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.

More on the sexual mores of Canadian publishing

Author Stacey May Fowles has established herself as a trenchant observer of the sexual mores of Canadian publishing. Last week, in her column with Masthead.com, Fowles offered her take on the Davidar scandal, arguing that publishing breeds a workplace environment that is “uniquely permissive.” In a follow-up piece posted online at The Walrus (where she works as the magazine’s circulation manager), Fowles goes even further, detailing several instances of harassment she experienced first-hand while working in an industry that she describes as “complex and dangerously flawed.”

Fowles’ piece, a response to Russell Smith’s Globe and Mail column about sexual politics in the perilous trade, is a scathing account of an industry that not only tacitly tolerates instances of harassment but seems to consider it part of the job. From The Walrus:

What Smith missed in his column is that for some of those publishing “hotties,” sexuality is a tool used in pursuit of respect — and there is a deep sadness that sets in with the realization that so few really care about your manuscript or your theories or what you studied at university, but instead are deeply interested in how well you “entertain.”

There is also the subsequent shame that you participated at all. That you fell for and dressed up for the momentary pleasure that attention brings. Kissing your idols in elevators makes for a great martini-induced anecdote, but it also brings on a realization that this publishing culture, despite the fact that it is overwhelmingly populated by women, is still defined and governed by men. This is the lie of the patriarchy­­ — that even though our workplaces are staffed by women, our books authored by women, our bylines, titles, and accolades given to women, we still function under old rule.

You may ask why not just slap the ass-grabbing offender in the face at the party populated by everyone you work with or for? I think that question is asked and answered. Publishing is world of relationships, of bridges built and never deliberately burned. Because it’s unclear “who works for who,” if an author gets a little filthy during cocktail hour, he tends to fall more in the category of pervert than abuser of power. God forbid someone accuses you, the receiver of unwanted advances, of being difficult to work with. Under the threat of “you’ll never work in this town again,” we learn to live with it, become amused by it, enjoy it as cliché and archetypal. We even get a little elitist thrill that we are more enlightened than most because we think we understand it.

But as I grow older and perhaps more jaded the lie wears thin. I have long-since learned the eye-rolling, strategic avoiding, and placating that gets you through the shift. What else is the solution when the only coping mechanisms seem to be laugh off the lechery or to leave the industry for good (like one anonymous blogger did)? Or, in Russell Smith’s exceptional case, to write a Globe and Mail column about refusing to participate, however impossible it may seem. Because I have more perspective now, I wonder if I am not complicit because I write fervently about sex and sexuality, because I speak the language of innuendo, because I roll eyes and fail to slap faces. Am I not still nurturing an environment that is difficult for women ten years my junior who are just starting out?

Russell Smith on sex and Canadian publishing

Globe and Mail columnist Russell Smith offers his thoughts on sex in Canadian publishing. His conclusion? Despite the fact that it is full of “totally unbelievable hotties,” overall the industry is surprisingly chaste.

The author of six works of fiction (most recently the novel Girl Crazy), Smith goes on to congratulate himself for having resisted the temptations of so many “gorgeous 32-year-olds with graduate degrees from McGill” over the years: “I have never in my whole career made a real pass at one of my colleagues or, I think, been flirtatious to the point of making someone seriously worried about my attention. Even when I was single.”

While Smith’s column is an amusing look at the relationship between an author and his publishing team, it’s most scathing in pointing out the power relationships inside publishing houses that lead to gender imbalances:

It’s an unusual industry: one dominated by highly educated and intelligent women, many of them young. Most of the high-up executives on the commercial side of publishing are still men. The literary side is female. Most of the editors-in-chief of the major publishing houses are women; most of the publicists are women; almost all the agents are women; the powerful CBC Radio programs that discuss books are hosted by women; most of the readers are women; the single powerful bookstore chain in the country is run by a woman. And it is a highly social industry, because social events promote books: Anyone who works for a publishing house must attend, as part of work, frequent evening book launches, book fairs and literary festivals, and they are all soaked in booze. So are most of the writers.

The changing face of DIY

In a recent column in The Globe and Mail, Russell Smith makes an excellent case for dismantling the stereotype of traditional publishers as obstinate elitists resistant to change:

Of course, everyone wants to get into selling e-books. No one is resisting this idea. The problem is that not everyone wants to buy them yet. Furthermore, no one has yet agreed on who will be in control of these sales, and in particular of how much each of these books is going to cost. Both the publishers and the booksellers want to set the prices, and the booksellers will want to set the prices much lower than the publishers will.

Smith goes on to discuss how e-books are helping change the face of self-publishing; he thinks that, in the age of PayPal, vanity presses may not be considered inferior to traditional publishing, despite continued lack of support from arts councils and awards juries:

Some of the most popular writers on the Internet are unpaid and unpublished in print. Furthermore, even successful published authors are beginning to experiment with putting their own works up for sale online. In this case, it’s not a lack of renown that causes authors to self-publish, but the opposite: If an author is a really big name, she knows she already has the following to generate sales without the help of a publisher’s marketing and sales departments.

The National Post examined the phenomenon of DIY publishing in a recent article:

It’s a curiosity of modern culture that an indie CD or film is cool, while a self-published book still carries a whiff of stigma. Don’t believe it? Just try to get your indie book reviewed in most publications that habitually fawn over indie music and film.

Gaiman to headline Luminato literary programming

The Toronto-based Luminato arts festival has announced its 2009 lineup, and fanboys the city over will be pleased to know that the theme for the literary programming is “fantasy, horror, and Gothic.” They’ll likely be even more pleased that fantasy icon Neil Gaiman is the headliner. He’ll be flying into town for a night billed as “An Evening With Neil Gaiman,” in which he’ll reveal some of the hidden corners of his “darkly fantastic imagination,” according to the Luminato press release.

Meanwhile, Globe and Mail scribe Russell Smith will host an event featuring three authors of psychological suspense: Patrick McGrath, who’ll kick off the Canadian launch of his latest novel, Trauma; Sarah Langan, winner of the 2007 Bram Stoker Award, who’ll read from her novel The Missing; and Quebec author Monique Proulx, who’ll read from her newest novel, Wildlives. Later in the fest will be “Gothic Toronto: Writing the City Macabre,” which will feature six writers – including Ann-Marie MacDonald and Andrew Pyper – concocting ghoulish tales set in Toronto.

There’ll be some non-fantasy-related programming, too: 2008 Man Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga will headline “World Voices in Fiction,” an evening with new or rising international literary stars. And Canadian children’s authors and illustrators will be feted at readings across the city in partnership with the Toronto Public Library.

For the full details, click here.

Bookmarks: Bolano, Meyer, and more

• The mythology of Roberto Bolaño’s hard-knock life is starting to crumble: his widow says he was never a heroin addict, and others say he was not in Chile during the Pinochet coup.
• Slate takes a quick look around at the state of the book business.
• Russell Smith offers some reading recommendations.
• BookNet Canada asks: are e-readers’ claims to a greater greenness overstated?
• Stephenie Meyer still hasn’t gone back to that novel that got leaked; she’s now working on something else.

Bookmarks: retro covers, home renovations, and more

Notes from far and wide:

• Penguin’s campaign of standardized, retro covers was a hit with book buyers Down Under.
• Two brave and hardy souls have set out to read every book in the New Canadian Library.
• Hey, Westwood agent Hilary McMahon had her home featured on one of those decorating TV shows!
• Russell Smith marvels at the enduring popularity of reading, and then suggests it’s because movies like The Dark Knight are so terrible. Not sure that theory holds up under scrutiny, but nonetheless, he’s right about The Dark Knight.
• That phony Holocaust memoir might get released after all – as a novel.

Bookmarks: the new Gothic, Patrick Lane, and more

Some recent book links:

• Russell Smith on the supremacy of Gothic fiction (The Globe and Mail)
• Red Dog, Red Dog author Patrick Lane on the Okanagan Valley’s history of violence (The Tyee)
• George Bowering takes on Joy Kogawa’s poetic language (Dooney’s Café)
• A business book roundup (Vancouver Sun)

Bookmarks: Want to buy a pink amublance? and more

• Pink ambulance for sale cheap: gently used by poet/performance artist Mingus Tourette
• Faber & Faber discovers the magic of customized book covers via POD (PostSpectacular)
• When book covers serve as visual metaphors for the contents (Design Observer)
• Co-author of 100 Things to Do Before You Die dies (AP via CBC.ca)
• Russell Smith recaps the Urquhart anthology/”Salon des Refusés” flap (The Globe and Mail)
• “Typo vigilantes” correct mistakes on public signs, get busted (CNN.com)

Smith and Adderson

In his Globe and Mail column today, Russell Smith has much praise for Caroline Adderson’s short-story collection Pleased to Meet You.

Reading Caroline Adderson’s prose after wading through the leaden, child-pleasing stories of our prize-winners (not mentioning any [Vincent Lam] names) is like being let through the door from the grey Ikea-furnished nursery into a sunlit garden full of adults. One lets out a happy sigh, loosens one’s tie and accepts an intriguing and unusual drink. I could stay in her world all weekend. In fact, I just did.

Adderson, a novelist and storyist from Vancouver, has just published a collection of stories called Pleased to Meet You, and it is my favourite book of the year so far; my favourite Canadian book of the past five.

Now, we at Quillblog like Russell Smith; we’re still waiting for a followup to his last novel, the excellent Muriella Pent. And we know only too well that everyone slips up on the facts once in a while. Furthermore, we agree wholeheartedly with the implicit premise of his latest column, which is that general readers, alas, don’t appreciate well-written short stories.

So when we point out that Pleased to Meet You was not “just published” but actually dates from 2006, we’re not just trying to pull a gotcha. And when we add that Smith moderated Adderson’s appearance at Luminato this week – and therefore discovered this excellent collection, two years after it was released, mainly because of a professional obligation – it’s only to note that this added context would seem to undercut the aforementioned implicit premise of the column. Or maybe support it.