Edmonton literary magazine launches in Toronto

Eighteen Bridges, the cultural magazine of “narrative journalism and first-person essays” that sprang onto Edmonton’s literary scene in October 2010, will make its Toronto debut tonight. A labour of love co-founded by Curtis Gillespie and Lynn Coady and featuring the likes of Lisa Moore, Marni Jackson, Timothy Taylor, and Marina Endicott, the general interest publication also includes literary criticism, fiction, and poetry that is “primarily, but not exclusively, about Canada or written by Canadians.”

On the magazine’s website, the co-founders suggest they’ve taken cues from some of the industry’s heavy hitters:

We value the timeless narrative flair of The New Yorker, the journalistic rigour of Harpers, the literary excellence of Granta, and we hope to weave these elements together with a distinctive Canadian sensibility. Eighteen Bridges will be a modern in-touch magazine concerned with people, politics, culture, and ideas, its articles substantial, in-depth, and grounded in the narrative tradition.

The public launch takes place at the Spoke Club, 600 King St. W., starting at 7 p.m. (RSVPs are welcome at nina@eighteenbridges.com.)


New online writing community geared toward teens

Parents and educators spend a lot of time, and spill a lot of ink, debating how to get teenagers interested in reading. Anyone who stops to think about the phenomenal success of Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight series will realize this is a somewhat odd debate to be having: teenagers are already reading (although perhaps not the kind of books that parents and educators might prefer).

Jacob Lewis, a former managing editor at The New Yorker, and Dana Goodyear, a staff writer at the magazine, seem to understand this. Lewis and Goodyear have teamed up to create Figment.com, an online community where young readers and writers can connect and submit their own fiction, poetry, even cell-phone novels.

From The New York Times:

The idea for Figment emerged from a very 21st-century invention, the cellphone novel, which arrived in the United States around 2008. That December, Ms. Goodyear wrote a 6,000-word article for The New Yorker about young Japanese women who had been busy composing fiction on their mobile phones. In the article she declared it “the first literary genre to emerge from the cellular age.”

Figment is an attempt to import that idea to the United States and expand on it. Mr. Lewis, who was out of a job after Portfolio, the Condé Nast magazine, was shuttered last year, teamed up with Ms. Goodyear, and the two worked with schools, libraries, and literary organizations across the country to recruit several hundred teenagers who were willing to participate in a prototype, which went online in a test version in June.

The Beta version of the site is up now. It features new writing from Blake Nelson, author of the acclaimed YA novel Girl, as well as contests, reviews, and user-generated content.

Price drop rumored for Kobo eReader

When it launched in May, one of the Kobo eReader’s big selling points was that it was one of the cheapest e-reading devices on the market at $149. But now, with Barnes & Noble selling the new wi-fi Nook for $149, and Amazon selling the new wi-fi Kindle for $139, the Kobo eReader – which requires a Bluetooth connection – suddenly has a lot less to recommend it. No surprise, then, that a Kobo price drop appears to be in the works. Though nothing has been announced officially as of yet, a current online-only piece in The New Yorker suggests that Kobo will be lowering prices very soon.

Reporting on a swanky rooftop party Kobo recently hosted in Toronto, The New Yorker had this to say:

Kobo is perhaps the scrappiest and most focussed player in the e-book war. Its online store has a vast and rapidly expanding catalogue of e-books that can be read on almost any mobile device (notable exception: the Kindle). And its own e-reader’s simplicity and affordability (it will reportedly be down to $99 in time for Christmas) has spawned a cult following. In Amazon’s rear-view mirror, Kobo is quickly gaining ground.

When asked by Q&Q to confirm the $99 rumor, Kobo vice-president of content, sales, and merchandising Michael Tamblyn said he wasn’t currently at liberty to comment on future pricing.

Daily book biz round-up: iPad security breach; on reading New Yorker fiction; and more

Book news pour vous:

• Early iPad adopters exposed to massive security breach
• Barbara Kingsolver wins Orange Prize
• Atwood to headline Frye Festival in 2011
• Only female candidate for Oxford professor of poetry position withdraws from race, citing “serious flaws” in election process
• Some Kindle titles more expensive in U.S. than in Canada
• Better writing through not linking
• On the joys and perils of reading The New Yorker‘s fiction selections
• The top ten bathroom reads

Daily book biz round-up: how to edit a Summer Fiction issue; Glenn Beck makes incredibly bad book choice; and more

Some quick news hits to kick-start your week:

• The New Yorker editors on assembling the new Summer Fiction issue (plus Q&As with the “20 under 40″)
• Glenn Beck’s latest reading recommendation the work of a notorious anti-Semite
• Bret Easton Ellis: “I did not want to write a sequel to Less Than Zero.” (But he did)
• Steve Jobs on Apple’s “hell factory”: “[It's] pretty nice…. They’ve got restaurants and swimming pools”
• Wiley editors have high hopes for With Glowing Hearts
• Sonia Gandhi’s supporters angry about fictionalized take on her life; Gandhi herself remains mum

Daily book biz round-up: Stieg Larsson big in digital; new iPhone to include iBookstore; and more

News to round out your week with:

• Almost 30% of first-week sales of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest are e-books
• A refreshingly candid response to The New Yorker‘s 20 Under 40 list
• iPhone 4G will include iBookstore (to the consternation of 3G owners everywhere)
• Blair Underwood reduced to starring in crappy “Vook” vignettes
• R.I.P.: poet and Ginsberg muse Peter Orlovsky

Daily book biz round-up: Target to sell Kindle; props to Galchen and Bezmozgis; and more

Browse and click!

• Canadians Rivka Galchen and David Bezmozgis make The New Yorker‘s 20 Under 40 list
• New copyright legislation gets tough about breaking digital encryption locks
• Target to become first brick-and-mortar retailer to sell Kindle
• Simon & Schuster U.S. publisher David Rosenthal gets the ol’ heave-ho
• Follett of Canada to begin renting textbooks to college students
• Indie booksellers in U.K. find yet more reasons to be mad at Amazon

The book industry: this week in quotes

“We’ve had the ‘woe is me, alas’ memoir, the ‘feeling orgasmic over the touch of linen on my toes alone in bed in Italy on Tuesday’ memoir, the ‘Thank Christ she wasn’t my mother’ memoir, the ‘I got rid of my husband and everything makes sense’ memoir, and now, in the case of Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story, we arrive at the “nothing in particular, on me holidays with me mum, we might be having a crisis but you’ll need a magnifying glass to find it” memoir. Publishers trot this tripe out because of the chance it might be lifted by the winds of marketing and carried to every middle-class dinner table.” – Anakana Schofield, from The Globe and Mail‘s Daily Review for Jan. 12

“A new independent study, conducted by the online monitoring and enforcement service Attributor, found that ‘nine million illegal downloads of copyright-protected books were documented during the closing months of 2009,’ according to the [Association of American Publisher's] release….Indeed, those are staggering numbers – and something that must be contended with. And yet they’re kind of perversely encouraging in a way: That many people want to read that many books, and are willing to steal to do so…. At least that goes against the ‘nobody reads anymore’ and ‘it’s the death of publishing’ story we’ve been hearing so much of. And that glass of rare Chateau Lafite 1787 is half full.“  - Mobylives

“How surreally wonderful to discover that an entire exhibition devoted to the ‘works’ of David Foster Wallace’s fictional creation James Incandenza is set to open later this month. A cult filmmaker, Incandenza is the star of Wallace’s seminal novel Infinite Jest… As was his wont, Wallace included a footnote in the novel about the filmography of Incandenza, and now using the author’s ‘detailed list of over 70 industrial, documentary, conceptual, advertorial, technical, parodic, dramatic non-commercial, and non-dramatic commercial works’, Columbia University’s Neiman Centre has commissioned artists and filmmakers to make the movies.”- The Guardian

“Three weeks after Highsmith’s arrival, a new resident appeared at Yaddo: Flannery O’Connor. Does your imagination not crackle at the idea of Highsmith and O’Connor living under the same set of roofs? As Highsmith drafted Strangers on a Train, O’Connor worked on Wise Blood…. Highsmith did not think much of O’Connor, who was disinclined to join the other colonists on their treks to the taverns of Saratoga Springs” – The New Yorker

January is SUAWOYN month … according to Colson Whitehead.

“Canada’s literary scene does not financially support more than a handful of authors, so don’t limit your work to Canada if your goal is to make a living as a novelist. You will either starve or die of frustration. It’s hard enough trying to make it as a writer without adding obstacles in your path.” – author Jeffrey Round on Open Book Toronto

New Yorker cans short fiction issue

On December 4, Douglas Hunter published an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail suggesting that the annual CBC literary smackdown known as Canada Reads is biased against non-fiction:

I think it’s super that Canadian novelists and short-story writers are getting another annual boost from the Mother Corp. I just find it discouraging that we seem to think serious, memorable reading only involves fiction. Canada Reads has not once in nine years included a non-fiction title. Were a celebrity participant to defend Ken McGoogan’s Lady Franklin’s Revenge or Ken Dryden’s The Game, I’d keel over in a dead faint.

The CBC is not alone in its bias. Non-fiction remains a second-class literary citizen in the Great White North.

Whether this ingrained national bias actually exists is open to debate (Quillblog would like to point out that non-fiction consistently outsells fiction in this country); the same is apparently not true south of the 49th parallel. WWDMedia today reports that The New Yorker has decided to pull the plug on its second fiction issue of the year (the first one appeared in the early summer) and instead publish a “world changers” issue, which hits stands this week.

“I think one is enough for the time being,” said editor David Remnick of dropping a fiction issue. “We’ll still continue to publish fiction every week. I think we’re one of the last magazines that does.”

And apparently the decision to replace the fiction issue sits well with advertisers:

Ad pages rose more than 50 percent for the issue, making it the biggest of the year. Chanel, Prada, and Louis Vuitton are among the fashion advertisers and the automotive category has seven more pages than last year, thanks to BMW, Acura, Ford, Cadillac, and Toyota. Total ad pages for “world changers” is almost 69, compared with 45 for last year’s winter fiction issue.

Bookmarks: Generic Wizard Nights, a feline Humbert Humbert, and more

Sundry links from around the Web:

• The Ontario Library Association has announced the nominees for the 2010 Forest of Reading Program. Votes can be cast for your favourite authors at the OLA’s website. Participants have between now and April 23 to read a minimum of 5 of the 10 titles in their chosen category
• Classic literature meets lolcats with LOLerature. Who knew what we were missing?
• A U.K. fan who was forbidden to throw a Harry Potter-themed dinner party throws a “Generic Wizard Night” instead
• Stephen King taps into vampire mania by writing his first comic book, American Vampire. The most terrifying fact, as pointed out by AbeBooks, is that the vampire bears an uncanny resemblance to Kid Rock
• For people who have too much time on their hands like dressing up their pets as literary characters, The New Yorker has been holding an online Critterati Contest. The contest has closed and the winners will be announced later today, but the gallery is still available for your browsing pleasure. (While there are a plethora of adorable Moby Dicks and Hestor Prynnes, this Quillblogger has money on the feline version of Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, caught in flagrante delicto with an unwitting Barbie Lolita)
• The woman who gave us Lestat de Lioncourt is swapping vampires for angels, the National Post reports