Joyland launches poetry hub

Online literary magazine Joyland has launched a new website, Joyland Poetry.

In a similar fashion to its short fiction and prose site, Joyland founders Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis are working with regional editors to publish poetry from across North America. The hub features work by John K. Samson, Thom Donovan, Johnny Thunders, Mott Hoople, and Harold Abramowitz.

In January, the duo also published the first edition of Joyland Retro, a print anthology of stories from the magazine’s website.

Editor’s note: While we think that Johnny Thunders and Mott Hoople are the best poet names ever, they’re actually placeholders during the site’s soft launch.

Emily Schultz’s Heaven is Small scores film deal

Emily Schultz’s second novel, Heaven is Small (House of Anansi Press, has been optioned by the Gemini award-winning Markham Street Films. Although MSF is best-known for producing documentaries, the company has also worked on several dramas, including Canadian author David Bezmozgis’s debut feature, Victoria Day. From the Anansi e-newsletter:

“I’m starting to feel like my character, Gordon Small,” responds Schultz, “a copy-editor who somehow manages to get his opus out into the living world through unlikely means.” She continues, “Markham Street Films is a stellar company, and I trust Judy Holm [producer] and Michael McNamara [director] will bring out the comedy and the tender moments of Heaven is Small.”

This is the second movie deal for Anansi in just over a month: in July, Gil Adamson’s The Outlander was optioned for the big screen.

Event photos: Heaven is Small launch

Author Emily Schultz launched her latest novel, Heaven is Small (House of Anansi Press), at an event last night at Supermarket in Toronto. Schultz entertained the crowd with a reading from her novel, a humourous interview with Brian Francis (author of the CBC Canada Reads-sanctioned Fruit), and a reading from a saucy Harlequin novel. (Photos courtesy of Julie Wilson, House of Anansi Press.)

Emily Schultz kicked off the evening with a reading from Heaven is Small.

Brian Francis listens while Schultz reads a passage from a Harlequin novel. Gordon Small, the recently deceased main character in Schultz’s novel, works at Heaven Book Company, the world’s largest romance publisher. Schultz once worked at Harlequin and used some of her own experiences as fodder for the novel’s fictional company.

Francis’s interview with Schultz revealed that the one tangible item she’d want to have in heaven would be cheese sandwiches. Just plain cheddar is fine, but no Kraft Singles.

Richard Poplak and more in the May Q&Q

Jet-setting author Richard Poplak travelled to 17 different countries to research his latest book, which looks at the influence of American pop culture in the Muslim world, and he’s Q&Q’s cover subject in the May 2009 issue. Also in the issue, we look at the surprising success of Harlequin Enterprises at 60 and at how print-on-demand is changing the bookstore of the future. Our Library Special Report examines the tricky task of putting Canada’s archival history online. Plus reviews of new books by Colin McAdam, Emily Schultz, Giles Blunt, Lynn Johnston, Barry Callaghan, and more.

Pop goes the world
Richard Poplak bets that tawdry TV and banal bubblegum can bring cultures together

Print-on-demand: The dream and the reality
The bookstore of the future, and why POD machines are waiting for books in the present

Love wins out
While other major publishers are bleeding money, Harlequin Enterprises is raking it in. How the firm has managed to beat the odds

History, bit by bit
What’s the best way to put our national heritage online?
AND MORE IN THE LIBRARY SPECIAL REPORT: Coping with rising patron demand, and learning to LOL at the reference desk

FRONTMATTER

• Ninety minutes with Stuart Ross
• Comedy is easy, kidlit is hard
• The adventures of Pierre Turgeon: a timeline
• Cover to Cover: Lauren Kirshner’s Where We Have to Go
• Snapshot: Alexandra Moore of Word on the Street
• Breakwater unbroken
• David Bezmozgis moves from control to collaboration

REVIEWS

• Heaven Is Small by Emily Schultz
• Though You Were Dead by Terry Griggs
• The English Stories by Cynthia Flood
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and poetry

BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE

• Dance Baby Dance by Andrea Spalding
• Dracula Madness by Mary Labatt and Jo Rioux
• Soccer Sabotage by Liam O’Donnell and Mike Deas
• Swim the Fly by Don Calame
• Plus more fiction, non-fiction, and picture books

THE Q&Q/BOOKNET CANADA BESTSELLERS

THE LAST WORD
Lesley Choyce does the math on three decades in writing

A new home for short stories

Toronto-based authors Emily Schultz and Brian Joseph Davis have come together and launched a new website for short fiction, called Joyland. In a mass e-mail sent to Q&Q, they explain the impetus for the site:

Current literary publishing wisdom has it that the short story is dead. We think otherwise. We think the form is at its stylistic peak. It’s just that the traditional venues for short stories – commercial print magazines – have changed dramatically and jettisoned the once prominent short story.

Joyland is dedicated to finding a new way to publish short fiction, and rather than just start a web magazine we’ve wedded a strict mandate (only short fiction) to some principles of social networking sites.

The message goes on to list the initial contributors, and it looks like a pretty respectable line-up: Canadian authors Lynn Coady and Nathan Sellyn, and U.S. authors Ed Park and Harold Abramowitz. (Another aim of the site, apparently, is to get readers from both sides of the border reading authors they may never have encountered before.) They’ve also got an international assortment of contributing editors, including Schultz herself, Vancouver author Kevin Chong, and U.S. authors Janine Armin (New York) and Matthew Timmons (Los Angeles).

You can check it out for yourself here.