Best publicity stunt of the day: Lemony Snicket and Seth collaborate on new series

Quill & Quire is not in the habit of publishing emails, but this one demands sharing.

This afternoon, Q&Q was blind-copied on a correspondence between Vikki VanSickle, marketing and publicity coordinator at HarperCollins Canada, and the curmudgeonly children’s author Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket. The email revealed the “confidential” news that HarperCollins Canada is publishing a four-book series by Snicket, with illustrations by Canadian artist Seth.

From Lemony Snicket:

From: LemonySnicket
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 11:43 AM
To: Vansickle, Vikki
Subject: RE: Lemony Snicket Announcement – CONFIDENTIAL

My Dear Ms. VanSickle,

As I have already explained at length to you and others in this publishing conspiracy: no.

Take this press release back, please. I have attached it here. I have sympathy for anyone wanting to promote my work, but none of this information can be released.

In particular, I do not want to see this press release distributed to the list of people I’ve taken care to blind copy above. May they remain forever blind to any information about myself or my work.

These books are questionable and contain questions. I, for one, question why anyone would be interested in reading them.

And have the decency to leave Seth out of it. He has enough trouble as a celebrated artist imprisoned in a basement studio in some wretched university town, not to mention the fact that he’s Canadian.

I would appreciate it if you didn’t contact me again. I’ll be in my office until 4.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

The email was accompanied by a “press release” with a placeholder for a quote from Seth (“if and when he recovers from the trauma of your last encounter”), and a marked-up version of the cover.

The official press release, which arrived 15 minutes later, confirmed that the first book in Snicket’s series, Who Could That Be at This Hour?, will be available in ebook and print formats on Oct. 23.

Robert Lepage’s creative alchemy

This feature by Sarah Greene appeared in the November 2011 issue of Q&Q.

Robert Lepage’s impressive artistic career spans theatre, film, and opera, and includes stints as designer and director for Cirque du Soleil and a Peter Gabriel world tour. The prolific Quebec actor, writer, and director has now added graphic novelist to his list of achievements. The Blue Dragon, first published in French earlier this year by Quebec’s Éditions Alto, appears this month from House of Anansi Press.

Adapted from the play of the same name, the book reunites co-writers Lepage and Marie Michaud, both of whom performed in the original 2008 production. The idea for the graphic novel, first suggested by Lepage’s sister and assistant Lynda Beaulieu, seemed natural given the influence on the play of Hergé’s The Blue Lotus, about TinTin’s adventures in Shanghai; the use of Chinese calligraphy, video, and comic panel-like squares in the set design; and the fact that the central character, Pierre Lamontagne, is a graphic artist and calligrapher.

“We thought a graphic novel would be more faithful, do more justice to the piece,” says Lepage. “We saw it as an opportunity to extend the themes of The Blue Dragon.”

A follow-up to the mid-1980s production The Dragons’ Trilogy, the story is set in modern-­day China and revolves around three characters in a love triangle: Lamontagne, a middle-aged Quebecois artist who lives in Shanghai and runs a contemporary art gallery; his ex-wife, a Montreal-based ­advertising executive hoping to adopt a baby; and Lamontagne’s younger Chinese lover. Just as there are three characters interacting in three languages (French, English, and Mandarin), there are three possible endings to the play and the book. Éditions Alto played on the number by printing a first run of 3,333 copies.

To adapt the highly visual play into print, Lepage and his production company, Ex Machina, imagined how they would present the story as a film. They auditioned a number of Quebecois artists for the project, eventually choosing Fred Jourdain, a young illustrator known for his portraits of rock stars and celebrities. Jourdain’s fluid, vivid illustrations of a rainy Shanghai are conveyed by mixing comic-book art with more painterly images. “He was very strong at expressing emotions on his characters’ faces,” says Lepage.

Anansi publisher Sarah MacLachlan fell in love with this combination of graphica and fine art. “I thought that was an extraordinary thing,” she says. The Blue Dragon is Anansi’s first graphic novel for the adult market (its children’s imprint, Groundwood Books, published the YA title Skim by Jillian and Mariko Tamaki in 2009). Canadian fiction editor Melanie Little met Éditions Alto president Antoine Tanguay last January, at the Canada Council for the Arts’ inaugural translation rights fair in Ottawa, and presented an offer within days.

The graphic novel has also had an effect on the theatrical version of The Blue Dragon, which will be remounted by Toronto’s Mirvish Productions in January. “Our work with Fred had a big influence on the piece,” Lepage says. “Both to make it stronger by simplifying some of the storylines, but also by complexifying some things that needed to be more [complex]. A lot of that came from some of the very rich, effervescent exchanges we had with Fred.”

Lepage says the adaptation was so successful it’s changed his approach to publishing: “Whatever play we come up with we should try to find a format – not necessarily another graphic novel – that is as faithful to our visual approach to the stage as it is [to] the written word.”

Éditions Alto and Ex Machina have continued their partnership, producing a limited-­run souvenir book for Lepage’s production of Stravinsky’s opera The Nightingale and Other Short Fables and collaborating on a nine-volume box set for his epic nine-hour opera Lipsynch.

“[Lepage] is a central cultural figure in Quebec right now,” says Tanguay. “Everything he does turns to gold.”

Illustrations by Fred Jourdain, courtesy of Anansi

Jim C. Hines strikes a pose for women on fantasy book covers

U.S. fantasy writer Jim C. Hines is a brave man.

The author recently posed as the sword-wielding heroine from his novel The Stepsister Scheme. Inspired by the result, Hines posed for several more photos modelled after the covers of best-selling urban fantasy novels. The results – and Hines’ point – speak for themselves (warning: shirtless man).

For a comical take on gender stereotypes and superheros, also check out Kate Beaton’s Sexy Batman and her surly Wonder Woman.

Novel becomes a bestseller despite author’s anonymity

“During the first weeks of spring 1974, when Jingqiu was still at senior high school, she and three other students were selected to take part in a project to compile a new school textbook.”

So begins the English translation of Under the Hawthorn Tree,  a novel set to be published in Canada by House of Anansi Press. Already a huge success in China, in part due to a 2010 film adaptation by Academy Award–winning director Zhang Yimou, the book began life as a blog by the writer Ai Mi. Perhaps most remarkable about the novel’s international success (it has reportedly sold in 15 countries) is that no one seems to know the real identity of the pseudonymous author.

The novel, a love story, is part of a crop of Chinese works dealing with the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong. In a translator’s introduction to the English-language edition, Anna Holmwood writes:

While political sensitivities have continued to limit full historical and political analysis, novels were for a while – and perhaps even still are – the most fruitful way of coming to terms with this period. They became known as “scar literature” or “literature of the wounded” – a term coined after the publication of Lu Xinhua’s novel The Scar.

According to an article in The Guardian, Lennie Goodings, the editor at Virago who bought the book for the U.K. market, hadn’t even read it in English when she made an offer.

Goodings asked someone from Shanghai who works in Virago’s accounts department to read it: “Her face fell and she said, ‘I’m not interested in the Cultural Revolution. It’s my parents’ generation.’ The next day she was at my shoulder, eyes brimming, saying ‘it’s so wonderful and I cried.’ On the basis of that, I bought it blind.” Although the original blog was serialised on a website that was blocked by the Chinese authorities, an admirer had passed it to one of China’s state-affiliated publishers, which has been overwhelmed by its sales.

Anansi will publish the English version of Ai Mi’s novel in February. There is currently no North American release date for Yimou’s film.

Sarah Polley to adapt Atwood novel

Sarah Polley is one step closer to bringing Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel Alias Grace to the big screen. According to the Canadian Press, Polley’s adaptation of the Giller Prize–winning book is one of 29 scripts in development with Astral’s Harold Greenberg Fund.

Away from Her, Polley’s 2007 directorial debut (an adaptation of Alice Munro’s short story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”), earned her an Oscar nomination for best adapted screenplay.

UPDATE: Also included in this round of funding are adaptations of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’s graphic novel Red: A Haida Manga (Douglas & McIntyre), scripted by Joseph Boyden; Alison Pick’s novel Far to Go (House of Anansi Press), co-written by playwrights Rosa Laborde and Hannah Moscovitch; Wayson Choy’s novel All That Matters (Anchor Canada), by director Paulo Barzman; Zoe Whittall’s novel Bottle Rocket Hearts (Cormorant Books), co-written by Whittall and Linsey Stewart; Gil Adamson’s novel The Outlander (Anansi), scripted by Esta Spalding; Sheree-Lee Olson’s book Sailor Girl (Porcupine’s Quill), written by film critic Johanna Schneller; and Steven Galloway’s novel The Cellist of Sarajevo (Vintage Canada), produced by Strident Films. A full list of recipients is available via the Greenberg Fund.

Josef Skvorecky, author of The Engineer of Human Souls, dies at 87

The dissident writer and publisher Josef Skvorecky, author of 1984′s Governor General’s Literary Award–winning novel The Engineer of Human Souls, has died at the age of 87, according to media reports.

Skvorecky came to Canada in 1968 following the Soviet invasion of his homeland, Czechoslovakia. With his wife Zdena Salivarova he founded 68 Publishers, which provided a home for dissident writers including Vaclav Havel and Milan Kundera.

Skvorecky is also the author of The Cowards, The Swell Season, and Dvorak in Love. He is survived by his wife.

Maurice Sendak tells those looking for Wild Things sequel to “go to hell”

“I do not believe I’ve ever written a children’s book. I don’t know how to write a children’s book.”

Book links round-up: reviewing The Hobbit trailer, Atwood is a 2011 hero, and more

• The Telegraph reviews trailer for The Hobbit
• Torontoist names Margaret Atwood one of 2011’s heroes
• Jonathan Ames contemplates writing book or comic to continue his cancelled HBO comedy, Bored to Death
• Publishers lament the titles that got away in 2011
• NPR names Kate Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant one of the top comics of 2011.

VIDEO:

Lorna Crozier talks poverty in Canada on CBC

Last Friday, poet and University of Victoria professor Lorna Crozier hosted a special edition of CBC Radio’s The Current.

“I know what it’s like to come from a needy family. Though both my parents worked, we lived in substandard rental housing. We went without. And I keenly felt my mother’s worry as she tried, and failed, to make ends meet,” Crozier said by way of introducing “We Are the 10%: Poverty in Canada.” The special in three segments presented various experiences of poverty from around the country (and also featured poetry readings by Crozier’s husband, Patrick Lane).

The first segment profiled three very different people who are just scraping by. The second looked at child poverty and focused specifically on current socio-economic conditions in British Columbia — the province with one of the highest rates of poverty. Crozier wrapped up with a panel discussion on the paradoxically higher day-to-day costs facing those with the lowest incomes.

The special has been so well received that The Current host Anna Maria Tremonti announced a follow-up call-in show with Crozier this Thursday, in which CBC listeners will discuss what it’s like to be poor in Canada.

The original radio special is available online at The Current‘s website.

Quillcast episode three: Charlotte Gill and Eating Dirt

Quillcast is a new podcast series from Quill & Quire featuring behind-the-scenes conversations with authors and publishing insiders. In this episode, the second in a two-part series on non-fiction authors, Vancouver writer Charlotte Gill speaks about her experiences as a professional tree-planter, the subject of her memoir Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe (Greystone Books), one of Q&Q’s 2011 books of the year.

Eating Dirt was shortlisted for the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction, and was recently longlisted for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

Scroll down to listen to the episode, and click on the thumbnails to view photos from Gill’s life as a tree-planter:

Quillcast is produced with media partners The Walrus, Open Book: Ontario, and Open Book: Toronto, with support from Toronto Life. This project has been generously supported by the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund.

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Embed