Relit Awards

Two Biblioasis titles have made the Relit Longlist: Leon Rooke's Hitting the Charts: Selected Stories, in the story category, and David Helwig's Saltsea in the Novel. Disappointed not to see Patricia Young, Mike Barnes, and David Hickey there, as there's no doubt that each is better than many that have made the cut, but t' is the way of these things.

Speaking of those three, we'll be doing a new book by all of them in the next year or so: Patricia Youngs' first poetry collection in nearly a decade, a brilliant and very moving memoir on art, memory and madness called The Lily Pond by Mike Barnes, and David Hickey's wonderful first children's book.

Last year, both of our titles by Goran Simic made the Relit longlist, and his From Sarajevo, With Sorrow made the shortlist for poetry (losing out to Leon Rooke's first poetry collection, Hot Poppies.) For those of you who have not read From Sarajevo, With Sorrow, you should order yourself a copy. It's powerful stuff.

And while I'm speaking of '08 (& beyond), we have another Simic collection in the works, a selection of his best pre-war poems, which will be made available (with a few exceptions) for the first time in english. In Canada (& elsewhere in the english speaking world), Goran is known solely as a poet of war and immigration. But he had a varied and successful career as a writer and poet before the war, and we are hoping to broaden the understanding, appreciation and audience of Simic with this new book.