Canadian literary event roundup: Feb. 10-16

It’s another busy week for literary events. Here’s a sample of what’s going on across the country:

• Asim Hussain launches Khadijah Goes to School, Toronto Women’s Bookstore (Feb. 11, 3 p.m., free)
• Sarah Ellis shares her experiences as a writer and librarian, Lillian H. Smith Library, Toronto (Feb. 11, 2 p.m., free)
• Vivek Shraya releases the second edition of God Loves Hair, Ryerson University Thomas Lounge, Toronto (Feb. 13, 6:30 p.m., free)
• Leslie Shimotakahara launches her memoir The Reading List, The Japan Foundation, Toronto (Feb. 14, 5:30 p.m., free, RSVP to info@jftor.org)
• Alan Lightman reads from his latest novel Mr g, Harbourfront Centre, Toronto (Feb. 15, 7:30 p.m., free)
• Ben Ehrenreich, Grace O’Connell, and Hal Niedzviecki share their stories about god, 61 Ossington, Toronto (Feb. 16, 7:30 p.m., free)
• Spoken word performer and motivational speaker Dwayne Morgan reads poetry, Danforth/Coxwell Library, Toronto (Feb. 15, 10 a.m., free)
• Saint Mary’s Reading Series presents poets Tammy Armstrong and Nick Thran, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax (Feb. 16, 7 p.m., free)
• Robson Reading Series presents Steve Burgess, author of Who Killed Mom? and Daniel Griffin, author of Stopping for Strangers, UBC Bookstore, Vancouver (Feb 16, 7 p.m., free)

Quillblog is looking for photos from literary events across Canada. Send your photos to scflinn@quillandquire.com

Book links roundup: Police sketches of literary characters, Bookninja’s send-off, and more

• The Atlantic on literary characters’ police composite sketches
• The National Post bids farewell to Bookninja
• Hot off her CBC Canada Reads win Carmen Aguirre performs her one-woman show based on her memoir Something Fierce
• Extremely close and incredibly personal: The Guardian‘s Q&A with Jonathan Safran Foer
• American Booksellers Association’s subsidiary IndieCommerce drops Amazon-published books

Penguin pulls out of OverDrive, stops ebook sales to libraries

Penguin Group has announced it will no longer provide ebooks to OverDrive, effective immediately. With the termination of the relationship between the publisher and the U.S. digital content distributor, public libraries are effectively cut off from acquiring and lending out Penguin ebooks and e-audiobooks.

The Digital Shift reports:

Penguin is negotiating a “continuance agreement” with OverDrive, which will allow libraries that have Penguin ebooks in their catalog to continue to have access to those titles.

But since the company does not have a contract with 3M, the still fledgling but growing competitor to OverDrive, the practical effect of the decision will be to shut down public library access to additional Penguin ebook titles (not physical titles) for the immediate future.

The news is not entirely unexpected. In November of last year, Penguin Group stopped selling frontlist ebook titles to OverDrive and other digital distribution platforms, and stopped offering new e-audiobooks to library distributors last month.

Penguin is not the only major publisher to demonstrate an unwillingness to provide digital content to libraries. Even as circulation numbers for ebooks grow at libraries, multinational publishers have tightened the reins on providing ebooks and e-audiobooks to these institutions. In March, HarperCollins capped library lending of its e-titles at 26 loans. Random House held off providing digital content to libraries until spring of last year (the availability of Canadian backlisted titles has been notoriously limited). Simon & Schuster and MacMillan have so far refused to provide e-titles to libraries. Now, HarperCollins remains the only large multinational publisher to provide digital titles to OverDrive.

In each of these cases, publishers have cited concerns over piracy and the potential for a loss of consumer sales. Canadian publishers such as House of Anansi Press, Douglas & McIntyre, and Orca Books do presently deal with the distributor.

This latest development with Penguin strengthens the argument for a Canadian-made solution to e-content distribution, championed by groups such as the Canadian Urban Libraries Council, the Association of Canadian Publishers, and the Canadian Publishers Council (of which Penguin Canada, Simon & Schuster Canada, HarperCollins Canada, and Random House of Canada are members).

[This post was updated Feb. 10.]

Carmen Aguirre wins CBC Canada Reads

Carmen Aguirre came out victorious at this year’s CBC Canada Reads. The B.C.-based author and playwright’s memoir, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter (Douglas & McIntyre), about growing up in the underground among South American revolutionaries during the 1970s, beat out Ken Dryden’s The Game (Wiley Canada), the former Habs goalie’s recollections of pro hockey and a very different version of the ’70s.

Something Fierce defender Shad had his work cut out for him, winning three votes to two against The Game’s champion, Alan Thicke, Thursday morning at the CBC studios in Toronto. The hip-hop artist was backed by Arlene Dickinson and Anne-France Goldwater (one of the rare instances when these two panelists agreed), while Thicke was seconded by Stacey McKenzie. The final showdown proved to be one of the tamest panels yet in a contest that included allegations of lying, bullying, terrorism, and lots of tears (we’re looking at you, Stacey).

Aguirre, who is currently touring her one-woman show, Blue Box, called into the studio from Ottawa after she heard the news. “It was a very interesting week for me because I’m alone in Ottawa right now,” she said. “I’d had to go every night to do my 80-minute monologue and then not sleep at night because I was waiting to see what will happen the next morning, but I’ve had a lot of virtual support.”

The Game and Something Fierce (a Q&Q Book of the Year for 2011), were the last titles standing after one by one panelists voted off Dave Bidini’s On a Cold Road (McClelland & Stewart), John Vaillant’s The Tiger (Vintage Canada), and Marina Nemat’s Prisoner of Tehran (Penguin Canada).

D&M is preparing for the expected increase in sales, often referred to as the “Canada Reads effect,” with a reprint of the book. As part of its participation in the contest, the publisher will make a financial donation to Frontier College’s Aboriginal Literacy Program.

Something Fierce will be released in the U.S. in August.

Bernadette McDonald wins American Alpine Club Lit Award

B.C. author Bernadette McDonald has won the 2012 American Alpine Literary Award.

McDonald, founding vice-president of mountain culture at the Banff Centre and the author of seven books, has received the honour for her book Freedom Climbers (Rocky Mountain Books, 2011), which recounts the true story of Polish adventurers who escaped Communist oppression after the Second World War and became the world’s foremost climbers of the Himalayas.

With the ACC award, McDonald has become the first writer to have scored the mountain lit hat-trick for a single title, having also won Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Festival and Britain’s Boardman Tasker Prize. (McDonald is the first Canadian to receive the British honour.)

The ACC will present McDonald with the award at a benefit dinner in Boston on March 3.

In December, Vertebrate Publishing acquired U.K. and Irish rights to Freedom Climbers, which they will release it paperback and ebook formats later this month.

Slideshow: George Stroumboulopoulos and celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl at the OLA Superconference

More than 4,700 library professionals, authors, and exhibitors descended on the Metro Toronto Convention Centre last week for the 2012 Ontario Library Association Superconference – the largest library conference in Canada, which ran Feb. 1–4.

Innovation was the theme for this year’s gathering, which featured more than 200 sessions and presentations by special guests such as Guy Gavriel Kay, Jonah Lehrer, Catherine Gildiner, Neil Pasricha, Nora Young, George Stroumboulopoulos, celebrity librarian Nancy Pearl, and Ontario Minister of Education Laurel Broten.

Click through the slideshow for a peek at what professional development and partying down look like in “library-land” (as one speaker put it).

Canada Reads day three: On a Cold Road is frozen out, more protests

Canada Reads author Dave Bidini performs with the BidiniBand at the Toronto Reference Library (Photo: Tanja-Tiziana Burdi)

Dave Bidini’s rock memoir, On a Cold Road, is the latest title to be voted off CBC’s Canada Reads.

Although the book was overshadowed all week by discussion about the other four titles, On a Cold Road’s demise was met with an emotional response. During a post-show Q&A, celebrity defender Stacey McKenzie broke down while reading a passage from the book in which Bidini’s hardworking band, the Rheostatics, fulfills a dream of performing at Maple Leaf Gardens.

While the panelists were on their best behaviour today, this morning Q&Q received a press release from Gabriel Fritzen, a German-Canadian who is demanding an apology from panelist Anne-France Goldwater and the CBC for “libelling survivors of Iran’s holocaust,” after Goldwater suggested on Monday’s show that Marina Nemat’s memoir, The Prisoner of Tehran, was not a truthful account of her experiences in an Iranian prison.

Fritzen, who lives near the Bergen-Belsen concentration camps in Northern Germany, is supporting Nemat by inviting a group of high school students and teaching staff from Aurora, Ontario, to attend a live taping of Canada Reads at his expense, and by attending the event himself carrying a poster of Nemat. “I owe it to the memory of those who were brutally murdered an hour’s drive from my home to show tangible support to the victims of the ongoing holocaust in Iran like Ms. Nemat,” Fritzen writes.

Tomorrow is the final day of what has become the most controversial edition of Canada Reads, which has been airing annually since 2002. Actor Alan Thicke will play defense for Ken Dryden’s The Game against hip-hop artist Shad, who is representing Carmen Aguirre’s Something Fierce.

Book links roundup: Top 10 literary frenemies, librarians in pornography, and more

• Cervantes’ Don Quixote and D.H. Lawrence’s Gerald Crich among top 10 literary frenemies
• The Paris Review on librarians in pornography
• The Globe and Mail explores life between the bookshelves
• Terrible Minds gives “25 reasons writers are bug-fuck nuts“
• Loud Poet offers career tips for surviving publishings’ digital shift

Marina Nemat: “Bullying hurts and it’s a crime”

Although CBC Canada Reads celebrity defender Stacey McKenzie shed a few tears, day two of the book contest was a more civilized affair than yesterday’s bloody match. But the fisticuffs are ongoing outside of the CBC studio.

Yesterday on Facebook, Prisoner of Tehran author Marina Nemat asked panelist Anne-France Goldwater to apologize for calling her book untruthful. Goldwater, who was no less animated today (even as the book she was defending, John Vaillant’s The Tiger, was put down), didn’t respond to Nemat’s demand.

This afternoon, Nemat posted a new profile photo on Facebook. She doesn’t mention Goldwater or Canada Reads, but the photo speaks for itself:

The photo was taken from a shoot Nemat did for Calgary photographer Catherine Oshanek’s anti-bullying website. Although it was taken before Goldwater’s accusation, Nemat has made her point.

Book links roundup: Dickens’ day, analyzing writers’ handwriting, and more

• In celebration of his 200th birthday, a remembrance of Charles Dickens’ visit to Niagara Falls
• Flavorwire analyzes writers’ personalities by their handwriting
• Russell Smith asks: fiction or non-fiction, does it matter anymore?
• Timothy Donnelly wins $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
• The Underground Literary Alliance: prescient revolutionaries or scary stalkers?