• Coach House Books? There’s an App for that
• The New York Times remembers celebrated American poet Lucille Clifton
• Apple may not be on our side after all
• Shocking White House library books!

On Feb. 4, Ben McNally hosted author, adventurer, and semi-pro kayaker Jon Turk at the Dora Keogh in Toronto’s Danforth neighbourhood as part of his series The Fine Print. Turk was there to talk about his new book, The Raven’s Gift (St. Martin’s Press/H.B. Fenn and Company).

Turk regales the audience with tales of foiling a rifle-toting local with only a snowmobile, a cigarette, and a steely gaze. (All photos courtesy of The Fine Print/Ben McNally Books)

H.B. Fenn’s Tom Best, The Fine Print’s Holly Kent, Rupert McNally of Ben McNally Books, and Turk do an impromptu impression of Jean Chrétien’s famous “kitchen cabinet.” (I think Rupert’s playing Roy Romanow…)

Quillblog was on the fritz on Friday, so here is what you missed:

“At the end of the day, people need to have the courage to speak out. The predatory pricing practice by Amazon has pulled the industry along, and the Federal Trade Commission should have paid attention. Ultimately the authors will pay out of their income. This is an attack on literature so Amazon can capture control of the industry. They think they will be the iTunes of literature. It’s a monopolistic play that has nothing to do with value for the consumer. It’s an interesting scam by a very large corporation and I think we should wake up. It hasn’t helped grow the market – it has concentrated the market in Amazon. It’s been 70 years since people got away with [such actions] because the anti-trust laws used to be enforced, but we didn’t have enforcement for eight years.” -   Bob Livolsi, founder of the ebookstore Books on Board, at a panel discussion at Mediabistro’s eBook Summit (via Mobylives)

“And don’t remind me of the conversation I once had with a prominent academic, who intended the phrase ‘But it’s so effortless …’ as an adverse comment on a novel. I simply couldn’t rant convincingly enough to ensure that particular book could win a small but useful prize. The narrative’s illusion of ease – and just you try creating an illusion of ease, matey – was too convincing. A parallel idiocy might involve refusing to applaud Derek Jacobi at the end of a performance, because he looked as if he wasn’t acting.” – A.L. Kennedy, on the Guardian’s blog

“My waitress tonight was a Trillium nominated novelist — what’s wrong with this picture?” – the OAC’s literature officer John Degen on Twitter

“As the debate progressed, it became clear that, although both poets know something of the current Canadian poetry landscape, both are conservative in conception and approach. Bok, who did not challenge the moderator’s depiction of him as an ‘experimental poet’ (in fact, he embraced it), is interested in equivalencies between poetic and scientific methodological composition, while the diffident Starnino prefers a poetry where emotion is to the garment what syntax is to the clothesline. Neither question the ideological construction of the structures they inhabit, and only barely did Starnino refer to Eunoia’s ’success’ as defined not by critique but by the market.” – Michael Turner on the Christian Bök/Carmine Starnino Cage Match of Canadian poetry

“I don’t for a second buy Bök/Starnino as the major critical dialectic in Canadian poetry. While one, generally, comes from a traditionalist mindset and the other is avant-garde, what matters is that both men are formalists at their core. The fact that Bök wants to write in genomic code and Starnino is into sonnets is secondary to the fact that the great professional theme for both is the use of constraint as a path to artistic freedom. A more representative conversation would be between the constrainers and the free-versers. But maybe the free-versers don’t have a spokesperson who’s talented or persuasive enough to hang with these two at an intellectual level.” – Jacob McArthur Mooney on his blog Vox Populism

On Nov 14th, the Toronto Women’s Bookstore will host the Written in Colour Writers’ Symposium, a full-day event geared toward emerging indigenous writers and writers of colour.

Workshops range from grant writing to getting your play produced to memoir and erotic writing. Facilitators include writers Tamai Kobayashi, Lee Maracle and Mariko Tamaki, as well as industry players like Cormorant Books publisher Marc Côté from Cormorant Books and John Degen from the Ontario Arts Council.

Tamaki, author of several books including the award-winning graphic novel Skim (with illustrator Jillian Tamaki), will be giving a workshop entitled You Are All Talk! about voice and writing.

“The idea is to get writers to think about writing and talk, what providing our characters with a voice means,” says Tamaki

Tamaki, who is Japanese-Canadian, thinks the symposium is relevant because culture and race are as important in the socio-political landscape as they are in the literary-arts landscape. “I think that representation is something everyone should be concerned about. People want to see themselves reflected back in the literary works that they love and so we should all have a vested interest in making sure that all different identities, readers and writers get supported.”

Tamaki notes that “colour” is a complex issue. “I write about Japanese people but I don’t like this idea that people feel beholden to put that element in their works. Like, if I don’t write about someone who’s Asian, have I messed up? Committed less of a service as an Asian feminist?”

The Written in Colour symposium will  be held at 918 Bathurst Street. Call 4-6.922-8744 to pre-register. Tickets are $15 to $30 sliding scale in advance and $30 to $50 sliding scale at the door.

Geoffrey Taylor, director of Harbourfront’s Reading Series, is to receive an honorary degree from the School of Creative & Performing Arts at the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning. Taylor, who has been with Harboufront Centre for 20 years, is being honoured for his contribution to the promotion of Canadian books and authors.

Over the last five years, Taylor has been responsible for the International Festival of Authors, has served as a jury member for both the Toronto Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Awards, and has been an adviser to the Humber School for Writers. In 2008, Q&Q included him in a list of the most influential people in Canadian publishing.

Taylor will be presented with the degree at a ceremony on Nov. 7.

…

The IFOA has also confirmed the lineup for its second annual presentation of the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize shortlist. For the reading on Oct. 28, the following authors will be reading:

• Douglas Coupland will read from Generation A
• Annabel Lyon will read from The Golden Mean
• Andrew Steinmetz will read from Eva’s Threepenny Theatre
• Jacqueline Larson will read from Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood’s English-language translations of Nicole Brossard’s Fences in Breathing
• Jane Urquhart will read from Alice Munro’s Too Much Happiness on behalf of Munro, who is unable to attend the event

The winner of the $25,000 award will be announced on Nov. 24 in Toronto.

It’s literary festival season all across Canada, with Calgary and Banff’s WordFest coming to an end, the IFOA getting into gear in Toronto, and the Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival rocking the best hospitality room debauchery on Granville Island. Below are some highlights from out West. (Photos by Zoe Whittall)

Shani Mootoo, Jan Conn, and Lorna Crozier at the WordFest closing party

Michael Turner and Billeh Nickerson at VIWF fundraising gala

Mariatu Kamara, author of The Bite of the Mango

June Hutton, Lisa Foad

Joseph Boyden at the VIWF opening reception

Author and big-time intellectual John Ralston Saul has just been elected president of PEN International. According to The Globe and Mail, he is the first Canadian to be elected president in the 88-year history of the organization.

Saul succeeds the Czech writer Jiri Grusa, who has held the post for six years. Earlier presidents have included Arthur Miller, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Alberto Moravia.

Saul, a novelist and essayist, is a former president of PEN Canada. “PEN International is the world’s most important and oldest freedom of speech and literary organisation,” he said in a press release. “Almost 1,000 writers who are in prison or are in danger around the world look to us for help. We have to invent new ways of turning back the rise of authoritarian controls.”

It’s not quite the biggest reward that can be given to a writer (that would be inclusion in Oprah’s Book Club, or maybe Richard and Judy’s), but the Nobel Prize for Literature is nothing to sneeze at – just look what it has done for last year’s winner, J.M.G. Le Clézio (who?). The prize is to be handed out tomorrow, and the international book media abounds with speculation. That the head of the prize  recently remarked that the Nobel has been too “Eurocentric” in its picks has caused some to believe this is America’s year, with maybe Philip Roth or Joyce Carol Oates heading to Stockholm.

As far as the oddsmakers are concerned, however, the prize is most likely to go to Israeli writer Amos Oz. According to the odds posted at Ladbrokes.com, Oz has a 3-1 chance of walking away with it, the same German author Herta Müller (who?).

Alice Munro is farther down the list at 25-1, the same odds as Bob Dylan(?). Atwood is 40-1, and Ondaatje is 50-1.

Whoever wins, the odds of someone posting, within 24 hours of the announcement, a video mashup on YouTube featuring Kanye West interrupting the ceremony in Stockholm are about 2-1.

Hilary Mantel has won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for Wolf Hall, published by Fourth Estate. The 41st Booker Prize was presented at a ceremony in London today.

Mantel was considered the odd’s-on favourite, despite being up against former winners A.S. Byatt and J.M Coetzee. The Guardian quotes Jim Naughtie, the chair of this year’s five-person judging panel, as saying:

Our decision was based on the sheer bigness of the book, the boldness of its narrative and scene-setting, the gleam that there is in its detail.

Mantel was competing against Byatt, Coetzee,  Adam Foulds, Simon Mawer, and Sarah Waters.