Today @ Penguin
Booker–nominated author Jon McGregor comes to Toronto
Jon McGregor, Booker–nominated author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things, So Many Ways to Begin, and the recently released Even the Dogs (9781596913486 / Bloomsbury), will speak to a U of T literature class on March 19. A public launch for Even the Dogs will be held that evening at 6:30 p.m. at Ben McNally Books.
Even the Dogs begins on a still and frozen day between Christmas and New Year, when a man's body is found in his ruined flat, then taken away, examined, investigated, and cremated. As the state begins its detailed, dispassionate inquest, the man embarks on his last journey through a world he has not ventured into, alive, for years. In his wake, a series of fractured narratives emerge from squats and alleyways across the city: the short and stark story of the man and his friends who look on from the shadows, keeping vigil as the hours pass, paying their own particular homage.
Intense, exhilarating, and shot through with hope and fury, Even the Dogs is an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society, littered with love, loss, despair, and a glimpse of redemption.
Daniel Poliquin receives a second award nomination for his Extraordinary Canadians biography René Lévesque
Daniel Poliquin's Extraordinary Canadians biography René Lévesque (9780670069194 / Viking Canada) has been shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. The book, also shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Non–Fiction, offers a unique portrait of Lévesque, the man and politician, by acclaimed novelist and translator Daniel Poliquin. It is at once affectionate, critical, and incisive.
The winner of the $25,000 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize will be announced in Ottawa at the Writers' Trust Politics and the Pen event on March 10.
The winner of the Charles Taylor Prize will be announced on February 8. A Bravo documentary will run several times during the week leading up to this announcement, and Ben McNally's Books and Brunch will feature all the nominees on Sunday, February 7.
Oscar nominations for Penguin books
The 82nd Annual Academy Awards were announced this week, and a number of terrific films based on Penguin books are in the running in multiple categories.
An Education, based on the memoir by Lynn Barber with the screenplay written by Nick Hornby, was nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress (Carey Mulligan), and Best Adapted Screenplay. Penguin has published great tie–in editions of both the Hornby shooting script (9781594484537) and Barber's memoir (9780141044149).
The Blind Side, based on a the book by Michael Lewis (9780393338386 / Norton), was nominated for Best Picture, and Sandra Bullock's performance in the movie garnered a Best Actress nomination. After the film's release in November, the book hit #1 on The New York Times bestseller list for several weeks.
Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, respectively, for Invictus, based on the book by John Carlin (9780143117155). Beginning in a jail cell and ending at a rugby tournament, it is the true story of how the most inspiring charm offensive in history brought South Africa together.
Based on the beloved story by Roald Dahl, Fantastic Mr. Fox––the animated film directed by Wes Anderson and featuring the voices of George Clooney, Bill Murray, and Meryl Streep––was nominated for Best Animated Feature. Penguin publishes the film tie–in edition (9780142414552), a picture book (9780142414545), and a sticker book (9780843189667), which were all promoted in conjunction with the film at its release in November.
Nominations for 2010 Thriller Awards
Two awards nominations were announced this week.
Dracula: The Un-Dead by Dacre Stoker and Ian Holt (9780670069866 / Viking Canada) has been named as a finalist in the best first novel category for the 2010 Thriller Awards. The winner will be announced at ThrillerFest, from July 7 to 10 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City—a four–day event for thriller readers, fans, writers, and industry professionals.
The Prince of Neither Here Nor There by Sean Cullen (9780143171201 / Puffin Canada) has been nominated for the Snow Willow Award, part of the Saskatchewan Young Readers' Choice Awards (SYRCA). Winners will be announced at the annual gala this spring.
The debate heats up on Lori Gottlieb’s Marry Him
Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (9780525951513 / Dutton), is based on a highly controversial article Lori Gottlieb wrote for the Atlantic in 2008, where she argued that women should stop holding out for Mr. Perfect and settle down with Mr. Real.
The book is a fascinating, in-depth look at modern dating, marriage, and the choices people make. Marry Him is already sparking national debate with full page features in O Magazine, Marie Claire, Redbook, and Newsweek on stands now. Chatelaine is doing a feature interview with Gottlieb for its March issue, which will include an excerpt and photos, and she was interviewed on CBC's Q on January 21 (listen here - 2nd interview). Gottlieb will appear on NBC's "Today Show" on February 4, and additional publicity is scheduled for The New York Times, Washington Post, Time.com, Salon.com, More.com, and Glamour.com, among others.
You can check out the debate between Marie Claire and Jezebel.com here.
More Awards News
Penguin Group (Canada) is proud to announce that Joseph Kertes has won the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction for his novel Gratitude (9780143053590 / Penguin Canada). Originally published in 2008, Gratitude has won critical acclaim from writers and media alike, including rave reviews from luminaries such as M.G. Vassanji, Ha Jin, and Roddy Doyle. As mentioned last week, Kertes will be honoured at a gala event in New York City on March 9.
"I feel lucky to have won such a prestigious award," Kertes told The Globe and Mail recently. "I was trying to write a story about people living through bad times and triumphing, prevailing over adversity. This story is more theirs than mine. I was merely their secret and now not-so-secret admirer. I am humbled."
Wells Tower has been shortlisted for the Story Prize, an annual award for books of short fiction, for his collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned (9780143175919). Penguin Canada will publish the short story collection in February. Ambivalence, wrong-thinking, and confusion are the engines that drive these nine insightful, witty stories that culminate in a tale about marauding Vikings who turn out to be just like the misguided, contemporary American characters in the rest of the book. The Story Prize will be awarded at the New School's Tishman Auditorium in New York City on March 3. The book is on sale in Canada on February 2.
New York Times bestselling author Thomas Ricks has been shortlisted for the 2010 Lionel Gelber Prize in the category of World's Best Book on International Affairs for The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (9780143116912 / Penguin). The winner will be announced on March 2, and on March 23 in Toronto, he or she will be presented with a cash prize of $15,000. The winner will also deliver the Lionel Gelber Lecture at the Munk Centre, and a subsequent event will be held at the Elliot School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
Greg Mortenson on The Hour
After many successful events in Toronto and the Vancouver area, Greg Mortenson continues to hit media outlets with his appearance on The Hour, which aired on January 20. His interview on CBC's The National will be broadcast this weekend, and The Globe and Mail will run its article on Mortenson and Stones into Schools (9780670021154 / Viking) on Monday.
While in Toronto, Mortenson also appeared on CTV's Canada AM, and articles ran in the Toronto Star and The Vancouver Sun. Reviews for Stones into Schools continue to appear, including in such newspapers as The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and the Winnipeg Free Press.
Three Cups of Tea has sold close to 300,000 copies in Canada, and over 4 million worldwide.
A full-page ad will run this Saturday in the Globe and Mail for Stones into Schools.
Murder and Mayhem at the Olympics in Michael Slade's Red Snow
Red Snow by Michael Slade (9780143167792 / Penguin Canada) is a tale of murder and mayhem at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Slade made the front page of The Globe and Mail book review section on Saturday, January 16, complete with a great illustration by Martin Ansin (click here to view).
The article followed Margaret Cannon's review in The Globe and Mail on January 15, where she wrote, "Just in time to scare the liver out of people heading for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics ... Red snow, indeed. This one is guaranteed to keep you awake with the lights burning" (click here to read the article).
The feature was picked up by CTV's official Olympics website, using the title "Faster! Higher! Stronger! Gorier!"-a take on the Olympics motto Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger).
Of all the villains who lawyer Michael Slade has created based on his experience in more than a hundred murder cases, Mephisto is the maddest ("Slade knows psychos inside out."-Toronto Star). A raging winter storm and a team of mercenaries have cut Whistler Mountain off from the rest of the world. Bent on bloody revenge, Mephisto attacks the members of Special X—the psycho hunters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—and that's just the start of his horrific plan. Red Snow is a three-ring circus of mystery, horror, and suspense. It has everything: whodunits and impossible crimes, psychological terror and police procedure. Let the games begin!
Joseph Kertes wins the National Jewish Book Award for Gratitude
Gratitude by Joseph Kertes (9780143053590 / Penguin Canada) has won the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for fiction, part of the National Jewish Book Awards. Based in the U.S., the National Jewish Book Awards is the longest running North American awards program of its kind in the field of Jewish literature and is recognized as the most prestigious. The winners of the 2009 awards will be honoured on March 9, 2010, at a gala ceremony at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
Earlier in 2009, Kertes won the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem Award--part of the Canadian Jewish Book Awards.
March 1944: War's darkest period descends upon Hungary's Jews. By the time it ends, over half a million Jews will have been murdered. Through a group of people to whom terrible circumstance has thrown together, Gratitude tells the story of that period, and of lives and loves saved and lost. With deep humanity it explores brilliantly the complexities of the human psyche in its darkest hour.
Greg Mortenson overwhelms audiences in Toronto
In addition to presentations at a number of schools in Toronto, Greg Mortenson appeared this week for a sold-out event at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon to promote Stones into Schools (9780670021154 / Viking). The event was also broadcast to the central atrium for those who did not have seats, resulting in a total audience of a thousand. Hosted by Mable's Fables and the Toronto Public Library, it was a huge success, with fans lining up after Mortenson's presentation until 12:30 a.m. to get their books signed by the humanitarian.
While in Toronto, Mortenson also appeared on CTV's Canada AM, CBC's Sunday Edition, The Hour, and the National News, with articles in the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, and the National Post. After hitting the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list at #2, reviews for Greg Mortenson's Stones into Schools continue to pour in, including those that ran in The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and the Winnipeg Free Press.
The book received an endorsement when US Weekly and TMZ.com published pictures of Angelina Jolie carrying Stones into Schools while shooting action shots for an upcoming film. Check it out here. There will be more exciting publicity to come including the airing of Greg's interview on PBS' "Bill Moyer's Journal" today, and NBC's "Nightly News."
More to come on Mortenson's Vancouver appearances and media. Stones Into Schools is currently #3 on the Globe and Mail bestseller list; Three Cups of Tea is #1 in its 93rd week.
Lee Henderson endorses Miguel Syjuco's award-winning Ilustrado
Lee Henderson, award-winning author of The Man Game, has just given a fantastic endorsement for Miguel Syjuco's Ilustrado (9780670063956 / Hamish Hamilton Canada / April):
"Ilustrado is a fantastic literary mystery that draws from the politics and poetics of Manila. It’s written in a smart pastiche of fictional newspaper clippings, interviews, and novel excerpts, and in the captivating voice of Miguel, a young writer who, far from Manila in his new Manhattan home, wants to piece together this puzzle of his hero’s death. Ilustrado is global in all aspects of the story, and frank and unpretentious in every right-on detail. With originality and insight, Syjuco writes of romance and ambition between grad students and lit stars who connive to form a literary island of their own-one that threatens to distract and estrange Miguel from a deeper responsibility to his literary father and their shared past."
—Lee Henderson, author of The Man Game
Syjuco’s highly anticipated debut novel won the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize as well as the Palanca Award, the Philippines’ highest literary honour. Ilustrado opens with Crispin Salvador, lion of Philippine letters, dead in the Hudson River. His young student Miguel sets out to investigate the author’s fatal departure from his encroaching obscurity and the suspicious disappearance of an unfinished manuscript-a work that had been planned to not just return the once-great author to fame, but to expose the corruption of the rich families who have ruled the Philippines for generations.
In this astonishingly inventive and bold novel, Syjuco explores fatherhood, regret, revolution, and the mysteries of lives lived and abandoned. Syjuco will appear at the Ottawa Writers Festival on April 23, Paragraphe Books & Breakfast in Montreal on April 25, in Toronto at Harbourfront on May 12, and in Montreal on May 13 with Drawn and Quarterly.
Jeremy Rifkin on CTV's Canada AM to promote The Empathic Civilization
Jeremy Rifkin, called "one of the leading big-picture thinkers of our day" by Utne Reader, delivers his boldest work in The Empathic Civilization (9781585427659 / Tarcher). In his erudite, tough-minded, and far-reaching manifesto, Rifkin claims that no matter how much we put our minds to the task of meeting the challenges of a rapidly globalizing world, the human race seems to continually come up short, unable to muster the collective mental resources to truly "think globally and act locally." In his most ambitious book to date, the bestselling social critic shows that this disconnect between our vision for the world and our ability to realize that vision lies in the current state of human consciousness.
Rifkin appeared on CTV's Canada AM this week to talk about The Empathic Civilization, and will be in Toronto on February 17 and 18 to for interviews with TVO's Allan Gregg in Conversation and CBC's Power & Politics with Evan Solomon. Reviews are set to run in The Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, and Montreal's Gazette.
Daniel Poliquin’s Extraordinary Canadians biography, René Lévesque shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction
Daniel Poliquin’s Extraordinary Canadians biography, René Lévesque (9780670069194 / Viking Canada), has been shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction (Tim Cook won the prize last year for Shock Troops). The prize commemorates Charles Taylor’s pursuit of excellence in the field of literary non-fiction and is awarded to the author whose book best combines a superb command of the English language, an elegance of style, and a subtlety of thought and perception. Of Poliquin’s René Lévesque, the jury commented:
"Daniel Poliquin offers an engaging portrait of René Lévesque: a nation-building hero to some, a nation-destroying villain to others. Richly insightful and deftly written, Poliquin pivots easily from the man and society, his enemies and friends, his victories and defeats, all the while capturing his complexity and conflicts. René Lévesque is a high-octane narrative."
The winner will be announced on February 8. A Bravo documentary will run several times during the week leading up to the prize, and Ben McNally’s Books and Brunch will feature all the nominees on Sunday, February 7.
Harley Pasternak promotes The 5 Factor World Diet on ET Canada
Harley Pasternak appeared on ET Canada as part of its New You in the New Year series on Monday, January 4, where he promoted his new book, The 5 Factor World Diet (9780670069231 / Viking Canada).
Pasternak will be in Toronto on January 21 and 22, and will be interviewed by CHUM FM, CityLine, Sun Media, the Toronto Star, Steven and Chris, and Best Health. He will also do two events at First Canadian Place (January 22) and a nutrition workshop with the media at GoodLife Fitness, Toronto Plaza (January 22).
Pasternak is the author of the international bestseller 5 Factor Fitness (9780399532092 / Perigee) and trainer to such stars as Halle Berry and Jessica Simpson. The 5-Factor World Diet is a program he’s developed based on the proven principles in The 5-Factor Diet: five meals a day, five core ingredients, and five-minute prep times. His world diet incorporates the best foods and nutritional habits from ten of the world’s healthiest countries.
Boyden, Henderson, Poplak, and more on the National Post’s best books lists
The National Post announced its list of the Best Canadian Books of the Decade. Sitting at the #2 spot is Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road, of which the reviewer stated:
"It’s his best and bravest book, and he’s the most invigorating writer to emerge over the past few years." --Ian Weir, author of Daniel O’Thunder
Coming in at #3 is The Man Game by Lee Henderson:
"Lee Henderson fulfilled the promise of his short-story collection, The Broken Record Technique, with this genre-bending novel set in turn-of-the-century Vancouver. The story of two lumberjacks and a former vaudeville performer who invent a sport that mixes boxing, ballet, and breakdancing-yes, it’s that bizarre a book-raised the bar for historical fiction to a level other writers will be hard-pressed to reach." --Mark Medley, National Post
Also announced was the list of the Best Books of 2009, in which Richard Poplak’s The Sheikh’s Batmobile came in at #2:
"I’m still surprised at how little attention this book received since its release last spring; Poplak’s expertly researched and beautifully written book is one of the most important documents of the post-9/11 world. When I first read The Sheikh’s Batmobile, before it hit stores, I was convinced I’d be reading essays about this book in the New Yorker and The New York Times, but, so far, that level of attention has failed to materialize. But just because awards committees and other newspapers have failed to recognize this book doesn’t mean you should let it slide. It’s also still timely, considering the events of Christmas Day."
Also on the list at #8 and #9 respectively, are The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen and Fall by Colin McAdam; view the list to see the reviews.
Al Pacino acquires rights to Philip Roth’s The Humbling
Al Pacino has acquired the rights to film Philip Roth's latest novel, The Humbling (9780670069712 / Hamish Hamilton Canada), a shattering account of inexplicable and terrifying self-evaluation.
Pacino will star in this story of a stage actor who faces diminishing power and confidence, and seeks to reinvigorate himself through a relationship with a younger woman. The story is filled with unusual erotic desire, a consolation for the bereft life so risky and aberrant that it points not toward comfort and gratification but to a darker and more shocking end.
According to The New York Times, the Oscar-winning director of Rain Man, Barry Levinson, is set to direct, and Buck Henry, the writer of The Graduate, is doing the screenplay.
"The book is perfect for Pacino because he has a love of the stage, and although he has never personally experienced these feelings, he understands them," publicist Pat Kingsley told The New York Times.
Click here to read the full article.
Eat, Pray, Love movie starring Julia Roberts set for August 2010 release
The long awaited film version of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, starring Julia Roberts as Elizabeth and Javier Bardem as Felipe, is set for wide release in Canada on August 13. Distributed by Paramount and directed by Ryan Murphy (Glee, Nip/Tuck), the film tells the story of a happily married woman who realizes her life needs to go in a different direction, and after a painful divorce, she takes off on a round-the-world journey.
Gilbert's Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (9780670021659 / Viking), the follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love, hits bookstores on January 5. Told with her trademark wit, intelligence, and compassion, Committed attempts to "turn on all the lights" when it comes to matrimony.
Gilbert comes to Toronto for an event and media day on February 24 as part of a multi-city North American tour.
New Puffin Classic tie-in edition for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland
From Walt Disney Pictures and visionary director Tim Burton comes a magical reimagining of one of the most beloved stories of all time. Set for wide release on March 5, 2010, Alice in Wonderland stars Mia Wasikowska as 19-year-old Alice, who returns to the whimsical world she first encountered as a young girl, reuniting with her childhood friends the White Rabbit, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Dormouse, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, and of course, the Mad Hatter. Alice embarks on a fantastical journey to find her true destiny and to end the Red Queen's reign of terror.
The film features an outstanding cast in addition to Wasikowska, including Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, and Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar.
Puffin Classics will release a new edition (9780141330464) of Lewis Carroll's classic with a great jacket featuring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. This title will go on sale on February 4, 2010.
Watch the recently released extended trailer for Alice in Wonderland here.
The Globe and Mail releases the top 100 best–reviewed, buzziest books of 2009
The Globe and Mail released its 12th annual pick of the 100 best and most influential books of the year, including prize-winners and surprises, writers allegedly famous and those about to be, prose and poetry, science and social studies, memoir and manifesto, and much, much more. Crime fiction reviewer Margaret Cannon and fiction reviewer Jim Bartley also offered up their picks for the best of the year.
The list included a great representation of Penguin titles:
- The Disappeared, Kim Echlin
- Fall, Colin McAdam
- The Act of Love, Howard Jacobsen
- Love and Obstacles, Aleksandar Hemon
- Sacred Hearts, Sarah Dunant (Little, Brown)
- Juliet Naked, Nick Hornby
- How to Paint a Dead Man, Sarah Hall (Faber)
- Norman Bethune, Adrienne Clarkson
- L.M. Montgomery, Jane Urquhart
- The Gamble, Thomas Ricks
- The Third Reich at War, Richard Evans
- Dawn Light, Diane Ackerman (Norton)
- The Third Man Factor, John Geiger
- Beyond Belfast, Will Ferguson
- Logicomix, Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou (Bloomsbury)
- The Book of Genesis, illustrated by Crumb (Norton)
- The Girl Who Played with Fire, Steig Larsson
- Vanishing and Other Stories, Deborah Willis
Half World featured in Quill & Quire's Books of the Year
In Quill & Quire's Books of the Year piece, Hiromi Goto's Half World (9780670069651 / Puffin Canada) was listed as one of the Overlooked Books of the Year.
"When adult writers try their hand at kidlit, they often attempt something simple. Not Hiromi Goto, whose second YA novel possesses a 'visionary plot' and 'hallucinatory power,' according to Q&Q's James Grainger. Punctuated by Jillian Tamaki's stark illustrations, Half World reads like 'a Hieronymous Bosch painting come to life.'"-Quill & Quire
Goto was also nominated for the Forest of Reading White Pine Award for Half World. She will be taking a week-long trip to visit schools and will be part of the Festival of Trees in May 2010.
Discover more at the Half World website.
Denialism author Michael Specter on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart
In the provocative and headline-making book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives (9781594202308 / The Penguin Press), Michael Specter confronts the widespread fear of science and its terrible toll on individuals and the planet. Specter is making many major media appearances to promote the book, including the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (click here to watch), NPR's On the Media, Weekend Edition Saturday, CBS's Sunday Morning, PBS' Charlie Rose, MSNBC's Morning Joe, CNN's Campbell Brown, and CNN International Christiane Amanpour, with reviews in the Winnipeg Free Press The New York Times Book Review, and The New York Times; first serial in The New Yorker, with features quoting Specter in Newsweek, USA Today, WIRED, and more.
In Denialism, New Yorker staff writer Michael Specter reveals that Americans have come to mistrust institutions and especially the institution of science more than ever before. For centuries, the general view had been that science is neither good nor bad-that it merely supplies information and that new information is always beneficial. Now, science is viewed as a political constituency that isn't always in our best interest.
Three Penguin titles shortlisted for Costa Book Awards
Costa Awards are given annually to authors based in the United Kingdom and Ireland for what the jury deems the "most enjoyable books of the year." On November 24 shortlists for the 2009 awards were announced, with three Penguin titles making the list.
Shortlisted for the First Novel Award, John the Revelator by Peter Murphy (9780571240203 / Faber) is a universal story of love, betrayal, and family. The book is narrated in the memorable voice of John Devine. Stuck in a small town, worried over by his single mother (the chain-smoking, bible-quoting Lily) and the "neighbourly" Mrs. Nagle, John yearns for escape.
Shortlisted for the Children's Book Award, Troubadour by Mary Hoffman (9781599903675 / Bloomsbury) is a story of persecution and poetry, love and war set in thirteenth-century Southern France. Also shortlisted for the Children's Book Award is Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera (9780141326078 / Puffin) about a fifteen-year-old Muslim boy from Rochdale who is abducted from Pakistan while on holiday with his family. He's taken to Guantanamo Bay and held without charge, his hopes and dreams crushed under the cruellest of circumstances.
Launched in 1971, the Costa Awards are decidedly more populist in focus than the Booker Prize, honouring literary merit but also enjoyment in reading for the widest possible audience. Each category winner receives £5,000 (€5,500). One winner is then selected as the Costa Book of the Year and given a further £25,000 (€27,700). The 2008 Book of the Year went to Irish author Sebastian Barry's The Secret Scripture. The 2009 category winners will be revealed January 5, 2010, and the Book of the Year will be awarded on January 26 in London (read the full article).
International PEN President John Ralston Saul at the ROM
Award-winning essayist and bestselling author John Ralston Saul speaks on A Fair Country (9780143168423 / Penguin Canada) to the Royal Ontario Museum on December 1. The lecture will begin at 7 p.m. (book signing to follow) in the Signy and Cléophée Eaton Theatre, level 1B at the ROM, with tickets available to the public for $18, members for $15, and students for $10.
John Ralston Saul has had a growing impact on political and economic thought in many countries. Declared a "prophet" by Time magazine, his works have been translated into twenty-two languages in thirty countries.
In A Fair Country Saul makes the argument that Canada is a Métis nation, and the famous "peace, order, and good government" that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country's true nature. Every single document before the BNA Act, he points out, used the phrase "peace, welfare, and good government," demonstrating that the well-being of its citizenry was paramount. Another obstacle to progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite-a colonial, non-intellectual business elite that doesn't believe in Canada.
Critically acclaimed across Canada, A Fair Country is a provocative treatise with the power to change the way we think.
Praise for A Fair Country:
"Thank God for John Ralston Saul. At least Canada has one leading intellectual unafraid to challenge the feeble orthodoxies that seem to consume our elites."
--David Mitchell, The Vancouver Sun
"A brilliant and timely argument about Canada's complex nature and our country's best future course ... We are a Métis nation, certainly, and it has never been so eloquently said."
--Noah Richler, The Globe and Mail
Colin McAdam wins the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction
At the annual Quebec Writers' Federation Awards on November 17, Colin McAdam's Fall took home the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction.
Fall was described by the jury as "a novel of great poise and verve whose complexities live in its language, comic and furious and brutal and discomposed. McAdam's many voices are powerfully distinctive, near-Faulknerian in their delicacy, and the movement between places and minds, between emotional registers, is swift and sure."
Also shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction, Fall is a disturbing and unforgettable story of guilt, memory, and confused identity. Colin McAdam's second novel is a work of power, pitch-perfect observation, and searing ambition. It confirms his status as a truly unique talent, one of the few living novelists capable of taking the modern novel and forging from it something startling and wholly new.
Obama campaign architect David Plouffe coming to Toronto
David Plouffe not only led the effort that put Barack Obama in the White House, but he also changed the face of politics forever and reenergized the idea of democracy itself. The Audacity to Win (9780670021338 / Viking) is his story of that groundbreaking achievement, taking readers inside the remarkable campaign that led to the election of the first African American president.
Plouffe will be in Toronto December 9-10 for two events to promote the book, including one with the Rotman School of Business and one with the Economy Club. Both events are expected to draw about 300 people each, with the book included in the ticket price. Plouffe will also be on CTV's Canada AM on November 23, and on CBC's The Current, Power and Politics, and BNN on November 24. Watch a recent interview with Plouffe on MSNBC.
For two years Plouffe worked side by side with Obama, charting the course of the campaign. His is the ultimate insider's tale, revealing both the strategies that delivered Obama to office and how the candidate and campaign handled moments of great challenge and opportunity. The Audacity to Win chronicles the arrival of a new moment in American life at the convergence of digital technology and grassroots organization, and the exciting possibilities revealed by a campaign that in many ways functioned as a $1 billion start-up with laser-like focus and discipline. In this extraordinary book, David Plouffe unfolds one of the most important political stories of our time, one whose lessons aren't limited to politics but reach to the greatest heights of what citizens dream about for their country and themselves.
Christopher Hitchens on Steig Larsson in the December issue of Vanity Fair
Hard to miss this month's issue of Vanity Fair with Twilight's Robert Pattison on the cover. But read inside for a hugely entertaining piece by Christopher Hitchens on Steig Larsson. Larsson, says Hitchens, "conjured a detective double act so incongruous that it makes Holmes and Watson seem like siblings" describing the bestselling Millenium Trilogy phenomenon in "quasi-tsunami" terms and pegging Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Winona Ryder as Blomkvist and Salander for the (not yet optioned) American film version of The Girl Who Played with Fire. Salander, the superheroine hacker extraordinaire gets this description from Hitchens: Picture a feral waif. All right, picture a four-foot-eleven-inch "doll" with Asperger's syndrome and generous breast implants. This is not Pippi Longstocking (to whom a few gestures are made in the narrative). This is Miss Goth, intermittently disguised as la gamine.
Read the full article here.
Penguin to publish multi–generational Chinese–Canadian award contender
Penguin Group (Canada) has acquired Canadian publication rights to an epic Chinese–Canadian novel by Zhang Ling, published in China to rave reviews. Gold Mountain Blues is the story of the great Chinese migration to Canada (called Gold Mountain by the Chinese wooed with stories of a "promised land").
In the tradition of Wild Swans and The Concubine's Children, Gold Mountain Blues is the story of five generations of a Chinese family, from the 1860s to the present. The novel relates the struggles and sacrifices of the labourers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the evolution of the modern Chinese–Canadian identity. It is a dramatic Canadian story, says commissioning editor Adrienne Kerr, "that brings us closer to our shared past." Kerr acquired the novel from New York agent Barbara J. Zitwer for publication in Canada in 2011.
In China, the novel is nominated for the inaugural Overseas Chinese Literary Award, and is a strong contender for the 2010 Maodun Literary Award. (The Maodun Prize, awarded every five years, is China’s biggest literary prize, equivalent to the Man Booker Prize.)
Zhang Ling, who stared writing in the mid 1990s, has published four novels and three collections of short stories. She’s won numerous literary prizes, including the October Literary Award in 2000 and 2007, the International Chinese Literary Award for Best Essay in 2003, the first Yuan Huesong Literary Award in Canada in 2005 and the People’s Literary Prize in 2006.
Eighteen Penguin titles longlisted for the 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
The 2010 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award longlist was announced this week, with 18 Penguin titles on the list, including 3 from Penguin Canada.
- Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden
- Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
- Indignation by Philip Roth
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (Europa)
- Life Class by Pat Barker
- The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
- City of Thieves by David Benioff
- People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
- The Lazarus Project by Aleksander Hemon
- The Paper Moon by Andrea Camilleri
- The Island of Eternal Love by Daína Chaviano
- Frida’s Bed by Slavenka Drakulic
- The Jewish Messiah by Arnon Grunberg
- The China Lover by Ian Buruma
- Wolf Totem by Jian Rong
- Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan
- Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo
- Blood Trail by C.J. Box
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is the largest and most international prize of its kind. This year, 156 writers have been nominated for the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English with a value of 100,000 euros. The nominations come from 163 libraries in 123 cities and 43 countries worldwide. Dublin City Council will announce the shortlist on April 14th, 2010 and the winning novel will be revealed by the Lord Mayor on June 17th, 2010.
Extraordinary Canadians in Toronto
Extraordinary Canadians authors Adrienne Clarkson, Mark Kingwell, Daniel Poliquin, with moderator and General Editor John Ralston Saul, will be in Toronto on December 8 for a special event presented by Sheila Hawks and Wendy Steepe (see poster for full event details).
The authors made the festival rounds in October: John Ralston Saul, Jane Urquhart, Mark Kingwell, and Daniel Poliquin did a fantastic presentation for a full house at Saint Brigid’s Church in Ottawa for the Writer’s Festival (read a great blog review here). The authors were also in Toronto on October 31 presenting at the IFOA (with Charlotte Gray stepping in as moderator for John Ralston Saul).
An article (with the event mention) on Daniel Poliquin’s René Lévesque ran in the Ottawa Citizen on October 25, a review ran in The Globe and Mail, and Poliquin also interviewed with Carleton University Magazine for their winter issue. Other media includes CBC Syndication for Mark Kingwell in 12 major Canadian cities, and CBC syndication for Jane Urquhart.
Esteemed media analyst Ken Auletta coming to Toronto
Ken Auletta, author of GOOGLED: The End of the World As We Know It (9781594202353 / Penguin Press) is coming to Toronto at the end of November for a breakfast event book launch with Bob Ramsay in partnership with The Globe and Mail and Mackenzie Investments. The event will be promoted with an e-blast to The Globe and Mail’s subscriber list and via a print ad in the newspaper.
Confirmed interview media includes The Globe and Mail, the National Post and BNN (with reviews also running in The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star). The book was also deemed a "savvy profile of the Internet search octopus" by Publishers Weekly, who gave it a rave review.
A revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsize influence Google has had on the changing media landscape, Googled author Ken Auletta offers insights into what we know, and don’t know, about what the future holds for the imperiled industry.
There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. As only he can, bestselling author Ken Auletta takes readers for a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and how it crashed into traditional media businesses-from newspapers to books, to television, movies, telephones, advertising, and Microsoft. With unprecedented access to Google’s founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.
Governor General Award nominee Deborah Willis captivates audience at the IFOA
Victoria’s Deborah Willis read from her Governor General Literary Award nominated short story collection at the IFOA on October 26. Willis closed the evening, reading both the father and daughter parts from the short story The Weather, and the power of her sharp prose shone through every word. A portion of her reading aired on CBC’s As It Happens on October 28, and you can listen to the full reading on the Globe and Mail’s online books section.
Evocative and passionately written, Vanishing and Other Stories (9780143170228 / Penguin Canada) explores emotional and physical absences, the ways in which people leave, are left, and whether or not it’s ever possible to move on. Readers will encounter a skinny, freckled ice-cream scooper named after Nina Simone, a vanishing visionary of social utopia, a French teacher who collects fiancés, and a fortune-telling mother who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter. In the title story, a writer vanishes, leaving unfinished work and unanswerable questions. In these stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents and children.
Said the Governor General Literary Award Jury: "Vanishing and Other Stories is a book of rare insight into the complications of the human heart. Light of touch but deep in content, Deborah Willis’s stories startle, exhilarate and radiate with piercing insights. Original and deftly structured, all 14 continue to resonate long after the book is finished."
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen (9780670069750 / Hamish Hamilton Canada) has been shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award in the U.K. As written in The Guardian:
"The novel’s main character is a genius 12-year-old cartographer from Montana and much of its story is told in the maps and diagrams supposedly drawn in the margins by Spivet.
"Most of the books on this year’s list divided opinions - often dramatically - among members of the Waterstone’s reading groups, and this was certainly true with Larsen. The Oxford reading group, in particular, fell in love with it: ’They wanted it to go on forever and were astonished that a first novel could be so assured and accomplished.’" (read the full article)
Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed wins the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year
Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (9781594201820 / Penguin Press) has won the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award, which aims to identify the book that provides "the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics".
FT editor Lionel Barber, one of the judges, called Lords, "a brilliant book, which brings to life the 1920s and the role of its great public servants in trying, but ultimately failing, to manage the world financial system. A must for anyone who wants to understand economics." (read the full article)
Two other Penguin titles were shortlisted for the award: Good Value by Stephen Green (9781846142369 / Allen Lane), and Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani (9780670068449 / Viking Canada).
Booklist picks Shandi Mitchell’s Under This Unbroken Sky as one of ten best first novels of the year
Booklist has released their top ten first novels list, which includes the critically-acclaimed Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell (9780670068081 / Viking Canada). Reviewer Brad Hooper writes "The author’s screenwriting skills serve her well in this remarkable portrait of a Ukrainian farming family in Alberta during the late 1930’s."
Under This Unbroken Sky has caught the attention of such writers as Joseph Boyden, Janice Kulyk Keefer, and Steven Galloway. Coverage includes The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the National Post, the Halifax Chronicle Herald, More magazine, The Winnipeg Free Press, the Edmonton Journal, the Calgary Herald, CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter, and Chatelaine.
Mitchell was at Calgary WordFest on October 18, and will be in Vancouver for the Vancouver International Writers Festival on October 23 for an event with Joseph Boyden, Cordelia Strube, and Ian Weir, and in Toronto for the International Festival of Authors on October 24 for a reading with Miriam Toews and Bonnie Burnard.
Kerry Pither wins Ottawa Book Award for Dark Days
The winners of the Ottawa Book Awards were announced this week, with Kerry Pither announced as the winner in the English Non-Fiction category for Dark Days: The Story of Four Canadians Tortured in the Name of Fighting Terror (9780670068531 / Viking Canada). Dark Days recounts how a Canadian national security investigation went terribly wrong, culminating in the overseas detention and torture of four Canadian Muslim men. It chronicles the activities of the investigation itself, and the experiences of those it targeted-Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, Maher Arar, and Muayyed Nureddin. Two inquiries have since effectively cleared their names, and corroborate Pither’s account of Canadian complicity in their brutal torture.
Jury Statement: "Dark Days is a compelling and powerful book about an important subject-racism in Canada and the clandestine activities of the RCMP and CSIS. The book tells the story of four Muslim Canadians-Maher Arar, Ahmad El Maati, Abdullah Almalki, and Muayyed Nureddin-all ’terror suspects’ tortured in Middle Eastern prisons before being released without charge. Writing with passion and empathy yet admirable restraint, Kerry Pither leaves the reader with a vivid, detailed and disturbing picture of what we do in the name of security."
A passionate human rights advocate, Ottawa’s Kerry Pither has worked on a wide range of national and international issues over the last 20 years. She played a pivotal role in the campaign for Maher Arar’s release from Syrian detention, and in the campaign for answers about Canadian complicity in torture abroad.
Vanishing and Other Stories by Deborah Willis nominated for Governor General Literary Award
The brilliant debut short story collection by Victoria’s Deborah Willis has been nominated for the Governor General Literary Award for Fiction. Evocative and passionately written, Vanishing and Other Stories (9780143170228 / Penguin Canada) explores emotional and physical absences, the ways in which people leave, are left, and whether or not it’s ever possible to move on. Readers will encounter a skinny, freckled ice-cream scooper named after Nina Simone, a vanishing visionary of social utopia, a French teacher who collects fiancés, and a fortune-telling mother who fails to predict the heartbreak of her own daughter. In the title story, a writer vanishes, leaving unfinished work and unanswerable questions. In these stories, secrets are both kept and unearthed, and lives are shaped by missing lovers, parents and children.
Said the Jury: "Vanishing and Other Stories is a book of rare insight into the complications of the human heart. Light of touch but deep in content, Deborah Willis’s stories startle, exhilarate and radiate with piercing insights. Original and deftly structured, all 14 continue to resonate long after the book is finished."
Willis’ collection has also received acclaim from International Man Booker Prize Winner Alice Munro, also nominated for the Governor General Award for Too Much Happiness. Penguin Canada proudly publishes all of Munro’s books in paperback.
Praise for Vanishing and Other Stories:
"The emotional range and depth of these stories, the clarity and deftness is astonishing."
-- Alice Munro
"Willis’ work is matter-of-fact on the surface, but beneath this veneer, it is absolutely propelled through to its captivating conclusion. The reader knows what will be discovered ... yet cannot stop reading or look away ... I wouldn’t be surprised to see [the book] shortlisted for an award..."
-- Eye Weekly
"[This] debut collection reveals Victoria writer’s formidable talent ... If I were a betting man, I’d put a sack of cash on Deborah Willis becoming a nationally renowned writer ... a remarkably accomplished collection by this soft-spoken 26-year-old, who moonlights as a Munro’s Books clerk."
-- Times Colonist (Victoria)
Nora Roberts talks to the Toronto Star
Bestselling author Nora Roberts did her first-ever Canadian interviews last week, one of which was published in the Toronto Star on the front page of the Entertainment section. Her other interview will be published in an upcoming issue of Wedding Bells magazine. The highly-anticipated second book of Roberts’ Bride Quartet series, Bed of Roses (9780425230077 / Berkley) comes out October 27.
The Star wrote:
"Her books are rarely reviewed and you may not know her name, but Nora Roberts is one of the world’s bestselling authors. She grosses $60 million (U.S.) a year writing romance and crime novels.
"Vision in White, the first book in a quartet of novels based on a group of girlfriends who are wedding planners, has sold nearly 100,000 copies in Canada alone since its May release." (read the full article)
In Bed of Roses, florist Emma Grant is finding career success with her friends at Vows wedding planning company, and her love life appears to be thriving. Though men swarm around her, she still hasn’t found Mr. Right. And the last place she’s looking is right under her nose.
Penguin Group Canada to publish Great Food At Home by Canadian Celebrity Chef Mark McEwan
Chef Mark McEwan - Photo courtesy of Food Network Canada
Toronto, October 13, 2009 – Penguin Group (Canada) announced today it will publish GREAT FOOD AT HOME by celebrity chef, restaurateur, and Food Network TV Host of The Heat, Mark McEwan.
The book was acquired by Andrea Magyar, Managing Director at Penguin, who said: "Penguin Group (Canada) is absolutely thrilled to be publishing Mark McEwan’s cookbook. Mark is one of the best chefs in Canada and GREAT FOOD AT HOME will definitely be a must-have for all our kitchens."
Mark McEwan is widely recognized for his distinctive style of cooking that captures the essence of classical cuisine with nuances of contemporary flavours. In 1990 McEwan opened the highly–acclaimed North 44. Since then, he has reached celebrity status with his television show, THE HEAT, coupled with the opening of the restaurants Bymark and One, located in The Hazelton Hotel.
THE HEAT, airing on Food Network Canada, will start in its third season in January 2010. It’s a full throttle, sweat–drenched ride into the many kitchens of one of Canada’s most renowned, successful and infamous chefs as McEwan and his entertaining staff of talented protégés pull out all the stops to achieve culinary perfection at 100 miles an hour.
This year McEwan opened his new gourmet grocery store—appropriately called mcewan—in Toronto. His latest venture will soon have the maverick entrepreneur adding author to his list of accomplishments. In fall 2010, Penguin Group (Canada) with publish Mark McEwan’s GREAT FOOD AT HOME—fabulous and easy–to–make recipes to create and enjoy with family and friends in the comfort of home.
“I’ve wanted to do a cookbook for many years but I also had very specific ideas about the way it would be,” said McEwan. “Chockfull of great restaurant recipes, of course – but ones people can duplicate at home without taking the day off. Not a coffee table book, but a first go–to reference guide for good home cooks. Something I could imagine spotting in other people’s kitchens years from now, well–thumbed and sauce stained. All that was very important to me so there was no way I was going to go about it without a solid production team that was on the same page and up to the challenge – so I’m really excited and gratified that my patience paid off and I got to do it with Penguin, who have such fine people working for them, and such an inspiring track record, too.”
Colin McAdam and Kim Echlin Short–Listed for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction
The first two Canadian authors published under Penguin Canada’s new Hamish Hamilton Canada literary imprint have been short–listed for Canada’s prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction.
The news was announced October 6th at a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. The five finalists were selected by an esteemed jury panel made up of celebrated American novelist and short story writer Russell Banks, acclaimed UK author and journalist Victoria Glendinning, and distinguished professor and award–winning author Alistair MacLeod. The shortlist was chosen from 96 books submitted for consideration.
THE DISAPPEARED by Kim Echlin is an unforgettable story of love and loss set against the haunting backdrop of Cambodia’s savage killing fields. Released in Canada in March 2009, rights to the novel have sold in 17 countries and its release coincided with the long–awaited UN–backed trial of a former Khmer Rouge leader in Cambodia at a Phnom Penh court, 30 years after the murderous regime fell.
Jury Citation: The Disappeared is an elegiac, beautifully told memory–tale of obsessive love. A teenaged Canadian woman falls in love with a young Cambodian refugee; after the fall of Pol Pot, her lover abandons her and returns home in search of his lost family. She follows him to Cambodia and takes the reader with her into one of the darkest chapters of 20th century history. On one level, the novel is a young Canadian woman’s bildungsroman; on another, a profoundly moving account of the genocidal horrors of the Cambodian killing fields and its terrible aftermath. Written in elegant, spare prose, The Disappeared confronts one of the most painful conflicts of our time; the collision between our private, personal desires and the brutal, dehumanizing facts of modern history.”
FALL is the second novel by Colin McAdam, whose debut novel Some Great Thing won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK.
Jury citation:
“The novel is set, unusually, in an exclusive boarding–school for the kids of Canada’s elite and of foreign high–flyers, notably Julius, the American ambassador’s confident son. There are a few girls in the school, one of them utterly beautiful and irresistible. The narrative is shared between Julius and his roommate Noel – less privileged, less attractive, a clever but confused loner. The traditional setting is offset by a sharp, modern immediacy of style and form, and by the author’s brilliantly authentic insight into adolescent sexuality and its heartbreaking delusions, dreams and betrayals. This is a strikingly well–achieved novel.”
Launched in March 2009, the Hamish Hamilton Canada imprint is the first literary imprint to be launched in Canada in over fifteen years, with an inaugural list that includes Kim Echlin and Colin McAdam, publishing sensation Reif Larsen, 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Joseph Boyden and international award winners Ali Smith, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith and Philip Roth.
Winnie–the–Pooh Returns October 5!
Penguin Young Readers Group revealed the much–anticipated cover and first chapter, including art, of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (9780525421603 / Dutton / on sale October 5), the first authorized sequel to A.A. Milne’s Winnie–the–Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner in more than 80 years. This is the first glimpse readers have been given of the new book, which was announced in January 2009. No review copies have been released, and the manuscript has been under lock and key at Penguin since it was delivered earlier this year. The remainder of the book is embargoed until October 5, when it lands in stores.
The National Post is running an excerpt in its Saturday, October 3, edition. Fans young and old are rediscovering the charm of Winnie–the–Pooh. Bookstores have created "Pooh–tiques," dedicated spaces for Winnie–the–Pooh and friends. Many of these stores are hosting Pooh tea parties with honey flavoured food, count–the–honey–candies–in–the–jar contests, story times with favourite Pooh books, bring–your–favourite–bear–from–home story times, and activities such as "pin the tale on Eeyore." On October 16, you’ll be able to see Winnie–the–Pooh walking around Toronto, giving out stickers to celebrate the release of his new book.
Small Print (previously known as TINARS for Tots) will be launching their series at the Gladstone Hotel with Winnie–the–Pooh’s Homecoming Party on Sunday, October 18, with two events. Celebrity readers Lisa Ayuso, Richard Crouse, Rachel Harry, Ibi Kaslik, Richard Poplak, Shoshanna Sperling (of Sho, Mo, and The Monkey Bunch), Michael Winter, and others will present a handful of the new adventures featuring the beloved "silly old Bear" and his circle. Don Kerr & Friends will perform classic and new songs. There will be activities based on old standbys such as "Pin the tail on Eeyore" and the "Piglet toss." Kids will create a giant birthday card and present it to Winnie–the–Pooh himself. And, of course, there will be a cake and honey! On November 8, Pooh will be heading to Winnipeg for another large–scale party in his honour at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People, hosted by Thin Air.
McNally Robinson (Toronto) will be hosting Thanksgiving with Winnie the Pooh on October 10. Other Pooh events will be at the Innisfil Public Library on October 3, Cookstown Branch; Blue Heron Books on October 24; three Indigo locations in Ottawa on October 31 and November 1; and at Words Worth Books (Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum) on November 15.
A new character will join Winnie–the–Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. Lottie the Otter, always dressed in pearls, is a smart and elegant character certain to cause a stir in the Hundred Acre Wood. Lottie has her own ideas about how things should be done and believes that everyone should follow the correct etiquette. She also knows a lot of facts and is a girl otter with great confidence.
Listen to award–winning narrator Jim Dale reading the Exposition to Return to the Hundred Acre Wood on our feature page, where you will also find the first chapter excerpt, activities, and more.
Readings by Boyden, Finucan, and Tarnopolsky in Guelph and Barrie
Joseph Boyden, Stephen Finucan, and Damian Tarnopolsky travelled to Guelph and Barrie this past week for eagerly anticipated public readings at The Bookself and Georgian College. The Barrie event supported the Simcoe County Board of Education’s Ideology Program, a university bridging class that works to prepare students for careers in journalism and publishing. Finucan and Boyden discussed the event in the National Post on September 27, where Finucan was guest blogging for The Afterword (read his other posts here).
’s The Fallen (9780670043026 / Viking Canada) is the story of a young Canadian lieutenant in 1944 in the newly liberated city of Naples who comes to terms with a tragic mistake made on the battlefield. It received spectacular reviews in The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. Goya’s Dog by Damian Tarnopolsky (9780670069736 / Hamish Hamilton Canada) is a picaresque tale of gin, cowardice, and artistic paralysis. It was also reviewed in The Globe and Mail and the National Post. Tarnopolsky’s style was deemed "essentially witty: it combines observation and action in a way that is so elegant, so articulate, and yet light of touch that one is hardly aware of its complexity." (Russell Smith)
Anthony Zuiker brings Level 26 to Toronto
Anthony Zuiker, CSI creator and author of the new digi–novel thriller Level 26: Dark Origins (9780525951254 / Dutton), was in Toronto this week to promote his new cross–platform experience combining books, film, and interactive digital technology. Zuiker was interviewed onstage by CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos at Indigo Manulife Centre, followed by a book signing. He was also on CP24’s LeDrew Live on September 28 and on CTV’s Canada AM on September 29. Other media includes a Reuters interview, picked up by the National Post, the Vancouver Sun, and CBC.ca, and more interviews on 680 News’ Morning Show, CBC National News The Scene, The Globe and Mail (plus a review), CBC’s Q and The Hour, The Strombo Show, VIRGIN Radio’s The Rush, MTV Canada, Canoe.ca, and the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
Media in the U.S. includes national interviews on CBS’ The Early Show, NBC’s Extra, Fox News’ Hannity, and PBS’ Charlie Rose, and major print media, including a Reuters interview, a New York Post feature, a profile in Fast Company, and reviews by the Associated Press, USA Today, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.
Colin McAdam and Kim Echlin longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize
The first two Canadian authors published under Penguin Canada’s new Hamish Hamilton Canada literary imprint have been longlisted for Canada’s prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction.
The Disappeared by Kim Echlin (9780670069088) is an unforgettable story of love and loss set against the haunting backdrop of Cambodia’s savage killing fields. The novel was released in Canada in March 2009, and rights to it have sold in 17 countries. Its publication coincided with the long–awaited UN–backed trial in Phnom Penh of a former Khmer Rouge leader 30 years after the murderous regime fell. Haunting, vivid, elegiac, critically acclaimed around the world, The Disappeared is at once a battle cry and a piercing lament for truth, for love.
Fall (9780670067206) is the second novel by Colin McAdam, whose debut work, Some Great Thing, won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the U.K. A tremendous literary page–turner that perfectly captures the agonies and delights of adolescence, Fall cements McAdam’s reputation as a powerful writer with pitch perfect observation who is creating something startlingly new with contemporary fiction.
Launched in March 2009, the Hamish Hamilton Canada imprint is the first new literary imprint in Canada in more than fifteen years. Its inaugural list includes Kim Echlin and Colin McAdam, publishing sensation Reif Larsen, and international award–winners Ali Smith, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, and Philip Roth.
Penguin celebrates Alice Munro
The national bestseller My Best Stories by Alice Munro (9780143170396 / Penguin Canada) will be available in paperback from Penguin next week. Ads will run in The Globe and Mail and in the program for the Vancouver International Writers Festival, where Munro will appear on October 18. She will also make a special appearance at the International Festival of Authors on October 21.
Winner of the 2008 International Man Booker Prize and called "the living writer most likely to be read in a hundred years" by The Atlantic Monthly, Alice Munro is one of Canada’s most distinguished writers. In the introduction of My Best Stories, Margaret Atwood says, "Alice Munro is among the major writers of English fiction of our time ... Among writers themselves, her name is spoken in hushed tones." Penguin Group (Canada) is proud to publish all of Alice Munro’s critically–acclaimed works in paperback.
My Best Stories is a dazzling selection of stories––seventeen favourites chosen by the author from across her distinguished career. The stories are arranged in the order written, allowing even the most devoted Munro admirer to discover how her work developed, taking surprising turns.
–century and include "Royal Beatings," "Friend of My Youth," and "The Love of a Good Woman." This is a book to read–and reread–very slowly, savouring each story. It is a collection of small masterpieces deserves a place in every Canadian booklover’s home.
New acquisitions for Penguin Canada
Hot on the heels of acquiring Witch of Babylon–the first of three books in the Mesopotamian Trilogy by D.J. McIntosh, winner of the Arthur Ellis Award–Adrienne Kerr, Penguin Canada’s new commissioning editor for commercial fiction, has signed another three–book deal, this time to publish the fast–rising Sophie Hannah, whose latest thriller, The Other Half Lives, sold over 23,000 copies last week on BookScan and is currently ranked #2 on the U.K.’s mass market fiction bestseller list, its highest position on the charts ever. As reported by The Times, "This utterly gripping thriller should establish [Hannah] as one of the great unmissables of this genre–intelligent, classy, and with a wonderfully Gothic imagination."
Published by Hodder in the U.K., Sophie Hannah is a book club favourite with global sales of more than 600,000 copies. A new ITV crime drama based on her first four suspense novels, populated by "strong women in peril," will air in 2010. Kerr acquired rights to the three books in a competitive bid among Canadian publishers, with the first, Room Swept White, to be published in original trade paperback alongside the U.K.’s trade edition in fall 2010. In the U.S., the upcoming novels will be published in paperback by Penguin US.
Coppermine by Keith Ross Leckie is a true Canadian thriller, set in the Arctic and based on the Coppermine case, one of the most sensational manhunts in Canadian history, undertaken by the Royal North West Mounted Police following the disappearance of two Catholic priests in 1913. Billed as part wilderness adventure, part romance, part true–crime novel, the story is brought to vivid life by Canadian screenwriter and director Leckie, and was acquired by Kerr from the Westwood Agency for publication in 2010. Leckie will tour to support the publication.
Kerr also acquired paperback rights to Robert J. Sawyer’s The Terminal Experiment and Illegal Alien, both for publication in mass market paperback in November 2009 to tie into the airing of FlashForward, the new ABC–TV series. The show, starring Joseph Fiennes and inspired by Sawyer’s novel of the same name, has been widely touted as "the new Lost" and is one of the most exciting dramas of the fall television season. Penguin is ramping up promotion for Wake (9780670067411), the first book in Sawyer’s new WWW trilogy, and Watch, the second in the trilogy, will be published in April 2010. For more information, visit www.wakewatchwonder.ca.
Winnie–the–Pooh returns after more than 80 years in Return to the Hundred Acre Wood
"Pooh and Piglet, Christopher Robin and Eeyore were last seen in the Forest – oh, can it really be eighty years ago? But dreams have a logic of their own and it is as if the eighty years have passed in a day."
So begins the introduction to Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (9780525421603), the first authorized sequel to A.A. Milne’s Winnie–the–Pooh and The House At Pooh Corner. Dutton Children’s Books will publish the embargoed title on Monday, October 5th, when it will land in stores nationwide. Written by David Benedictus and illustrated by Mark Burgess, this is the first new Winnie–the–Pooh book in more than 80 years. Penguin Audio will publish an audio version read by Grammy Award–winner Jim Dale.
Penguin is rolling out an extensive six–figure marketing campaign leading up to the publication. On September 3rd, bookstores across the country opened "Pooh–tiques", dedicated spaces for Winnie–the–Pooh and friends. With these "Pooh–tiques", booksellers are inviting readers to rediscover Winnie–the–Pooh’s beloved adventures and return to the Hundred Acre Wood.
Libraries and bookstores across the country are holding Winnie–the–Pooh themed events, including a Pooh event at the Innisfil Public Library on October 3, a Pooh Picnic Day at McNally Robinson in Toronto on October 10, and more.
Upcoming national media coverage for Return to the Hundred Acre Wood includes segments on the Today show and NPR’s Morning Edition, features in USA Today, Parents, Parenting, Ebony, The Associated Press and Salon.com, as well as national and regional television and radio interviews with author David Benedictus.
Dutton officially introduced Christopher Robin and his "silly old bear" to the US in 1926 with the publication of Winnie–the–Pooh by A.A. Milne and illustrated by E.H. Shepard. Dutton published The House at Pooh Corner, which introduced Tigger, in 1928.
D–Day author and renowned British historian Antony Beevor comes to Toronto
Renowned British historian and bestselling author Antony Beevor will be in Toronto on October 21 to 23 to promote his new work, D–Day: The Battle for Normandy (9780670021192 / Viking / on sale October 13). Beevor will appear on CBC’s The Current, and will also be filming a history documentary with other major international historians, which will air on CBC in the new year. Beevor will be the keynote speaker for the fall dinner at the Canadian Forces College; he will be onstage in conversation with Globe and Mail feature writer Ian Brown for the Toronto Public Library’s new literary series, The Writer’s Room; and he will headline a Ramsay breakfast in Toronto.
In D–Day, Beevor explores the events of that historic invasion up until the liberation of Paris in August using previously unexplored material and an uncharted perspective. The first in–depth analysis of these events in twenty years, the book goes where no account of that fateful June day has gone, recounting for the first time the experiences of the French, of whom more were killed by Allied bombing and shelling than British civilians had been by the Luftwaffe. The book has already sold over 100,000 copies in the UK.
Describing mounting tensions on every side of the military, as well as details of the advance on Normandy (from the first airborne assault in history to the move inland) and the psychological and political implications of a crucial moment in the war, Beevor skillfully employs overlooked and new material from over thirty archives in a half–dozen countries. In providing a unique perspective on one of history’s most infamous turning points–one that changed global warfare and politics forever–Beevor takes the events leading to and from D–Day and breathes new historical life into them. A thrilling, thoughtful, and thoroughly researched look at the turning point of World War II, D–Day is sure to enthrall history buffs and casual readers alike.
Media and event update: Extraordinary Canadians
Three new books in the Extraordinary Canadians series released this week, and the authors will kick off their tour in Kingston this weekend at the Kingston Writer’s Festival.
The books take on three influential historical figures: Mark Kingwell writes about the eccentric genius of one of the world’s most renowned classical musicians in Glenn Gould (9780670068500), Daniel Poliquin profiles the charismatic leader and founder of the Parti Québecois in René Lévesque (9780670069194), and Jane Urquhart writes about the author of Anne of Green Gables in L.M. Montgomery (9780670066759).
Upcoming events include the Kingston Writer’s Festival on September 25 (Urquhart, Kingwell, Poliquin, and Gray), the Lighthouse Book Store in Brighton on September 26 (Urquhart), A Different Drummer Bookstore in Burlington on September 29 (Urquhart, Kingwell, Saul, and DeSoto), the Harbourfront Studio in Toronto on October 1 (Kingwell), Toronto Public Library on October 13 (Kingwell), the Ottawa Writer’s Festival on October 27 (Urquhart, Kingwell, Poliquin, and Saul), the Toronto Public Library on October 27 (Clarkson), the IFOA in Toronto on October 31 (Urquhart, Kingwell, Poliquin, and Gray), the Paragraphe Bookstore in Montreal on November 1 (Poliquin), the Heleconian Club in Toronto on November 11 (Gray), the Toronto Public Library on November 13 (Urquhart), the Paragraphe Bookstore in Montreal on November 29 (Kingwell), and Authors and Books in Toronto on December 8 (Saul, Clarkson, Kingwell, and Poliquin). M.G. Vassanji will do a presentation on Mordecai Richler at the Jewish Book Fair in Vancouver in November.
Confirmed media includes interviews in the Toronto Star, Maclean’s, and Ottawa Magazine, on Classical FM 96.3, CKCU FM, CBC’s All in a Weekend, and TVO’s Allan Gregg, as well as reviews set to run in The Globe and Mail, More magazine, Montreal’s Gazette, the Winnipeg Free Press, Maclean’s, the Georgia Straight, the Concordian newspaper, the Sun Times, and more.
Visit www.extraordinarycanadians.com for more information.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet nominated for two international awards
Reif Larsen’s inimitable The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet (9780670069750 / Hamish Hamilton Canada) has just been nominated for two international book awards.
The first is The Guardian First Book Award (U.K.), a prize that honours debut books of all genres.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet has also been shortlisted for the Boeke Prize, a South African book prize sponsored by Exclusive Books and loosely modelled on the U.K.’s Man Booker Prize.
The much–buzzed debut novel has been profiled in Vanity Fair, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, the National Post, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, the Washington Post Book World, The New Yorker, Time Out New York, New York magazine, the Boston Globe, and the Denver Post, among others.
In the Land of Long Fingernails by Charles Wilkins shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award
Charles Wilkins has been shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award for In the Land of Long Fingernails (9780670065554 / Viking Canada). The official announcement was made this week at the Toronto Reference Library. The annual awards offer $15,000 in prize money–each finalist receives $1,000 and the winning author receives the remaining amount.
During the hazy summer of 1969, Charles Wilkins, then a student at the University of Toronto, took a job as a gravedigger. The bizarre–but–true events of that time, including a midsummer gravediggers’ strike, the unearthing of a victim of an unsolved murder, and a little illegal bone shifting, play out amongst a Barnumesque parade of mavericks and misfits in this macabre and hilarious memoir of mortality, materialism, and the gradual coming of age of an impressionable young man.
Wilkins has great events planned around the award, including an event at Word on the Street; an evening event with the shortlisted authors at the Toronto Public Library; and at the awards gala on October 15 at the Toronto Reference Library, at 6:00 p.m.
Lords of Finance, Good Value, and Imagining India shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year
The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award aims to identify the book that provides "the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues, including management, finance and economics". The 2009 shortlist includes Penguin titles Lords of Finance by Liaquat Ahamed (9781594201820 / Penguin Press), Good Value by Stephen Green(9781846142369 / Allen Lane), and Imagining India by Nandan Nilekani (9780670068449 / Viking Canada).
"Lionel Barber, editor of the FT, called the list ’outstanding’ and Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive–echoing the mission of the award–said all the books were ’both compelling and enjoyable.’"
The judges were united in praise for the quality of the shortlist. That’s not a surprise in a year in which some of the world’s best academics, journalists, and management and business writers applied their expertise to the roots and consequences of the global credit crunch. What is more surprising is that three of the shortlisted authors were moonlighting from their day jobs: Nandan Nilekani, who wrote Imagining India and is also co–chairman of Infosys, the technology group; Liaquat Ahamed, a director, adviser and investment manager, whose Lords of Finance is one of the two histories on the list; and Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC, the bank." (read the full article)
Tim Cook and Kerry Pither shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Award
The shortlist for the Ottawa Book Award has been announced, and nominated in the English non–fiction category is Shock Troops by Tim Cook (9780143055938 / Penguin Canada / paperback on sale September 29), the story of Canadian forces in the Great War and winner of the Charles Taylor Prize. Through the eyes of foot soldiers who fought and died in the trenches on the Western Front, and based on newly uncovered archival sources, this book builds on volume I of Tim Cook’s national bestseller, At the Sharp End.
Also nominated is Dark Days by Kerry Pither (9780670068531 / Viking Canada), the story of four Canadian Muslim men accused of terrorist links. One of them, Maher Arar has been fully exonerated by a public commission of inquiry. Dark Days chronicles the shocking story of how three other Canadian men experienced similarly devastating ordeals.
The shortlisted finalists all receive a $1,000 prize. The winners of a $7,500 prize will be announced at a ceremony at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa on October 20.
Fatal Tide and Sima’s Undergarments for Women shortlisted for the Victoria Book Prize
The $5,000 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize is awarded annually to the best book by an author residing in the Victoria region. The 2009 short–list includes Fatal Tide by David Leach (9780670066292 / Viking Canada), a book that transports readers into the turbulent Bay of Fundy Multi–Sport Race, and Sima’s Undergarments for Women by Ilana Stanger–Ross (9781590200896 / Overlook), the story of a secret underground New York sisterhood where women of every shape and creed can come to share their milestones, laughter, loves, and losses against a backdrop of discount lingerie.
The winner of this $5,000 award will be announced on October 14, at a gala event at the Union Club of B.C.
Mao’s Last Dancer at the Toronto International Film Festival
The film based on Mao’s Last Dancer (9780425201336 / Berkley), the bestselling memoir by Li Cunxin, will be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on September 13. Li will be in Toronto for the special presentation, which comes from the writing and producing team behind Shine, and stars Joan Chen, Jack Thompson, Kyle MacLachlan, and Bruce Greenwood.
Mao’s Last Dancer tells Li’s remarkable story in his own inimitable voice. From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, he was chosen by Madame Mao’s cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America–and with an American woman. Two years, later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak–and–dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world.
Watch the trailer for the film.
Nick Hornby’s Toronto visit
Nick Hornby is kicking off the 36th season of Authors at Harbourfront on September 13 at the Enwave Theatre, where he will be onstage in conversation with The Globe and Mail’s Carl Wilson. He will offer audience members a reading from his new novel Juliet, Naked (9781594488870 / Riverhead / on sale September 29).
Hornby is in Toronto to promote the book, as well as his screenplay for An Education (watch the trailer), starring Emma Thompson and Pete Sarsgaard that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10. The tie–in screenplay of An Education (9781594484537 / Riverhead / on sale October 6) features the shooting script for the film, an original introduction, and vivid stills from the movie. It was an award winner at the Sundance Film Festival when it premiered there, and the Toronto Star noted that it is one to watch all the way to the Oscars! The film hits theatres on October 23 for a wide release in major markets.
Media coverage includes event and book mentions in the National Post, Quill & Quire, the Toronto Star, EYE Weekly, and NOW magazine, and a Canwest News Service fall book preview feature. Upcoming coverage will include interviews in The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the National Post; on CBC’s The Hour, the National News, Q, and CBC.ca; and reviews in NOW magazine and EYE Weekly. Juliet, Naked is on sale September 29.
In the novel, Hornby returns to the preoccupations that first made him a literary star–pop music, passionate fandom, and the struggles and triumphs of modern love. It is a powerfully engrossing, humblingly humorous novel about music, love, loneliness, and the struggle to live up to one’s promise.
Apples to Oysters by Margaret Webb shortlisted for a Canadian Culinary Book Award
The finalists in the 2009 Canadian Culinary Book Awards were announced on September 1 by its sponsors, Cuisine Canada and the University of Guelph. The winners of these prizes, as well as the new Hall of Fame Culinary Book Award, will be presented on November 6, the opening day of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.
Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover’s Tour of Canadian Farms (9780143052906 / Penguin Canada) was nominated in the Canadian Food Culture category, which features books that best illustrate Canada’s rich culinary heritage and food culture. On the cross–Canada odyssey of Apples to Oysters, Margaret Webb introduces readers to great farmers in every province or, as she calls them, chefs of the soil and the sea, tractor–seat philosophers, and poet biologists. Her stories of the challenges they face growing good food are inspiring, touching, and gritty. They will make you hungry. They will make you laugh. These fascinating stories about the passionate, driven people who farm and produce food in our country make for a powerful manifesto for eating Canadian.
Cuisine Canada in a national alliance of Canadian culinary professionals that promotes the growth and study of the country’s distinct food culture. For more than 140 years, the University of Guelph has contributed to Canadian cuisine through its programs in agriculture, food science, hospitality, and tourism management, and is the home of one of Canada’s largest cookbook collections.
Click here to read the full Canadian Press article.
Nick Hornby comes to Toronto
Nick Hornby kicks off the 36th season of Authors at Harbourfront on September 13 with an onstage interview with Globe and Mail editor Carl Wilson. Penguin has confirmed an A–list of Canadian media for his new book, Juliet, Naked (9781594488870 / Riverhead), when it goes on sale on September 29, including interviews for CBC’s The Hour and Q, The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the National Post.
In Juliet, Naked, Hornby returns to the preoccupations that first made him a literary star–pop music, passionate fandom, and the struggles and triumphs of modern love. Tucker Crowe is a notoriously reclusive musician, the famous creator of the greatest breakup album ever recorded (after which, for mysterious reasons, he went into early retirement), and a grave disappointment to himself, his ex–wives, his children, and everyone but a few still–obsessed fans. Duncan, a faculty member at an obscure college in a shabby English seaside town, is one of those fans, undoubtedly among the world’s most zealous "Croweologists." Annie, Duncan’s longsuffering partner and the director of an equally shabby local museum, is approaching forty and wondering whether her inadvertent decision to forego motherhood was a dire mistake of bad planning. "What do you do," she asks, "if you think you’ve wasted fifteen years of your life?"
Juliet, Naked has received excellent advance reviews in Vogue, GQ, and more.
Four Penguin Canada titles on the 2009 Man Booker Prize longlist
Penguin Group (Canada) represents three of the thirteen titles longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize: Ed O’Loughlin’s Not Untrue and Not Unkind (9781844881857 / Penguin Ireland), Sarah Hall’s How to Paint a Dead Man (9780571224890 / Faber & Faber), and Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room (9781408700778 / Little, Brown).
Penguin Canada Executive Editor Nicole Winstanley has just acquired Canadian rights to James Scudamore’s Heliopolis, also longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize. Says Winstanley, "We’re very proud to have Heliopolis on the Penguin Group (Canada) list and are delighted with the Man Booker Prize jury’s recognition of both the book and its remarkable author."
Scudamore’s first novel, The Amnesia Clinic, was hailed by fellow Booker prize nominee Hilary Mantel as "a wonderful debut–witty, polished, fluent, and effortlessly entertaining." It was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and the Glen Dimplex Award, and went on to win the Somerset Maugham Prize.
His second work, Heliopolis, was declared "a triumph" by New Statesman and "an unsettling and magically compelling read" by The Daily Mail. It centres on Ludo, who as a child was plucked out of the shantytown where he was born and transported to a world of languid, cosseted luxury. Now twenty–seven, he works high above the sprawling metropolis of Sao Paulo for a vacuous communications company. But this is not his world, and this is not a simple rags–to–riches story: Ludo’s destiny moves him around like a chess piece, showing him extremities of opulent excess and abject poverty, taking him to the brink of madness and brutality.
The Man Booker Prize, the leading literary award in the English–speaking world, is worth £50,000 and is awarded to the author of the best full–length novel in the opinion of the judges, and usually guarantees major spikes in sales for the work. A total of 132 books, 11 of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the Man Booker Dozen longlist of 13 books. The 2009 shortlist will be announced on September 8 at a press conference at Man Group’s London headquarters, with the winner revealed on October 6th in a ceremony at London’s Guildhall. Visit the Man Booker Prize website for more details and the full longlist.
The Sartorialist visits Toronto
Scott Schuman was in Toronto on July 22 as one of six fashion bloggers being celebrated by a special series of Holt Renfrew window displays. Schuman talked about his new book, The Sartorialist (9780143116370 / Penguin / on sale August 18), in all of his interviews, including a large feature in the National Poston the front cover of the Arts and Life section on July 23. He was interviewed on CTV’s Canada AMon July 23, where he showed a copy of the book, and The Globe and Mail ran a feature and interview on him on July 25.
Upcoming media includes a interview and feature in the Toronto Star on July 30 and lots of media around the pub date, including an Eye Weekly interview, a Fashion TV interview by Jeanne Beker, a MTV Canada interview, a Much Music interview, and features in the September issues of Flare and Sharp magazines, the October issue of Elle Canada magazine, the November issue of LouLou magazine, and the holiday issue of Fashion.
U.S. magazine coverage includes the September issues of Glamour, GQ, Marie Claire, Nylon, TeenVogue, Foam, and Gotham. Other print coverage will include New York magazine’s "21 Questions" column, features in the Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post/Fashion Washington, the New York Post, and much more. Blog coverage includes The New York Times / T Magazine "The Moment" blog, Fast Company.com, and Art in America.com.
A self–taught photographer, Schuman shoots for publications including French Vogue, American GQ, Fantastic Man, and Elle, and for a growing list of advertising clients. His now–famous and much–loved blog, thesartorialist.com, is his showcase for the wonderful and varied sartorial tastes of real people across the globe. This book is a beautiful anthology of Schuma’s favourite images, accompanied by his insightful commentary. It includes photographs of well–known fashion figures alongside people encountered on the street whose personal style and taste demand a closer look.
Music legend Dolly Parton talks children’s books with CBC Q’s Jian Ghomeshi
Jian Ghomeshi did a great interview with the beloved music legend–and now author–Dolly Parton on Q on July 30. The interview was all about Parton’s new children’s picture book, I Am a Rainbow (9780399247330 / Putnam Juvenile), which provides children with a fun way to talk about their feelings, learn to respect the feelings of others, and take control. Parton’s proceeds from I Am a Rainbow will go to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which works with local community sponsors to provide books to preschool children across the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom. Click here to listen to the podcast and here to read Parton’s Maclean’s interview with Nathan Whitlock.
Authorized Winnie–the–Pooh sequel coming this fall from Penguin
On October 5, Penguin will publish Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (9780525421603 / Dutton Children’s), the first authorized sequel to A.A. Milne’s Winnie–the–Pooh and The House At Pooh Corner. Unarguably one of the most recognized characters in children’s literature, Winnie–the–Pooh–the Best Bear in All the World–has been loved by generations of children. It was eighty years ago, on the publication of The House at Pooh Corner, when Christopher Robin said goodbye to Winnie–the–Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. Now, approved for the first time by the trustees of the Pooh Properties, they are all back in new adventures. This companion volume, written by David Benedictus and illustrated by Mark Burgess, truly captures the style of A.A. Milne.
The Toronto Star ran a great profile article on the new sequel on Thursday, July 16:
"’I hope that the new book will both complement and maintain Milne’s idea that whatever happens, a little boy and his bear will always be playing,’ said David Benedictus, who provided the text for the new book, which hits Canadian bookstores Oct. 5. The sequel is to be translated and sold in 50 languages. Since 1926, when 150,000 copies of Winnie–the–Pooh were sold, worldwide sales of Pooh–related literature have exceeded 50 million copies." (read the full article)
The announcement of this publication was also covered in The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and more.
Penguin celebrates the 40th anniversary of the moon landing with new books
On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history as the first men to ever step foot on the moon. Forty years later, author Andrew Chaikin commemorates the historic Apollo 11 moon landing mission in Voices from the Moon (9780670020782 / Viking), a mesmerizing, exclusive look at the astronauts’ extraordinary experiences. Interviewing twenty–three out of the twenty–four Apollo lunar astronauts, Chaikin and his collaborator Victoria Kohl capture their candid and deeply personal reflections. Also included are 160 images taken from NASA’s stunning, new high–resolution scans–many of which the general public has rarely seen before. Andrew Chaikin will appear on CBS Evening News, a Fox News Special on the Apollo 11 missions, Reuters Television, and more. The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Scientist, Scientific American, and Earth Magazine are just a few that have reviewed the book. Andy will be writing a short piece for USA Today on Friday about the mission.
Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon (9780670021031 / Viking) by Craig Nelson has also been garnering a lot of media attention. Nelson was featured on CBC’s The Current on July 14, where he marked the significance of the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing, and reminded listeners why the mission was the greatest adventure of the 20th century, and the greatest technological achievement of all time (listen to the podcast). Nelson will also be featured in an interview in the Toronto Star on July 18.
Reviews or features have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Popular Science, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, USA Today, and more. On the web we’ve seen coverage from ABC.com for Good Morning America’s summer books recommendations, and Vanityfair.com, NationalGeographic.com, and Popular Science.com have also run coverage. Nelson appeared on NASA TV as part of the Apollo History and Legacy Roundtable.
A media frenzy also surrounds three major space books from the Penguin Young Readers Group. This Tuesday, USA Today ran a major spread featuring Look to the Stars (9780399247217 / G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers) by second man on the moon Buzz Aldrin; illustrated by Wendell Minor, One Giant Leap by Robert Burleigh, with paintings by Mike Wimmer (9780399238833 / Philomel), and Mission Control, This Is Apollo by Andrew Chaikin, with paintings by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean (9780670011568 / Viking Children’s Books). All three titles have also been prominently featured in Scripps Howard News Service, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Tacoma News–Tribune, and the Deseret News.
Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong rides in Waterloo
Two thousand and nine marks Lance Armstrong’s triumphant return to the sport of cycling–along with his bid to break his own record at this year’s Tour de France! TV coverage of the event has increased by 90 percent this year because of Armstrong’s decision to race one more time, and he has captured the attention of the media and racing fans. Make sure you have It’s Not About the Bike (9780425179611 / Berkley), the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir of the man who battled cancer, inspired millions, and commands the sport of racing.
The seven–time Tour de France champion will be cycling on rural roads in Waterloo Region on September 12 to support cancer care and research at Grand River Hospital and Toronto’s Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
It’s Not About the Bike is the ultimate guide to Armstrong’s winning techniques, and is the story of one man’s journey through triumph, tragedy, transformation, and transcendence. People magazine called it "inspiring." The New York Times called it "fascinating." But perhaps the Cincinnati Enquirer said it best: "It’s not about the bike, or about the sport. It’s about the soul."
A Suitable Girl for Penguin
In a move which will cheer hundreds of thousands of his fans, Vikram Seth has today announced he is writing a long–awaited sequel to his much–loved million–copy bestseller, A Suitable Boy, set in India just after Independence. A Suitable Girl will be published by Penguin (in Canada, India, and the U.K.; the U.S. rights are not yet for sale) in autumn 2013. In Seth’s new book, he will bring the action of the narrative up to the present, encompassing some of the enormous social and economic changes India has undergone in the last sixty years. Lata, the sparky and rebellious heroine of A Suitable Boy, is now a grandmother, and her grandson is the one in search of a good match.
Two thousand thirteen marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of A Suitable Boy, which was a worldwide sensation. The 1,350–page book sold over a quarter–million hardbacks and more than a million paperbacks in its U.K. edition. In 2013, Penguin will put the book in its distinguished Modern Classics list and republish it in paperback. In the intervening years, Penguin will also publish volumes of Seth’s poems and essays.
Vikram Seth said today, “In India, all my books have for years been published by Penguin. But I am very happy today to be joining foreign colonies of the Flightless One. They have already made me feel very welcome, and I hope in time to hatch many suitable eggs with them.”
Penguin imprint Hamish Hamilton has bought world English language rights (excluding the U.S.) from Seth’s agent, David Godwin. This is the first worldwide acquisition by Hamish Hamilton UK, together with its newly formed imprints in Toronto, Melbourne, and Delhi.
“I think Vikram is a writer of supremely great gifts, and I’ve been privileged to have published him for many years now,” said Penguin Group (Canada) publisher and president David Davidar. “We’re hugely delighted to have him on the Hamish Hamilton Canada list.”
“This is a proud moment for Hamish Hamilton Canada,” echoed Nicole Winstanley, executive editor for the Canadian imprint. “I’m particularly thrilled because when I first read A Suitable Boy, I became so immersed in it that I missed my subway stop on more than one occasion. Vikram’s writing is vivid, evocative, and utterly absorbing, and his many characters stay with the reader long after the final page has been turned. His many Canadian fans will be pleased to learn than a new novel is forthcoming.”
Ingram appointed to the Order of Canada
Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, governor general of Canada, announced sixty new appointments to the Order of Canada. Among them is Jay Ingram, host of Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet and author of The Science of Everyday Life (9780143056638 / Penguin Canada) and most recently The Daily Planet Book of Cool Ideas (9780143169352 / Penguin Canada).
Ingram was chosen "for his contributions toward making complex science accessible to the public as a broadcaster, public speaker, and author, and for his leadership of future generations of science journalists." (Governor General of Canada)
Penguin will publish The Daily Book of Science by Ingram in October 2010.
More media coverage for Jane Green and Dune Road
The New York Times #1 bestseller Jane Green visited Toronto on July 2 for a launch of Dune Road (9780670069132 / Viking Canada) at Dove Spa and for multiple media appearances. At the event, Green read from her novel, and those attending had access to exclusive discounts on spa services. Multiple media outlets covered the launch, including Glow magazine, Life and Fashion magazine, Sweetspot.ca, YummyMummy.ca, and CTV.ca. While in Toronto, Green appeared on Breakfast Television, and was featured in Metro, Wedding Bells, Slice.ca, and more. Promotion for the event also included five on–air teasers on EZ Rock, along with book giveaways and spa packages.
Dune Road is another fun and fearless adventure that will take Green’s many fans from laughter to tears and back again. The novel is set in the beach community of a tiny Connecticut town. Our heroine is a single mom who works for a famous—and famously reclusive—novelist. When she stumbles onto a secret that the great man has kept hidden for years, she knows that there are plenty of women in town who would love to get their hands on it—including some who fancy the writer for themselves. Dune Road is the story of life in an exclusive beach town after the tourists have left for the summer and the eccentric (and monied) community sticks around. It will surely be the book to pack in beach bags this summer.
"The queen of the chick–literati—her books are just so damn readable."—Glamour
“Green’s writing is deliciously witty”—People
“A perfect summer read … funny, poignant.”—Toronto Sun
“Think The Big Chill with lots of tea and posher accents.”—USA Today
“Compulsively readable.”—The Times (London)
Four CBA Libris Awards for Penguin Group (Canada), including two wins for Joseph Boyden
The Canadian Booksellers Association (CBA) announced the 2009 Libris Award winners this week, and Penguin Group (Canada) followed up its 2008 Publisher of the Year win with four awards from the Canadian Booksellers Association in 2009, including Marketing Achievement of the Year, Sales Representative of the Year, and a double win for 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Joseph Boyden.
Boyden’s critically acclaimed Through Black Spruce (9780670063635 / Viking Canada) won the Fiction Book of the Year Award, and he won Author of the Year honours for his outstanding literary work, contribution to Canadian culture, and support of the bookselling industry. A congratulatory advertisement will run on June 27 in The Globe and Mail.
Through Black Spruce has sold over 90,000 copies in hardcover since its publication last September, and Boyden, beloved by booksellers for his debut novel Three Day Road (9780143017868 / Penguin Canada), met and matched demand for the new novel, touring the country for over 65 days, speaking about the plight of Native peoples in contemporary Canada, and reading to sold–out crowds. Boyden, with members of his family in attendance, thanked booksellers for their support and for both awards. Hailed internationally as a masterpiece, Three Day Road has sold over 150,000 copies and maintains a strong presence on the country’s bestseller lists. Boyden’s biography of Métis leaders Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont will be published as part of Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians series in March 2010.
The Extraordinary Canadians series, for which Penguin took home the Marketing Achievement of the Year Award, re–imagines Canada’s most influential historical figures from the fresh, new perspective of such bestselling writers as Boyden, Douglas Coupland, and Vincent Lam. The series launched in April 2008 with a national press campaign that used the tagline Why They Mattered Then, Why They Matter Now, and that has featured author events from coast to coast as well as a three–year print–media sponsorship with Maclean’s. The individual biographies, critically acclaimed by reviewers, are easily accessible at just over 200 pages and gorgeously designed with cover portraits by leading Canadian artists and illustrators. The series, with John Ralston Saul as General Editor, is also the subject of an upcoming twelve–part documentary television series on OMNI and The Biography Channel. News on author events and upcoming titles can be found at www.extraordinarycanadians.ca.
Adrienne Kerr, Penguin Canada sales representative for Southwest Ontario and former bookseller for Nicholas Hoare and book buyer for HDS Retail, was honoured by the CBA as Sales Rep of the Year.
Penguin Group (Canada) acquires official history of M15
Penguin Canada Editorial Director Diane Turbide has acquired Canadian rights to the first ever authorized history of the British Secret Service by Britain’s leading historian of intelligence, Christopher Andrew. Under strict embargo until publication date, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized Official History of M15 will be published simultaneously by Knopf U.S. and Penguin Press in the UK in October 2009.
To mark the centenary of its foundation, M15 has for the first time opened its archives to an independent historian, an unprecedented publishing event. Despite the sensitive nature of the materials, no restrictions have been placed on the judgments made by the author.
The book also reveals the identities of previously unknown enemies of the UK whose activities have been uncovered by the Service, adds significantly to our knowledge of many celebrated events and notorious individuals, and definitively lays to rest a number of persistent myths. Above all, it shows the place of this previously extremely secretive organization within the UK. Few books could offer such an immediate and extraordinary expansion of our understanding of British history over the past century.
Christopher Maurice Andrew, PhD, is a historian at the University of Cambridge with a special interest in international relations and the history of intelligence services.
The Canadian book deal was brokered by John Pearce at The Westwood Agency in Toronto.
Penguin Canada author receives Hero Recognition from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Journey of Injustice: Canada’s Underground World of Human Trafficking has just been acquired for publication by Penguin Group (Canada) in October 2010, received a “Trafficking in Persons Hero” award this morning from the U.S. Department of State as part of the annual global Trafficking in Persons report released by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This is one of the most significant global awards on this issue and a deep honour for the UBC law professor, one of nine people recognized worldwide. The award was presented at a press conference at the U.S. Consul General’s office in Vancouver, and announced by the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa.
Professor Perrin maintains a high-profile presence in the media as one of Canada’s foremost authorities on human trafficking. In 2007–2008 he made over 165 media appearances and was featured by every major Canadian news outlet.
In the follow-up to this announcement Ben Perrin has picked up significant national news coverage. Television coverage has included CBC News (Vancouver), CTV (BC / National), City TV, Shaw TV – Studio 4, CBC National, CTV Canada AM, and more. Radio coverage has included CBC Radio (BC Almanac), CKNW – Bill Good Show (BC), Talk AM 1410 – Nik and Mark Show (Vancouver), CBC Radio (Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Saint John, Whitehorse, Charlottetown), and more. Print media has included articles on CTV News (June 17), The Globe and Mail (June 17), The Canadian Press(appearing on over 20 news outlets on June 16), The Vancouver Sun (x 2) (June 16), and more.
First ever Global Penguin Walk in Canada
On Friday, June 5, Penguin Group (Canada) celebrated World Environment Day by joining Penguin offices around the world for the annual Global Penguin Walk. Penguin UK walked along the Thames River, Penguin China walked on the Great Wall, and in the first ever Penguin Walk in Canada, over thirty Penguin employees hiked in the Don Valley ravine with friends and family in an effort to raise money for the Nature Conservancy of Canada.
Started by Penguin UK, the Global Penguin Walk this year not only included offices in the UK, Canada, and China offices, but also those in New York, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and South Africa. Said CEO John Makinson said, “We want to demonstrate our commitment to making Penguin a greener company by raising money and planting trees.”
Here in Canada, participants were given the choice of walking five or ten kilometres, with president and publisher David Davidar leading the way. In total, about 4,000 Penguin employees around the world showed their support and ongoing commitment to being green by walking and raising funds for various environmental causes. Employees formed walking teams, donned team T-shirts, and asked for sponsorship from friends and family.
Penguin Walk Canada marks the beginning of what we hope will be an annual event. As Yvonne Hunter, Vice President, Publicity and Marketing, says, “We only hope to get bigger and better with each passing year.”
Hala Jaber, author of The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles, talks to Anna Maria Tremonte on CBC’s The Current
Hala Jaber gave a stirring interview on CBC’s The Current on June 4, where she discussed Iraq and her new book, The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles: A Woman’s Fight to Save Two Orphans (9780670069613 / Viking Canada). Host Anna Maria Tremonti was captivated by Jaber’s emotional story and graciously thanked the author for her compelling conversation.
The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles was also chosen as a top 5 summer read on Divine.ca, and has received excellent advance reviews in the U.S. and the U.K. Reviews and further interviews to come.
In 2003, award-winning foreign correspondent Hala Jaber went to Iraq to cover the war, where she was confronted with Sahra and Hawra, two little girls who’d lost everything. Unable to conceive a child herself, Jaber became emotionally involved with the orphaned girls, one of them badly burned in a bombing. Beautifully written and deeply moving, The Flying Carpet of Small Miracles offers fresh insight into the situation in Iraq, particularly the plight of women and children caught in war’s crossfire.
Zoya Phan to visit Canada for Ottawa Writer’s Festival
Zoya Phan, activist and author of Little Daughter (9780670069682 / Viking Canada), will be visiting Canada on October 24 for the Ottawa Writer’s Festival. National media is scheduled in the near future, which will include interviews with Canwest, The Ottawa Citizen, and The Globe and Mail.
Phan was born in the remote jungles of Burma to the Karen tribe, which for decades has been resisting Burma’s brutal military junta. At age thirteen, her peaceful childhood was shattered when the Burmese army attacked. So began two terrible years of running, as Phan was forced to join thousands of refugees hiding in the jungle. Her family scattered, her brothers went deeper into the war, and Phan, close to death, found shelter at a Thai refugee camp, where she stayed until 2005, when she fled to the U.K. and claimed asylum. There, in a twist of fate, she became the public face of the Burmese people’s fight for freedom. Little Daughter is her inspirational story.
The Financial Times (U.K.) called Phan’s story "a clearly written testimony to an unending apocalypse ... The horrors described are all too real ... Little Daughter is a partisan account, though no less compelling for that."
Penguin Group (Canada) Congratulates Alice Munro, Winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize
Penguin Group (Canada) author Alice Munro has won the third Man Booker International Prize. The prize, worth £60,000 or roughly $100,000 CDN, is the international version of the UK’s Man Booker Prize and is awarded once every two years to an author for a body of work with outstanding international impact. Authors Peter Carey, E.L. Doctorow, V.S Naipaul and Joyce Carol Oates were among the 2009 finalists.
The judging panel said: ‘Alice Munro is mostly known as a short story writer and yet she brings as much depth, wisdom and precision to every story as most novelists bring to a lifetime of novels. To read Alice Munro is to learn something every time that you never thought of before.’
Munro is one of Canada’s most celebrated writers and Penguin Group (Canada) publishes her entire body of work including The Love of a Good Woman, The View from Castle Rock, Lives of Girls and Women and Runaway, currently under adaptation for film by Jane Campion. Originally from the small southwestern Ontario community of Wingham, Munro has garnered praise for her tales of women living in small towns. She is a three-time Governor General’s Award winner, a two-time Giller Prize winner and was also nominated for the international Booker in 2007.
Penguin will release the paperback edition of Munro’s My Best Stories, with an Introduction by Margaret Atwood, in October, 2009. “Alice Munro is among the major writers of English fiction of our time,” says Atwood in her Introduction. “Among writers themselves, her name is spoken in hushed tones.”
Penguin Group (Canada) began publishing Canadian and international titles in 1977, and quickly became known as one of Canada’s pre-eminent publishers of literary, thought-provoking fiction, and non-fiction. The company was named 2008 Publisher of the Year by the Canadian Booksellers’ Association, and in 2009 received a record nine nominations including Publisher of the Year.
View our feature on Alice Munro.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen
Reif Larsen’s highly anticipated The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet has been the novel everyone is talking about, and now it is available in bookstores across the country. To celebrate the publication, Penguin Group (Canada) and Pages’ This Is Not a Reading Series presented An Evening of Geographic Discovery on May 4. In addition to profile coverage in Vanity Fair, Larsen was also interviewed by The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, and the National Post. Reviews and/or features are assigned in the New York Times Book Review, New York Times, Washington Post Book World, The New Yorker, Time Out New York, New York magazine, Boston Globe, and Denver Post, among others.
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet defies easy categorization or comparison. With touches of the classic road story and coming-of-age tale, it quickly transcends these to become something all its own. And defying the e–book trend, this is a novel – with T.S.’s notes, diagrams, and illustrations pulling the plot into every corner of the page – that can only unfold on paper. Touching, hilarious, and wholly original, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet is a delightful and thrilling debut.
Click here to view the amazing trailer for T.S. Spivet, as well as an interview with Larsen. Click here to see a round–up of reviews. A grassroots poster campaign designed by the award–winning agency BBDO launched last week in Montreal and Toronto, with complementary advertising in the June edition of Walrus and a three–city Via Rail tour to commemorate Larsen’s one–time odyssey across Canada by rail.
Penguin Canada launches a website for the new Robert J. Sawyer trilogy
Wake, the first novel in the Wake Watch Wonder (WWW) trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer (9780670067411 / Viking Canada), released to terrific reviews, and Penguin has now launched wakewatchwonder.ca. The website features a trailer for Wake, along with downloadable features and an excerpt from the first chapter.
Sawyer has been named McNally Robinson’s author of the month for May. He kicked off a thirteen–city tour with a standing–room–only event in Vancouver, followed by a Toronto launch on April 30. Upcoming events include an appearance in Waterloo on May 21 at WordsWorth Books, a Keycon Convention in Winnipeg on May 15, a McNally Robinson event in Winnipeg on May 16, and a Sudbury event on May 25 at Chapters Bookstore.
Review coverage will appear in the National Post, the Edmonton Journal, FFWD magazine, and more, with a review in the Winnipeg Free Press.
In other news, ABC has recently completed filming the pilot for a TV series based on Sawyer’s novel Flash Forward. It features such stars as Joseph Fiennes and Courtney B. Vance. The Hollywood Reporter declared that “ABC might finally have launched a strong companion to Lost.”
Praise for Wake
“Almost alone among Canadian writers, [Robert Sawyer] tackles the most fundamental questions of who we are and where we might be going—while illuminating where we are now.”
—National Post
“Wildly thought–provoking … The thematic diversity—and profundity—makes [Wake] one of Sawyer’s strongest works to date.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Sawyer continues to push the boundaries with his stories of the future made credible. His erudition, eclecticism, and masterly storytelling make this trilogy opener a choice selection.”
—Library Journal
More award news for Rudy Wiebe
Edmonton author Rudy Wiebe, who most recently wrote Big Bear (9780670067862 / Penguin Canada), part of the Extraordinary Canadians series, has won a Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award. Wiebe was one of two artists selected for the 2009 prize, worth $30,000. Founded in 2005, the Alberta Distinguished Artist Awards recognize individual Albertans for outstanding achievement in the arts or for significant contribution to the arts in Alberta. They are presented every second year.
Read more about the award and Wiebe’s comments in The Edmonton Journal.
Big Bear is shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non–Fiction. Winners will be announced and awards presented at the literary awards gala on Saturday, May 23, at the Hotel Arts in Calgary. In the book, Wiebe, who is also the author of a Governor General’s Award–winning novel about Big Bear, revisits the life of the eloquent statesman, one of Canada’s most important Aboriginal leaders.
Visit www.extraordinarycanadians.com.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bible! by Jonathan Goldstein
Sally Armstrong speaks to the media in light of a proposed Afghan law
Sally Armstrong’s Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots (9780670068685 / Viking Canada) is a moving portrayal of the lives of women and girls in Afghanistan. As a result of a new law proposed by the Afghan parliament that would legalize marital rape, Armstrong’s expertise on women in that country has been called upon numerous times.
This past week, Armstrong has had interviews with CanadaAM, CBC’s Newsworld, CTV News, CTV Newsnet, CTV.ca, and with CBC for syndication for 16 drive-home CBC radio programs across the country.
In Bitter Roots, Tender Shoots, respected journalist Sally Armstrong revisits Afghanistan to compare women’s lives pre- and post-Taliban, interviewing Afghan and Western women who are dedicated to improving health, education, culture, religion, and human rights. Armstrong connects these stories with the analysis of experts and considers the grassroots efforts of Canadians and the dedicated tax dollars being spent by the Canadian government.
Imagining India author Nandan Nilekani on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
On March 1, Nandan Nilekani, author of Imagining India (9780670068449 / Viking Canada / on sale April 14) appeared on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (click here to watch). The New York Times Sunday business section ran a great review of Imagining India, calling it “one of those rare books in which a businessman proves himself to be a capable expository writer, a balanced social and political commentator, and an innovative economic thinker.” Click here to read the full review.
Nilekani will be in Toronto on May 4 and 5 to promote his book in the Canadian market. His visit will include local and national media interviews (BNN, Canada AM, Allan Gregg, The Globe and Mail, The South Asian LINK, the South Asia Focus, CBC’s Morning News, and Maclean’s), and three major events with Rotman, Schulich, and the Canada India Foundation. Nilekani was also interviewed on PBS by Charlie Rose and on CNN by Fareed Zakaria.
Imagining India is a fascinating look at the emerging economic giant. Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, a global leader in information technology, charts the ideas that are crucial to India’s current infrastructure revolution and quest for universal literacy, urbanization, and unification. He argues that only a safety net of ideas—from social security to public health to the environment—can transcend political agendas and safeguard India’s economic future.
Alice Munro is a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize
Alice Munro, already one of the most honoured writers in Canada, is one of 14 finalists for the $108,000 Man Booker International Prize, awarded every two years.
In Canada, Munro, as reported in the Toronto Star, has won the Governor General’s Award three times, as well as two Scotiabank Giller Prizes, an O. Henry Award, the Trillium Book Award, the Jubilee Prize, and the Libris Award, among many others. It has been ironically suggested that as such a perennial winner, she no longer qualifies for new prizes. Abroad, acclaim continues to pour in. Both Runaway and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award, Caribbean and Canada region, and were chosen as one of the Books of the Year by The New York Times.
Penguin will publish Carried Away, a selection of Alice Munro’s stories in September 2009.
Patrick French’s The World Is What It Is wins the 2008 NBCC Award for Biography
A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2008, Patrick French’s The World Is What It Is (9780670045297 / Viking Canada) has won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award in the biography category. This biography of V.S. Naipaul was also shortlisted for the 2008 Samuel Johnson Prize.
The World Is What It Is begins with a richly detailed portrait of Naipaul’s childhood in Trinidad—a boy born to an Indian family who wins a scholarship to Oxford at the age of 17. He achieves his first literary success in London in the 1950s, but homesickness almost defeats Naipaul, his narrow escape aided by Patricia Hale, an Englishwoman who will stand by him for four decades, even as he embarks on a 24-year love affair that feeds his dizzying creativity. Informed by exclusive access to the subject’s private papers and personal recollections, French’s revelatory biography does full justice to an enigmatic genius.
Two Penguin titles longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction
The Orange Prize for Fiction, the UK’s only annual book award for fiction written by a woman, announced the 2009 longlist. Debra Adelaide’s The Household Guide To Dying (9780670068647 / Viking Canada / on sale April 28) was longlisted, along with Blonde Roots by Bernadine Evaristo (9781594488634 / Riverhead) (click here to see the full list). Now in its fourteenth year, the Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.
In The Household Guide To Dying, Delia has made a living writing a series of hugely successful modern household guides. As the book opens, she is not yet forty, but has only a short time to live. She is preoccupied with how to prepare herself and her family for her death, from writing lists to teaching her young daughters how to make the perfect cup of tea. What she needs is a manual – exactly the kind she is the expert at writing.
Award-winning writer Bernardine Evaristo’s novel Blonde Roots asks: What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans? How would that have changed the ways that people justified their inhuman behavior? And how would it inform our cultural attitudes and the insidious racism that still lingers—and sometimes festers—today?
Hamish Hamilton Canada: A New Page in Canadian Publishing
March 3 marked the official launch of Hamish Hamilton Canada, the first literary imprint to launch in Canada in over fifteen years, with an inaugural list that includes such luminaries as Phillip Roth, Zadie Smith, Arundhati Roy, and a much anticipated novel from David Cronenberg. The launch party at Nyood in Toronto was attended by Penguin Chairman John Makinson and generated a buzz that will reverberate around Canada for years to come. Penguin marketing, working with international award-winning agency BBDO, has created a marketing campaign to distill the essence of the Hamish Hamilton Canada brand and reflect the eclectic and selective nature of this list. The campaign includes national print advertising, and in-store promotion with over 60 participating accounts, including a limited time offer to get a free Hamish Hamilton Canada tote bag with the purchase of any of the first three books. Congratulations to Publisher David Davidar, Executive Editor Nicole Winstanley and the entire Penguin team.
Said Globe Books Editor Martin Levin in his blog:
It was a good and lively party, with mercifully brief and to-the-point speeches, and it’s especially warming to see a new imprint from a major publisher (the last such introduced in Canada, if I heard correctly, was some time back in the Cenozoic era). For those of you who may not know, Hamish Hamilton is a venerable and selective eponymous imprint founded in London in 1931. (Actually, it’s not precisely eponymous, since the founder’s name was Jamie Hamilton, but since Hamish is a Gaelic version of same, eminently and alliteratively understandable.)
The series begins promisingly this spring with titles from the Scot Ali Smith (reviewed in The Globe already) and Canadians Colin McAdam and Kim Echlin (both to be reviewed in the next few weeks). A firmly international sensibility will guide the project, as will the more than capable stewardship of Nicole Winstanley. Look for the likes of the brilliant and fierce Zadie Smith as the series unfolds.
The full Globe and Mail blog article can be read here.
Be sure to visit www.hamishhamilton.ca for more information.
*Photo by Aaron Lynett
Anticipation mounts for Michael Ignatieff’s True Patriot Love
Plans are well underway for the much anticipated release of Michael Ignatieff’s True Patriot Love (9780670069729 / Viking Canada / on sale April 21), including events with the author in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Victoria, and various other cities. Press coverage booked to date includes a first serial excerpt with Maclean’s (on stands April 16th), excerpt and interview in the Globe and Mail, cover stories and excerpts with Zoomer magazine and Reader’s Digest, interviews with More magazine, Costco Connection and Canada AM, and coverage on CBC’s The National as well as interviews with the CBC’s Shelagh Rogers, Michael Enright and Jian Ghomeshi.
In 1872, the author’s great-grandfather George Monro Grant set out with Sandford Fleming to map out the railway line that would link Canada ocean to ocean. Michael Ignatieff recreates his journey, seeing the country through his ancestor’s optimistic vision and tracing how that vision filtered through his illustrious family tree. The Grants’ engagement with the idea of Canada’s place in the world includes his uncle George Grant’s classic, Lament for a Nation, and his own more confident view of Canada’s potential. Recalling the novelistic flair of The Russian Album, Ignatieff blends history and love of country and tradition into an unforgettable family memoir.
Pre-publication buzz for Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy by Isadore Sharp
How did a child of immigrants, starting with no background in the hotel business, create the world’s most admired and successful hotel chain? And how has Four Seasons grown dramatically, over nearly a half century, without losing its focus on exceptional quality and unparalleled service?
Isadore Sharp, founder of the Four Seasons hotel chain, answers these questions in his engaging memoir, which doubles as a powerful guide for leaders in any field.
Portfolio US has just concluded a major sale of the book to Japan and Canadian publicity includes events at the Rotman School of Management, Holy Blossom Temple, an event with Heather Reisman, a four part serial excerpt in The Globe and Mail, and coverage in Maclean’s, Toronto Life, and more. The book is on-sale across North America on May 5.
In Four Seasons (9780670069217 / Viking Canada), readers will be fascinated to learn how Four Seasons does it, year after year, in more than 30 countries around the world.
