Categories
Book Cover

Rowan The Strange Book Cover

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The cover for Julie Hearn’s book Rowan The Strange published by Oxford University Press is based on a photo I took several years ago of my youngest son.  It’s always great to get an image published somewhere different and while I’ve had my own books published and have had a number of writer portraits used for book covers this is the first book cover from a photograph of mine. The image was chosen from a British/Spanish agency I have some photos with, Arcangel. Here’s arecent review of the book from the Guardian. I’m not sure if a North American edition has been released but the British edition is easily available/ordered through your local bookstore.

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Another photo of my son was used on a Dutch version of a Hugo Hamilton book. I’m not sure what the English version was titled as my Dutch is nonexistent.

Categories
In The Newspapers

Malcolm Lowry Centenary

Writer Tom Hawthorn has a column in the Globe and Mail about the ongoing connection between the late Malcolm Lowry and British Columbia and a centenary conference celebrating the author at The University of British Columbia.

Categories
Book Launch Book Review Publisher's Announcement

New Books from Nightwood Editions – Bachinsky, Binks, Bowling, Rosnau and Scofield

The ever helpful Rachel at Nightwood Editions had sent me a number of their latest books and I thought it was about time I brought them to your attention. Four poetry volumes and one novel for you to check out. Great also to read on their site the news (that I had completely missed) that Brad Cran is now Vancouver’s new poet laureate.

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‘god of missed connections’ is Elizabeth Bachinsky’s third book of poems.

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‘The Book Collector’ from Tim Bowling. An amazing looking cover.

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Novelist and poet Laisha Rosnau with her new book of poems ‘lousy explorers’

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The latest from Metis poet Gregory Scofield ‘Kipocihkan’. Kipocihkan is a Cree slang for someone who is unable to talk, a mute.

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From Andrew Binks, his first novel ‘the Summer Between’

Categories
News

New Toronto Small Press Group Co-Organizers Announced

Details in press release below:

Dear TSPG community,

Thank you all for your help in creating a wonderful Spring TSPG Book Fair at the Toronto Reference Library. In our first e-mail, we said we would be working to the best of our abilities on your behalf, and judging by the highly supportive and positive feedback we received in the days and weeks after, we believe we succeeded in our objectives: by obtaining the best possible venue, we significantly raised the profile of the fair; funding from the TAC was reinstated, while OAC funding was continued; we also took the unprecedented step of adding an international component to the fair; seventeen of Toronto’s finest writers read from their work; and by accommodating 95 exhibitors in one space, we set a TSPG record. In addition to this, we showcased two highly successful off-site TSPG reading events at Ben McNally Books and Ireland Park.

We thoroughly enjoyed co-organizing the fair, but due to the fact we will be relocating to Mexico, we have decided to hand stewardship of the Toronto Small Press Group along to Sang Kim and Lisa Pasold. We did not take this decision lightly, but throughout an extended dinner meeting/interview, during which both displayed an impressive knowledge of small press matters, we became convinced that Sang and Lisa will do a great job in co-organizing the Fair.

Both Lisa Pasold and Sang Kim are published authors from the small press (see bios below). They bring a wealth of administrative and management expertise from a variety of industries. They are thrilled to be organizing the Fair and will continue to foster an inclusive culture while bringing artistic leadership and strategic vision to the organization.

SANG KIM:

Sang Kim has published two books, Ballad Of A Karaoke Cowboy (2007) and A Dream Called Laundry (2006), both by KCLF Press. Austin Clarke has written in the introduction to “A Dream Called Laundry”: “It is the voice, the posture, the majestic stature that makes it the successful entry onto the Canadian literary stage that it is.” His works have been produced, translated, and taught in two languages.

His novel, Driftwood Avenue, about a group of boys coming-of-age in the Jane-Finch housing projects during the late ’80s will be launched in late 2010; he is currently working on Letters To A Young Worker, reflections on aligning Money/Meaning and Work/Love for youth preparing to enter the workplace.

His literary and professional work has been profiled or reviewed in The Toronto Star; Globe and Mail; National Post; Toronto Life; Halifax Chronicle-Herald and has also been interviewed on CBC Television.

He is the founder and President of Bridge Canada, an industry-leading job placement company and training centre for international students based in Canada.

LISA PASOLD:

Lisa Pasold’s first book of poetry, Weave, appeared in 2004 from Frontenac House in Calgary. Stephen Osborne in Geist magazine called the book “quite simply a masterpiece: there is more in these eighty odd pages than in most novels.” Her second book of poetry from Frontenac, A Bad Year for Journalists, appeared in 2006; The Globe and Mail called this poetry collection “critical, darkly funny and painstakingly lyrical.”

Her literary work has appeared in magazines such as Fence, Exile, and New American Writing. Her poetry is included in anthologies from presses such as Short Fuse and littlefishcartpress. And she has spent many interesting hours making chapbooks on a variety of kitchen tables from Vancouver to Paris, France.

As a journalist, Lisa’s work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Chicago Tribune, Fence, The Calgary Herald, New York Living, and Time Out. She has also worked as a correspondent for Billboard Magazine.

In 2006, she taught Creative Writing at the American University in Paris; she has also led workshops in writing family history & memoir in France and in Canada. In 2007, Lisa spent three months in the Yukon, at the Berton House Writer’s Retreat in Dawson City. She is now based in Toronto and writes a blog called “elsewhere” (http://lisapasold.blogspot.com/). Her first novel, Rats of Las Vegas, is appearing with Enfield & Wizenty in September 2009.

Kind Regards,

Veronica Garza Flores & Colin Carberry

Categories
Photography Portraits

Timothy Findley – Portrait

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Sometimes you don’t need a face for a portrait.

I had photographed the late Timothy Findley for my first book First Chapter and following that photo session he sat down for an interview and lunch with then Calgary Herald books editor, now best selling author in his own right, Ken McGoogan. I joined the pair and Findley’s partner Bill Whitehead and continued to take a few photos but mainly listened in. What I was treated to was an entertaining hour and a half as Findley and Whitehead, the practiced tag team that they were, traded stories, memories, observations while eating, smoking and drinking wine. i think Ken just hung on and tried to get it all down.  It was an incredibly enjoyable lunch and I think this image showing Findley’s hand, glasses and wine remind me more of that encounter than the other, more traditional,  portraits I took that day.

Categories
Book Launch

Robert J. Wiersema – The World More Full Of Weeping – Novella Available in Limited Edition

This in from Robert Wiersema, the Victoria writer has a new novella coming out, get your order in for the limited edition which sounds like a great deal:

Chizine Publications has announced the release, this fall, of The World More Full of Weeping, a new novella by Robert J. Wiersema, author of the bestselling novel Before I Wake.

To quote from their synopsis: “When eleven-year-old Brian Page disappears in the woods, the entire community of Henderson rallies around his family, sending searchers into the darkening forest. But what appears to be a simple nature walk gone wrong takes an ominous turn when his father Jeff is reminded that he disappeared into the same woods a quarter century earlier, an incident of which he has no memory. What secrets lie in the mysterious forest? Will Brian follow in his father’s footsteps, and emerge shaking into the arms of his family, or will he be claimed by the eternal twilight of the trees?”

The World More Full of Weeping will be published in two editions, both of which will include, in addition to the novella, a lengthy essay entitled Places and Names, describing how the town of Henderson came to be the recurring setting for some of Wiersema’s fiction.

(By the way, these are going to be beautiful little books, smaller than your average volume, with a gorgeous, haunting cover by Erik Mohr. It’s not a long book, probably about 120 pages — it is a novella, after all — but it IS a good one. )

The trade paperback edition of The World More Full of Weeping will be published in September, and priced at a very appealing $12.95. We’ll be carrying the book as regular stock, and, why yes, there will probably be a launch at the store, if we can get Wiersema to agree to it.

There will also, however, be a limited collector’s edition hardcover published later in the fall (with a very reasonable price of about $35).

This hardcover, which as a bonus will include The Small Rain Down, a previously unpublished short story also set in Henderson, will be published in November. It will be signed by both the author and the cover artist, and will be numbered. (The print run of the limited edition will be determined by the number of people who pre-order it between now and mid-August — once the pre-order period ends, no further copies will be printed. Ever.)

As a rule, ChiZine’s limited editions have only ever been available for direct order on-line. Through a special negotiation with the publisher, however, Bolen Books has arranged to have a limited number of these books available for in-store sale upon its publication.

If you are interested in purchasing this very limited edition, please pre-order it now via email to books@bolen.bc.ca.

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Uncategorized

I Am Monocular

Currently Not Posting…why….see www.dondenton.ca/blog