Weekend reading list: top stories from around our offices

Every weekend Q&Q rounds up the highlights from other websites in the St. Joseph Media family. This week’s top stories get sporty with the Roller Derby World Cup and Where Canada‘s top skiing apps.

Giving roller derby a sporting chance [Torontoist]

Our five favourite skiing apps [Where Canada]

Holiday gift guide 2011 [Toronto Life]

Introducing Nail Corner: your guide to DIY manicures [Fashion Magazine]

A cute and simple winter snack: hot chocolate marshmallow mugs [Canadian Family]

Ottawa Magazine food editor Shawna Wagman kick-starts holiday shopping [Ottawa Magazine]

Weekend sweets: two divine pretzel treats [20 Minute Supper Club]

Thirty-five gorgeous blue bouquets [Wedding Bells]

Quillcast episode three: Charlotte Gill and Eating Dirt

Quillcast is a new podcast series from Quill & Quire featuring behind-the-scenes conversations with authors and publishing insiders. In this episode, the second in a two-part series on non-fiction authors, Vancouver writer Charlotte Gill speaks about her experiences as a professional tree-planter, the subject of her memoir Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe (Greystone Books), one of Q&Q’s 2011 books of the year.

Eating Dirt was shortlisted for the inaugural Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for non-fiction, and was recently longlisted for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

Scroll down to listen to the episode, and click on the thumbnails to view photos from Gill’s life as a tree-planter:

Quillcast is produced with media partners The Walrus, Open Book: Ontario, and Open Book: Toronto, with support from Toronto Life. This project has been generously supported by the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund.

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Embed

Weekend reading list: top stories from around our offices

Every weekend Q&Q rounds up the highlights from other websites in the St. Joseph Media family. This week’s top stories include a history of LGBT publisher Pink Triangle Press and a new biography of former National Ballet of Canada artistic director Celia Franca.

A brief history of Pink Triangle Press [Torontoist]

New biography explores battles and heartbreaks of Celia Franca [Ottawa Magazine]

Next year could see the return of chickens to Toronto’s backyards [Toronto Life]

Giles Deacon on all things ballet, Tumblr, and Cecil Beaton [Fashion Magazine]

The games our children make us play [Canadian Family]

Inspiring Canadian helicopter tours [Where Canada]

Food-lover holiday gift ideas [20 Minute Supper Club]

Canadian-made favours unique to each province [Wedding Bells]

Pop Sandbox launches interactive film version of The Next Day

Toronto transmedia company Pop Sandbox has launched an interactive Web version of The Next Day, which chronicles the stories of four suicide-attempt survivors.

The animated online documentary, a co-production with the National Film Board, accompanies the 100-page graphic novella of the same name. The book was released in early May during Canadian Mental Health Week.

Pop Sandbox is best-known for its graphic novel Kenk: A Graphic Portrait (a Q&Q 2010 book of the year), which, along with The Next Day, was just released in the U.S. An animated film version of Kenk is also in the works, as is a photographic novella adapted from an original Russell Smith story, shot by Toronto artist Jaret Belliveau.

Click here to read Q&Q’s profile of Pop Sandbox and to read a review of The Next Day.

Weekend reading list: top stories from around our offices

Every weekend Q&Q rounds up the highlights from other websites in the St. Joseph Media family. This week’s top stories include extreme winter activities and a holiday gift guide.

Fifteen extreme Canadian winter activities [Where Canada]

Holiday gift guide 2011 [Fashion Magazine]

Holt Renfrew rolls out resort collections from Marni, Lanvin, Stella McCartney, and more [Toronto Life]

How to make chocolate cake in a mug [Canadian Family]

Top food trends spotted at Gold Medal Plates 2011 [Ottawa Magazine]

Banana bread in the slow cooker [20 Minute Supper Club]

Fifty adorable ways to dress up your pet for your wedding day [Wedding Bells]

Occupy Toronto: one month in and safe, for now [Torontoist]

Weekend reading list: the top stories from around our offices

Every weekend Q&Q rounds up highlights from other websites in the St. Joseph Media family. This week’s top stories include teaching your kids classic Canadian songs and Movember grooming advice.

Thirteen great songs every Canadian kid should know [Canadian Family]

How to not look like a complete jerk for the rest of Movember [Torontoist]

Bankruptcy in Europe, deficits in the U.S. and Canada. What comes next? [Ottawa Magazine]

Fifteen historic Canadian battle sites [Where Canada]

Five easy party appetizers [20 Minute Supper Club]

2011’s most romantic cakes and flowers [Wedding Bells]

Holt Renfrew unveils its holiday windows [Toronto Life]

Photos from the Versace for H&M runway show and afterparty [Fashion Magazine]

Canadian literary event round-up: Nov. 11-17

Here are just a few of the literary events happening across the country in the next week:

• Maria Meindl reads from Outside the Box, Type Books, Toronto (Nov. 12, 5 p.m., free)
• Hal-Con sci-fi, fantasy, and comic convention, World Trade & Convention Centre, Halifax (Nov. 12–13, tickets at hal-con.com)
• CBC’s Carol Off interviews Jeffrey Sachs, author of The Price of Civilization: Economics and Ethics After the Fall, Toronto Reference Library (Nov. 14, 7 p.m., free)
• Neil Pasricha signs The Book of (Holiday) Awesome, Indigo Manulife Centre, Toronto (Nov. 14, 7 p.m., free)
• Readings from Somebody’s Child: Stories About Adoption by contributors J. Jill Robinson, Bonnie Evans, Dale Lee Kwong, Raquel Schneidmiller, Elaine Hayes, and Judith Hope, Memorial Park Library, Calgary (Nov. 15, 7 p.m., free)
• Helen Humphreys presents at Heart of Niagara Fall Reading Series, Pelham Public Library, Fonthill, Ontario (Nov. 16, 7:30 p.m., $8)
• Tightrope Books launches How to Get a Girl Pregnant, a memoir by Karleen Pendleton Jiménez; Onion Man, a poetry collection from Kathryn Mockler; and Prick, a novel by Ashley Little, Slack’s Restaurant, Toronto (Nov. 17, 6 p.m., free)
• Local authors K.L. Denman, Christy Goerzen, Cristy Watson, and Nikki Tate launch new YA titles, Kidsbooks, Surrey, B.C. (Nov. 17, 7 p.m., free)
• Beverley Brenna launches Falling for Henry, McNally Robinson, Saskatoon (Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m., free)
• Kathleen Winter reads from Annabel, Killam Library, Halifax (Nov. 17, 7:30 p.m., free)

$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.

Weekend reading list: top stories from around our offices

Every weekend Q&Q rounds up the highlights from other websites in the St. Joseph Media family. This week’s top stories include a gastronomical homage to Ferran Adrià at the Cookbook Store and the unveiling of Team Canada’s Olympic uniforms.

A visual tour of El Bulli Imitació, Matt Kantor’s epic 22-course homage to Ferran Adrià at the Cookbook Store [Toronto Life]

The Bay unveils Team Canada’s London 2012 Olympic Games apparel [Fashion Magazine]

Get kids talking with the high-low game [Canadian Family]

Wine and Food Festival preview with expert David Lawrason [Ottawa Magazine]

MoneySense weighs in: best credit cards for travel –  [Where Canada]

Four dishes to fight cold and flu season [20 Minute Supper Club]

Thirteen cost-cutting ideas from photography to catering [Wedding Bells]

Photo gallery: Church Street’s best Halloween costumes [Torontoist]

Book links round-up: social media and the slush pile, e-book charts take off, and more

• Social media is changing path to authorship
• Wall Street Journal releases e-book bestseller charts, fuelling U.K. demand for digital tracking
• Recession-era escapism makes sci-fi and fantasy publishing strongholds
• The segregation (and success) of “urban street lit”
• Why old books smell good