Ling Zhang responds to accusations of plagiarism

This week, the controversy dogging Chinese-Canadian author Ling Zhang’s second novel, Gold Mountain Blues, flared up again as prominent Chinese-Canadian authors Wayson Choy, Sky Lee, and Paul Yee signed a letter asking Penguin Canada to delay publication of its English-language translation of the book. Zhang has been accused of plagiarizing work by Choy, Lee, and Yee, as well as other well-known Chinese-Canadian writers. In their request, the trio criticize Penguin’s efforts to substantiate the accusations and they’ve asked for the delay so that an independent review might take place. (For more details on the controversy please follow the links to previous posts on Quillblog.)

In response, Zhang has issued a statement in which she claims not to have read the works from which she has allegedly borrowed, and expresses her disappointment at the recent turn of events:

Gold Mountain Blues is the result of years of research and several field trips to China and Western Canada. The research data obtained over the years is voluminous enough to allow me to write another complete novel if I chose to. A hundred and fifty years of Chinese-Canadian history is a “common wealth” for all of us to share and discover. I have not read The Jade Peony, Disappearing Moon Café, The Bone Collector’s Son, or Tales from Gold Mountain. I have a great respect for the authors who have already explored this rich territory before me: Wayson Choy, Denise Chong, Paul Yee, and Sky Lee.  I welcome and encourage authors interested in Chinese-Canadian history to do the same. When I started to write this book, I hoped it would serve to bring the Chinese-Canadian community a little more closely together, by sharing such a long and meaningful history.  I am deeply saddened to see that things do not seem to be going in that direction.

Canadian literary event round-up: July 22-28

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

• Melancthon (7 Directions & the African Reparations Fund) poetry reading with NourbeSe Philip, Jumari Giles, Truth Is, Zainab Amadahy, Sonny Be, and Sedina Fiati, Blue Moon, Toronto (July 22, 9 p.m., $10 or pwyc)
• Don Banting signs Two Shadows Have I, Indigo South Edmonton Common (July 23, 1 p.m., free)
• Dorothy Ellen Palmer, author of When Fenelon Falls, reads with Chad Pelley, The Ship, St. John’s (July 24, 7:30 p.m., free)
• Alison Uitti reads from First Days Night Movies, McNally Robinson, Saskatoon (July 25, 7:30 p.m., free)
• Chevy Stevens signs Never Knowing, Chapters Granville, Vancouver (July 25, 7 p.m., free)
• Farzana Doctor reads from Six Metres of Pavement, Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium, Vancouver (July 26, 7 p.m., free)
• Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti launch The Chairs Are Where the People Go, The Garrison, Toronto (July 27, 7 p.m., free)

Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther shortlists announced

Shortlists for the annual Gerald Lampert Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award were announced last night at the National Poetry Month launch event in Toronto.

The Gerald Lampert Award recognizes the best debut poetry collection published by a Canadian. The shortlisted books are:

• The Crow’s Vow, Susan Briscoe (Signal Editions)
• That Other Beauty, Karen Enns (Brick Books)
• Tiny, Frantic, Stronger, Jeff Latosik (Insomniac Press)
• [sic], Nikki Reimer (Frontenac Press)
• Here Is Where We Disembark, Clea Roberts (Freehand Books)
• The Nights Also, Anna Swanson (Tightrope Books)

The Pat Lowther Award is presented to a book of poetry published by a Canadian woman. The shortlisted books are:

• Ossuaries, Dionne Brand (McClelland & Stewart)
• Walking to Mojácar, Di Brandt (Turnstone Press)
• Living Under Plastic, Evelyn Lau (Oolichan Books)
• Memory’s Daughter, Alice Major (University of Alberta Press)
• Cathedral, Pamela Porter (Ronsdale Press)
• La luna, Tango, siempre la luna / The Moon, Tango, Always the Moon, Nela Rio (Broken Jaw Press)

It’s been a fine week so far for Brand, who today was also nominated for the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Winners of both awards, worth $1,000 each, will be announced June 11 at the LCP Poetry Fest and Conference in Toronto.

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.

National Post reveals finalists for Canada Also Reads competition

The eight books and panelists for the National Post’s Canada Also Reads book competition – created to put a spotlight on lesser-known books ignored by CBC’s Canada Reads – were announced today. Two Q&Q staffers, Zoe Whittall and Steven W. Beattie, will be defending their choices on the panel, alongside six other authors, poets, and even one singer/songwriter.

The Post’s Mark Medley created anticipation for the event by live-tweeting in the moments leading up to the reveal, offering hints such as “one of the books is set near some famous falls” and “one of the finalists had two of her novels long-listed.” After announcing that the final post was being spell-checked, and admitting that they were milking this build-up for all it was worth, the results were finally posted on the Post’s Afterword book blog. Here’s the full list:

• Steven W. Beattie defends My White Planet by Mark Anthony Jarman (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• Author Tish Cohen (Inside Out Girl, Town House) defends The Day The Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan (HarperCollins Canada)
• Singer/songwriter Andy Maize (Skydiggers) defends Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis (McClelland & Stewart)
• Poet Jacob McArthur Mooney (The New Layman’s Almanac) defends The Last Shot by Leon Rooke (Thomas Allen Publishers)
• Blogger John Mutford defends Yellowknife by Steve Zipp (Res Telluris)
• Author Lisa Pasold (Rats of Las Vegas) defends You and The Pirates by Jocelyne Allens (The Workhorsery)
• Author Neil Smith (Bang Crunch) defends Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant (Knopf Canada)
• Zoe Whittall (Holding Still for as Long as Possible) defends Fear of Fighting by Stacey May Fowles (Invisible Publishing)

According to the Afterword, while the blog is “a fan of what Canada Reads has done to promote CanLit, we figured this would be a great opportunity to help shine a light on some of the books sitting in the shadows.” Starting March 1, the Afterword will post two panelists’ defences of their chosen novels each day. On March 8, it will host a live chat with all the panelists and authors. The winner will be chosen via a public poll.

Bookmarks: Melancholy Whores on pause, B.C. Government hates books and more

• Filming of Gabriel García Márquez’s latest novel adaptation of Memories of my Melancholy Whores has been delayed by an anti-prostitution group claiming the movie promotes child prostitution. In the words of Jon Stewart: “I watched The Sound of Music. When I heard Climb Every Mountain I didn’t immediately go out hiking every weekend…”
• B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, fond of bragging about his province being the “most literate” decides to clear cut funding to just about everyone invested in writing, promoting, educating, and publishing literature in B.C.
• Google co-founder writes NYTimes op-ed explaining the importance of Google’s book scan plan
• A sneak peak of Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk
• In defence of the single-purpose e-reader

Yann Martel in orbit

It’s been a good year for Canadian authors when it comes to outer space. This summer, when astronauts Julie Payette and Robert Thirsk visited the International Space Station, they took with them copies of space-themed books by Kenneth Oppel and Jean-Rock Gaudreault. Now, it seems that the work of Yann Martel will be given a celestial reading by Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberté.

Tomorrow, the Quebec billionaire – Canada’s answer to Richard Branson – will become the first Canadian space tourist when he blasts off from a Kazakhstan cosmodrome to his destination at the International Space Station – a 12-day round trip reportedly costing him in the range of $35 million. Lest you think him frivolous, Laliberté has described the trip as a “poetic social mission” meant to raise awareness about water issues. It will culminate, on Oct. 9, in a two-hour “artistic happening” that will be broadcast in 14 cities worldwide and feature a hodgepodge of activists and global celebrities, including Al Gore, Peter Gabriel, Shakira, Salma Hayek, and U2. The centrepiece of the event, however, will be Laliberté’s reading of a specially commissioned story by Martel, about “the moon, the sun, and a drop of water.”

Laliberté has said that he hopes the event will focus the world’s attention on a pressing issue facing humanity, but it’s hard to take him all that seriously. A former fire-eater and stilt-walker, Laliberté says he’ll be wearing a red clown nose when he takes off.

Kenneth Oppel in outer space

The 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing may be grabbing all the headlines today, so it’s easy to overlook a bookish footnote to the historic milestone. According to a press release from the Canada Council for the Arts, astronaut Robert Thirsk, currently aboard the International Space Station with fellow Canadian Julie Payette, has brought with him two books by Canadian authors – Airborn by Kenneth Oppel and Deux pas vers les étoiles by Jean-Rock Gaudreault. Both books share non-terrestrial themes (the former concerns dirigibles and the latter, a play, is about a wannabe astronaut) and they have both won a Governor General’s award. Thirsk brought along the books in recognition of the fact that he is a descendant of Sir John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir of Elsfield, the Governor General who established the Governor General’s Literary Awards in 1936.

Bookmarks: Frank McCourt, Yann Martel, Tom Wolfe, Harry Potter, and more

Some book-related links:

• Frank McCourt dies at 78.
• Yann Martel’s new novel gets a U.S. deal.
• Tom Wolfe says, “To the moon, America, to the moon…”
• Harry Potter books “very Talmudic.”
• What’s wrong with the Hugo shortlist?
• Leave Hemmingway aloooooone!!!
• Five laws of the novelist.

Twilight sequel script found in trash

It was a blunder worthy of CSIS. In 1999, Canada’s spy agency had egg on its face after top-secret documents were stolen off the back seat of a parked car while the car’s owner attended a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game. Then, in 2008, top-secret counter-terrorist documents were discovered in a trash can in downtown Ottawa. Now, in what has to be an equivalent threat to national security (this time in the U.S.), the top-secret script for New Moon, the film sequel to last year’s Twilight adaptation, along with a treatment for the third film in the series, were left in a trash can outside of a St. Louis hotel, where they were summarily discovered by salon owner Casey Ray.

Okay, maybe it’s not as serious as a CSIS security breach (Twilight fanatics are welcome to disagree), but one has to wonder who thought it would be a good idea to dispose of the hottest property in Hollywood by dumping it in a public trash bin.

Fortunately for the sanctity of the film series, Ray ignored her initial impulse to sell the scripts to a tabloid and instead returned them to Summit Entertainment, the production company for the movies. For her honesty, Ray has been invited to attend the premieres of both films.

This is not the first time a Stephenie Meyer property has been inadvertently leaked. Fans may remember the incident last year, in which a partial manuscript for a novel called Midnight Sun was released online, prompting the author to cancel plans to publish the book. The 12-chapter draft was later posted on Meyer’s website.