Canadian literary event roundup: Jan. 20-26

It’s a busy week for literary events. Here’s a sample of what’s going on across the country:

• Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild presents “Writing North: Writing the Extraordinary,” University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon (Jan. 20–21, free, www.skwriter.com)
• Poet Tanya Davis leads Stanzas in the Stacks: Poetry in the Library after Dark, Spring Garden Road Memorial Public Library, Halifax (Jan. 20, 8 p.m., free)
• Dragnet literary magazine launches its fourth issue, Academy of the Impossible, Toronto (Jan. 21, 9 p.m., pay what you can)
• Third annual Sparks Literary Festival, Memorial University, St. John’s (Jan. 22, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., free)
• William Gibson discusses his new book, Distrust that Particular Flavor, Bolen Books, Victoria (Jan. 23, 7 p.m., free)
• Robbie Burns marathon poetry reading with haggis and shortbread, Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre, Vancouver (Jan. 25, 8 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., free)
• CBC Radio and McNally Robinson host 5 Readers, 5 Writers, 5 Minutes, Winnipeg (Jan. 25, 8 p.m., free)
• Brian Brennan, author of Writing My Way From Ireland to Canada, and Frances Hern, author of Yip Sang and the First Chinese Canadians, read from their work and discuss the Canadian immigrant experience, Central branch, Calgary Public Library (Jan. 26, 12 to 1 p.m., free. Call 403-260-2620 to register)
• Ottawa Independent Writers presents “How to Write a Winning ‘How-To’ Book” with business author Dr. Denis Cauvier, Library & Archives Canada (Jan. 26, 7 p.m., $10, www.oiw.ca)
• Reading and book signing with UPEI writer-in-residence Michael Crummey, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Charlottetown (Jan. 26, 7:30 p.m., free)

Quillblog is looking for photos from literary events across Canada. Send your photos to scflinn@quillandquire.com.

Booksellers’ picks of the year: sports

Although it was released just last month, Cornered: Hijinks, Highlights, Late Nights and Insights (HarperCollins Canada) by Ron MacLean with Kirstie McLellan Day has quickly become one of Canada’s top sports titles of 2011.

Booksellers from coast to coast have seen the Hockey Night in Canada co-host’s memoir sell to a broad audience.

“That’s done really, really well,” says Ian Donker, manager of Book City in Toronto. “And I think it’s going to continue to do well.”

Another autobiography, Georges Laraque: The Story of the NHL’s Unlikeliest Tough Guy (Penguin Canada), written with Pierre Thibeault, is poised to join Cornered as another hit of the holiday season, says Michael Hamm, manager of Bookmark in Halifax.

“[Georges Laraque] is one of those sports books where the readership will expand into people who don’t normally follow hockey,” says Hamm. “It touches on wider subjects.” The book addresses topics including racism, animal rights, Haitian relief efforts, and drug use among athletes.

At Bookmark, local appeal has made Chris Cochrane’s Inside the Game: The Stories Behind Nova Scotia’s Sports Headlines (Nimbus Publishing) a top pick of 2011, Hamm adds.

Out West, Celebrating the 2010–2011 Season of the Vancouver Canucks (Fenn-M&S) by Andrew Podnieks has been a best bet this year, says Colin Holt, manager of Victoria’s Bolen Books – perhaps because 2011 was the Canucks’ first shot at the Stanley Cup since 1994, or because no list of Canadian sports lit would be complete without a heavy dose of hockey.

Canadian literary event round-up: Oct. 21-27

The literary scene is lively this week with many festivals underway. Here’s a sample of what’s happening across the country:

• LitFest non-fiction festival, various locations, Edmonton (until Oct. 23, tickets at litfestalberta.org)
• Vancouver International Writers Festival, various locations, Granville Island (until Oct. 23, tickets at writersfest.bc.ca)
• Ottawa International Writers’ Festival, various locations, Ottawa (until Oct. 25, tickets at writersfestival.org)
• International Festival of Authors, various locations, Ontario (until Oct. 30, tickets at readings.org)
• Gaspereau Press’s 12^th annual Wayzgoose and open house, Kentville, Nova Scotia (Oct. 22, all day, free)
• Roald Dahl Day with screening of James and the Giant Peach plus contests, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto (Oct. 23, 11 a.m., $10)
• Canzine, 918 Bathurst Centre, Toronto (Oct. 23, 1 p.m., $5)
• Psychologist Shelagh Robinson demos Mirror Read Books, Babar Books, Pointe-Claire, Quebec (Oct. 24, 2 p.m., free)
• François Cusset reads from The Inverted Gaze, Type Books, Toronto (Oct. 26, 7 p.m., free)
• Scrivener Creative Review launches its latest issue with guest reading by Jason Price Everett, Papeterie Nota Bene, Montreal (Oct. 27, 4:30 p.m., $5 for entry, a copy, and a cupcake)

CLA kicks off Canadian Library Month

The Canadian Library Association kicked off Canadian Library Month on Tuesday. Throughout the month of October, libraries across the country will host events to raise awareness about the importance of libraries in the nation’s communities.

According to a press release from the CLA, the theme for 2011, Your Library: A Place Unbound, strengthens this message by pointing to libraries as hubs of information and personal connection in the midst of a quickly evolving world. “From coast to coast to coast, libraries are without boundaries, places of endless opportunity where Canadians have an equal right to access resources,” says CLA president Karen Adams in the media release.

Within the span of a few months, Canadian libraries have faced threats from municipal funding cuts, union strikes, devastating fires, and natural disasters — to name but a few challenges. It’s nice, then, to have some positive library-related news to report.

And in case a month of library celebrations isn’t uplifting enough, here’s a quick round up of other library-friendly news:

• The Nova Scotia Library Association names Tracey Jones-Grant winner of the 2011 Norman Horrocks Award for Library Leadership, and Rachel Crosby winner of the 2011 Emile Theriault Library and Information Technology Award for support staff
• Newfoundland and Labrador Public Libraries celebrates 75 years on Oct. 28
• Toronto Public Library’s Arthur Conan Doyle Room is getting a face lift
• Vancouver Public Library may have closed its Riley Park Branch last month, but Vancouver City Council has approved an increase in VPL funding for the brand new Terry Salman Branch

Happy Canadian Libraries Month!

Canadian literary event round-up: Sept. 23-29

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

• Kingston WritersFest, various locations, Kingston, Ontario (Sept. 23–25; schedule at kingstonwritersfest.ca)
• We Are Here: Telling African-Canadian Stories, World Trade and Convention Centre, Halifax (Sept. 23, 6:30 p.m., $10)
• Graphic novelist Craig Thompson launches Habibi, Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal (Sept. 23, 7 p.m., free)
• Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia hosts Fall into Writing with Ami McKay, Stephens Gerard Malone, and Sue Goyette, Pier 21, Halifax (Sept. 24, 7 p.m., $10)
• The Word on the Street national book and magazine festival, various locations in Vancouver, Lethbridge, Saskatoon, Kitchener, Toronto, and Halifax (Sept. 25; schedules at thewordonthestreet.ca)
• Peter Knegt launches Queer Rights, Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal (Sept. 26, 6 p.m., free)
• Leanne Prain launches HOOPLA: The Art of Unexpected Embroidery with a stitch-and-bitch, Type Books, Toronto (Sept. 27, 6 p.m., free)
• Evan Munday launches The Dead Kid Detective Agency, No One Writes to the Colonel, Toronto (Sept. 29, 7 p.m., free)

East Coast author files lawsuit against Warner Bros.

A Nova Scotia sailor and writer is suing Warner Bros. for allegedly plagiarizing his novel, Fandango’s Gold, for their 2008 Matthew McConaughey/Kate Hudson vehicle Fool’s Gold.

In a statement of claim filed in federal court last week, Lou Boudreau maintains that writer-director Andy Tennant’s screenplay shares “uncanny” similarities with Boudreau’s book, written in 1999. Fandango’s Gold, based on the author’s real-life experience as a diver and fisherman, was registered with the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and published in 2006 by Tiller Publishing, a Maryland-based press specializing in nautical books.

The claim doesn’t specify the amount Boudreau is seeking in damages, though he says he’s entitled to the same cut afforded to the screenwriter of the film, which made over $300 million.

From Halifax’s The Chronicle-Herald:

In his statement of claim, Boudreau says his manuscript ended up in the hands of movie industry insiders, particularly in California, because he spent about five years between 1999 and 2004 promoting it.

In an interview… Boudreau said Fandango’s Gold starts out as the tale of a Spanish sailor on a galleon laden with gold sailing for Spain. It runs into a hurricane and is wrecked on a remote atoll in the Caribbean. The crew carries the treasure ashore and hides it in an underground cave with a passage to the sea.

[...]

In his statement of claim, Boudreau lists pages of similarities between his book and the film. They include the two romantic leads looking for the galleon’s treasure, the female lead being taken hostage by the bad guys, and the lead characters finding the treasure in an underground cave and swimming through an underwater tunnel to safety.

Boudreau is wading into risky waters – many an author has taken on big U.S. production companies and filmmakers, and the results haven’t necessarily been favourable. (Remember when Rebecca Eckler took on Judd Apatow in 2007?) In the end, Boudreau says he has to stand up for his work and his “moral rights.”

“I’m the little schooner captain from Cape Breton and they are Warner Bros. Therein lies the great inequity,” he told The Chronicle-Herald. “It’s important for me because I wrote this book. It was very personal to me.”

Daily book biz round-up: Tolkien & Dickens; New Jersey libraries saved; and more

Today’s book news:

• Descendants of Tolkien and Dickens (!) rework classic children’s fantasy
• Crime Writer’s Association announces Gold Dagger nominees
• Nielsen looks at the ways film adaptations like Eat, Pray, Love affect book sales
• Amazing what a little media attention can do: New Jersey libraries to be saved
• E-books taking off at libraries in B.C. and Nova Scotia

Forcing books on politicians, Lesley Choyce edition

In a similar vein to Yann Martel’s book barrage on Harper, Lesley Choyce, author and publisher of Pottersfield Press, plans to hand-deliver copies of his new book Nova Scotia: Visions of the Future to all provincial MHAs and federal MPs in the province. According to Choyce, the purpose of the book, which was released in May, is to set in motion an action plan to help improve Nova Scotia. From the Pottersfield Press web site:

In the summer of 2008, Pottersfield publisher Lesley Choyce sent a letter to a select and varied list of Nova Scotians asking them to contribute to a book about this province’s future. … He invited many Nova Scotians to write anything they wanted to, hoping contributors would cover environment, technology, immigration, social aspects, urban life, rural life, energy, politics, government, family, economics, forests, the ocean and much more. The bolder the vision, the better. Stories and personal aspects were okay. Controversial ideas were fine. Which future? Anything beyond ten years and up to a thousand.

The initiative will also coincide with Pottersfield’s 30th anniversary. Choyce intends to personally confront his province’s leaders in the second week of July.

Canadian kids’ authors on long longlist for rich Swedish prize

Two Canadian storytellers and one Nova Scotia literacy group are in the running for the world’s richest children’s literary prize. Ottawa kids’ novelist Brian Doyle, Quebec author and illustrator Marie-Louise Gay, and Read to Me!, a family literacy program, have all been nominated for the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, worth about $800,000 (or 5-million Swedish crowns).

It’s still too early for the Canadian candidates to get their hopes up, however, as there are 150 other nominees on the list. The winner, whose work “upholds the highest artistic quality and evokes the deeply humanistic spirit that Astrid Lindgren treasured,” will be announced in March, with an awards gala in May. Past winners include Philip Pullman, Maurice Sendak, and Sonya Hartnett.

The international prize was founded in 2002 after the death of Lindgren, creator of Pippi Longstocking.