Erin Bow’s Plain Kate wins TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award

Erin Bow has won this year’s TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for her historical fantasy YA novel Plain Kate, published by Scholastic Canada.

Bow received her $25,000 prize at a gala event in Toronto last night. The Canadian Children’s Book Centre also announced winners of the following awards:

Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award ($20,000)
I Know Here by Laurel Croza; Matt James, illus., Groundwood Books

Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-fiction ($10,000)
Case Closed? Nine Mysteries Unlocked by Modern Science by Susan Hughes; Michael Wandelmaier, illus., Kids Can Press

Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People ($5,000)
The Glory Wind by Valerie Sherrard, Fitzhenry & Whiteside

John Spray Mystery Award ($5,000)
A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee, Candlewick Press/Random House of Canada

The CCBC also introduced the Monica Hughes Award, which will honour excellence in the children’s science fiction and fantasy genre. The inaugural $5,000 cash prize will be awarded annually, starting October 2012. To be eligible, the book must be an original work in English, aimed at readers ages eight to 16.

The Writers’ Trust of Canada presents 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Grant to Nancy Jo Cullen

Poet Nancy Jo Cullen has won the 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Grant for best emerging gay writer in Canada, with honours of distinction presented to fiction writers Lisa Foad and George K. Ilsley. The jury was made up of writers Brian Francis and Suzette Myer, and grant founder Robin Pacific.

Cullen is the author of three books of poetry: Science Fiction Saint, Pearl, and Untitled Child, all published by Frontenac House. She has received an Alberta Book Publishing Award and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book of poetry, the Writers Guild of Alberta’s Stephan G. Steffanson Award for Poetry, and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.

Established in 2007, the annual award is presented by the Writers’ Trust of Canada to an emerging gay or lesbian writer “who demonstrates great promise through a body of work of exceptional quality.” It is sponsored by donor Robin Pacific, in honour of her late best friend Dayne Ogilvie, an editor, writer, and passionate supporter of literature. The prizes will be presented at a ceremony during Pride Week in Toronto.

Harlequin tries for some online love with digital publishing venture

Harlequin Enterprises, best known as a publisher of romance novels in the traditional “dead tree” format, has just launched an online publishing house, Carina Press. According to the Carina home page, the new venture will focus on romance novels but “will also acquire voices in mystery, suspense and thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, erotica, gay/lesbian, and more.” An inaugural blog post on the site provides a kind of mission statement for Carina: “There are hundreds of fantastic stories out there that for one reason or another don’t yet have a home. Our intent is to give them one and provide the authors behind them with opportunities to play an active role in this exciting and ever-changing digital space.”

Indeed, a quick scan of the Carina site indicates that authors will be required to play a very active role in promoting their books: the FAQs page says that authors “have more control over [their] own brand” in the digital arena and that Carina will provide the tools to help authors begin “self-promoting in the digital space.”

Additionally, Carina authors will not be paid an advance, but instead will be “compensated with a higher royalty.” And Carina does not offer digital rights management to prevent authors’ work being copied or downloaded illegally.

According to a Harlequin press release, Carina books will be sold directly to consumers via its own website and various third party websites. The release continues:

“As a digital-only publisher Carina Press is a natural extension to our business; it builds on our digital strength and leadership position. We expect to discover new authors and unique voices that may not be able to find homes in traditional publishing houses,” said Donna Hayes, CEO and Publisher of Harlequin Enterprises. “It definitely gives us greater flexibility in the type of editorial we can accept from authors and offer to readers.”

Angela James, described in the press release as “a well-known advocate for digital publishing,” has been named executive editor of Carina. The “press’s” first books are expected to appear online in spring 2010.

Bookmarks: offensive books, William Golding, and Alice Munro country

Some book-related links:

• Where the Brooklyn Public Library hides the offensive books
• William Golding was not the lord of his own fly
• Travels in Alice Munro country
• How John Grisham helped free the Norfolk Four
• Five sci-fi and fantasy books that never should have been written

Canadian Connections

Sponsored Blog Post: Canadian connections found in The Time Traveler’s Wife include actors Rachel McAdams as Claire Tabshire and actress Fiona Reid as Lucille Abshire; film locations in Toronto, Hamilton and Scugog Township; and one of the soundtrack songs is ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, recorded by Canadian band Broken Social Scene.

Currently The Time Traveler’s Wife is number one in Amazon.ca’s ranking of literature and fiction, number two in Amazon.ca’s ranking of science fiction and fantasy and is the number nine bestseller overall on Amazon.ca as well as one the Globe and Mail’s top 10 trade paperback bestsellers in Canada.

Bookmarks: Mamet directs Anne Frank, Anna Porter visits the Y, and more

Some book-related links:

• David Mamet to direct Anne Frank film for Disney (NB: the Guardian‘s headline is “David Mamet to tackle Anne Frank,” which is just not nice)
• Anna Porter on her appearance at New York’s 92nd St. Y
• Jay-Z, Bob Costas, and Warren Buffet – book blurbs often make for strange bedfellows
• The top ten cafés in which to write a novel
• George Jonas wonders, are books seasonal?
• What can books tell us about banks?
• When it comes to sci-fi, it’s all about the quantum flux

Community reading campaign goes on 100-Mile Diet

An Ontario community reading campaign has gone with a non-fiction title for the first time in its history. The “One Book, One Community” program, based in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, has gone with Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating, first published last year by Random House Canada. The campaign will last throughout the summer, concluding with author appearances and other events in September.

This is the seventh year for “One Book, One Community”: previous choices have been mostly CanLit fiction, with a venture into science fiction (Robert J. Sawyer’s Hominids) in 2005.

Bookmarks: online shoppers prefer books, kids ought to read, sci-fi space gods are dumb, and other shockingly obvious book news

Some book-related links:

• Books are tops amongst the world’s online shoppers (The Guardian)
• Apparently, reading is good for kids, so they should do it more (Toronto Star)
• The dumbest space gods in science fiction (io9)
• Will Ferrell – yes, that Will Ferrell – wins James Joyce Award (Canadian Press)
• Zagat restaurant guides to be sold? (The Mercury News)
• Welsh writers in digital archive spat with National Library of Wales (BBC News)
• Nine (American) destinations for bookstore connoisseurs (The News & Observer)
• Professional radio vulgarian Don Imus sued by publisher of presidential bio (CNN.com)
• Three Little Pigs update turned down for award for potential offence (Journal Live)

Review Roundup: William Gibson’s Spook Country

Review Roundup is a new feature on Quillblog, wherein we compile some of the critical reaction to one of the season’s big books. For our inaugural edition, we look at the reviews for William Gibson’s new novel, Spook Country, upon which a lot of ink (real and virtual) was spilled over the past couple of weeks.
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Lem dead at 84

Between yesterday and today, at least eight major news sources have reported on the death of Polish science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem. Lem, best known for the novels His Master’s Voice and Solaris, which was turned into a film in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky and again in 2002 by Steven Soderbergh, died yesterday of heart failure at the age of 84. Often considered a sci-fi writer for those who don’t like sci-fi, Lem showed a public disdain for many of the genre’s exemplars, which led to his honourary membership to the Science Fiction Writers of America being revoked in 1976. And although, according to Ben Sisario’s obituary for Lem in The New York Times, “his books have been translated into at least 35 languages and have sold 27 million copies,” many of his fans, among them bloggers at Bookninja.com and The Literary Saloon, say that his books are woefully undertranslated.

Related links:
Click here for Lem’s obituary in The Guardian
Click here for Lem’s obituary in The New York Times
Click here for a Lem-related posting on The Literary Saloon
Click here to access Lem’s official website