Atwood-bashing begins over “Fox News North”

Margaret Atwood is once again lending her name to a worthy cause, and like her support for the environment, brown-bag lunches, and stay-at-home book tours, the celebrated novelist’s actions have generated some mild controversy in the Canadian media.

The latest episode erupted on Tuesday when Atwood announced (via Twitter) that she had added her name to a petition protesting Sun Media’s efforts to launch a Fox TV-style news channel in Canada (the channel is being dubbed “Fox News North” and “Tory TV”). That immediately prompted a response, also via Twitter, from Sun Media national bureau chief David Akin accusing Atwood of supporting “an anti-free speech movement” and effectively accusing “me and my colleagues of hate speech.”

Atwood in turn replied that the issue isn’t about free speech per se, but rather Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s meddlesome involvement with the CRTC, which recently denied the network a top-tier broadcast licence. As Atwood puts it in fewer than 140 characters, “we shouldn’t B Forced to Pay for it, & CRTC chair should be arms’ length, not Harper tool. Fox free 2 set itself up.” She elaborates her position in The Globe and Mail:

“Of course Fox & Co. can set up a channel or whatever they want to do, if it’s legal etc.,” she told The Globe and Mail in an email. “But it shouldn’t happen this way. It’s like the head-of-census affair – gov’t direct meddling in affairs that are supposed to be arm’s length – so do what they say or they fire you.

“It’s part of the ‘I make the rules around here,’ Harper-is-a-king thing,” she wrote.

In today’s National Post, columnist Kelly McParland hits back with an editorial deriding Atwood for “sign[ing] onto this silliness.” Atwood, McParland writes, “stands for good stuff like freedom of speech and freedom of the press, except when it comes to the case of people who don’t agree with her…. Right Peggy? Because you can’t be a good Canadian if you’re a Conservative. Everyone at the CanLit festivals agrees, so it must be true.”

The Post’s paranoid speculation about a left-leaning CanLit cabal is nothing new. Assuming that at least some of Quillblog’s readers will want to follow Atwood in rejecting Fox News North, you can do so by adding your name to the petition here.

Daily book biz round-up: new Oprah pick coming; money for Ontario textbooks?; and more

Today’s book news:

• Oprah prepares to announce new book club pick, and it’s not Freedom
• Scholastic Book Club takes new marketing approach
• Dalton McGuinty makes vague reference to helping Ontario schools cover cost of textbooks
• Penguin sues sports writer over undelivered bio
• Century 21 scoops up former Barnes & Noble space before corpse is even cold
• EW uncovers shocking Hollywood prejudice: authors not asked to be on Dancing With the Stars
• Delightful literary oddities available on EBay

Thomas Trofimuk’s Waiting for Columbus part of Richard and Judy’s Book Club 2.0

Since ending their long-running British TV chat show, Richard and Judy have mostly ruled out a return to the small screen. Luckily for publishers and booksellers (and, depending how you look at it, readers), they have restarted their mega-popular book club, this time as an online-only entity hosted by bookseller W.H. Smith.

The pair recently announced their picks for the 2010 edition of the club, and they include Edmonton author Thomas Trofimuk’s novel Waiting for Columbus, published in the U.K. by Picador and in Canada by McClelland & Stewart. The novel did not make much of a dent when it was published here last year, but given the traditional boost provided by the R&J club, it  may very well enjoy a second life.

The Book Club site includes a Q&A with Trofimuk, as well as “Thomas Trofimuk – A to Z”, in which he expresses his love of the Dalai Lama, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, and Irshad Manji, as well as his disdain for espresso in styrofoam cups, e-books, the Obama administration, and a woman who used a flash camera at a Lyle Lovett concert he recently attended.

(Q&Q’s review of Waiting for Columbus can be read here.)

2011 Griffin judges announced

The trustees of the Griffin Poetry Prize have selected the jurors for 2011: Irish author Colm Toíbín, Canadian poet Tim Lilburn, and American poet Chase Twichell. This marks Toíbín’s second stint judging a major Canadian literary award, following his 2008 duties on the Scotiabank Giller Prize jury. As for the other two judges, Lilburn is a former Governor General’s Literary Award–winner for Kill-site (McClelland & Stewart, 2003), and Twichell is a seven-times-published poet and the wife of novelist Russell Banks.

Daily book biz round-up: Sony’s new e-reader; Munro and Franzen; and more

Today’s book news:

• Sony launches new e-reader (and blows it again)
• Chicago Manual of Style changes its rules
• HarperCollins granted right to Stig memoir
• How Alice Munro may have influenced Franzen’s Freedom
• Guardian literary editor slams editing of First Book Prize submissions
• Justin Bieber stomps on “truthful, expressive work”

Russell Smith’s Girl Crazy optioned for film

Canadian producers Bill House , Jennifer Jonas, and Leonard Farlinger have optioned Russell Smith’s novel Girl Crazy (HarperCollins Canada) for film. The book, released in April 2010, recounts  a college teacher’s obsession with a younger woman, who introduces him to a world of sex, drugs, and violence.

Smith, also a Globe and Mail columnist, is writing the screenplay. Production is slated to start in Toronto in 2011.

2010 ReLit shortlists unveiled

The shortlists for the 10th annual ReLit Awards have been announced, and Q&Q’s very own Zoe Whittall is among the nominees for best novel. The awards will be handed out in Ottawa on Oct. 20.

Best Novel:

• Away From Everywhere, Chad Pelley (Breakwater Books)
• Wrong Bar, Nathaniel G. Moore (Tightrope Books)
• Overqualified, Joey Comeau (ECW Press)
• The Beautiful Children, Michael Kenyon (Thistledown Press)
• Holding Still For As Long As Possible, Zoe Whittall (House of Anansi Press)
• The Plight House, Jason Hrivnak (Pedlar Press)
• After the Red Night, Christiane Frenette (Cormorant Books)

Best Poetry Collection:

• Lisa Robertson’s Magenta Soul Whip, Lisa Robertson (Coach House Books)
• A Nice Place to Visit, Sky Gilbert (ECW Press)
• The Others Raisd in Me, Gregory Betts (Pedlar Press)
• Always Die Before Your Mother, Patrick Woodcock (ECW Press)
• Paper Radio, Damian Rogers (ECW Press)
• Red Nest, Gillian Jerome (Nightwood Editions)
• The Last House, Michael Kenyon (Brick Books)

Best Short Story Collection:

• Men of Salt, Men of Earth, Matt Lennox (Oberon Press)
• Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, Stuart Ross (Freehand Press)
• The Moon of Letting Go, Richard Van Camp (Enfield & Wizenty)
• What Boys Like, Amy Jones (Biblioasis)
• Fatted Calf Blues, Steven Mayoff (Turnstone Press)
• What We’re Made Of, Ryan Turner (Oberon Press)
• Sentimental Exorcisms, David Derry (Coach House Books)

Poetry rains on Berlin

Berlin was bombed with poetry Saturday night as 100,000 bookmarks printed with poems by 80 German and Chilean writers rained from a helicopter above the city’s Lustgarten.

The blitz, which lasted half an hour, was organized by the Chilean art collective Casagrande in protest of war and in celebration of Chile’s 200th anniversary of independence. The Berlin bombing was Casagrande’s fifth: the group had previously poetry-bombed Santiago de Chile in 2001, Dubrovnik in 2002, Gernika in 2004, and Warsaw in 2009 – all cities that have suffered aerial bombings in their histories.

The Guardian reports:

Organisers say that just as wartime bombings were intended to “break the morale” of the inhabitants of a city, so the poetry bombing “‘builds’ a new city by giving new meaning to events of her tragic past and therefore presenting the city in a whole new original way.”

Daily book biz round-up: Borders closure; B&N closure; and more

Special death-of-bookselling edition:

• Borders closes major San Fran location!
• B&N closes major New York location!
• Borders cuts price of Kobo e-Reader to $129!
• Staples to start selling Kindle!
• And finally: Dick and Jane and Vampires

U.K. authors petition to keep Public Lending Right intact

Authors in the U.K. are upset that the government may make cuts to the national Public Lending Right, which provides authors with a payment of six pence each time one of their books is checked out from a U.K. library. Jeremy Hunt, the British secretary of state in charge of the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport, has been instructed to reduce the department’s budget, and authors are nervous that he might be eyeing PLR as a place to make cuts.

So nervous, in fact, that prominent writers such as A.S. Byatt, Hari Kunzru, Victoria Glendinning, and Ali Smith have added their names to a petition requesting that the government keep PLR, which they say “gives effect to a legal right and is not a subsidy,” intact. The petition goes on to state, “Press coverage tends to focus on a few successful authors, yet most struggle to make ends meet. PLR provides a significant and much-valued part of authors’ incomes.”

Quoted in the Guardian, crime writer Penny Grubb, who also chairs the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (whose website is hosting the online petition), said that the funding review will be a “dog fight,” but called for action to ensure that PLR money remains untouched:

“For many writers PLR payments are a substantial part of their annual income and exceed their income from primary sales,” said Grubb. “With average earnings for writers so low, and with such a short shelf life for books in shops these days, PLR income for many writers is a vital part of their take-home pay.”

Author Trisha Ashley, also quoted in the Guardian, seconds Grubb’s concerns:

My books may be out there in the supermarkets and bookshops, but I still want them to be available to those who can’t afford to buy them, or want to read them in large print. And for that reason and to support the many friends I have whose main source of income is PLR, I signed the form and would be prepared to march with banners, lobby parliament, or do whatever else it takes to keep this vital payment at at least the same level.