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! 

Ondjaki featured on Paul Kennedy's Ideas!

This is great: CBC's Ideas with Paul Kennedy features an entertaining, colourful, hilarious, nigh hour-long conversation with Angolan trickster/charmer Ondjaki. Literary equations are goofy, but I kinda like this one: imagine if the benevolent ghosts of Clarice Lispector & Mark Twain crosspolinated to try their hand at utopic YA set during the Angolan Civil War. That might give you a sense of the eccentricity and magic behind his picaresque Granma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret, a coming-of-age story that is literally explosive.