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.

Event photo: Louise Penny at Bolen Books in Victoria

Best-selling mystery writer Louise Penny read from her seventh novel, A Trick of the Light (St. Martin’s Press/Raincoast), at Bolen Books in Victoria on Sept. 24. The crowd of over 100 made for standing room only. Above: fans with their copies of the book. (Photo by Louise Penny)

B.C. ecologist Don Gayton wins Peace Corps Travel Book Award

British Columbian ecologist Don Gayton’s Okanagan Odyssey: Journeys Through Terrain, Terroir and Culture (Rocky Mountain Books) has won the 2011 Peace Corps Travel Book Award. The prize is presented annually to an author with Peace Corps experience. Prior to moving to Canada from the U.S. in the 1960s, Gayton was a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Colombia.

Gayton receives a cash award and a special citation from the blog Peace Corps Writers.

Chinese novel alleged to have stolen from Canada’s “literary elite”

The “Great Chinese Canadian Literary Feud” is now underway, according to a Toronto Star story by Bill Schiller. The author at the centre of the supposed controversy is Toronto’s Zhang Ling, whose previous novel, Aftershock, became a surprise bestseller in China when a film version was released there last summer.

For her latest novel, Gold Mountain Blues, Zhang is accused of stealing from a diverse group of Chinese-Canadian authors, including Denise Chong, Wayson Choy, Sky Lee, and Paul Yee. An English translation of the novel was due to appear with Penguin Canada by early 2012, but according to the Star, it has been put “in limbo until [Penguin] is satisfied that the author hasn’t been poaching from the works of Canada’s Chinese Canadian literary elite.”

It’s a damning accusation, but the case against Zhang is anything but cut and dried. The accusations of plagiarism appear to stem from an online smear campaign led by an anonymous blogger known as Changjiang. When the Star tracked down and questioned the man supposedly behind the posts, one Robert Luo, he “grew alarmed and then hung up.” Another of Zhang’s attackers, Cheng Xingbang, also refused an interview.

Meanwhile, Penguin has not said it is delaying publication of Gold Mountain Blues, only that it is waiting for the English translation to be complete before making an internal decision about how to handle the accusations. And two of the supposed victims of plagiarism contacted by the Star – Sky Lee and Denise Chong – were equally in the dark, as neither reads Chinese. As the Star reports, Chong, who is also published by Penguin, is hesitant to weigh in on the controversy:

Changjiang’s website accuses Zhang of borrowing the key character of Chong’s [1994 memoir, The Concubine’s Children] – her grandmother May-ying, the hard-drinking, smoking, gambling “concubine” of the title — then fashioning it into a character in Gold Mountain Blues.

Chong says that without a translation she can’t really comment.

But she did send an email to alert her agent once the controversy hit the Chinese blogosphere.

Reached in Montreal, reclusive Canadian writer Sky Lee, author of the groundbreaking novel Disappearing Moon Café (1990), an instant classic, admits she was “shocked and dismayed” when she first heard from a friend in British Columbia that someone might be poaching her work.

But then she realized that she couldn’t really evaluate the allegations first-hand. She doesn’t read Chinese either.

So she farmed it out to her trusted friend, Jennifer Jay, a historian at the University of Alberta who is fluent in Chinese, who spent a day reading an online version of Gold Mountain Blues.

Jay was careful in a telephone interview, saying she was not an expert, noting she had had limited reading time and, while intimately familiar with Disappearing Moon Café, she had not read it for a while. But she said Gold Mountain Blues did make her feel “alarm.”

“I’m not ready to say this author is a plagiarist,” she says. “At this point I’m saying it’s ‘problematic.’ ”

At the same time, says Jay, she has “a lot of sympathy” for Zhang.

“It must be a nightmare for the author to be going through this if she’s innocent,” she says.

“I’ll have a venti mochaccino and an award-winning book, please.”

In his memoir On Writing, Stephen King advises aspiring writers to avoid writing in coffee shops. Canadian novelist Corey Redekop, by contrast, admits that “the majority of [his] writing occurs in coffee shops.” There is undoubtedly a certain clichéd mystique surrounding writers who find inspiration along with a strong cup of Joe at their local java joint; now there’s even a prize for books written in coffee shops.

Yesterday, the Toronto Star published an article about the first annual Coffee Shop Author contest, which recently announced its inaugural winners. The contest winner is Mississauga resident Ranjini George Philip. Second and third place went to Theresa Wouters of Grande Prairie, Alberta, and Ron Stewart of Komoka, Ontario, respectively.

The brainchild of Calgary resident Susan Toy and Oolichan Books owner Randal Macnair, the contest asked writers to register with the Coffee Shop Author website, secure the endorsement of a local coffee establishment, “then pledge to write the bulk of a novel, short story collection, poetry collection or a work of creative non-fiction at the coffee shop between November 2009 and April 2010.” Entrants paid a fee of $30 and the first-place winner receives a spot at the Fernie Writers Conference in Fernie, British Columbia.

From the Star:

Forty-two Canadians entered the online contest, promising to write most of their submissions — poetry, novels, teen fiction — in coffee shops. A few bent the rules and created in local libraries, and in one case, in rural Saskatchewan, an ice cream parlour.

Writing is a lonely pursuit and has always driven writers out of their houses to find companionship — or distraction or inspiration — in public places.

“I’ve been a coffee shop writer for a long time,” says Philip, 46, who taught at Zayed University in Dubai before coming to Canada with her husband and two children three years ago.

“There’s a lot of solitude and I find I work better when there is a buzz of noise around me.”

According to the Star, the contest’s popularity has convinced Toy to expand next year’s contest beyond Canada. It would appear that there are a significant number of writers out there willing to ignore Stephen King’s advice.

Doing the Harper shuffle

Ordinary working people in the arts community who were miffed by the Conservative government’s $45-million cuts to a broad array of arts programs may have reason to breathe a bit easier today. Josée Verner, the Heritage Minister in place when those cuts were announced, has been bounced from her portfolio by newly re-elected Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who announced his new cabinet today. Verner takes over the Intergovernmental Affairs portfolio, while James Moore, MP for Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam, takes over the Heritage post.

Celebrations within the arts community may prove short-lived, however. According to his official website, the only arts-related experience Moore has had comes from working as a radio broadcaster in Vancouver and Prince George, where he hosted a talk show called “Behind the Headlines.” He has held several positions in the Conservative government, including parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Works and, most recently, Secretary of State for the 2010 Olympics, Official Languages, and the Asia-Pacific Gateway.

His website bio reads in part:

In his first term in office, through Private Members’ bills, James proposed legislation that would offer relief to victims of the leaky condo tragedy, toughen laws against date-rape drugs, force the Prime Minister to appoint elected Senators, impose consecutive rather than concurrent sentencing for violent criminals, ban gun ownership for violent criminals, toughen penalties for the illegal trafficking of prohibited weapons and ammunition, and toughen penalties for the trafficking of child pornography online.

It remains to be seen whether this tough-on-crime crusader will be a successful advocate for Canadian arts organizations. This Quillblogger has his suspicions, but will refrain from voicing them at this time.

Also of note in Harper’s newly constituted cabinet is the presence of veteran television broadcaster Peter Kent, who takes over as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (Americas).

Lytton’s had enough!

The winner of the 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the worst opening line of an imaginary novel was announced last week (the winner wrote something about passion in a New York City taxi).

However, in a letter to the editor in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, Chris O’Connor, mayor of Lytton, B.C. (Bulwer-Lytton’s namesake), announced the town will host a debate on the merits of Bulwer-Lytton’s prose.

For years, Professor Scott Rice has been making sport of Lord Edward George Bulwer Lytton, with his Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

Lord Lytton was both a statesman and an author. As colonial secretary, he helped create the Crown Colony of British Columbia in 1858.

Prof. Rice has accepted our challenge to debate Lord Lytton’s writing prowess in our village this Labour Day weekend, with the Hon. Henry Cobbald-Lytton, his great-great-great-grandson.

The Guardian covered this story as well, publishing the entire ridiculed first sentence of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, Paul Clifford, showing there’s more to “It was a dark and stormy night” than Rice suggests.

The debate will take place on Aug 30 and, as O’Connor says, “It won’t be a ‘dark and stormy night’; the debate is at 3:00 p.m.”

Breaking news: Amazon buys Abebooks.com

News broke this morning that Amazon intends to buy Abebooks.com, the Victoria-based online bookselling network. From the official release:

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals, and is expected to close before the end of the fourth quarter of 2008.

AbeBooks will continue to function as a stand-alone operation based in Victoria, British Columbia. AbeBooks will maintain all of its websites, including its Canadian website with Canada-specific content, such as reviews of Canadian-authored books and interviews of Canadian writers.

For Canadian observers, that reference to “regulatory approvals” will of course jump out. The question is whether Abebooks would be considered a bookseller, and thus subject to Investment Canada rules prohibiting foreign ownership. Watch Q&Q Omni early next week for a full story.

Poetry in Palestine

Anvil Press’s current anthology Imagining British Columbia: Land, Memory and Place includes an essay by Harbour Publishing owner Howard White about, among other things, the role of culture and literature in society. The Tyee has posted White’s essay, which recounts his meeting with Palestinian poet Fawaz Turki.

I met Fawaz at a big Amnesty International jamboree of oppressed writers in Toronto a few years ago, and one of the things that intrigued me about him was a rumour that he might be reduced to chopped liver by a Mossad hit squad at any time. I found it invigorating to think that I was sharing the planet with people who cared enough about poetry to shoot anybody over it.

I made use of a bar break to ask Fawaz if his notoriety wasn’t maybe to do with something besides versifying, like bombing buses. Fawaz was a bit piqued by this suggestion. Any damn fool can chuck a bomb while it takes brains to write a poem, and the Palestinian people understand this, he pointed out.

Back in Jordan it was nothing to have a crowd of several thousand gather on a few hours notice to hear him at an open-air reading. When he appeared in public, throngs of grown women followed him around ululating and fluttering their hands like leaves, chanting his name. His broadsheets outsold the newspapers. Poets like him and his buddies Mahmoud Darweesh and Fawazi el Asmar were far more important to the Palestinian cause than bomb-throwers, and far more worrisome to the authorities, and this was because of their ability to express the feelings of their people, Turki said. That is why so many of the poets known to Amnesty were behind bars, not only in Palestine but around the world.

I tried to picture this in Canadian terms. Prime Minister Harper is pacing around his desk ranting at General Hillier, “General, you and I will have no rest until we silence that traitorous menace Fred Wah, the Man Whose Name Is Breath!” Or: “I’m sure you know why you’re here, General. At 15:31 yesterday the l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e poets declared war on conventional imperialist grammar. I want our fighting men to spare no effort until this sinister challenge is stamped out to the last slash and hyphen!” It didn’t quite click.

GG Unit

John Meier wants to own every English-language first edition book that has ever won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. (You may remember him from a Quillblog post back in November.)

Today, Meier, 51, was profiled in the The Globe and Mail. Marsha Lederman describes the Ikea Billy bookcases where Meier houses his collection on the ground floor of his parent’s house. He uses blackout curtains to protect the books and sometimes even shelves them backwards so as not to expose colours prone to fading, such as the Day-Glo orange on his four copies of Brian Moore’s The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960).

Meier is currently trying to raise $500, 000 to display his collection at the Cultural Olympiad, which will coincide with the 2010 Winter Olympics. After the Olympics, Meier hopes to take his books on a cross-country tour of Canada. The Canada Council will not fund the project because it “constitutes privileged treatment” of the English-language Governor General winners for fiction.

Read the article here. For more on Meier read this story about the National Book-Collecting Contest published in Q&Q last month.