2011 ReLit longlist revealed

The very long list of nominees for the 2011 ReLit Awards, which celebrates novels, poetry, and short fiction titles published by Canadian independent presses, has been announced. ECW Press leads this year’s longlist with nine nominees.

NOVELS:

• Sandra Beck, John Lavery (House of Anansi Press)
• Étienne’s Alphabet, James King (Cormorant Books)
• Isobel & Emile, Alan Reed (Coach House Books)
• The Cube People, Christian McPherson (Nightwood Editions)
• Glenn Piano by Gladys Priddis, Jason Dickson (BookThug)
• The Obituary, Gail Scott (Coach House)
• How Should a Person Be? Sheila Heti (Anansi)
• A Thoroughly Wicked Woman, Betty Keller (Caitlin Press)
• When Fenelon Falls, Dorothy Ellen Palmer (Coach House)
• Lethal Rage, Brent Pilkey (ECW Press)
• Hope Burned, Brent LaPorte (ECW)
• The Matter of Sylvie, Lee Kvern (Brindle & Glass)
• A Likely Story, Eric Wright (Cormorant)
• Follow Me Down, Marc Strange (ECW)
• New Under the Sun, Kevin Major (Cormorant)
• The Bourgeois Empire, Evie Christie (ECW)
• One Bloody Thing After Another, Joey Comeau (ECW)
• Far to Go, Alison Pick (Anansi)
• Annabel, Kathleen Winter (Anansi)
• Baldur’s Song, David Arnason (Turnstone Press)
• In Plain Sight, Mike Knowles (ECW)
• Flight, Darren Hynes (Killick Press)
• Cupids, Paul Butler (Flanker Press)
• Book, Ken Sparling (Pedlar Press)
• Flyways, Devin Krukoff (Thistledown Press)
• Spaz, Bonnie Bowman (Anvil Press)
• Of Water and Rock, Thomas Armstrong (DC Books)
• Something Remains, Hassan Ghedi Santur (Dundurn Press)
• The Evolution of Inanimate Objects, Harry Karlinsky (Insomniac Press)
• Solitaria, Genni Gunn (Signature Editions)
• Waiting for Ricky Tantrum, Jules Lewis (Dundurn)
• Letters to Omar, Rachel Wyatt (Coteau Books)
• The Goon, Jerrod Edson (Oberon Press)
• Raising Orion, Lesley Choyce (Thistledown)
• The Master of Happy Endings, Jack Hodgins (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• In the Fabled East, Adam Lewis Schroeder (D&M Publishers)
• Blood Relatives, Craig Francis Power (Pedlar)
• The Glass Harmonica, Russell Wangersky (Thomas Allen)
• This Book Will Not Save Your Life, Michelle Berry (Enfield & Wizenty)
• Anderson, Michael Boyce (Pedlar)
• Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed, Jacob Wren (Pedlar)
• Drive-by Saviours, Chris Benjamin (Roseway Publishing)
• Gaze, Keith Cadieux (Quattro Books)
• Sheilagh’s Brush, Maura Hanrahan (Inanna Publications)
• Combat Camera, A.J. Somerset (Biblioasis)
• Victim Rights, Norah McClintock (Red Deer)
• Good Evening, Central Laundromat, Jason Heroux (Quattro)
• Black Alley, Dawn M. Cornelio (Biblioasis)
• Krakow Melt, Daniel Allen Cox (Arsenal Pulp Press)
• The Hungry Mirror, Lisa de Nikolits (Inanna)
• Firmament, Bruce Johnson (Gaspereau Press)
• Pitouie, Derek Winkler (The Workhorsery)
• The Lucky Child, Marianne Apostolides (Mansfield Press)
• The Case of Owen Williams, Allan Donaldson (Vagrant Press)
• L (And Things Come Apart), Ian Orti (Invisible Publishing)
• Retina Green, Reinhard Filter (Quattro)
• Sweet England, Steve Weiner (New Star Books)
• Real Gone, Jim Christy (Quattro)
• The Find, Kathy Page (McArthur & Company)
• Confessions of a Reluctant Cougar, Myna Wallin (Tightrope Books)
• Tobacco Wars, Paul Seesequasis (Quattro)

POETRY:

• Floating Bodies, Julie Roorda (Guernica Editions)
• Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon, Ray Hsu (Nightwood)
• Children of Ararat, Keith Garebian (Frontenac House)
• Indexical Elegies, Jon Paul Fiorentino (Coach House)
• Falling Blues, Jannie Edwards (Frontenac)
• Marimba Forever, Jim Christy (Guernica)
• The Porcupinity of the Stars, Gary Barwin (Coach House)
• Patient Frame, Steven Heighton (Anansi)
• Seeing Lessons, Catherine Owen (Wolsak and Wynn)
• Against the Hard Angle, Matt Robinson (ECW)
• You Know Who You Are, Ian Williams (Wolsak and Wynn)
• Fieldnotes, Kate Eichhorn (BookThug)
• Watermelon Kindness, David Donnell (ECW)
• The Inquisition Years, Jen Currin (Coach House)
• O Resplandor, Erin Mouré (Anansi)
• Light and Time, Michael Mirolla (Guernica)
• Bloom, Michael Lista (Anansi)
• Nature, Mark Truscott (BookThug)
• Casanova in Venice, Kildare Dobbs (The Porcupine’s Quill)
• Update, Bill Kennedy and Darren Wershler (Snare Books)
• Living Under Plastic, Evelyn Lau (Oolichan Books)
• The Little Seamstress, Phil Hall (Pedlar)
• Winterkill, Catherine Graham (Insomniac)
• Tiny, Frantic, Stronger, Jeff Latosik (Insomniac)
• The Walnut-Cracking Machine, Julie Berry (BuschekBooks)
• Ghost Music, Mark D. Dunn (BuschekBooks)
• Return from Erebus, Julia McCarthy (Brick Books)
• The Scare in the Crow, Tammy Armstrong (Goose Lane Editions)
• The Emperor’s Sofa, Greg Santos (DC Books)
• Why Are You So Long and Sweet? David W. McFadden (Insomniac)
• Mammoth, Larissa Andrusyshyn (DC Books)
• A Pirouette and Gone, E.D. Blodgett (BuschekBooks)
• Swimming Ginger, Gary Geddes (Goose Lane)
• Sweet, Dani Couture (Pedlar)
• Here Is Where We Disembark, Clea Roberts (Freehand Books)
• Every Day in the Morning (Slow), Adam Seelig (New Star)
• Hump, Ariel Gordon (Palimpsest Press)
• The Unsettled, Mona Fertig (Kalamalka Press)
• Soul on Standby, Antony Di Nardo (Exile Press)
• Hold the Note, Domenico Capilongo (Quattro)
• Traumatology, Priscila Uppal (Exile)
• Sew Him Up, Beatriz Hausner (Quattro)
• Hard Feelings, Sheryda Warrener (Snare)
• A Good Time Had By All, Meaghan Strimas (Exile)
• The Lateral, Jake Kennedy (Snare)
• The Sylvia Hotel Poems, George Fetherling (Quattro)
• The Good News About Armageddon, Steve McOrmond (Brick)
• Psychic Geographies and Other Topics, Gregory Betts (Quattro)
• Alien, Correspondent, Antony Di Nardo (Brick)
• The Stream Exposed with All its Stones, D.G. Jones (Signal Editions)
• An Open Door in the Landscape, Elisabeth Harvor (Palimpsest)
• The Philosophy of as if, Fraser Sutherland (Bookland Press)
• Circus, Michael Harris (Signal)
• Syrinx and Systole, Matthew Remski (Quattro)
• The Day Is a Cold Grey Stone, Allan Safarik (Hagios Press)
• The Crow’s Vow, Susan Briscoe (Signal)
• The Mourner’s Book of Albums, Daniel Scott Tysdal (Tightrope)
• The Nights Also, Anna Swanson (Tightrope)
• Don’t Get Lonely Don’t Get Lost, Elisabeth Belliveau (Conundrum Press)
• Fallout, Sandra Ridley (Hagios)
• Stray Dog Embassy, Natasha Nuhanovic (Mansfield Press)
• At the Gates of the Theme Park, Peter Norman (Mansfield)
• Cathedral, Pamela Porter (Ronsdale Press)
• Goodbye, Ukulele, Leigh Nash (Mansfield)
• Come Closer, Leanne Averbach (Tightrope)
• The Stonehaven Poems, R.D. Patrick (Your Scrivener Press)
• I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being, Johanna Skibsrud (Gaspereau)
• Welling, Margaret Christakos (Your Scrivener)
• The Annotated Bee & Me, Tim Bowling (Gaspereau)
• The Art of Breathing Underwater, Cathy Ford (Mother Tongue Publishing)

SHORT FICTION:

• Ravenna Gets, Tony Burgess (Anvil)
• Ronald Reagan, My Father, Brian Joseph Davis (ECW)
• This Ramshackle Tabernacle, Samuel Thomas Martin (Breakwater Books)
• All Those Drawn to Me, Christian Peterson (Caitlin)
• World News Story, Michael Woods (Book Thug)
• Three Deaths, Josip Novakovich (Snare)
• I Still Don’t Even Know You, Michelle Berry (Turnstone)
• Recipes From the Red Planet, Meredith Quartermain (BookThug)
• Punishing Ugly Children, Darryl Joel Berger (Killick)
• Mystery Stories, David Helwig (Porcupine’s Quill)
• The Mountie at Niagara Falls, Salvatore Difalco (Anvil)
• I’m a Registered Nurse Not a Whore, Anne Perdue (Insomniac)
• The Devil You Know, Jenn Farrell (Anvil)
• Mennonites Don’t Dance, Darcie Friesen Hossack (Thistledown)
• Sex in Russia, Kenneth Radu (DC)
• The Young in their Country, Richard Cumyn (Enfield & Wizenty)
• High Speed Crow, Sheila McClarty (Oberon)
• Bird Eat Bird, Katrina Best (Insomniac)
• The Doctrine of Affections, Paul Headrick (Freehand)
• The Meaning of Children, Beverly Akerman (Exile)
• Faded Love, Robert N. Friedland (Libros Libertad)
• Bats or Swallows, Teri Vlassopoulos (Invisible)
• There is No Other, Jonathan Papernick (Exile)
• Missed Her, Ivan E. Coyote (Arsenal Pulp)
• Light Lifting, Alexander MacLeod (Biblioasis)
• Icebreaker/Auricle, Alisha Piercy (Conundrum)

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

Gloria Vanderbilt (!) and Exile Editions announce new literary prize for emerging Canadian writers

The American author, heiress, and mother of CNN’s Anderson Cooper has established an annual short fiction prize for Canadian writers in conjunction with Exile Editions. She’ll be in Toronto on March 13 to launch the prize at the Turf Lounge. From the release:

Ms. Vanderbilt, who has two short stories and a suite of paintings in a recent issue of Exile: The Literary Quarterly (33.3), will announce a prize of $2000 for short fiction, open to any and all emerging Canadian writers, a prize to be awarded for the first time in April of 2011 under the auspices of Exile in memory of her son, Carter V. Cooper. The winner of the prize – to be chosen from among a group of finalists by Ms. Vanderbilt – will be presented annually. Each year, the finalists’ stories are to be published in an anthology, by Exile Editions, and released the day of the prize announcement.

Readers salivate over Salinger’s unpublished manuscripts

J.D. Salinger has been dead a scant five days, but already people are clamouring for his unpublished work to be made available. In a 1974 interview (one of the few the famously reclusive author ever gave), Salinger said, “Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.” And the prospect that the author was writing – and not publishing – has fans all a-twitter at the notion that there may be new work forthcoming once the vaults are thrown open.

Writing on the National Post‘s Afterword blog, novelist Andrew Kaufman suggests (with tongue firmly in cheek) that he and a group of “co-conspirators” are going to descend on New Hampshire for the purpose of “stealing J.D. Salinger’s filing cabinet.”

We just can’t wait any longer. Mr. Salinger may have only [just] passed on … but it’s been 16,296 days since he’s published anything. We’ve received no new family dramas from the Glasses, nothing about Holden dropping out of college or backpacking through India, not even a chuckle from the Laughing Man. But Salinger, so the legend goes, turned his back not on writing but publishing. Joyce Maynard who lived with Salinger after his self-imposed literary exile claims he’s completed at least two full novels. Margaret Salinger, his sister, stated that Salinger kept a detailed filing system, one that’s even colour coded to let future editors know what to publish and how to publish it.

In a more serious vein, entertainment lawyer Michael Levine tells the Toronto Star that Salinger’s unpublished work represents a potential “gold mine”:

“The interest and enthusiasm in the academic community and in the trade community remains profound. Sixty-five million copies of The Catcher in the Rye have sold. Whatever the quality of the subsequent manuscripts, there would be interest,” Levine said.

All of which may be true, but Quillblog would like to caution Salinger’s many fans about the dangers of being overly enthusiastic. Posthumously published work by renowned authors is not always everything it’s cracked up to be.

Laferrière wins Medicis

Montreal author (and recent Q&Q cover star) Dany Laferrière is on a roll lately. After winning the $10,000 Blue Metropolis Literary Grand Prix last week, he has now been named recipient of France’s illustrious Prix Medicis literary award, alongside U.S. author Dave Eggers.

According to AFP:

Laferrière won the Medicis for L’enigme du retour (The Enigma of Return), a fictionalised account of the 56-year-old author’s soul-wrenching return to his native Haiti to attend his father’s funeral. Born in Port-au-Prince but now living in Montreal and Miami, Laferrière has explored the themes of identity and exile in some 20 novels over the past 25 years.

Laferrière won the French-language prize, while Eggers won the prize for best foreign novel for his 2006 work What Is the What? Lafèrriere is only the second Canadian novelist to win the Medicis. The first was Marie-Claire Blais, who won in 1966 for Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel.