Fashion designer Adrian Wu dresses up Atwood’s In Other Worlds for the Book Lover’s Ball

Adrian Wu at Toronto Fashion Week. Photo: George Pimentel

Tonight is the Book Lover’s Ball, an annual fundraiser that brings out the tuxedos and gowns in support of the Toronto Public Library Foundation.

A formidable list of authors, including Erin Morgenstern, Lawrence Hill, Kathleen Winter, Miriam Toews, and Peter C. Newman will be mingling with guests who paid anywhere from $600 to $8,000 (for a premium corporate table) to attend the dinner and auction.

The evening will conclude with a fashion show featuring the work of six Toronto designers. Each designer was paired with a book that shares a common thread to the designer’s aesthetic or philosophy.

Quillblog spoke to 21-year-old design wunderkind Adrian Wu, who was paired with Margaret Atwood’s science-fiction essay collection, In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (Signal/McClelland & Stewart). It’s a bright idea, considering Wu’s voluminous spring/summer 2012 collection was partly inspired by quantum physics, specifically the double-slit experiment, which deals with the behaviour of light waves and particles.

What did you think when you were approached to participate in the show?
They asked if I was comfortable being paired up with Margaret Atwood. What do you say to that? Of course, I was ecstatic. This is one of the biggest collaborations that I have done and I’m honoured to work with such a legendary icon.

Did you relate to the book?
Margaret Atwood is unconventional, and I consider my collection to be an unconventional commentary on society. She’s witty but still serious; I relate to her contradictions.

I guess you could also say I’m fascinated with inhuman qualities and fantasy. I’ve always loved X-Men.

How do you translate the essence of a book into fashion?
What I’m showing is more of a styled version of my collection, but I did alter the collection to fit the meaning of the book. It’s more feminine and less ambiguous than as it was presented at Toronto Fashion Week.

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.

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Show Rob Ford and TPL some love this holiday season

Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has not been terribly successful on the literary front. From his under-the-breath insult to author Vikki VanSickle during this summer’s marathon executive committee hearing to his brother Doug’s very public spat with Margaret Atwood over cuts to library funding, Ford’s not been viewed as the most book-friendly mayor Toronto has ever known.

People feeling that the embattled mayor might need a bit of holiday cheer can now send him seasons greetings while also helping the Toronto Public Library retain its service levels in the face of calls for cutbacks from the city. A cheeky website called the Rob Ford Book Club has appeared, suggesting that users make a minimum $10 donation to TPL in the mayor’s name; they can then take advantage of an option to have a card sent to the person in whose name the donation has been made. “The effect is two-fold,” says the rubric on the Rob Ford Book Club. “[G]ive the library a hand, and have your voice heard.”

The site offers detailed instructions for making a donation to TPL on behalf of a third party, then instructs users on how to have a card or e-card forwarded to Mayor Ford. Users are also encouraged to include a personal message for the mayor, but are cautioned against any inappropriate commentary:

Use your real name or an alias such as “Toronto citizen,” but please keep the message respectful and do not make any slurs, attacks, or threats toward the Mayor. We want you to express your desire to see libraries remain an important part of the city in a constructive and peaceful way.

Quillblog applauds this clever approach to civic activism, and wonders whether one of the cards the mayor receives will be from Atwood.

TPL union names winners of lunch with Atwood contest

The Toronto Public Library Workers Union has announced the winners of its “Why My Library Matters to Me” personal essay contest. Each of the 44 winners will have lunch and tour a local literary landmark with a participating author — Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Linwood Barclay, Joy Fielding, Judy Fong-Bates, Sylvia Fraser, Vincent Lam, Robert Rotenberg, Susan Swan, Anna Porter, or Jeremy Tankard.

The contest is part of the union’s Project Rescue campaign to prevent library funding cuts as proposed by the municipal government. (Q&Q has previously reported on the contest and Project Rescue.)

In an e-mail to Project Rescue supporters, TPLWU/CUPE Local 4948 president Maureen O’Reilly says more than 500 submissions were received in a span of two weeks. The winning entries are now posted at the contest website, including this homage to Charlie Chaplin.

Toronto mayor Rob Ford knows lots of B words

Although Margaret Atwood didn’t attend Thursday night’s marathon Toronto city council executive meeting to address the city’s budget deliberations, she was there in spirit and in swag (scroll down the Torontoist’s impressive live blog to see an Atwood button and references to photocopied face masks of the author). Although Atwood has become a symbol for library-devoted Torontonians thanks to councillor Doug Ford’s stated inability to recognize the country’s most recognizable author – even the Guardian mentioned it – several other authors waited patiently for their turn to speak to city council.

NOW magazine reports that Thom Vernon, author of The Drifts (Coach House Press) told the room, “We are not for sale … The KPMG report is a work plan to transfer public wealth to the private sector.”

Children’s author Vikki VanSickle expressed her concerns about the budget at around 4:30 a.m. After being asked the title of her book, Words That Start with B (Scholastic Canada), mayor Rob Ford is heard on video muttering, “I can think of another B word for her.”

This morning, the Twitterverse was filled with support for VanSickle, who tweeted, “Rob Ford thinks I’m a bitch, but I think he’s a bully.” There’s no response yet from the mayor, although joke account Hulkmayor tweeted, “WAIT! HULKMAYOR NO CALL LADY B-WORD! IS MISUNDERSTANDING.”

Publishing at the polls: Copyright reform

As Canadians head to the polls on May 2, Q&Q looks at key federal policies affecting the publishing industry. Stay tuned for upcoming features on federal funding, mass digitization, and foreign-ownership regulations.

After nearly a year of parliamentary hearings and heavy industry lobbying, Bill C-32, the Copyright Modernization Act, succumbed to a sudden death on March 26, when the latest Canadian federal election was called.

For nearly a decade, publishers, authors, and other content creators have lived without a copyright act that takes into account the realities of a digital economy. Bill C-32 was the federal government’s third attempt to update the legislation. To get a sense of how outdated Canada’s current laws are, the last copyright reform, passed in 1997, instituted a levy on cassette tapes. It will now be up to the new government to table yet another copyright bill — and successfully get it passed for there to be meaningful reform.

As Canadians head to the polls once again on May 2, Q&Q spoke to several publishing copyright advocates about the lessons learned from Bill C-32.
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Daily book biz round-up: March 18

• The Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders’ Arrival City “couldn’t be more timely” according to The New York Times
• How I wish this were an Onion headline
• Novelist Alison Pick proves some authors are still loyal to their publishers in Open Book Toronto’s Questionless Books interview
• Ten Canadians make the LAMBDA Literary Awards shortlist
• Looking at earthquakes through literature
• Margaret Atwood on e-books

Daily book biz round-up: Oprah likes Dickens; Atwood likes Wilkie Collins; and more

Today’s book news:

• Oprah chooses two Dickens classics for her book club
• PW names the notable newsmakers of 2010
• Borders may take over Barnes & Noble
• Margaret Atwood likes Wilkie Collins
• A new web hub for teenage authors is launched
• Natalie Portman wears Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, a handbag

Daily book biz round-up: Costa Book Award nominees; world’s best bookstores; and more

Today’s book news:

• Costa Book Award nominees announced
• Joyland Books, the e-book only imprint of ECW Press, releases its first Canadian-authored title: Chris Eaton’s Letters to Thomas Pynchon
• Lonely Planet names world’s 10 best bookstores
• Grand Central to publish Dan Rather memoir
• George Murray pesters Margaret Atwood (and demonstrates why interviews require questions)
• NPR on writing in exile

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.