Meet Children's Author and Windsor Native Dave Atkinson, author or WEREDUCK @ Biblioasis!

Dear Windsor friends, 

Don't forget that children's author Dave Atkinson will be signing copies of his new middle grade comic-horror novel Wereduck at Biblioasis from 1-3 on Saturday April 11th. 

Kate's family has told her that on her thirteenth birthday she'll hear the "Whooooo" call of the moon, and howl back, and become a werewolf just like them. But she doesn't want to be a werewolf. She's always felt more like a duck. On the night of her thirteenth birthday, Kate stands near her family's cabin in the backwoods of New Brunswick and hears the moon calling - but it sounds like more of a "Whooooo?" as in "Who are you?" and Kate does what she's always wanted to do - she quacks. Quack, quack, quacks. Her family tries to understand Kate's new full-moon form, but they are busy integrating themselves with some new, edgy werewolves in town. Engaging, hilarious, and utterly believable, Wereduck is a thrilling addition to the were-canon.

Mia Couto a Finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize!

Big news at the Bibliomanse this morning. We were thrilled to learn that contemporary Mozambican author Mia Couto, whose novel Tuner of Silences we published in 2013, and whose Pensativities: Selected Essays we have forthcoming this spring, has just been named a finalist for the 2015 Man Booker International Prize.

The ten finalists for the prestigious biennial prize were announced this morning, a list that includes such luminaries as César Aira , Amitav Ghosh, Fanny Howe, and László Krasznahorkai. The authors come from ten countries with six new nationalities included on the list for the first time. They are from Libya, Mozambique, Guadeloupe, Hungary, South Africa and Congo.

The sixth Man Booker International Prize, which is worth £60,000, recognizes one writer for his or her achievement in fiction.

The 2015 Man Booker International Prize winner will be announced at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London on 19 May.

Congratulations to Mia Couto and his English translator David Brookshaw! 

The Search for Solace Within: Glad & Sorry Seasons gets a rave review from Prism

"Catherine Chandler’s Glad and Sorry Seasons is a successful illustration of the ways in which we as humans search for meaning in the face of passing time, the way in which we take pleasure and comfort in ordinary details and are simultaneously baffled and pained by them. The juxtaposition of artificiality, the poet’s expert use of constrained poetic forms—especially her characteristic sonnets—and a piercing sincerity makes this collection aching and beautiful."

Catherine Chandler's Glad & Sorry Seasons gets a rave review from Ruth Daniell in Prism International.  

A Painful Homecoming: Quill & Quire on Robyn Sarah's My Shoes Are Killing Me + Tour Dates

Montreal poet Robyn Sarah's  latest, My Shoes Are Killing Me, is featured in the new 80th anniversary April issue of Quill & Quire, where reviewer Jason Wiens calls it a collection of "poems recollecting emotion in the (in)tranquility of boomer twilight."  Here's more: 

The title of Robyn Sarah's My Shoes Are Killing Me speaks to the nostalgia that her poems explore: if nostalgia literally means "painful homecoming," then the "shoes" - read as metonymy for the past of her life's journey - cause at times painful reflection on the rest of the voyage...the frame widens to include the broader public spaces of Sarah's Montreal, then extends this frame further to the global scale....the nostalgia encompasses memories of the Jewish diaspora alongside the motto of the poet's province: "a past continuous, a past as presence. Je me souviens. A motto you can make your own."  

Robyn Sarah will reading this spring along the 401 in Ontario as well as the East coast and Montreal. For a listing of upcoming dates, see below. 

April 20th - Montreal, @ The Word, w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 21st - Kingston @ Novel Idea w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 22nd - Toronto @ Dora Keogh w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 23rd - Hamilton @ Bryan Prince Bookseller w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 24th - Windsor @ Biblioasis  w/ Robert Melançon and TBA
May 19th - Halifax @ Halifax Public Library w/  Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane
May 20th - Lunenburg @ Lexicon Books w/  Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane
May 21st - Moncton @ Attic Owl Reading Series w/ Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane

Among the Quick: Sum by Zachariah Wells reviewed in Quill & Quire + Tour Dates

Zachariah Wells's third poetry collection Sum was on deck in the 80th anniversary April issue of Quill & Quire, and reviewer Jason Wiens calls Wells "a poet who delights in sound patterns—internal and end rhyme in particular." Here's more:

Highlights include "Squalid," which recalls "the dollars / squandered down urinal drains in bars / of dubious repute," and "The Parkinsonian Reflexologist," which mixes cliches to sometimes hilarious effect: "if you get caught fucking the dog / deny the devil his Scooby-Doo." "Magic Man," in its celebration of the retired Blue Jays player John McDonald, is a paen to the underdog, one "Consigned to ride pine for lack of thunder / in his bat." Appropriating Hopkins's "The Windhover," Wells traces the inscape of this infielder, "sensei of the second sack."

Wells will be presenting from Sum as part of IFOA's 7th Annual Battle of the Bards on Wednesday, March 25th @ 7:30PM. He will also be embarking on an Ontario and Montreal tour with Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon in late April, as well as an East Coast tour with Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane in May. For full listings, see the dates below.

April 20th - Montreal, @ The Word, w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 21st - Kingston @ Novel Idea w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 22nd - Toronto @ Dora Keogh w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 23rd - Hamilton @ Bryan Prince Bookseller w/ Robyn Sarah and Robert Melançon
April 24th - Windsor @ Biblioasis  w/ Robert Melançon and TBA
May 9th - PEI @ Confederation Center Public Library w/ M. Travis Lane
May 19th - Halifax @ Halifax Public Library w/  Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane
May 20th - Lunenburg @ Lexicon Books w/  Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane
May 21st - Moncton @ Attic Owl Reading Series w/ Robyn Sarah and M. Travis Lane

The Book Doctor Is In

Ever wondered how a book is put together? Or how to repair that old volume you inherited from your grandmother? What about that stack of antique books that has been sitting in your basement—ever wonder whether they could be restored? The Book Doctor is here to answer all of these questions and more! Biblioasis would like to cordially invite you to drop by the shop, 1520 Wyandotte St. East, on Saturday March 28th, from 1-4 p.m., as world-class bookbinder and restorer Dan Mezza will be offering appraisals and repair suggestions on a drop-in basis.

Kathy Page announced as BC Book Prize fiction finalist

We're thrilled to announce that Kathy Page's Paradise & Elsewhere, already boasting a 2014 Giller nod, is now a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Other finalists include Michael Springate, Caroline Adderson, Brian Payton, and Aislinn Hunter. Adderson's upcoming novel, A History of Forgetting, will be released by Biblioasis this spring. Congratulations to all the finalists!

All Saints to be featured on The Next Chapter

We're pleased to announce that K.D. Miller will be featured on the upcoming episode of The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers, to be aired Monday, March 9th at 1PM. She will be talking about her most recent collection, the 2014 Writer's Trust finalist All Saints.

45 Years a Critical Success

45 Years, a feature film adapted from the title story of David Constantine's In Another Country, which we are publishing this spring, recently premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film, directed by Andrew Haigh, blew away the critics, garnering incredibly positive reviews from the likes of Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Guardian, and was crowned the festival's "first unqualified success" and "the first great film of 2015" by Jessica Kiang of indieWIRE. "It's an extraordinary concept," writes Kiang, "taken from a short story by David Constantine."

Constantine's masterful story, in which an elderly couple's marriage is shaken by the arrival of a letter detailing the discovery of the husband's lost love, is beautiful, brutal, musical, and gut-wrenching. Culled from four books and over three decades, In Another Country: Selected Stories, is a revelation that will bring you close to tears. We can hardly contain our excitement over this release. 

Biblioasis will be releasing In Another Country in Canada this coming May, and June in the USA. The North American right to 45 Years have been acquired by Sundance Selects, and the film will see North American screenings in the near future. More info to come soon! 

Suffering Fools Badly: Career Limiting Moves reviewed in The Rover

A wonderful review of Zachariah Wells's witty and engaging essay collection Career Limiting Moves by Brian Campbell in The Rover. Here's a taste:

As we progress through the Essays and Reviews section, we discover in Wells a thorough reader and masterful critic. Poets he takes down a notch with his trenchant pen include perennial favourites Don MacKay (“His poems are fun, smart, easy to like. But like a stranger you meet on a train, I don’t think much about them afterwards”), Anne Simpson (“a tourist in the realms of human misery and suffering”), and Patrick Lane (“singing the sadsack song of his self-image”). But in all cases, he does indicate strengths of said poets, although I think his assessment of Simpson could have been more balanced. Lengthy essays that take up the cause of unjustly neglected poets like Peter Van Toorn and Peter Sanger, as well as an award-winning piece on Bruce Taylor, are standouts. The poets’ work is quoted fully enough that we gain direct experience of what these poets are like.

Biblioasis Bonanza @ Lit Live in Hamilton, this Sunday March 1st

For those of you who are in Hamilton this weekend, Lit Live has a wonderfully distinguished and stacked bill featuring Elisabeth de Mariaffi, George Murray, and Biblioasis trio Ray Robertson, Nancy Jo Cullen, and Diane Schoemperlen. The event takes place at 7:30 PM on Sunday, March 1st @ Homegrown on 27 King William St., and will be opened by emerging writers Taylor Wilson and Geoffrey Line. 

Hope to see you there!

Cast Your Vote: All Saints and Paradise & Elsewhere up for 2015 CBC Bookies

Prepare your ballots, dear readers: it is time again for the annual CBC Bookies.

We're pleased to say that this year both All Saints by K.D. Miller and Paradise & Elsewhere by Kathy Page are up for the 2015 Short Story Category! Click here to vote. (Note: if you wish, you can skip categories by pressing the "Next" button). Voting is open until Monday, February 23rd. 

Michael Dirda Praises The Pebble Chance in The Washington Post

"What draws a reader to a particular book?" asks Michael Dirda, over at The Washington Post. "A friend’s recommendation? A sign inscribed “Best Sellers” over a table in a bookstore? A review? For serious readers, it can be something hard to put into words, something highly subjective."

In the case of Marius Kociejowski's The Pebble Chance, Dirda confesses that even prior to the time of reading "there were several tugs on my attention, starting with the word “feuilletons.”" 

He elaborates:

Not often seen in English, this French word, associated with newspapers, might be translated in various ways: columns, trifles, “casuals” or even essays. That inimitable humorist S.J. Perelman used to refer to his comic pieces as “feuilletons.” Second, this Biblioasis paperback is slightly taller than most trade paperbacks, and its front and back covers are folded back on themselves to create dust-jacket flaps, a design feature common to European books. The Pebble Chance is consequently elegant in appearance and a pleasure to handle. Third, the author photograph of Kociejowski, with his handsome Slavic face and prematurely gray hair, makes him look like a Central European poet, a Zbigniew Herbert or Czeslaw Milosz.

And as for The Pebble Chance's content? Once he was drawn in, Dirda discovered a work whose virtues were equal to his initial intrigue, and found much to admire:

The Pebble Chance links together a meditation on Bernini’s sculpture of Apollo and Daphne, Kociejowski’s “continuing poetic silence,” the Italian game of bocce, and the place of skill and chance in artistic creation. It is a little tour-de-force, and...proffers the reader equal measures of autobiography, insight and quirky charm.

A rave stand-alone review of this sui genesis collection of literary essays in one of America's leading papers. Read the full review here.

Colette Maitland and Cynthia Flood on 2014 ReLit Short Fiction Shortlist

Great news: two Biblioasis short story collections, Cynthia Flood's Red Girl Rat Boy and Colette Maitland's Keeping The Peace, have been shortlisted for the 2014 ReLit Prize. The ReLit, whose mandate is "Ideas, Not Money," celebrates yearly the best new work published by Canada's indies, and The Globe and Mail has called it “The country’s pre-eminent literary prize recognizing independent presses." This year, the ReLit has mixed things up by eliminating longlists in favour of long shortlists. The shortlists are broken down by novels, poetry, and short fiction. 

Red Girl Rat Boy was also included in The National Post's recent roundup, "2014 Things of 2014: 20 Books Plus 3 Comics," where it was distinguished as one of their top three short story collections of the year. 

Best of luck to Cynthia and Colette and all the nominees! 

Alphabet Featured on Shelf Awareness

Each week, Shelf Awareness and its top industry insiders select and feature the top 25 new releases of the week.

In addition to the countless hits on its website, Shelf Awareness's weekly newsletter also goes out to over 300,000 subscribers.

Featured today on their front page is Alphabet by Kathy Page, an incredible novel we've released for the first time this fall in the United States, and also reissued here in Canada as part of our new Reset reprint series.

Shelf Awareness loves it:

Alphabet transforms from a novel of crime and punishment into a nuanced psychological profile of a killer, ultimately providing a gut-wrenching reminder of the atrocities contained within institutional walls and the lengths to which we are willing to go in order to protect our innermost selves. … Heartbreaking and emotional.

We're thrilled to see such great coverage for Kathy. Alphabet is gaining momentum and quietly making waves in the states. It's definitely a book to keep your eye on.

And it's not just Shelf Awareness and the starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus I'm talking about.

Hearty recommendations from the likes of indies like Emily Pullen from Brooklyn's Word Bookstore, featured below, give us the additional pleasure of knowing that the book is physically being put in people's hands. This is a book that will transform readers of all stripes, and there are people on the ground getting behind it and making this happen. 

We hope that those of you discovering the book through Shelf Awareness for the first time will try to seek out the novel from such unacknowledged heroes as Emily before making the digital rounds:

If you like fiction that makes you a little uncomfortable (but still has a compelling voice), try Alphabet by Kathy Page. The narrator is in prison in the UK for killing his girlfriend, and we see his various coping mechanisms and treatments and eventual attempts to learn how to connect with people in a healthy way. His journey will surprise you. - Emily Pullen

The Toronto Star loves Diane Schoemperlen's By The Book

A very intelligent review of Diane Schoemperlen's By The Book appeared in The Toronto Star today, courtesy of James Grainger. 

Calling Diane "a relentless literary experimentalist who challenges the conventions of the short story and novel formats" Grainger goes on to show why even, in her most radically challenging work, Diane has won "a wide and devoted readership in a marketplace increasingly hostile to “difficult” or “challenging” texts."

So what sets By The Book, her most formally adventurous work since the Governor General's award-winning novel Forms of Devotion, apart from the current experimental crop?

Grainger has some ideas, and we couldn't agree more:

One of the reasons for the popularity of Schoemperlen’s inventive work, which incorporates elements of collage, fragmentation, and other postmodern tropes, is that she seems to be having so much fun creating it. Her fiction also avoids turgid academic language in favour of playful re-imaginings of such mundane sources as romance advice columns, devotional texts, catalogues, and lifestyle questionnaires....Schoemperlen wants us to consider the randomness, absurdity, and militant certainties not only of another era’s texts and images but of our own, which will one day be judged as quaint as those of the Victorians. By the Book is a challenging read, but it never talks over or under the readers’ head, which should endear it to Schoemperlen’s fans and to adventurous readers unfamiliar with her work.

We've talked before about the undeniable weirdness of this book, its beauty and distinction  as a printed objet d'art, but perhaps this is the best way to view By The Book: as the work of a restlessly creative mind that above all else is reveling in having fun, and moreover a brand of fun that the reader is free to participate in. Like Douglas Glover says of By The Book, "none of the conventional words cover it for they miss the fantastic wit, the energy of humour, the divine ability to find comedic ore in the print detritus of our culture." The book is yours to discover. 

Windsor's Small Presses Featured Tonight @ The Capitol!

Have you ever thought about starting your own publishing house?

Are you an aspiring writer who has wondered about how to go about getting published and how the mystifying world of submissions, advances, and royalty statements works?

Or have maybe you have simply wondered what it is exactly that a publisher does?

If you answered yes to at least one of the above questions, then it's your lucky day.

Tonight, Thursday, October 23rd @ 7PM Bookfest Windsor will be presenting a special free feature on the small presses of Windsor at The Capitol! Each publisher will have a feature author representing their press who will give a brief reading, to be followed by an informative panel discussion on publishing in the region.

Rampike will feature poet Susan Holbrook, Cranberry Tree will feature novelist Rosalind Knight, Palimpsest will feature poet Ariel Gordon, Black Moss will feature poet Mary Ann Mulhern, and Biblioasis will be proudly presenting award-winning magazine and non-fiction writer Chris Turner who will be reading from his fantastic new collection of essays How To Breathe Underwater!

Come out and see the best of what the region has to offer and get your questions about the publishing industry demystified! 

For more info, please see Bookfest's Website or give us a call at 519-968-2206.

Diane Schoemperlen on By The Book

These six stories are not exactly stories at all. 

Rather, each piece is a construction or a deconstruction or a reconstruction (or maybe all three). I did not exactly write any of the lines in any of them. 

I discovered them (like a continent), mined them (like gold or coal or potash), unearthed them (like bones), excavated them (archaeological artifacts), solved them (like a crossword puzzle), deciphered them (like a secret code), organized them (like a filing cabinet or a clothes closet), choreographed them (like a ballet or maybe a barn dance), arranged them (like a symphony or a bouquet of flowers).

In each case, I picked out the pieces (like gold nuggets from gravel or maybe like worms from the garden), shuffled them many times (like playing cards), and then put them together again (like a jigsaw puzzle, ending with a picture entirely different from the one on the front of the box).

Order By The Book, the adventurous sequel to Forms of Devotion, from Biblioasis

Local History Launch at The Walkerville Brewery on November 12th

Dear Friends and Colleagues in Windsor,

Please join us at the Walkerville Brewery for a dual launch of two new local history books from Biblioasis:  David Newman's Postcards From Essex County and Patrick Brode's 

The River & The Land! 

David Newman's Postcards From Essex County is the long-awaited follow-up to the hugely popular Postcards From The Past, published by Walkerville Publishing in 2005. Boasting over 315 historic postcards featuring the churches, factories, fairgrounds, houses, beaches, trains and cars of the old towns in Essex County, this is a beautiful gift book in hardcover with full-colour illustrations. 

With The River & The Land, Patrick Brode, author of The Slasher Killings and Unholy City, gives us an authoritative history of Windsor up to 1900. Featuring sections on Windsor's role in the American Civil War, Confederation and street-car manufacturing, and chronicling the cultural tensions between the French, English, Irish, and Scottish settlers of the region, The River & The Land is a thorough, compelling and readable history, sure to set the bar for local historians for years to come.

Doors open at 6 and readings/presentations will begin at 7. There will be snacks available and you are of course encouraged to partake in a few of the Walkerville Brewery's famous beers. Books will be available for sale, cash or credit.

See you there!

Translation Tuesday: Birth of a Bridge excerpted on the BITSblog

Site meeting – sometime after seven o’clock in the morning and Diderot is talking, standing mountainous at the end of the oval table. Bare room, thin partitions, thin carpet hastily placed, smell of glue, smell of new, freeze-dried coffee, classroom chairs dragged in. These accommodate some fifty individuals, among them Sanche Cameron, the crane operator, and Summer Diamantis, the girl in charge of concrete – Diderot watches these two surreptitiously, the boy with the dazzled face, the girl who takes notes without lifting her head. He directed the comment at them when he said, fingers joined in a bouquet over his chest, hey, rookies, call me Diderot. 

He clears his throat and begins in a loud voice. Okay, let’s get started. Plan of action: one, dig the ground – he lifts his thumb; two, dredge and clear the river – he lifts his index; three, get started on the concrete – he lifts his middle finger. Turns to pull down a wall-mounted screen, starts up a laptop, turns back, slowly surveys the audience, and then slams down the first words.

Just a taste of Maylis de Kerangal's 2010 Prix-Médicis-winning novel Birth of a Bridge, excerpted today on the BITSblog. Happy Translation Tuesday!