Emma Donoghue’s Room wins Evergreen Award

Emma Donoghue’s novel Room (HarperCollins Canada) has won the 2011 Evergreen Award, to be presented on Feb. 3, 2012, in Toronto.

The Evergreen Award is administered by the Ontario Library Association as part of the Forest of Reading program, designed to expose adult library users to Canadian fiction and non-fiction. Library patrons are invited to vote for their favourite of 10 nominated titles.

“I am thrilled that with this award, Room will be part of such a valuable initiative to promote reading,” Donoghue said in a press release.

The other nominees for the prize were:

• The Night Shift, by Brian Goldman (HarperCollins Canada)
• Amphibian, by Carla Gunn (Coach House Books)
• Dahanu Road, by Anosh Irani (Doubleday Canada)
• Death Spiral, by James W. Nichol (McArthur & Company)
• Far to Go, by Alison Pick (House of Anansi Press)
• Still Missing, by Chevy Stevens (St. Martin’s Press)
• A Man in Uniform, by Kate Taylor (Doubleday Canada)
• The Tiger, by John Vaillant (Knopf Canada)
• Annabel, by Kathleen Winter (House of Anansi Press)

$10,000 Alberta prize now open to books published out of province

Organizers of the Alberta Readers’ Choice Award, now in its third year, have taken steps to quiet a muted strain of controversy that has attached itself to the prize since its inception.

The $10,000 award, organized by the Edmonton Public Library and voted on by Alberta readers, had until now been open to all books published in Alberta, regardless of the author’s origin or city of residence. But Alberta authors who happened to be published outside the province – someone like, say, Scotiabank Giller Prize nominee Lynn Coady, who lives in Edmonton but is published by Toronto-based House of Anansi Press – would be ineligible for the award.

That is all going to change this year, judging by new criteria posted to the EPL website:

This year, works of fiction and narrative non-fiction (i.e., first edition full-length novels, short story collections or books of poetry) will be accepted by any author who has been a resident of Alberta for a minimum of 12 consecutive months immediately prior to the publication of the submitted work, and who currently resides in Alberta, no matter where the book was published. The change makes this truly an Alberta award and recognizes the exceptional writing talent in our province while encouraging readers to support Alberta authors.

As it turns out, both of the prize’s prior winners – Helen Waldstein Wilkes’ memoir Letters from the Lost (AU Press) and Michael Davie’s novel Fishing for Bacon (NeWest Press) – are by authors currently residing in B.C.

Edugyan’s unpredictable year culminates in Giller win

A novel that, less than a year ago, was without a Canadian publisher has won the country’s most prestigious literary prize. Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues, about a jazz musician who disappears in Nazi-occupied France, was awarded the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize Tuesday evening, capping an unlikely run that has seen the Calgary-born novelist rise from obscurity to become one of the season’s most buzzed about authors.

Edugyan’s sophomore novel was supposed to appear in the spring with the now bankrupt Key Porter Books. Half-Blood Blues eventually landed with Thomas Allen Publishers, which released the book this summer, months after it had appeared in the U.K. (with the venerable literary press Serpent’s Tail) and the U.S. (Picador).

Accepting the prize at a Toronto gala, Edugyan thanked Thomas Allen publisher Patrick Crean for rescuing the book from limbo. “Thomas Allen has been the most amazing publisher,” she said. “After Key Porter – that wonderful Canadian house – fell apart, he (Patrick) came in and believed in the book and purchased it, and I’m so, so thankful for that. It’s been a wonderful experience, Patrick.”

Edugyan also thanked her editors Jane Warren and John Williams (of Key Porter and Serpent’s Tail, respectively), as well as a trusted early reader, the author Jacqueline Baker. Finally, she acknowledged her husband, poet and novelist Steven Price, “without whom nothing gets written.”

In fact, Price, whose first novel, Into That Darkness, appeared this spring with Thomas Allen, had a hand in getting the book published, too. Crean said Price contacted him in April, “shortly after the problems with Key Porter,” and convinced him to take an advance reading copy to the London Book Fair. After reading the novel on the plane, Crean said he was “absolutely beguiled and amazed.” He signed the book not long after returning to Toronto.

This is the second time Thomas Allen has won the Giller, and only the third time in the prize’s 18-year history that a solely Canadian-owned firm has published the winning title. When Thomas Allen last won the Giller, in 2002, it was for Barbadian-born novelist Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe.

Crean described being in the winner’s circle for a second time as “an absolute thrill.” He added: “It’s also a thrill to see a young African-Canadian woman win it. I think we have a lot of wonderful writers of many different backgrounds, but we seem to have a dearth of young writers of that particular heritage.”

Edugyan is a second-generation Canadian whose father emigrated from Ghana in the 1970s.

There are currently 23,000 copies of Half-Blood Blues in print. “Tomorrow morning we’re going to be pushing the button again,” Crean said. “I don’t quite know what the number is going to be, but it’s going to be upwards of 20,000.” Thomas Allen has sold just 250 e-book copies of the novel, but Crean said “that may change very rapidly now.”

Following the controversy that erupted last year when winning publisher Gaspereau Press was unable to keep up with demand for Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists, Crean reassured retailers that history isn’t about to repeat itself. “[Gaspereau is] an artisan publisher, and one has to respect that very much,” he said. “We’re a more commercial house, and we keep our eye on the sales figures and make sure there’s enough inventory.”

The Giller is just one among a full slate of literary prizes Edugyan was eligible for this fall. With Giller co-nominee Patrick deWitt she shares the peculiar distinction of having been nominated for all three of Canada’s major literary awards as well as the U.K.’s Man Booker Prize.

Last week, deWitt won the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for his sophomore novel, The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi Press). Along with Edugyan and deWitt, a third Giller nominee is eligible for the $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award, which will be handed out next week: David Bezmozgis, nominated for his first novel, The Free World (HarperCollins Canada).

The other Giller nominees were Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist (Anansi), Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart), and Zsuzsi Gartner’s Better Living Through Plastic Explosives (Hamish Hamilton Canada).

Anansi, which has yet to win a Giller, has now been nominated 10 times, more than any other publisher save Random House of Canada and McClelland & Stewart.

Fall preview 2011: Canadian fiction

In the July/August issue, Q&Q looks ahead at the fall season’s biggest books.

NOVELS

One of the most anticipated releases of the fall season is surely the new novel from internationally acclaimed author Michael Ondaatje, his first since 2007 Governor General’s Literary Award winner Divisadero. Set in the early 1950s, The Cat’s Table (McClelland & Stewart, $32 cl., Sept.) tells the story of an 11-year-old boy crossing the Indian Ocean on a liner bound for England, and the mysterious prisoner shackled on board. • Also from M&S is Guy Vanderhaeghe’s first novel in eight years. Set in the late 19th-century Canadian and American West, A Good Man ($32.99 cl., Sept.) is the third book in a loose trilogy that also includes The Last Crossing (2003) and The Englishman’s Boy, which won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award. • A third GG winner has a new novel out this season: David Gilmour, who won in 2005 for his previous novel, A Perfect Night to Go to China. Gilmour returns with The Perfect Order of Things (Thomas Allen Publishers, $26.95 cl., Sept.), the story of a man who revisits traumatic and life-changing incidents from his past.

Marina Endicott follows up her Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted 2008 novel Good to a Fault with The Little Shadows (Doubleday Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), about three sisters who become vaudeville singers following the death of their father. • Acclaimed novelist Helen Humphreys returns with an historical novel set in France during the Napoleonic period. The Reinvention of Love (HarperCollins Canada, $29.99 cl., Sept.) is about a French journalist whose affair with Victor Hugo’s wife causes a scandal (as it might be expected to do).

Brian Francis’s debut novel, Fruit, was a runner-up in the 2009 edition of CBC’s battle of the books, Canada Reads. His second novel, Natural Order (Doubleday Canada, $29.95 cl., Aug.), tells the story of a mother who is forced to confront the secrets she has kept about her son when her carefully constructed life is overturned by a startling revelation. • Kevin Chong returns to fiction with his first novel in a decade. Beauty Plus Pity (Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95 pa., Sept.) follows an Asian-Canadian slacker in Vancouver whose incipient modelling career is derailed by the death of his father and the sudden departure of his fiancée.

Requiem (HarperCollins Canada, $32.95 cl., Sept.), the third novel from Frances Itani, is about a Japanese-Canadian who embarks upon a cross-country journey of discovery following the death of his wife. • Anita Rau Badami follows her best-selling novels Tamarind Mem and The Hero’s Walk with Tell It to the Trees (Knopf Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), about the Dharma family – the authoritarian Vikram, the gourmand Suman, and the old storyteller Akka. When the Dharmas’ tenant, Anu, turns up dead on their doorstep, the family’s long-buried secrets begin to boil over. • Gayla Reid returns with her first novel since 2002’s Closer Apart. Set during the Spanish Civil War, Come from Afar (Cormorant Books, $32 cl., Aug.) tells the story of an Australian nurse who falls into a relationship with a Canadian soldier from the International Brigade.

Haitian expat Dany Laferrière is back with his third novel in translation in three years. The Return (Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95 pa., Aug.) tells the story of a 23-year-old Haitian named Dany who flees Baby Doc Duvalier’s repressive regime and relocates to Montreal. Thirty-three years later, Dany learns of his father’s death in New York City, and plots a return to his native country. David Homel translates. • Another Montreal resident, poet Sina Queyras, has a novel out this fall, the author’s first. Autobiography of Childhood (Coach House Books, $20.95 pa., Oct.) is about one day in the lives of five siblings haunted by the death of a brother years before. • Infrared (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl., Sept.), the new novel by Nancy Huston, is about a photographer who travels to Tuscany with her father and stepmother. Employing internal dialogues with the photographer’s mental doppelgänger, Huston opens up her hero for exposure and provides an intimate picture of her interior life.

CanLit mainstay David Helwig returns with a novella, his first since 2007’s Smuggling Donkeys. Killing McGee (Oberon, $38.95 cl., $18.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a professor’s dual obsessions with the assassination of D’Arcy McGee and the disappearance of one of his students. • Toronto-based poet Dani Couture returns with her first novel, a surreal and iconoclastic take on that perennial CanLit staple: the family drama. Algoma (Invisible Publishing, $19.95 pa., Oct.) tells the story of a family attempting to cope with the aftermath of a young child falling through the ice and drowning. • Shari Lapeña also has a novel about a perennial CanLit concern: raising money to allow one time to write poetry. Happiness Economics (Brindle & Glass, $19.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of a stalled poet who takes a job writing advertising copy to start a poetry foundation.

Jamaican-born novelist, poet, and non-fiction author Olive Senior returns to long-form fiction with Dancing Lessons (Cormorant, $22 pa., Aug.), about a woman looking back on her life after a hurricane destroys her home. • Memoirist Frances Greenslade (A Pilgrim in Ireland, By the Secret Ladder) has a debut novel out this August. Shelter (Random House Canada, $29.95 cl.) is a coming of age story about two sisters searching for their mother, who abandoned them after their father was killed in a logging accident.

Not one, but two novels this season extend the burgeoning CanLit focus on towns that have been/are about to be flooded (after Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists, Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault, and Michael V. Smith’s Progress). Tristan Hughes’s Eye Lake (Coach House, $19.95 pa., Oct.) is about the town of Crooked River, Ontario. Named for a river that was diverted to make way for a mine, the town harbours secrets that surface when the river reclaims its original course. • And in September, Goose Lane Editions will publish Riel Nason’s The Town that Drowned ($19.95 pa.), about the suspicions, secrets, and emotions that flare up when the township of Haverton is scheduled to be flooded to allow for the construction of a massive dam.

Edward Riche follows up his Thomas Head Raddall Award winner The Nine Planets with Easy to Like (House of Anansi Press, $29.95 cl., Sept.), a satire about a screenwriter and oenophile who dreams of travelling to Paris, but is trapped in Canada by an expired passport and a growing Hollywood scandal. Relocating to Toronto, he bluffs his way into the upper echelons of the CBC. • Former president and CEO of Penguin Canada, David Davidar was forced out of his position under a cloud of scandal after accusations of sexual harassment. Davidar’s new novel, Ithaca (M&S, $29.99 cl., Oct.), is, perhaps not coincidentally, about the rise and fall of a publishing star.

Canadian literary icon Michel Tremblay returns with a new novel, the first in a trilogy. Set in 1913, Crossing the Continent (Talonbooks, $18.95 pa., Oct.) takes the author’s characters out of Quebec for the first time, to tell the backstory of the people who populate his Chroniques du Plateau-Mont-Royal series. Long-time Tremblay collaborator Sheila Fischman translates.

A resident of St. John’s, Newfoundland, lately one of the most fertile spots for Canadian writing, Michelle Butler Hallett crafts genre-busting stories and novels that frequently experiment with gender and perspective. Her new novel, Deluded Your Sailors (Creative Book Publishing, $21.95 pa., Sept.), focuses on the culture industry from the perspective of Nichole Wright, who makes a discovery that puts a government-funded tourism project in jeopardy, and a shape-shifting minister named Elias Winslow. • Another Newfoundland native, Kate Story, has a novel out with Creative this season. The follow-up to 2008’s Blasted, Wrecked Upon This Shore ($21.95 pa., Sept.) tells the story of Pearl Lewis, an emotionally damaged, charismatic woman who is seen at different stages in her life.

In 1972, Christina Parr returns to her hometown of Parr’s Landing, a place she fled years earlier. The dirty secret of Parr’s Landing? A 300-year-old vampire resides in the caves of the remote mining town. Christina learns why she should have stayed away in Michael Rowe’s Enter, Night (ChiZine Publications, $17.95 pa., Oct.). • English literature professor Janey Erlickson struggles to make headway in her academic career while caring for a tyrannical toddler in Sue Sorensen’s comic novel A Large Harmonium (Coteau Books, $21 pa., Sept.). • Paul Brenner, a Vancouver lawyer, dines with his son, Daniel, one Friday evening. The next day, Brenner receives word that his son has been murdered. Hold Me Now (Freehand Books, $21.95 pa., Oct.), the first novel from Stephen Gauer, examines a father’s grief and a lawyer’s faith in the legal system.

SHORT FICTION

Anyone who has ever wondered what might transpire if the author of Bigfoot’s autobiography were to illustrate a story collection by Canada’s reigning postmodern ironist can stop wondering. October sees the publication of Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People (Random House Canada, $24 cl.), the first collaboration between author Douglas Coupland and well-known illustrator Graham Roumieu.

D.W. Wilson currently lives in London, England, but is a native of B.C.’s Kootenay Valley. The winner of the inaugural Man Booker Prize Scholarship from the University of East Anglia, Wilson’s debut collection, Once You Break a Knuckle (Hamish Hamilton Canada, $32 cl., Sept.), is a suite of stories about good people doing bad things.

Novelist Anne DeGrace has her first collection of short stories on tap for September. Flying with Amelia (McArthur & Company, $29.95 cl.) spans the 20th century and crosses vast swathes of territory. Wireless telegraphy, German POWs in Manitoba, the Great Depression, and the FLQ crisis all crop up in her stories. • David Whitton’s story “Twilight of the Gods” was included in the 2010 sci-fi anthology Darwin’s Bastards. The story also appears in Whitton’s first solo collection, The Reverse Cowgirl (Freehand, $21.95 pa., Oct.), which sports the most sexually suggestive title for a collection of CanLit stories since Pasha Malla’s The Withdrawal Method.

Toronto writer Rebecca Rosenblum follows up her Metcalf-Rooke Award–winning debut collection Once (a Q&Q book of the year for 2009) with The Big Dream (Biblioasis, $19.95 pa., Sept.), a collection of linked stories about the lives of workers at Dream, Inc., a lifestyle-magazine publisher. • The Maladjusted (Thistledown Press, $18.95 pa., Sept.), Toronto writer Derek Hayes’ debut collection, focuses on people who run afoul of the dictates of polite society. • Also from Thistledown, Britt Holmström’s Leaving Berlin ($18.95 pa., Sept.) examines contemporary women in both Canadian and European settings.

The fine print: Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2011. All information (titles, prices, publication dates, etc.) was supplied by publishers and may have been tentative at Q&Q’s press time. • Titles that have appeared in previous previews do not appear here.

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)

Pick, Edugyan, deWitt make Booker longlist

Three Canadian authors have made the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction longlist, announced today. Alison Pick’s Far to Go (House of Anansi Press, Q&Q’s September 2010 cover profile), Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues (forthcoming from Thomas Allen & Son in September and profiled in the July-August 2011 issue of Q&Q), and Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi) are vying for the title of “the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.”

It’s also worth noting three of the longlisted titles come from House of Anansi, which is also the domestic publisher of Stephen Kelman’s longlisted book, Pigeon English.

The full list includes:

• Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape/Random House)
• Sebastian Barry, On Canaan’s Side (Faber)
• Carol Birch, Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books/HarperCollins)
• Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers (Granta/House of Anansi)
• Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail/Thomas Allen)
• Yvvette Edwards, A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
• Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child (Picador/Pan Macmillan)
• Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English (Bloomsbury/House of Anansi)
• Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
• A.D. Miller, Snowdrops (Atlantic)
• Alison Pick, Far to Go (Headline Review/House of Anansi)
• Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
• D.J. Taylor, Derby Day (Chatto & Windus/Random House)

The six-title shortlist will be revealed Sept. 6 and the winner announced Oct. 18. Each author included on the shortlist will receive £2,500 and a special edition of their book. The winner will be awarded an additional £50,000. The jury, chaired by Dame Stella Rimington, is made up of writer Matthew d’Ancona, author Susan Hill, author and politician Chris Mullin, and Gaby Wood, books editor at The Daily Telegraph.

Canadian authors celebrated at the Lambda Awards

Four Canadian authors took home awards last night at the 23rd Lambda Literary Awards in New York City. “The Lammies”  celebrate the best in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender writing for books published the previous year.

First-time novelist Amber Dawn won the Lesbian Debut Fiction award for Sub Rosa (Arsenal Pulp Press). Zoe Whittall won in the new Transgender Fiction category for her novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible (House of Anansi Press). Anna Swanson took the Lesbian Poetry Award for her collection, The Nights Also (Tightrope Books). And S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein took home the award for best LGBT Anthology for Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press).

Read the complete list of winners.

Anansi puts Rob Ford on a streetcar

When House of Anansi Press was strategizing its marketing campaign for The Little Book of Rob Ford, a collection of “quips, quotes, and colourful comments” from Toronto’s mayor, it took a more subtle approach than NOW Magazine’s controversial nudie cover. They put Ford on the side of a streetcar.

Anansi’s director of publicity Laura Repas says the idea originated with one of Ford’s own quotes: “If you get stuck behind a streetcar you’re stuck! Enough with the streetcars!” Originally Anansi wanted to do a vinyl advertising wrap that would cover the entire car, but with a price tag of more than $20,000, the bold idea was cost-prohibitive. Repas says that poster ad on the side of the TTC streetcar was “an amazing deal,” especially considering the “happy accident” timing of Ford’s new transit plan announced on Thursday.

The book, conceived a day after Ford was elected and released on Feb. 16, does not have a huge marketing budget outside of the streetcar ad, which runs on the Queen Street line: “It goes by City Hall and it’s such a great, long route,” says Repas. Anansi also organized direct outreach to unconventional bookretailers like bike stores and “edgy, fun giftshops,” and set up a Tumblr page to promote the book. Anansi’s Twitter and Facebook followers are encouraged to send in their photos of the TTC ad for a chance to win a package of spring 2011 titles.

Books of the Year 2010: Fiction and Poetry

There’s no formula for choosing the books of the year. Some break ground, some tackle familiar themes with new energy. Some represent the best work from established authors, some introduce us to important new voices. And some are simply in-house favourites we feel deserve a little more attention. Here are the Fiction and Poetry books that made the most impact in 2010.
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Griffin fever!

The 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize will be handed out at a ceremony in Toronto this evening. Verse lovers are making bets on who will take home the world’s most lucrative award for a collection of poetry in English. One prize honours a Canadian poet, and another is awarded to an international poet.  This year the prize money has increased from $50,000 to $65,000 for both recipients, with each shortlisted author receiving $10,000.

The Canadian shortlist includes debut collection The Certainty Dream by Kate Hall (Coach House Books). The judges wrote in their citation: “I like the feeling her poems give that as we read them we are amidst an actual process of thought.” The book is regarded as a long-shot by some, as a first collection has yet to win a Griffin.

Coal and Roses by the late P.K. Page (Porcupine’s Quill), is a collection of 21 glosas by the iconic poet. “How heartening to be reminded that creativity, zest and curiosity can endure, even flourish, into great old age,” wrote the judges. Page’s collection Planet Earth was nominated for the Griffin in 2003, and some are speculating the 2010 award will go to her in part to honour her considerable life’s work.

Pigeon (House of Anansi Press) is Karen Solie’s third collection of poetry.  This is Solie’s second Griffin nomination, and some surmise this one might secure a win. From the judge’s citation: “Among the greatest of Solie’s talents, evident throughout the poems of Pigeon, is an ability to see at once into and through our daily struggle, often thwarted by our very selves, toward something like an honourable life.”

Over a thousand people attended last night’s Griffin readings at the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning. American poet Adrienne Rich was awarded the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s Lifetime Recognition Award.

The judges for this year’s prize are Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie, and Carl Phillips.