At The Guardian’s books blog, Claire Armitstead, who was a juror for this year’s Samuel Johnson Prize, asks the eternal question, “Just how many books should you read to judge an award?”

More specifically, Armitstead notes that this year’s Johnson jury was faced with 131 books submitted by publishers — and then “called in” 31 more titles that weren’t originally submitted.

So is the call-in system actually worth the extra work it generates? On the plus side, it enables prize juries to follow the buzz around books, and take in titles which the publishers might not have thought to submit for all sorts of reasons. (Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, the highest profile book ever to win the Guardian first book prize, was technically a call-in because it was only the second year of the prize and Penguin forgot to submit.)

On the minus side, it leads to all sorts of special pleading. This can be direct: before they’ve even started discussing the novels already entered, the Booker judges meet to discuss letters from publishers begging for extra titles to be accepted. It can also be indirect: a well-connected author being talked up by friends in high places.

Two weeks ago, I would have begged for call-ins to be banned. Today I’m not so sure. Without them, we wouldn’t have had Patrick French’s Naipaul biography on the shortlist.

(The shortlist, by the way, is covered here.)

This is all well and good, though Armitstead skirts the ever-thorny issue of how many books submitted to award juries are actually read in full. Presumably that means they all were in this case, but Quillblog can’t help thinking of Michael Kinsey.

Kinsey was a non-fiction judge for the U.S. National Book Award in 2002. In a hilariously honest Slate piece on his experiences, Kinsey started off with this: “My motives were ignoble – mainly vanity and a desire for free books – so, it served me right when the books started rolling in and I realized with horror that I was actually expected to read them: 402 in all.” He went on to openly state that he did not, in fact, read them all.

When jury chair Christopher Merrill cried foul, Kinsey retorted:

Chris Merrill, our chairman, says, “I read enough of each book to know whether it merited further consideration.” Me, too. Sometimes that was none at all.

The winners of this year’s BC Book Prizes were feted at a gala April 26 at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver. Prizes were awarded in seven categories at the ceremony, where the annual Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence was also presented.

Ian McAllister, who won the Booksellers Choice Award for his memoir The Last Wild Wolves (Greystone Books), and Harbour Publishing owner Howard White.

Fiction nominees Heather Burt and Mary Novik. Novik won for her historical novel Conceit (Doubleday Canada).

George McWhirter, poetry nominee and poet laureate of Vancouver.

Author and award presenter Dennis Foon with Meg Tilly, a finalist for her kids’ book Porcupine (Tundra Books).

Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence recipient Gary Geddes, West Coast Book Prize Society president Sally Harding, and B.C. Lieutenant Governor Steven Point.

Illustrated children’s literature finalist Lisa Cinar, author Michael Turner, and poetry finalist Gillian Wigmore.

From a piece in the North Shore News by Friend of Q&Q Caroline Skelton:

If only literary awards could be more like the Grammys.

The organizers of that famed event don’t seem to give a hoot that each year their audience twitches fitfully through 90 per cent of the evening, en route to album of the year. Tuning in to see whether Amy Winehouse would trounce Rihanna this year, for instance, you were first apprised of Jimmy Sturr and His Orchestra’s big win in Field 17 — Polka.

At the B.C. Book Prizes, announced tomorrow, there’s but seven little categories. And out of all the B.C. fiction published this year, there’s just one Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize.

Reading through the five books on the shortlist, it struck me as unfair that one should go home with all the proverbial marbles.

What about the many charms and peccadillos of the other four? Not one little ode for all those finely realized characters, lushly painted scenes and hold-onto-your-socks-lest-you-get-blown-away metaphors?

Click through to read the author’s suggestions for new awards, including the “I can smell the cobblestones!” award, the bad sex award, and the madwoman/madman in the attic award.

The nominees for this year’s BC Book Prizes were feted at a shindig held April 19 in Vancouver. The winners will be named at the prize gala on Saturday, April 26. (Photos courtesy of kc dyer.)

Crystal Stranaghan, publisher of Gumboot Books, with author James McCann.

Author and BC Book Prizes boardmember Norma Charles chats with author Julie Burtinshaw.

Children’s author Kari-Lynn Winters, whose book Jeffrey and Sloth (Orca Book Publishers) is nominated in the picture book category.

Author Meg Tilly and her husband. Tilly’s book Porcupine (Tundra Books) is nominated in the YA category.

Ian McEwan, Khaled Hosseini, and J.K. Rowling were all honoured at the Galaxy British Book Awards last night, but much of the subsequent media coverage has focused on a brief moment after the awards, when Rowling came perilously close to a boob reveal.

From The Daily Mirror’s pun-tastic take on events:

She may be a wizard with words – but Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling keeps getting herself in a right old muggle with her frocks.

At the Galaxy British Book Awards on Wednesday night she almost revealed everything in her Chamber of Secrets as her figure-hugging purple satin gown suddenly started Slytherin down.

Luckily her press aide Mark Hutchinson gave new meaning to the phrase PR handout – by quickly grabbing the top of the dress to spare her blushes.

J.K., who picked up the Outstanding Achievement Award at London’s Grosvenor House, suffered more overexposure on a U.S. tour last year when her dress slipped to reveal her white bra.

Not to dedicate too much more time to this, but be sure to scroll down in the Mirror piece for the three-picture slide-show of the dramatic rescue as it unfolded.

Harlequin has announced their fourth annual More Than Words awards and anthology, which honours five women who have made a difference in their communities.

The More Than Words anthology contains fictional stories inspired by the work of the award recipients, who each received a $10,000 donation in support of their respective charities.

Harlequin authors Linda Lael Miller, Sherryl Woods, Curtiss Ann Matlock, Jennifer Archer and Kathleen O’Brien contributed to this year’s collection of short stories. Each author’s fictional story is accompanied by a factual introduction of each recipient, with proceeds from the book being reinvested in the Harlequin More Than Words program, which aims to inspire readers to give back to their own communities.

This year’s award recipients include Jeanne Greenberg (SARI Therapeutic Riding), Aviva Presser (Bears Without Borders), Ruth Renwick (Inside The Dream), Dr. Ricki Robinson (Autism Speaks), and Sally Hanna-Schaefer (Mother/Child Residential Program).

Who says booksellers are the last guardians of good taste in an ever-more tawdry world?

From AbeBooks:

Welcome to the Hooker Prize – in honor of Elliot Spitzer and his fall from grace in a New York minute, AbeBooks.com has compiled a list of 10 recommended non-fiction reads about hookers, madams, high-class callgirls and prostitutes. Prostitution, of course, is the oldest profession in the world and has fascinated readers for centuries. Since the 1970s, there has been a wealth of memoirs from ‘ladies of the night’ so here’s the literary lowdown on the callgirl culture.

Yes, The Happy Hooker by Xavier Hollander is #1.

The National Book Critics Circle handed out its annual book awards on Thursday, and among those honoured was Junot Diaz for his debut novel, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao – a tragicomic family saga that New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani compellingly described as “Mario Vargas Llosa meets ‘Star Trek’ meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West.” The other winners were Haitian-born Edwidge Danticat for her memoir Brother, I’m Dying; New Yorker music critic Alex Ross for The Rest Is Noise; poet Mary Jo Bang for Elegy; Tim Jeal for his biography Stanley, the Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer; and Harriet Washington’s Medical Apartheid.

Besides their Caribbean origin, Danticat and the Dominican-born Díaz share some striking similarities. Both authors are young (Danicat, at 39, is a year younger than Díaz), and both got their start after completing creative writing MFAs at New York universities (at Brown and Cornell, respectively). Less superficially, both books address the themes of immigration, murky family lineages, and the recent, brutal histories of their respective home countries. And, evidently, they’re friends – or at least friendly colleagues. Here’s Danticat and Díaz in conversation in Bomb, the literary quarterly; here they share the stage at a Lannan Foundation reading in California; and here’s Danticat discussing Díaz’s short story, “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie),” for a New Yorker podcast.

The Salon du Livre, an international book fair in Paris, is being boycotted by a coalition of Islamic nations unhappy with the decision to award the ‘Pavilion of Honour’ to Israeli writers.

From The Guardian:

The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Isesco) has urged its 50 members to boycott the fair, which starts on March 14. So far, Iran, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon and Tunisia have confirmed they are to pull out.

A statement issued by Isesco said that “the crimes against humanity Israel is perpetrating in the Palestinian territories” make it an unworthy recipient of the honour.

Christine de Mazières, speaking for the French Publishers’ Association who organise the Salon, said it was an unfortunate move. “What is happening in the Middle East is very sad, but it is not linked to our event.” Israel, she stressed, was not being honoured for its politics but for its writers, such as Amos Oz and David Grossman, both of whom are due to appear at the event. All of the countries now pulling out, Ms de Mazières said, were aware of the Israeli honour at the time they signed up.

Oz and Grossman are both outspoken peace activists and highly critical of Israeli aggression.

The Quill Awards, launched in 2005 to celebrate the best book in U.S. publishing, has lost the support of one of its corporate co-founders, Reed Business Information (which owns Publishers Weekly).

The Canadian Press reports:

Reed Business Information gave no reason for the decision and a company statement did not make it clear whether the awards had been placed on hiatus or ended permanently. A spokeswoman for Reed, which operates such publications as Variety and Publishers Weekly, declined to give any further details.

The Reed announcement, posted on the website of Publishers Weekly, said the plan was to “suspend” backing of the Quills, but also referred to the “dissolution” of the awards. Money raised for the Quills Literacy Foundation will be distributed to two non-profit organizations - First Book and Literacy Partners.

The award ceremony was a black-tie affair that has featured Jon Stewart and Donald Trump as presenters, and had been broadcast on NBC stations. The Quills Literacy Foundation, chaired by former Variety publisher Gerry Byrne, raises money to support U.S. literacy.

The British publishing industry mag The Bookseller has been running its Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year competition for 31 years now, and the 2008 shortlist has just been announced. The nominees are:

• I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen

• How to Write a How to Write Book

• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues

• Cheese Problems Solved

• If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs

• People who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr Feelgood

On The Bookseller website, Horace Bent, the custodian of the Diagram Prize, talks a bit about the selection process:

I confess: I have been anxious that as publishing becomes ever more corporate, the trade’s quirky charms are being squeezed out. Lists are pruned, targets are set, authors are culled. But happily my fears have been proved unfounded: oddity lives on. Your submissions for the 2007 Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year were as rich and varied as ever. Drawing up the six-strong shortlist was a fraught and wildly controversial process.

For our money, though, none of the selected titles is as merrily bizarro as last year’s winner, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification. Except, maybe, for one title that The Bookseller ruled out for missing the publication cut-off date: Squid Recruitment Dynamics, by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Over in England, Scottish writer A.L. Kennedy has won the Costa Book of the Year Award, worth £25,000. Kennedy won the Costa (the award formerly known as the Whitbread) for Day, about life in postwar Britain. Last year’s winner, Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves, was set in Canada and had a Canadian publisher, Penguin Canada. There’s a Canuck connection for Day, too: House of Anansi Press has Canadian rights to the book, which they published last August, and Kennedy appeared at the firm’s 40th birthday bash last October.

Canadian talent fared well in this year’s Oscar nominations, announced this morning. And in case you needed an excuse to catch the February 24 ceremony – if it happens – there’s a publishing tie-in, too.

Besides the best actress nod for Halifax’s Ellen Page for Juno, which is dominating Canadian headlines, Toronto director/actor/activist Sarah Polley is up for best adapted screenplay for her directorial debut Away From Her, based on the Alice Munro story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.” Julie Christie also got a best actress nomination for her role in the film.

The news dovetails with a mini-debate on GalleyCat about how Polley’s film has accomplished the seemingly unthinkable by sexing up Alice Munro for a mass audience. Yesterday, a mildly scandalized reader complained about the new Vintage paperback edition for The View From Castle Rock (pictured above), first published in 2004.

“I saw the cover for the paperback of Alice Munro’s latest collection, The View from Castle Rock, in an ad in the NY Times Book Review,” a GalleyCat reader emails, “and Vintage has given the book a Sessalee Hensley makeover.” … [I]t’s not too hard to see what he’s talking about, although my reference point upon first glance wasn’t so much Hensley, the fiction buyer for Barnes & Noble, as it was all those chick lit covers with women’s legs and no faces. (Not to mention the hot pink lettering; nice touch, that!) “While I understand the effort to sell more copies, it seems like a desperate approach for such a great writer,” our source continues, addressing the “chick lit” question directly: “Is that Vintage’s marketing strategy? I guess, if it gets Munro into more people’s hands it’s a good thing, but for me there’s a real disconnect in tone between the cover and the contents.”

Today, another reader rebuts by asking if Munro’s (or Munro’s publisher’s) concession to the marketplace is really such a big deal. After all, in CanLit, as in Canadian film, opportunities to sell out are few and far between.

Last night, the winner of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers was announced. This being the first year the award is sponsored by the RBC Foundation, the ceremony was held, appropriately enough, in the 40th floor reception suite of the RBC building on Toronto’s Bay Street. Below are some photos from the event.

Marjorie Celona (back to camera), whose story “Othello” won this year’s award, is congratulated by judges Michelle Berry and Andrew Pyper. (The third judge, Natalee Caple, was unable to attend the event.)

(More photos after the fold…)

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The Washington Post is reporting that Windsor, Ontario, resident Christopher Paul Curtis has scooped up his third Coretta Scott King Award for Elijah of Buxton, his YA novel about a free-born child in an Ontario farming community of escaped slaves (for Q&Q’s review see here). The book also received a Newbery Honor at the American Library Association’s annual meeting in Philadelphia.

Laura Amy Schlitz took home this year’s Newbery Medal for Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, a collection of dramatic monologues about a medieval village. The Caldecott Medal, which usually goes to a conventional picture book, was awarded to Brian Selznick for his genre-bending tome The Invention of Hugo Cabret, aimed at eight- to 12-year-olds.

Reportedly, Selznick was caught off guard by the win.

Selznick won the Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, a 500-plus-page category-buster that the author has called “not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things.” The judges decided that Selznick’s tale of an orphan who lives in a Paris train station was driven primarily by its elegant black-and-white drawings, which qualified it for the picture-book award.

Selznick said yesterday that the questions about his book’s genre were “part of what makes this [award] such a surprise.” His young protagonist ends up getting involved with one of the pioneers of the cinema, and Selznick said he chose a picture-heavy form “because I saw that it connected with how a director tells a story through a camera.”

From CBC.ca:

Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam has been shortlisted for the Story Prize for short fiction for his book, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures.

The Story Prize is an annual U.S. book award for short story collections written in English and published in the U.S.
Three finalists, chosen by a jury, were announced on Wednesday.

The competing entries are Jim Shepard’s Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which was nominated for a National Book Award in the U.S., and British author Tessa Hadley’s Sunstroke and Other Stories.

From The Guardian:

The inanities of the internet have seduced a generation, and we live in a fragmenting culture where people read nothing and know nothing of the world, the new Nobel laureate novelist Doris Lessing warned yesterday.

Lessing, described by the Nobel committee as “that epicist of the female experience”, has been in poor health, and the £750,000 Nobel prize for literature was presented yesterday in London, while a recording of her acceptance speech was relayed to the Swedish Academy hall in Stockholm. Her tone was profoundly pessimistic. Although she is still working hard at the age of 87, and she insisted the world would always need stories and storytellers, she also warned: “Writing, writers, do not come out of houses without books. We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned, and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing.

Though we’re fairly sure that well-educated know-nothings existed long before the Net, and though we happen to think that questioning certainties can be a very good thing, we take her point – especially when it comes to houses without books.

The American National Book Awards were bestowed in New York City last night. The big winners were Denis Johnson’s Vietnam epic Tree of Smoke for fiction; Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian for young people’s lit; Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA for non-fiction; and Robert Hass’s Time and Materials for poetry. (For those keeping track of Canadian distributors, that would be Douglas & McIntyre, H.B. Fenn, Random House, and HarperCollins, respectively.)

Q&Q contributor Sarah Weinman was on the scene, and on her own blog she has a thorough roundup of coverage. As for her own impressions:

Like this year and last, I had a good time at the Book Awards. Why? Because even though the dress-up quotient was high and the speeches were long, I always feel a palpable love of literature in the room, even if it’s not necessarily correlated to the nominated books.

Weinman and several other litbloggers were also live-blogging from the event. Her one-line-at-a-time on-the-spot impressions can be found here. (Sample: “[Presenter Michael] Cunningham: nervous and a blowhard.”)

As you may have heard, the annual Scotiabank Giller Prize was handed out last night. Q&Q will have a full report on the evening on our News page, but for now, here’s some shots of the gala.

Above: Authors Linda Spalding and Michael Ondaatje.

More below the fold… (more…)

It’s safe to say that last year’s Giller Prize-winner, Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, caught some pundits off-guard. (Ahem.) This year, the peanut gallery has kept curiously mum on who will take home the $40,000 prize (which, of course, is being awarded tonight in Toronto).

Except, that is, for a trio of Globe and Mail panelists made up of “Review”-section editor Andrew Gorham and writers Sandra Martin and James Adams, who say unanimously that the Giller should go to Ondaatje for Divisadero. Only Andrews thinks the prize won’t go to Ondaatje – he’s laying his bet on Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air. (Hay seems to have captured the popular vote, too.)

Literary merit aside, Gorham thinks the timing is right for a Hay win: “It feels like this is Hay’s moment because she has been building in our literary landscape with each book that she publishes,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Toronto Star teases readers with a recent headline — “Which book is likely to win the Giller?” — but finds the question too hot to handle (so does CBCNews.ca, for that matter). Instead of giving a straightforward answer, publishing reporter Vit Wagner coughs up some BookNet Canada sales data (for Quillblog’s take, see here) and simply says:

Winning a Scotiabank Giller Prize or a Governor General’s Award is guaranteed to boost the sales of any author, with relatively unsung writers having the most to gain.

The National Post hardly raises the bar, leading its Giller coverage with this eye-opener:

Novelists tend to command unnatural facility with language and possess keen powers of observation and a high tolerance for solitude. Talking to them can be intimidating.

This Quillblogger, however, is reserving speculation on who will take home the Giller in light of news out of France that the Renaudot prize — the country’s second most prestigious literary contest — was awarded to an author who wasn’t even on the shortlist.

But the biggest surprise of today’s announcements, not least to the novelist himself, was the award of the Renaudot prize to Daniel Pennac. Chagrins d’École was not even among the five titles selected for the final round of the award, which is second only to the Goncourt in importance to French readers.

“It’s a complete surprise,” he declared to journalists as he arrived late for the celebration at the Drouant restaurant in Paris. “I expected it even less since I wasn’t even on the programme,” he added. “There must have been something amusing happening [on the panel],” he suggested.

While a similar upset is unlikely at the well-scripted Gillers, the French shenanigans bode well for seemingly overlooked titles like, say, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negros.

To brush up on all the Giller nominees, see Q&Q’s reviews:

Effigy by Alissa York
A Secret Between Us by Daniel Poliquin (trans. Donald Winkler)
The Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji
Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay
Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje

CanLit fans and publishing types who are not attending the Scotiabank Giller Prize ceremony will have two other opportunities to get together, eat, drink, and merrily debate which book should win. The Scotiabank Giller Light bash – the ceremony’s younger and less formally dressed sister – will again be thrown in both Toronto and Winnipeg this year.

Attendees can watch the official ceremony on the big screen. The event in Winnipeg is put on by McNally Robinson Booksellers at the Grant Park store and includes a dinner. In Toronto, singer Kyle Riabko will be entertaining at Steam Whistle Brewing’s Roundhouse. Proceeds from the $25 tickets go to support the cross-country literacy programs of Frontier College.

It’s participation time. With the Scotiabank Giller Prize coming up in less than a week, we’d like to ask our readers (a) which book should win the prize, (b) which one will win, and what the hell, (c) which book should be in the running but isn’t.

You can weigh in on the comments field – and if you’re worried about offending some author/friend/colleague, remember that our blog allows for anonymous comments. Or you can pick a pseudonym like “Darth Reader.”

And here’s a reminder as to the five Giller nominees:

• Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (M&S)
• Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje (M&S)
• A Secret Between Us by Daniel Poliquin; Donald Winkler, trans. (D&M)
• Effigy by Alissa York (Random House Canada)
• The Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji (Doubleday Canada)

According to just-released statistics from BookNet Canada, the shortlist announcement for the Scotiabank Giller Prize sparked a sales spike that averaged a 388% increase in weekly sales for the listed titles.

In the week ending October 14, 2007, A Secret Between Us by Daniel Poliquin saw the highest percent increase at 1200%, followed by Effigy by Alyssa York with 564%. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje and The Assassin’s Song by M.J. Vassanji, already selling at a robust rate before the shortlist announcement, increased by 83% and 70% respectively, while Elizabeth Hay’s Late Nights on Air has seen a 22% bump in sales.

Quillblog doesn’t want to dampen the celebrations – any sales spike is a good sales spike – but interpreting this information requires a bit more analysis.

Although BookNet does not release sales figures, the percentages should be understood in light of the fact that pre-announcement sales for some of the books were quite small. Daniel Poliquin’s jump from a week of single digit sales to one in the low triple digits, explains the huge percentage increase for his book. York’s 564% increase similarly comes from a jump from low double digit to high double digit sales. Books from Hay, Vassanji, and Ondaatje all got smaller bumps from low triple-digits to mid triple-digits.

The percentage figures also don’t take into account the varying lengths of time each book has been on sale. Ondaatje’s Divisadero, for example, had much higher weekly sales right after it was released in the spring than it does now.

What was it that Mark Twain said about statistics?

Irish writer Anne Enright is the surprise winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering, beating out bookie favorites Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach and Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip, The Guardian reports.

Howard Davies, chair of the panel, described it as “an unflinching look at a grieving family in tough and striking language”. No picnic, it was described by the Observer’s critic as “a story of family dysfunction, made distinctive by an exhilarating bleakness of tone”. Davies said: “It’s accessible. It’s somewhat bitter – but it’s perfectly accessible. People will be pretty excited by it when they read it.”

Enright herself told Radio 4’s Today programme this morning: “When people pick up a book they may want something happy that will cheer them up. In that case they shouldn’t really pick up my book. It’s the intellectual equivalent of a Hollywood weepie”.

There you have it from the author herself – keep your tissues handy and enjoy.

Doris Lessing is the 2007 Nobel laureate in literature – and only the 11th woman in the prize’s 106-year history. Presented this morning in Stockholm, the citation describes Lessing as “that epicist of the female experience” and singles out 1962’s The Golden Notebook as one of “the handful of books that informed the 20th-century view of the male-female relationship.” The Swedish Academy also points to Lessing’s genre-expanding series of science fiction novels, Canopus in Argos (published from 1979 to 1984), which combined her signature themes of feminism, colonialism, mystical Sufism, and nuclear and ecological catastrophe.

Long considered a contender for the prize, Lessing “declared herself totally surprised” upon receiving the news “from a group of reporters camped on her doorstep” in London, reports The New York Times.

Short, stout and a bit hard of hearing, Ms. Lessing was sharp and straightforward in her comments. After a few moments, she excused herself and went inside.

“Now, I’m going to go in to answer my telephone,” she said. “I swear I’m going upstairs to find some suitable sentences which I will be using from now on.”

Whether or not this augurs well for Margaret Atwood, another Nobel “favourite,” remains to be seen.

Not content to be sidelined by the literary establishment any longer, Amazon announced on Monday that it is teaming up with Penguin Group to launch a new prize for unpublished novelists. Appropriately, the “jury” is composed of amateur reviewers and established editors, who will award the top prize of a Penguin publishing contract and a US$25,000 advance:

… contestants from 20 countries [including Canada, except for residents of Quebec] can submit unpublished manuscripts of English-language novels to Amazon, which will assign a small group of its top-rated online reviewers to evaluate 5,000-word excerpts and narrow the field to 1,000. The full manuscripts of those semifinalists will be submitted to Publishers Weekly, which will assign reviewers to each. Amazon will post the reviews, along with excerpts, online, where customers can make comments. Using those comments and the magazine’s reviews, Penguin will winnow the field to 100 finalists who will get two readings by Penguin editors. When a final 10 manuscripts are selected, a panel including Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the current nonfiction paperback best seller Eat, Pray, Love, and John Freeman, the president of the National Book Critics Circle, will read and post comments on the novels at Amazon. Readers can then vote on the winner …

Whether the formula is hopelessly baroque or refreshingly democratic remains to be seen, but its complexity seems to confirm one thing: clearly, scouting literary talent is a subtle art.

An article in The Guardian describes how Indra Sinha, author of the Man Booker-shortlisted novel Animal’s People, came to write the novel, which is based on the experience of the people in Bhopal, India, where a chemical leak from a Union Carbide factory killed 8,000 people and caused long-term health problems and suffering in the community.

Sinha, who was a successful and wealthy advertising copywriter in England before becoming a novelist, has been campaigning for compensation for Bhopal since 1993, when an activist asked him to help raise money for a clinic.

Animal’s People is both novel and polemic, but Sinha is clear that it must work as fiction if it is to have any impact. “It has to be a work of art – if you will excuse me using that expression – first,” he says, “and if it can’t succeed as that, it could have no power to change things.”

The author says he had been working on a novel with intertwining stories of people in a Bhopal-like setting, but had trouble making the book live until he found the main character:

Animal, a 20-year-old whose spine was wrecked as a result of the leak and who has been reduced to walking on all fours. “I used to be human once. So I’m told,” he says at the outset. Animal curses, masturbates while spying on a naked woman from up a tree, and tries to poison the leader of the justice campaign. He is the anarchic centre of an angry, yet warm-hearted, book….

Sinha says it was finding Animal – and his violent, vibrant voice – that was the key to the book. “I had tried first person, third person, all sorts of things, and it just wouldn’t work,” he says. “It remained resolutely, totally dead, and then one day someone said to me, ‘I’ve met this young man in Bhopal who goes on all fours.’ I didn’t know anything more about it than that, and the fact that he was quite a feisty character with a chip on his shoulder but also a sense of humour. I thought: maybe that’s what this thing needs.”

The winner of the Man Booker Prize will be announced on Oct. 16.

Call your bookie, dryclean your tux or dress, and prepare your conspiracy theories: the Giller longlist has been unveiled.

The 14 15 titles on the list, which will be whittled down to five on Oct. 9, are below. Just like last year, the list is a mix of the usual suspects and surprising newcomers, big presses and small. N.B.: the last three Q&Q cover stars – Michael Winter, Elizabeth Hay, and D.R. MacDonald – made the list.

Here’s the complete list, with links to Q&Q reviews and author profiles.

• Soucouyant by David Chariandy (Arsenal Pulp Press)
• Zero Gravity by Sharon English (The Porcupine’s Quill)
• Helpless by Barbara Gowdy (HarperCollins Canada)
• Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay (McClelland & Stewart)
• The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (HarperCollins Canada)
• Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles (HarperCollins Canada)
• Lauchlin of the Bad Heart by D.R. MacDonald (HarperCollins Canada)
• The Reckoning of Boston Jim by Claire Mulligan (Brindle & Glass Publishing)
• Conceit by Mary Novik (Doubleday Canada)
• Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart)
• A Secret Between Us by Daniel Poliquin, translated by Donald Winkler (Douglas & McIntyre)
• The Assassin’s Song by M.G. Vassanji (Doubleday Canada)
• The Architects Are Here by Michael Winter (Penguin Canada)
• October by Richard B. Wright (HarperCollins Canada)
• Effigy by Alissa York (Random House Canada)

Watch Q&Q Omni for a full story later today.

When the Man Booker longlist was announced last August, pundits were somewhat surprised that many of the year’s biggest authors – Sebastian Faulks, J.M. Coetzee, Michael Ondaatje – were left off. After yesterday’s shortlist announcement, however, they’re positively hornswoggled. The most disturbing element of the list, according to The Telegraph, is that all but one of the authors – Ian McEwan – are practically unheard of, and that a full four of them have sold less than a thousand copies of their books.

While McEwan’s novella, On Chesil Beach, has been a runaway commercial success, selling more than 100,000 copies, one of his rivals for the prize, Animal’s People, loosely based on the Bhopal chemical plant explosion, by the Indian author Indra Sinha, had sold just 231 copies in [the U.K.] by mid-August, 10 days after its sales were supposedly given a major boost by being longlisted.

Nicola Barker’s Darkmans had sold only 499 copies. Anne Enright’s The Gathering had fared a little better with sales of 834 sales, Mister Pip had sales of 880 and of McEwan’s rivals, only Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist broke the four-figure barrier, with 1,519 readers buying it.

Michael Redhill’s novel Consolation was the winner at this year’s Toronto Book Awards presented at the Toronto Reference Library. (Photos by Michaela Cornell)

Sally Gibson, whose book Inside Toronto was shortlisted, is congratulated by David Miller.

Doubleday Canada publisher Maya Mavjee accepts this year’s Toronto Book Award from David Miller on behalf of author Michael Redhill.

Three – well, four – big-name Canadian authors are among the 71 new appointments to the Order of Canada announced by Governor General Michaëlle Jean on Friday. Alistair MacLeod (Officer), Charlotte Gray (Member), and Leon Rooke (Member) are being honoured as “citizens who have shown the most exceptional achievements and are known on the national or international stage,” according to the CBC.

And the fourth author? That Jean Chrétien fellow, whose new memoir is coming out in the fall, was named a Companion, the highest level in the Order. Some of you may have heard of him.

UPDATE: There’s one other notable inclusion; Harbour Publishing owner Howard White was named a Member.

Last Friday, at the MagNet magazine conference in Toronto, Markets Initiative handed out its first-ever “Order of the Forest” awards for publications and printers who have worked to become ancient forest friendly. Q&Q publisher Alison Jones won for the magazine’s 2005 redesign, which moved the magazine’s printing to Ancient Forest Friendly paper. (The awards were retroactive.)

More on the awards at the Canadian Magazines blog.

Congratulations to Alison, and to all the other winners. The “Order of the Forest” ceremony was held in a quiet forest glade, and attended by a huge gathering of anthropomorphic animals wearing vests and hats. There may even have been a centaur or two….

Norwegian author Per Petterson has won this year’s IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the world’s richest book prizes. Petterson won the €100,000 prize for his novel Out Stealing Horses; the book’s translator, Anne Born, will receive a quarter of the prize money. Per’s novel beat out seven other shortlisted titles, including Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown, Julian Barnes’s Arthur & George, and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men.

No Canadian titles made the shortlist, though a dozen were among the 130-plus longlisted books. The sole Canadian to win an IMPAC is Alistair MacLeod, for No Great Mischief, in 2001.

Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian author best known for his 1958 novel Things Fall Apart, has won the Man Booker International Prize. The £60,000 prize, secondary to the main Man Booker prize, was recently established and is awarded every two years to “a living author for a body of work that has contributed to an achievement in fiction on the world stage.” It was first awarded to Ismail Kadaré in 2005.

Achebe’s work has focused on African politics, the effects of colonialism on the continent, and perceptions of Africa and its people in the West. Things Fall Apart has sold over 10 million copies and has been translated into 50 languages. His novel Anthills of the Savannah was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1987.

Author Nadine Gordimer, who was one of three jurors, wrote:

Chinua Achebe’s early work made him the father of modern African literature as an integral part of world literature. He has gone on to achieve what one of his characters brilliantly defines as the writer’s purpose: ‘a new-found utterance’ for the capture of life’s complexity.

The other jurors were authors Elaine Showalter and Colm Tóibin. Achebe will receive the prize at a ceremony on June 28, 2007, at Christ Church in Oxford.

Author Michael Winter, getting stuck while describing Jack Award winner Richard Bachmann’s A Different Drummer bookstore: “Is there still a cat?”

Richard Bachmann, on receiving the award, a hefty, metal jack: “Where’s the ball?”

On being this year’s winner: “This is very gratifying, though I can’t feel entirely humble about it.”

On why he opens his store up to so many authors and events: “I get to spend a lot of time with very smart people.”

On his old bookselling philosophy: “If we know what works, we do it again.”

On his new one: “Nothing works, but everything does help.”

On the relative gentleness of his acceptance speech: “I’m only giving you one barrel tonight.”

A small family reunion would make the second floor of Toronto’s Czehoski restaurant on Queen Street West feel a little cramped. With dozens of bookselling and publishing industry friends and well-wishers present to see A Different Drummer’s Richard Bachmann receive this year’s Jack Award, the place felt like a bizarre, adult game of Twister.

Bachmann, an outspoken figure on the Canadian publishing and bookselling scene for many years, received the award – a bowling ball-sized metal jack, appropriately enough – from author Michael Winter, whose 2004 novel The Big Why won the Drummer General’s Award, a prize Bachmann set up to recognize worthy books that were overlooked by the major awards.

In his acceptance speech, Bachmann admitted that A Different Drummer could just as easily be a “small bookstore on a side street in Burlington,” but that he and his staff have always wanted it to be more, a place that engages both author and readers, something he said was being lost amid shrinking serious book coverage and a culture more obsessed with technology than reading.

Bachmann made a point of thanking Hamilton bookseller Bryan Prince, with whom he often collaborates on events and promotions. At the end of his speech, Bachmann proposed a toast, not only to his friends and fellow booksellers, but to readers.

The Jack Award, presented by the Book Promoters Association of Canada, has been awarded each year since 1993 to “an individual within the Canadian publishing industry or media, who has made a significant contribution to the promotion of Canadian authors and books.” The award is named after Jack McClelland, who was its first recipient.

Before the presentation of the Jack Awards, outgoing BPAC president Doug Blair presented the Award for Promotional Excellence to HarperCollins Canada’s publicity team, for their campaign for Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers. Miranda Snyder of HarperCollins accepted the award on behalf of the rest of the team. Honourable mentions went to Penguin Canada, for its campaign for Craig Davidson’s The Fighter, and HarperCollins again, for the campaign for Londonstani.

Among those in attendance were author Elizabeth Hay, The Globe and Mail’s Martin Levin, McClelland & Stewart’s Ruta Liormonas and Ellen Seligman, McGill-Queen’s University Press’s Jacqueline Davis, freelance publicist Debby de Groot, McArthur & Company’s Kim McArthur, Penguin Canada’s Yvonne Hunter and Stephen Myers, incoming BPAC president David Leonard, and many more.

To view photos from the event, click here.

The annual Griffin Poetry Prize gala is a chance for poets and poetasters alike to dine, drink, dance, and let their lines run right to margin. This year’s event, held June 6 at The Stone Distillery in Toronto’s Distillery District, was no exception. For the story in Q&Q Omni, click here. For pictures from the event, scroll down. (Photos by Tanja-Tiziana Burdi)

Kitty Lewis of Brick Books arrives at the gala.

Griffin jury member and past nominee Karen Solie arrives with her husband, poet David Seymour.

The CBC’s Lisa Godfrey, author Gil Adamson, House of Anansi’s Laura Repas, Griffin nominee Ken Babstock, and Anansi publisher Lynn Henry assemble near the bar. (Babstock’s Airstream Land Yacht was in the running for the Canadian prize.)

Novelist Austin Clarke, The Walrus’s Ken Alexander, the Canada Council’s Melanie Routledge, and poet Earl Lovelace chat and quaff.

Ladies and gentlemen, the white stripes.

Nominated poet Priscila Uppal with her brother.

Charles Wright, winner of the international prize, expresses himself at the podium.

The prize’s founder, funder, and namesake, Scott Griffin, angrily shushes the crowd. (Kidding.)

Don McKay, the Canadian winner, addresses the largest number of media microphones ever simultaneously aimed at a poet in this country, ever. (Again, kidding.)

While announcing the shortlist for the annual U.K.-based Carnegie Medal for children’s writing this week, the organizers also released a list of their top ten favorite titles of all time. According