receive a $25,000 award and a specially created, leather-bound copy of their winning title. Additionally the publisher of each winning title receives $3,000 to help in promotion of the book, and each non-winning finalist also receives $1,000.

All in all, that's a pretty good day for Canadian literature.

Canadian Children's Literature Award

The Scotiabank Giller Prize wasn't the only major book award handed out in Canada last night.The TD Canadian Children's Literature Award, worth $25,000, was given to Arthur Slade, for his book The Hunchback Assignments.

The other finalists for the award were:

Janet McNaughton for Dragon Seer
Sharon Jennings for Home Free
William Gilkerson for A Thousand Years of Pirates
Nancy Hartry for Watching Jimmy

Congratulations to Arthur Slade and all the finalists.

Giller Prize 2010: The Sentimentalists

A huge congratulations to Johanna Skibsrud for winning the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel The Sentimentalists. The book is published by Gaspereau Press (based maybe 10 minutes from where I grew up in Nova Scotia). This is especially noteworthy because not only is Gaspereau Press a very small publisher, but they also set their type by hand, which is practically a lost art in today's highly-mechanized world.

Congratulations to all the finalists (and all the nominees).