Alice Petersen on 12 or 20 questions

rob mclennan's "12 or 20 questions" blog feature has become a fixture in Canada's literary conversation, giving readers a look inside the writing lives of Canadian authors.

This month, Alice Petersen, author of the QWF winning short story collection All the Voices Cry, took on questions about the smells that remind her of home, and her reaction to seeing her first book in print.

Read the full article on rob's blog, here.

The Best Reading of 2012: The Toronto Star

Well the press offices have officially gone dark for a couple of days, but we're re-emerging for just a second with a little Christmas candle: yesterday both Alice Petersen's All the Voices Cry and Anakana Schofield's Malarky were listed as two of the Toronto Star's Best Books of 2012. Congratulations to Alice and Anakana, a Merry Boxing Week to those of you braving the crush, and a very happy new year to you all. Peace and love (and good reviews!),
Tara.


Malarky by Anakana Schofield 
"Unaccountably overlooked by this year’s prize juries, Anakana Schofield’s ribald story of an Irish farmwife’s descent into late-life cougardom and mental breakdown is a standout debut and one of the best Canadian novels of the year: the sort of book that forces you to read it over again as soon as you finish."

All the Voices Cry by Alice Petersen

"Why does Canada produce so many great short story writers? For the record here’s another. Alice Petersen’s first collection reads like the work of someone who is already a master of the form, her writing dense with understatement, subtlety and ambiguity."

Round up, round down ...

Hi, folks, and happy Thursday. Lots of little publicity hits buzzing around the office the past week—must be the unseasonally warm weather, makes 'em breed?—so I thought I'd line some up for you. Like the bees in Black Books. Nutritious, delicious, pairs well with absinthe. Here we go!

Strange Voyages and Joyce Carol Oates: Nadine McInnis featured on Hazlitt's Shelf Esteem series
Join the author of Blood Secrets as she discusses her book collecting habits, her favourite poetry collections and novellas, and her unexpected fondness for travel narrative.

All the Voices Cry makes Steven Beattie's Books-of-the-Year list at Quill & Quire
"Finely crafted and pared down to their bare essentials," sings the heavenly Quire: "These are stories that work on multiple levels, and continue to divulge their secrets after several rereadings."

Malarky is one of The Georgia Straight's Best Books of the Year ... thrice over.

Quoth Alexander Varty: "The immensely gifted Anakana Schofield’s vivid study of a middle-aged Irish housewife’s nervous breakdown has a huge heart and a fierce brain; Malarky is, by a wide margin, the most memorable fiction I’ve read this year." (... I think the phrase is boo-ya?) Malarky is the first-ever book to be selected by three of the Straight's annual round-up critics, with other endorsements coming from Michael Hingston ("Joe Biden may have done more to repopularize the word malarky this year, but Schofield’s electrifying novel will leave a much longer impression"), and Books Editor Brian Lynch ("a fully realized marvel  ... raw, sad, funny ... and yet consistently surprising"). 

Emma Donoghue Comes Out in Favour of Malarky

No link for this one, but the author of ROOM has said this about Our Woman's saga: "A caustic, funny and moving fantasia of an Irish mammy going round the bend."

All the Voices Cry YES! Announcing Alice Petersen, Winner of the QWF First Fiction Prize

Winner of the Concordia University
First Book Prize

It was with great delight that we caught Alice Petersen's name floating around the twitterverse this morning, and it's with even greater delight that we announce her 2012 story collection (All the Voices Cry) was last night declared the winner of the QWF's First Book Prize. Congratulations to Alice! Twas well-earned, madam. To celebrate, here's a teeny tiny excerpt from one of my favourite stories in the collection. All the Voices Cry is also this month's featured book on the Biblioasis website, so should you desire, it can be yours for 30% off. Enjoy!

from All the Voices Cry

Winner of the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize

"Scottish Annie"

ON SATURDAYS AT FIVE Archie McLean visits the retirement home to take requests at the piano. Each week the seniors try to trip him. “Robins and Roses,” they’ll say, naming some old tune that they used to dance to on the wind-up. They can’t catch Archie out. Archie knows them all and he sings in that old-fashioned radio way, leaning back on the piano stool, nodding to the ladies. At the end, he opens the piano lid right up and plays an extra fast bumblebee song. I’m usually out in the garden when Archie gets back after the tea and scones, and then he leans over the hedge to tell me about it. 

“Well Ruby,” says Archie, “I think we wowed them today.” It always makes me laugh. You would think he was a whole orchestra the way he talks. Archie is a nice young man. Genteel, my mother would have said. We play Scrabble on Wednesday nights. He’s been my neighbour for nearly fifteen years now. Back in March, he celebrated his fiftieth birthday, and I made an eggless chocolate cake, because Archie doesn’t believe in exploiting the hens. He served me a slice and said, “so when’s your birthday, Ruby?” 

“Get away with you,” I said, “a lady doesn’t admit to her age until she’s in for a telegram from the Queen. All I’m saying is I’m not old enough to be your mother. Have some more cake.” 

Last week, when he had finished toting up the score for the word umbilical, Archie told me that he has to move, because his landlord wants to sell the house. I was very sorry to hear that. Archie has been a great friend to me. 

After mother died, three years ago next February, Archie got me started volunteering at the retirement home. He said it was better than hiding in the potting shed. At the time, I said that I wasn’t hiding and that I’d think about it. Now I take the seniors out on wee trips in the car. Archie is the piano man and I am the driving jukebox. They tell me where they want to go, and I take them, within four hours and within reason. Often they like to go back to where they were born, or where they’ve had picnics in the past. One afternoon I drove ninety-year-old Willy Callaghan to Oamaru. We idled outside a renovated villa on Vine Street while Mr. Callaghan wept for the loss of the corrugated iron sheets on the roof and the front room where he had been born. I said that a nice conservatory full of tomatoes was nothing to cry about. Still, I let him have a good old weep, and then we went for an ice cream and came home. It takes me a year to get through all the seniors, so some of the older ones don’t come more than once. 

When I arrived up at the home last week, Mrs. Webster was waiting for me in the foyer, all wrapped up warm for her outing. She always wears mohair cardies that her niece from up Ranfurly way knits for her. The light catches in the hairs. 

“You’re glowing, Mrs. Webster,” I said, and she was pleased. Mohair keeps your chest warm, but it’s not cheap, and it gets stringy. Better to mix it with a bit of wool. 

“Anyway,” I said, “where are we off to today?” Mrs. Web- ster wanted to go to the nursery at Blueskin Bay, to buy a miniature rose for her bedroom. She had a coupon from the paper. They do love coupons. So off we went, out through Pine Hill and over the motorway to the nursery. She got a wee apricot rose to match her curtains. I almost got one too, but then I thought it was silly to get over-excited about plants that don’t survive the winter. 

Mrs. Webster was sitting in the car looking at the rose bush on her lap. Then she looked at me quite shyly. 

“Do you think we could take the road along the coast, through Seacliff?” she asked. 

“Of course we can, Mrs. Webster,” I said. “My wish is your command.” So away we went, winding along above the sea, past the rabbit holes in the yellow clay banks and the twisted macrocarpa trees along the fence lines. 

“Seacliff always makes me sad,” I said, just to make conversation. It’s the kind of thing that people say when they drive through Seacliff. The paddocks there fall so steeply towards the sea that it’s hard to tell how a sheep might hold on in the wind, let alone a farmer on a bike. And you think you might hear some ghost from the asylum wailing away in the breeze. It was a grand old place, the asylum at Seacliff, majestic and crenellated. They had proper lunatics in those days.

Manitoba Steps Up; Petersen Dives Under

See that guy? Right there? He's wondering
when his Spring 2013 catalogue will arrive.

Greetings and salutations, my friends. Three new morsels for the BiblioBlog: first, a delightful explication of Craig Boyko's Psychology and Other Stories from The Winnipeg Review; second, Manitoba's Canadian Materials has assessed Mike Barnes's The Reasonable Ogre, and its contribution to YA & teen lit; and third, Alice Petersen's native land has coughed up its first review (in The Landfall). 

So what exactly do they all say? For starters: "All the Voices Cry announces itself early on as something of a gift ... The authorial voice, far from being elusive, is sharply, poetically present."

Yup.

"The Reasonable Ogre … is intellectually engaging and filled with haunting pieces of art that beautifully complement each story." 

Yup.

"Bokyo’s insights and criticisms into psychology as a profession are biting, but never disrespectful … This shows Boyko’s control over subtlety and his talent as a writer of nuance. Psychology and Other Stories tickled my cynicism just right."

Anybody else have a cynical bone? Tee hee.

New Manse News

"Fans of satirical fiction will love this book," the National Post said of C.P. Boyko's Psychology and Other Stories last weekend: "so will anyone who has reclined on a therapist’s couch, or taken a psychology course from a larger-than-life professor with obvious neuroses, or read a self-help book by an author whose biography reveals them to be a total mess."

Dan Wells and Chris Andrechek
wrestle the Counter of Death 

The BiblioManse Office in its
Final Hours

The New (Blue!) Office

First Books on the Shelves. Does
anyone else smell poetry?

We know something about total messes over here at the new Bibliomanse. Oh yes we do. That's why we've let a WHOLE WEEK go by without talking to you about the VERY EXCITING THINGS that are happening, will happen, HAVE happened, to our VERY EXCITING authors. We've had a spate of reviews and we have people at festivals and gosh darnit we've even had an award nod. And, of course (of course? really? is it real?), we've moved. Last Friday was the Great Migration. We've been phoneless and internetless to varying degrees over the past four days. Which is just my way of saying, er, if you've perhaps been trying to get in touch and found us slightly less responsive than usual, please do just give another poke and we'll get back to you as soon as we're able. It's been, er, zany. (Imagine steel desks with undersides like the death star and an old cash counter from the Bay [and then from the old shop on Ouellette, and most recently from the basement of Dan's house], an old cash counter made entirely of pressboard, glue and maybe some secretly of anvils—imagine all that good stuff being discombobulated and hauled around some staggering corners on steepish stairs, and then imagine something of the 10,000 books in said basement, and you've got an inkling of our week.)
In any event. I apologize for not giving each of these a proper write-up, but here are a few of the wonderful happenings that we've neglected in our boxish and internet-starved state. We'll have pictures of the new office-in-progress up soon. Till then!

Here's the little swooning-on-the-couch for Boyko that ran in the Post on Saturday (what a glower)! 

Here's an interview that David Helwig did with Seth for CBC PEI last week. 

Here are Mark Kingwell's "Seven Pathways to the Stars," which peeped out this Saturday in the Globe, and here is his upcoming IFOA interview with John Ralston Saul.

Here is Alice Petersen's All the Voices Cry reviewed in the Montreal Review of Books. And HERE—ding ding, exciting!—is the press release announcing that Alice Petersen has been shortlisted for the QWF's First Book Prize! Congratulations to Alice from all of us. 

Here are Rebecca Rosenblum's first and second appearances at the Vancouver International Writers Festival, starting today (the Human Carnival with Anne Fleming, AL Kennedy, and Jessica Westhead, then an Afternoon Tea with Steven Heighton, Linda Svendsen, Bill Gaston, Lorna Crozier and J. Jill Robinson);

Here is Anakana Schofield's appearance tonight at said VIWF, in the always-spectacular Literary Caberet (brought to you by Joe Biden—wait, what?—and for which she did an interview on CiTR); 

and here are her appearances at IFOA!

Tonight's an event night here at HQ, with Eugene McNamara reading from Dreaming of Lost America at 7 PM. RSVP on FaceBook today (now, always)—hope to see you soon!

Cook the Caboto Club Way - The Windsor Star

Biblioasis Typesetter & IT Saint
Chris Andrechek, flipping zucchini
crepes. Chris, our resident man
of all seasons, is also a chef.

Well these are beautiful days over in BiblioLand. The sun is glinting off the wet roads like (ugh) ice, and temperatures might be plunging to near-freezing at night, but we were warm by our griddles and chafing dishes last night: we're proud to say that Cooking with Giovanni Caboto launched to great local enthusiasm, with a packed joint nibbling happily on Chris Andrechek's creations, and we were greeted this morning by a full-page spread in the Food section of The Windsor Star. In the area? Pick up a copy. It's got neat stats about the book, a seasonally appropriate recipe sample (can anyone say pumpkin?), a couple beaut photos of Gino, Mauro, and chefs Steven and Remo. Otherwise you can sneak a peek online. 

Editor Gino Piazza (left), and
Photographer Maura
Chechi (right). Where
would we be without them?

In other BiblioNews, we had a thoughtful meditation from Daniel Green run this weekend on experimentalism and Anakana Schofield's Malarky, and a shout-out for Alice Petersen from Stephen Beattie over at That Shakespearean Rag. We're basking in the digi-love these days. Keep it coming! And keep an eye out for Anakana at the Victoria Book Festival, Wordstock, and the Vancouver International Writers Festival over the next few weeks.

Families and Friends, Fields and Streams: Alice Petersen in the Globe

Well, as we head into the salad days of summer, what better than to think back on the glories of spring? The Globe & Mail has run a delightful story-by-story summation of Alice Petersen's All the Voices Cry. My only beef (if beef you can call it—this may be the lean turkey slice of complaints) is how coyly it refuses to cough up a pull quote. I'm forced to give you a spackling of phrases. What does the Globe like about Alice? Her writing is: 

• sharp
• arresting
• carefully built
• nuanced, 
• and (my favourite), full of bursty "descriptive panache"! 

For those of you (like me) who are fans of this particular metaphor, the avocado-froggy innards got its props, as did the cows-as-vanilla-fudge (speaking of beef). Alice will also be touring with the fall contingent this season. Look out, Ontario! More on events in your neighbourhood very very shortly. And should you find yourself looking this holiday weekend for "an amiable reminder of both how unlikely and how seemingly inevitable each human life is," well, this is just to say that the Globe has a sharp arresting carefully built nuanced and bursty recommendation, just for you.

Poop and Bumfuggery

Part I: Bumfugging

So "Poop and Bumfuggery" is perhaps not the best title for a post about two really very lovely reviews that have come in over the past several days, but I had to do something to win back your love. Poor Thirsty! So content-parched—so dry—so, yes, so constipated of late. But no more! The gates have flexed, the skies openeth, and content shall be, let's say, regular, from this point forward. (Which is not to imply that good reviews are the Metamucil of publicity blogs: heavens. That would be taking the metaphor too far.) 

Er. Anyhow and bibliobowels aside, readers of the Star will have noticed that Malarky got another ace review courtesy of Georgie Binks. It commences: "When the kids leave home and you’re left talking to yourself day in and day out, it’s comforting to let someone else’s inner monologue take over your brain." 

Malarky-catharsis? 

Awesome. 

Even better, perhaps, is the pull quote: "A fascinating voyage into the mind of a woman embattled ... absolutely beautiful."— (Those of you who have read Malarky will know where the bumfuggery comes in.) And for the full review you can of course click here. 

Part II: Poop

This post's colonic trajectory is owed in part to a review that came in this morning from momosyllabic, which is the blog of a mother, a self-confessed scatologist, and a friend of Alice Petersen. I'm not sure Alice is going to be super-thrilled about me spreading the word even further—sticking my virtual heels in it I guess—but, thanks to momosyllabic, there's a now an oh-bollocks-sitting-in-poop story circulating about her on the internet. Yup. Happily the review that goes with it is pretty swell: 

[All the Voices Cry] presents characters humbled by circumstance ... These women are fantastically ambivalent even as Alice has them experience the most profound emotional moments in human life .... There are fantastic words evoking far-flung locales ... Alice Petersen’s plots move with a quick, light foot through the most embattled terrain of human relationships.

What's that? The book is fantastic? Yep. In fact it's fantastic twice over. Adjectivally and adverbially fantastic. And as for the poop story, well, you can go roll in that sh!t on your own time. (Myself I'm a fan of any review that can get poop, Keats, and the word "plangent" within two sentences of one another.)

Alice Petersen's Short Story Playlist

Morning, all, and a happy fifth of July. Wanted to take a moment and point your digital eyeballs to the guest post Alice has done for Kerry Clare over on the 49th Shelf. It's a fun exercise--which Canadian stories have stayed with you, and why?--though it's hard to imagine better picks than some of hers. (Hey, Alice! Which Canadian short stories have made it all the way to New Zealand with you this summer?)   

This Weekend in Reviews

The LA Review of Books reviewed Attack of the Copula Spiders this weekend saying "For the budding writer, Attack of the Copula Spiders offers an excellent primer on the basics; the practiced writer will glean so much more from Glover’s wonderful literary experience."

The Big Dream was featured on The Quarterly Conversation today: "The prose in these 13 stories," says Jeff Bursey, " contains rueful truths...swift portraits...and depths of feeling"

Alice Petersen's All the Voices Cry was reviewed on goodreports.net, the conclusion: "All the Voices Cry has to be counted one of the most assured short story debuts in recent years."

Last week Petersen was author of the "Old Book, New Author" column in the National Post: Alice's take on Russell Hoban's post apocalyptic world.

After Congress: One Complete Voyage.

What's better than coming home after Congress and discovering a pile of happy reviews? The fact that my plants aren't dead is pretty good but this may be even better. First and foremost, we have Douglas Glover's Attack of the Copula Spiders, which after just shy of three chapters won the heart of Charles Wilkins at The Globe and Mail. Still a skeptic re: Spiders? Wilkins was too, & confessed to cracking it with a How to write a novel, yes yes, well well, grumble snuffle snort. But (& quoth my gran), there's no greater zealot than a convert: 

As I absorbed the book’s title piece, "Attack of the Copula Spiders," an eloquent little commentary on writing well in the age of Facebook, I felt a first pang of regret over my churlish resistance to a book that would ultimately reward me with its erudition and democratic spirit. Such was the pace of my conversion, that by the time I reached the penultimate chapter ... I had decided that every literate person in the country should be reading Glover’s essays and was fixing to present them to my eldest daughter.

It's possible that coming home to Copula Spiders is even better than coming home to that review. We'll have to ask the eldest Ms. Wilkins how she liked it. 


Next up we have a run on Alice Petersen, whose All the Voices Cry is splashed on blogs across the country this week. Yesterday Steven Beattie featured Alice's "Neptune's Necklace" as Day 30 of his 31 days of short stories, commenting on mood, place, and the subtle power of setting to shape subtext. (Sssssuper stuff.) For those of you who are curious. here's the section from Alice's interview to which he's referring:

2. “Neptune’s Necklace” is set by Aramoana Beach, Otago, where in 1990 thirteen people were shot dead by a lone gunman. The Aramoana massacre is now famous as New Zealand’s worst modern act of gun violence. Was the choice of this setting deliberate? What does it contribute to your story?

Aramoana Beach, Otago, NZ

Yes, this was a deliberate choice. I was twenty when that tragedy occurred and it really shook us all up. Before that, Aramoana had been known for its triumphant rejection of plans to build a smelter down there on the salt flats at the entrance to the Otago harbour. It’s a small settlement, but a strong one. It’s a place that makes you think. You are beside the sea and it’s all brisk and fresh and there are plenty of shells to pick up, but there’s this sadness in the air. I did not want to write about the massacre itself, so I made a parallel narrative, as my own act of memorial.

 "Neptune's Necklace" is a lovely story and well worth further attention. As Steven Beattie puts it:

It is coincidental that I read the interview with Petersen prior to reading her story. But how does a knowledge of Aramoana Beach’s history change the effect of the story, if at all? How would one react to the melancholy aspect of the tale if one thought it had no real world resonance? Does the knowledge of the 1990 massacre lend Hattie’s story additional gravitas? Does it tug at a reader differently? ... Petersen describes the setting of the massacre without ever mentioning the massacre. The story stands on its own. Armed with the background knowledge of what the story’s setting implies, how does that change a reader’s experience of it? Since it is impossible to erase the knowledge of what the setting implies, it is impossible for me to answer these questions. I would be interested to find out, however.

So would I. 


(As an aside, the first time I spoke with Alice on the phone about this book I swore she was saying, not "Neptune's Necklace," but "Nixon's Necklace," which I think would make a great followup piece. Alice? You game? Something at the Watergate hotel?)


Next we have The Winnipeg Review, who's to be commended for selecting a marvellous passage that really does showcase Alice's imagistic flare. Poor froggy! Here's their conclusion:

Petersen’s almost strange observations create a collection of realistic stories about loss, love, restlessness, and freedom— above all, it is a collection of decisions. Written in easily-managed chunks, All the Voices Cry could be read in spare moments, or, as the easy prose tempts you, all at once. The decision is up to you.

Last but not least we have the indefatigable Kerry Clare, who's given us a strong two cents on Alice at Pickle Me This. "The book is slim," she observes, "the stories are subtle and quiet, and their impact is not always immediate" - but "All the Voices Cry is a collection you might want to meditate on, its pages getting dog-earned and stained with coffee rings as the summer wears on."


It's worth noting that a few reviewers, including Kerry and Kirsty Hourd over in Winnipeg, have commented on how pleasant it is to read a series of what can only be called short short stories. 5 pages, 7 pages, and so forth. Therefore to conclude I thought I'd leave you with some of Alice's own words on the subject:

My ideal reader is sitting in the car waiting to pick up the kids. He has a small coffee at hand and ten minutes to spare and he’s already read his favourite page of the car manual. There’s nothing else in the glove compartment except All the Voices Cry and some gum. Or maybe she has ten minutes tucked up in bed before she knows she is going to zonk out, so she looks in my book to find a story that will take ten minutes to read. These are the folks who value the compact quality of the short story. Just ten minutes, time for one story, one brief excursion to somewhere else. One complete voyage. 

We hope you've enjoyed your trip.


Oh yes. In case you're one of the 2 people who haven't seen me splashing it all over facebook, Anakana Schofield is this month's cover girl at Quill and Quire. Take a look. Picture's there at the bottom left. You know, where you see that sultry stare.

Nests, sticks, sweat, stones, and - Congress?

Good morning, all. We've been mired in trade show preparations this past week at the Bibliomanse, with Congress coming up this weekend in Kitchener and BEA the week after that. Storing up on lozenges and caffeine pills. Which is why--oh shame!--I haven't yet pointed you all to the lovely series of blogs that Alice Petersen is doing this week for The Afterword. So! Here we go & here I am, pointing it out with my digital walking-stick. They're there. By the clump of wild carrots, next to the hickory stump, just north of the ...


Sigh. 


Yesterday's post was especially nice. Torturous but nice. Between that and the sun and booking a ferry ticket from Victoria to Seattle for Mme Malarky's next tour installment, I'm feeling a little more--I was going to say Wordsworthian but that's not right, I think someone like Ernest Thompson Seton is closer to the mark--a little more woodsy than one ought to feel, heading to an academic conference. But if you're there, do stop by and say hello--we'll be reporting live from WLU throughout the weekend and early next week--booth number one. Starting bright and early Saturday morning. See you there! 


Objectively speaking one should mention there are some good deals to be had. Is your CNQ subscription about to expire? Breathe some life into it cheap. Ridiculously cheap. I mean, we were cheap before, but this is downright floozyish. What else? Sign up for our mailing list and get free swag. An issue of CNQ, a chance to win a prize-pack of ten books, the pleasure of bimonthly and quasi-harrassing emails from yours truly, flogging events at a TOWN NEAR YOU ... what's there to lose? TELL YOUR FRIENDS. 

Angel Quires

Afternoon, folks. April was kind to us over at Quill and Quire, with reviews coming out today for both Alice Petersen and Douglas Glover. Of Alice--who has her Montreal launch coming up at Atwater Library on May 7th--they say she "has produced a first collection of stories that, in its depth and quiet wisdom, is reminiscent of the work of another famous Canadian writer named Alice." All the Voices Cry they call "a beautiful tribute to human fragility and the inevitability of change." And of Doug Glover's Attack of the Copula Spiders they say quite simply:

Glover practises what he prays for in others. His own prose is clean and polished, thoughtful and intriguing, accessible yet serious .... erudite books such as Attack of the Copula Spiders are always useful as roadmaps for developing better readers and writers. Now if we could only get the world to read them carefully.

We couldn't agree more.

Don't forget, all you Toronto Bibliofans, that Alex Boyd's launch will start at the Dora Keogh in about 4 hours. Poesy and beer! And for those of you who already have the shakes for our next Toronto event, here's a little shot to steady the nerves. Courtesy of Open Book Toronto and featuring the marvellous Mike Barnes.