More Victoria Butler shortlist coverage...

An article published yesterday in the Victoria Times-Colonist.

Husband and wife vie for city book prize

Katherine Dedyna

Times Colonist

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

An exciting literary evening will climax Oct. 17 at the Union Club when one of five local writers wins the $5,000 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize.

"If people want tickets, they should get them quickly," says Victoria Book Prize Society president Bess Jillings, noting only 200 of the $10 tickets remain available.

The event features readings by the five finalists, refreshments and a chance to mingle with the authors and have books autographed by finalists.

The 2007 finalists include a husband and wife as well as last year's winner. They are:

- Bill Gaston, author of Gargoyles, a book of edgy short stories nominated last year as best English-language fiction for the Governor General's Award. According to publisher House of Anansi, gargoyles are "physical manifestations of the disfigurements and contortions to which we human beings subject ourselves."

- PK Page, one of Canada's most acclaimed poets, for Hand Luggage, her poetic account of her years spent travelling as the wife of a diplomat. It's a book of "penetrating observations and probing questions arising from richly varied cultural experience frankly and lovingly examined," says a review by Stan Dragland on the website of publisher Porcupine Quill.

- Patricia Young, known previously for her poetry, for Airstream, 14 short stories published by Biblioasis that, according to the publisher, "explore the small victories and lurching disappointments" of everyday life in unsentimental style. To wit: "a house fire sets in motion the end of a marriage as a couple re-examine the meaning of truth and commitment."

- Terence Young (Patricia's husband), a St. Michaels University School teacher, for his book of poetry, Moving Day. Publisher Signature Editions notes that "some poems touch on the dreamy qualities of memory, its tendency to slip into the magical, and still others turn a quirky eye onto child-rearing, education, home repair." Young is a previous winner for his novel, After Goodlake's.

- Mark Zuehlke, last year's winner for Holding Juno -- his view of the Normandy invasion -- this year goes back to the War of 1812 with For Honour's Sake, a non-fiction account published by Knopf Canada. "This is a really readable history of that war," says Jillings.

Zuehlke explores who really won through "never-before-seen archival material" and covers not only the horrors of war but the unsatisfactory negotiations in Ghent that ended it but have resonated for nearly two centuries, says the publisher's website.

The five finalists were winnowed from about 50 entries. Local authors, who did not make the cut include Silken Laumann (Child's Play; Random House); Terry Glavin (Waiting for the Macaws; Penguin) and Katy Hutchinson (Walking After Midnight; Raincoast).

The jury will be revealed on the evening of the awards; MC will be John Gould, a past Giller Prize nominee and University of Victoria writing instructor.

The Victoria Butler Book Prize is funded by the city of Victoria, with administrative and some event costs covered by philianthropist Brian Butler of Butler Brothers Supplies. Other contributing sponsors include the Union Club, the Greater Victoria Public Library and the Magnolia Hotel.

Tickets are available at Munro's, Bolen Books, Ivy's or by calling 592-1464.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007

Victoria Butler Prize News Release

For those who don't know, Patricia Young's Airstream made the short-list. It's a stacked one: Gaston, Page, Zuehlke, and Patricia's husband Terence. Anyone in the area might want to consider attending: from what I understand it's a pretty swell event.

Tickets on Sale for Victoria Butler Book Prize Awards

Date: Tuesday, October 9, 2007 For Immediate Release

VICTORIA, BC — Tickets are now on sale for the 4^th Annual City of Victoria Butler Book Prize gala awards presentation to be held at the Union Club of British Columbia on Wednesday, October 17, 2007. The City’s $5,000 prize is awarded annually to a Greater Victoria author for the best book published in the preceding year in the categories of poetry, non-fiction, children’s books, fiction and biography.

The 2007 finalists include:

Bill Gaston Gargoyles (fiction), published by House of Anansi

PK Page Hand Luggage (poetry), published by Porcupine’s Quill

Patricia Young Airstream (fiction), published by Biblioasis

Terence Young Moving Day (poetry), published by Signature Editions

Mark Zuehlke For Honour’s Sake (non-fiction), published by Knopf Canada

The winner will be selected by three jurors, comprised of professionals from the writing, library, and book- selling community.

Open to the public, the event will feature readings by the five finalists and will provide guests with the opportunity to meet the writers and have their books signed. This year’s Master of Ceremonies is John Gould, an award-winning author, a teacher of creative fiction at the University of Victoria, and a past Giller Prize nominee.

Tickets are $10 and can be purchased in advance at Bolen Books at Hillside Mall, Ivy’s Book Shop on Oak Bay Avenue and Munro’s Books on Government Street, or by calling 592-1464. Tickets will also be available for purchase at the door. Refreshments will be served and there will be a no-host bar.

What: 4^th Annual City of Victoria Butler Book Prize Awards

When: Wednesday, October 17, 2007, Event starts at 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m.

Where: Union Club of British Columbia, 805 Gordon Street

Founded in 2004, the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize is a partnership between the City of Victoria and Brian Butler of Butler Brothers Supplies and is sponsored by the Greater Victoria Public Library, the Magnolia Hotel and Spa and the Union Club of British Columbia. The Victoria Book Prize Society establishes the policy and criteria for the prize, appoints the jury and administers the competition.

- 30 -

For More Information:

Gail Price Douglas, Community Development Planner Bess Jillings, President

Parks, Recreation and Community Development Department Victoria Book Prize Society

(250) 361-0358 (250) 592-1464

Airstream Review in Canadian Literature

A good review of Airstream in Canadian Literature. If you haven't picked up a copy at your local bookstore, or at the very least borrowed it from a library or friend, perhaps this and the Victoria Butler nomination will help you make the right decision.

Unfortunately, this review is also coupled with a poor review of Clark Blaise's latest, published by the Porcupine's Quill. Though we have no stake in this one -- beyond the fact that we first published one of the stories, The Sociology of Love, in the Biblioasis chapbook series -- Blaise is one of the most important Canadian writers of the last 40 years, and one of a handful -- along with Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant, and Norman Levine -- of the best short story writers in the country. This collects some of his best, along with a few new stories. In fact, the whole PQL Blaise project is a necessary purchase for any and all interested in short fiction, in Canada or elsewhere.

My own personal CanLit journey began with Blaise's Tribal Justice and North American education, his first two books, and still among the best collections of short fiction ever published in Canada. Understanding how one thing leads to another, I'm not at all sure that Biblioasis would exist today if I'd not read those collections.

Epiphany vs. Exploitation

Patricia Young (Author)

Airstream.

Buy this book from Amazon.ca

Clark Blaise (Author)

World Body: Selected Stories: 4. Porcupine's Quill

Buy this book from Amazon.ca

Reviewed by Jennifer Fraser

Airstream follows in the tradition of the Joycean epiphany, whereas World Body exploits both world and body. Patricia Young’s Airstream evokes through poetic language nuances of emotion leading to a decision; with each story one is startled by what Joyce would term the “revelation of the whatness of a thing.” Young has the command of language and the depth necessary to discover, as Joyce would put it, “the radiant soul” of “the commonest object” or person. Reminding the reader of the diverse characters of Dubliners, in Airstream, the narrators vary, and the voices in which they think and talk vary; thus, although not packed full of international reference, the fictions of Airstream are far more foreign than those of World Body. Dubliners explores paralysis; Airstream examines betrayal.

A child is abandoned by her mother: “Hanging upside down from her knees, she rolls her eyes back and the woodchip playground becomes a sky. She flutters her eyelids and chants the new unlisted number, hoping her mother can hear her wherever she is.” A 20-year-old falls in love and stops caring what people think: “every cell in my body was a small closed monastic room that had thrown its door open.” A widow explains: “Doctor Whitely suggested I write these letters. He said I needed to find a way to hold onto the love while letting go. I have no intention of letting go, but I agreed to write letters in exchange for sleeping pills.” A boy hides the toy gun he’s been given by his father: “Mick loves the gun and hates it, which is sort of how he feels toward his mother because of the divorce.” A foster-parent protects her child: “A metal plate slides down over my eyes and a horrible stink hits me like a blow to the head and something long and supple slips off a shore and into the water, and then my hands are around Butchy’s neck.” A hitchhiking teenager discovers: “The afternoon sun is a column of light pouring through the arched window at the end of the hallway, and she thinks she could tell this boy that she wishes she’d chanted at her father’s bedside, she wishes she’d chanted and sung and prayed day and night, she wishes she’d pressed her mouth to his ear and begged him not to give up, to please please hold on.” A young girl yells in defiance: “All the other girls wear leggings” and her Scottish immigrant mother answers back: “I don’t care if the Pope of Rome wears leggings.” A teenager faces her boyfriend: “Trudy accepted all of it. She looked into his eyes, the pupils like tiny imploding black holes, and she saw the truth clearly: She was as wired to Dill as he was to heroin.”

These quotes cannot capture the epiphanies which begin with the first word of the story and build with each phrase, sentence, paragraph. As suggested by her title, Young draws the surrounding oxygen in order to create each story’s combustion. The words of the stories are like air particles joining to form a high-altitude wind that blows apart characters’ beliefs and hopes. It is this wind that an agoraphobic woman blows when her husband announces he’s leaving her and the kids: “She might have been someone with somewhere to go, a woman who, having just applied nail polish, was blowing it dry.” The terrified becomes the brave.

When you finish a Patricia Young story, your bones hurt. You ache. And it’s because of the knowledge you now carry.

In contrast, the stories in World Body read like resumes, case studies or obituaries. Everyone is a stranger to everyone, even parents and children. Dr. Lander is trying to reach his son who has become an extremist Buddhist monk in Japan, but he’s attracted to his son’s girlfriend: “We were standing in a Tokyo subway, I was staring into cleavage and a warm zombie had just propositioned me.” Dr. Lander next visits a colleague who has left his wife and children to marry one of the breathtakingly beautiful women who are a dime a dozen in Blaise’s stories. Alas, Lander fails to secure her attentions for the night, so he takes next best: “And so that way they spent the night, his stiffened cock up the bitch’s cunt, her jaw clamped firmly on his wrist.” One realizes in World Bawdy that if gorgeous young women aren’t available, one always can consider their pets. Another narrator, Picard, breaks his own code of conduct in Jakarta and has sex with a 15-year-old prostitute three times, but unfortunately for him, her arm gets blown off in an uprising.

The tone and diction of World Body are often clinical and academic until an occasional twist at the story’s end. The narrators are so similar and the stories so formulaic in the pattern of sexual yearning and fulfillment or failed conquest that perhaps the collection should be thought of more as a repetitive novel. Sometimes the stories read as possibly brilliant academic essays on memory, but without the references or documentation, they seem a hodge-podge of ideas that tend to collapse when a woman “fresh from her shower” or a blushing “ex-student,” now elderly prof’s wife, enters the room.

Sometimes Blaise’s stories reach the rhythm of a meditation and resonate with striking insights as in “Kristallnacht”: “No guns, the violence is more intimate; chains swung in an arc then down on a skull.” Another powerful line is thought by a man who hears the story of a humiliated female stranger when they sit side by side on an airplane: “Leap, Saint Patty. I present myself to you like a tethered bull in a pasture. Rip my stupid throat out.” Unfortunately, these potent ideas do not receive exploration; they surface in the story only to sink again. These stories recall a tabloid where tawdry sex occurs in different cities that function as backdrop to the same shallow human gestures.

Airstream on Victoria Butler Shortlist

Patrica Young's collection of short fiction, Airstream, published last Spring, has been shortlisted for the Victoria Butler Book Prize. It's nice to see that this collection made the cut against a very stacked list, when it's been so regularly overlooked up to this point. The inaugural Metcalf-Rooke Award winner, it's one of the books I've been most proud to have been a part of here at Biblioasis, and that is really saying something.

The winner will be announced October 17th. The remaining short-listed authors and books are:

Bill Gaston. Gargoyles. (short fiction) Anansi
P.K. Page. Hand Luggage. (poetry Porcupine's Quill
Terence Young. Moving Day. Signature Editions
Mark Zuehlke. For Honour's Sake (Canadian Military History) Knopf.

A strong, varied list. Wonderful to see Terence, Patricia's husband, also on the list for his collection. He'll forgive me if I keep rooting for Patricia.

Airstream can be purchased directly from the Biblioasis website, on Abebooks, or here, at amazon.ca.

An additional note: I learned today that Patricia has had another story accepted for publication in the Best Canadian Short Fiction Anthology published by Oberon Press. Congratulations are also in order for that accomplishment.