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.

Wild Writers Literary Festival Is Upon Us!

Dear friends in the Waterloo/Kitchener/Guelph area: 

don't forget that this weekend is the date of the Wild Writers Literary Festival!

The weekend features some amazing programming, 

including appearances from K.D. Miller, Diane Schoemperlen, Ray Robertson, and Kathy Page.

For more info on schedules, tickets and directions, please see the festival's website. 

Happy Weekend!

K.D. Miller in Maclean's and Globe and Mail: up for Writer's Trust Tonight!

Besides teaching me so much about writing, Alice Munro once taught me something about being a writer. It was 1986. She had just launched The Progress of Love and was doing a reading in a local library. I couldn’t afford to hand her one of the glossy new hardcovers to sign, so I took along my least-tattered Munro paperback – Lives of Girls and Women. She opened it tenderly, looked up and gave me a gracious smile before signing her name.I learned that night that the reader is to be honoured – even if she shows up with a second-hand copy of the wrong book.

A lovely anecdote from K.D. Miller about the graciousness of Alice Munro in The Globe and Mail as part of yesterday's feature on the Writer's Trust award, for which K.D. is up tonight. 

And speaking of influence and homage, K.D. was also featured in Maclean's this past Monday, where she spoke of her debt to Flannery O'Connor and her ability "as a religious person, to see beyond the borders of her faith and at times stare straight into the eyes of evil," something readers acquainted with All Saints and the character of Alice Vipond will no doubt be familiar with.

The Writer's Trust Award is announced tonight at 6:30PM at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto.

Our fingers are crossed for you, K.D.!

Writing Is The Way I Pray: K.D. Miller in conversation with Lori McNulty

This week, The National Post's Afterword is featuring several conversations between the authors nominated for the 2014 Writer's Trust Award. Yesterday featured a fascinating conversation between Lori McNulty and our very own K.D. Miller, giving readers a chance to eavesdrop on their observations on the art of the short story, developing and maintaining personal writing habits, the act of writing as a leap of faith, and much more. Here's a taste of what K.D. has to say: 

Writing is the way I pray. It’s through writing — the creative act — that I come into my own. I frequently have doubts about my relationship with my religion and my church. But writing? Never. ... As an actor, I was taught to observe, to listen and to empathise. As a director, I was taught to evaluate every detail of a scene from the standpoint of the audience. That balance of absorption and objectivity has been a big help to me as a writer.

All Saints is a finalist for the 2014 for the Writer's Trust Award and one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year, proclaimed an instant Canadian classic by Macleans and others.

K.D. Miller Graces the Digital Pages of Chatelaine

What better way to start a Friday morning than with more exciting news about our own K.D. Miller?

She was interviewed, along with her fellow 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Award shortlisted authors, by glamourous Chatelaine magazine. When asked how her book All Saints developed into a series of linked short stories, K.D. replied:

It started as two stories, “Still Dark” and “Ecce Cor Meum,” that were strongly linked. Then Dan Wells, publisher of Biblioasis, asked for “more Anglican stories.” So I started to think about the people who might rub shoulders, however lightly, with a small, struggling urban church.  The characters started to show up after that — Simon the rector, Kelly the long-time parishioner, Alice the mass murderess who used to teach Sunday School…

After answering more questions about favourite books and hidden talents, K.D. ends the interview by naming "Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)" as her favorite song. One happy listen later, we couldn't resist sharing. This one's for you, Ms. Miller.

What She Has: An Interview with K.D. Miller

Over at The Story Prize blog, K.D. Miller has answered a few questions about her approach to writing:

If you weren't a writer, what would you be doing?
What I would like to be (whether or not I could manage it) is either an actor or a down-and-dirty blues singer. I don’t sing at all, but I do have an acting/theatre background. In fact, it was very much a road not taken.

What else (beyond books and writing) informs or inspires your work?
Theatre. Good acting excites me as much as good writing does, and the two are remarkably alike in terms of the muscles they use. I don’t regret a minute of my acting and directing training. I use it every day at my desk.

Describe an unusual writing habit of yours.
I get up at 4 a.m. and am usually at my desk by 4:30. Yes, really. I write before I set out for my day job, which pays the rent. If a story is on the home stretch, I might write in the evening. But usually, it’s the hour and a half first thing in the morning that gets it done.

Where do you do most of your work?
I compose by hand at an antique “secretary” desk—one with a drop-down writing surface and pigeon holes. For computer work, I have a computer desk that supports my laptop and printer. Both are in the sunroom of my apartment.

What do you do when you're stuck or have "writer's block"?
I go to my desk at the usual time and just read. You have to breathe in sometimes.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
Write. Stop talking about it, thinking about it, claiming you have no time for it. Just do it. Every day. Ten minutes a day is better than nothing. And it will grow.

For the full interview, please go here.

K.D. Miller @ Luminato Festival: A Literary Picnic

Biblioasis's K.D. Miller and Ray Robertson will be appearing in Toronto at the Luminato Festival this weekend! They will be participating in the fabulous Literary Picnic scheduled this Sunday June 15 from 12pm-3:30pm at Trinity Bellwoods Park.

The event will take place across three stages and will feature readings from forty-five of Toronto's finest authors. The rapid-fire presentation and vast array of writers presents the perfect opportunity to get a taste for new writers while re-connecting with old favourites. In keeping with the picnic theme, delicious food will be available onsite courtesy of Fidel Gastro’s, Localista, The Pop Stand and Greenhouse Juice Co. And on the book side of things, Ben McNally and the Toronto Public Library Bookmobile will be on site to satisfy all your biblio-cravings. 

In addition to Miller and Robertson, participating authors include Austin Clarke, Barry Callaghan, Ins Choi, Don Gilmour, Andrew Pyper, Zoe Whittall, and more. For a full list of participants, click here.

With so much going on, delicious grub and fun in the sun, this is the can't miss literary event of the summer! And don't forget that it coincides with Father's day, so grab your dad, grab some blankets and books, and get thee to Trinity Bellwoods to hear some of Toronto's freshest voices!

All Saints gets Starred Review in Quill & Quire

Angie Abdou gives K.D Miller's All Saints a rave review in the new Quill & Quire, highlighting the subtle intricacies of the linked story collection and how it "gains momentum, until it begins to feel very much like a novel." Revolving however loosely around the symbol/physical space of All Saints, a Toronto-based Anglican congregation in decline, the book, as Abdou aptly notes, does not consist of your grandmother's Anglicanism: "The collection is as much about eroticism and love as it is about religion and spirituality." Comparing its genre-bendiness to Jennifer Egan's A Visit From the Goon Squad, Abdou concludes that All Saints is "the work of a writer with a confident voice and a clear vision." 

And If that wasn't great enough, Jeet Heer then went on to tweet that "KD Miller is Canada's greatest unknown writer." A hearty and heartfelt endorsement we can get behind. 

And finally, did we mention how lovely the book itself is? The ornate frontispiece is textured and debossed, upping the physical desirability factor to celestial levels.  These pics only hint at the marvels. Go do yourself a favour and pick up a copy! 

The Bibliomanse is Back in Business!

A Happy New Year to all our devoted Thirsty followers. We've hit the ground running here at Biblioasis after a delightful holiday hiatus: some of us were in Texas, some of us were in New Brunswick, one of us (*cough*ChrisAndrechek*cough*) may have caused a scene at the Gare Central by banging on a train window and hollering "HEY ZACH!", and a couple of us (*cough*Dan*cough*Jesse) saw the bookshop through its long snowy hours. A certain resident press shih tzu may have tried to take on a herd of urban deer. Altogether I'd say it was a smashing holiday (did I develop a cough?), but all in all we're glad to be back.

In the interim a few nice media hits came in for our titles, and some lovely blurbs for Cynthia Flood and KD Miller especially. Congratulations to all.  I also wanted to share a beautiful poem that seems appropriate as we sit here between Christmas and Epiphany, which is by our own Marsha Pomerantz and ran recently in Raritan. It's there if you scroll down.

Onward, upward, 2014 ho!—
T.

1. Strength of Bone review from The National Post syndicated by PostMedia News
Which means you may have seen it in Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Regina, Windsor, Ottawa, Canada.com, & more.

2. Red Girl Rat Boy makes National Post’s Best of 2013 Short Fiction List (Steven Beattie)
"These stories shine like glass, but glass that is coloured and curved and prismatic. Flood’s brief, technically adventurous tales sparkle and glitter in dazzling, yet frequently unexpected ways.”

3. Red Girl Rat Boy makes Globe & Mail’s Books of 2013 Short Fiction List (Caroline Adderson)
"In Red Girl Rat Boy Cynthia Flood has pared her style down to a clipped staccato that is at first jarring, then mesmerizing. How does she scrape the narrative so close to the bone, yet still manage to emotionally engage the reader? Because she’s a master, carefully maximizing the potential of each word."

4. Red Girl Rat Boy reviewed on The Coastal Spectator
"These stories are told in a voice that navigates like an underground stream through the deepest channels of the psyche. These stories are felt in the marrow."

5. KD Miller’s Brown Dwarf reviewed in FreeFall Magazine

"Brown Dwarf ... creeps up on you with its increasing complexity and deft handling of an adolescent mindset. More than a mystery, it explores not only the limits of memory—how our perception of events shifts as we age and change into adults—but also the sometimes irrational dynamics of relationships between friends, and between child and parent … deeply affecting.”

6. Light Lifting reviewed in FreeFall Magazine

“MacLeod so beautifully articulates everyday events that even the most normal (even mundane) occurrence becomes breathtaking. He takes his reader to a reality in which everything is nuanced. Every object, interaction and event has a beautiful poignancy to it, and it is in illuminating this beauty to his reader that MacLeod succeeds in breaking his reader’s hearts … a collection that should be consumed carefully."

7. Marsha Pomerantz has 5 Poems in Raritan (published by Rutgers)

Of which this is the first.

Saint Luke Paints the Virgin

As soon as his brush lifted,
the elixir of her withdrew,

leaving her mud in small
shaped phrases. He was

painting his desire to hold
her always and want her

never. I’d trade always for
an apple, said the assistant,

stroking the arc of a cheek as
his teeth marked minutes along

his lips. Holiness is separation,
pooling just beyond depiction

in a single swimming thought.
That Luke could ever get her

down was either blasphemy
or fantasy, and both options

beckoned. Know me, he heard her say.
Take my likeness, make me likely.

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Claustrophilia: An Interview with Mike Barnes, by KD Miller

Morning, folks, and happy Thursday. Wanted to direct your attention to a lovely bit of conversation between KD Miller and Mike Barnes that's running in the latest TNQ. And as a teaser here's a piece that I especially liked (not least of all because KD herself has a collection called All Saints scheduled for release with us this spring—sshhhh!):

Art has its saints, its martyrs, its holy fools, to be sure. But they’re rare. Their fame obscures that fact. Or underlines it. For the most part, art is—must be—practiced from a position of relative affluence. Not necessarily material, needless to say. But without some surplus of energy, of resources, there is no art. To make a medieval analogy, while there may be art in the upper reaches of hell—cries from those ascending or descending—there is none at the bottom.

For the full interview, click here.

April events with K.D. Miller

For our Toronto area Bibliofriends, you have the chance to catch K.D. Miller reading twice in April.

First, head to Saturdays at Portobello Restaurant and Bar (995 Bay St. in Toronto), Saturday, April 6 from 1:30 - 4:30pm, where K.D. will participating as guest author.

Then, on Saturday, April 13th from 10:30am-12:30pm, check out the National Poetry Month Celebration put on by the Vaughan Poets' Circle. This free event will feature K.D. Miller as well as other local poets. For more information, email Debbie Ouellet at vaughanpoetscircle@gmail.com.

Zut alors! Missed one.

This is ALSO happening tomorrow. Seems the 4th is going to be a fun night in TO.

K.D. Miller, tomorrow, Q Space!

1520 Wyandotte St. East

Happy Monday, folks! It's an exciting time for us here at the BiblioManse, as we're about to kick off our fall touring season—and as the first of several Great Events is likely to have us pie-eyed by Friday I wanted to make a few important announcements. Right now, while the faculties are intact; or before I twitterbomb you all to death; or, um, before this books-as-benzos thing gets TOTALLY out of hand. 

You see, there are rumours afoot. Whispers afeet. Gossip to hand. Something about sugar?

Thus and Therefore:

1. Yes, Biblioasis's KD Miller will be reading on October 4th at Q-Space, and yes it's part of the "Not-So-Nice Italian Girls" series, and yes it will be GREAT, because KD Miller is GREAT;

2. Yes, Nadine McInnis's second collection of short stories has shipped (finally woot woot!), and yes we're launching it this Wednesday, and yes it's going to be a GIANT PARTY;

3. Yes, the same is true for Norm Sibum on Thursday;

The place we'll soon call home. Once it's not grape-coloured.

4. ... we've bought a building. 

Really.

Yes it's purple.

Yes it has a rocket ship.

And yes, it is, it most definitely is, the sweetest spot in Windsor.

Since September 4th 2012 Dan Wells has been the proud new owner of 1520 Wyandotte St. East, formerly Candylicious, and soon-to-be the new Biblioasis headquarters. We're going to be a bookstore again, folks, and an event space, with the publishing offices in back. Everyone's terrifically excited. Everyone's hoarding boxes. The official move date is TBD but construction has begun and paint colours have been chosen. It really is hard to describe what it means for us to be back in the Windsor community again.

In celebration of the new building and to close out the BiblioBash tour—which includes the launches for Norm and Nadine, and about which you'll hear more shortly—we'll be having a little fete at the new manse on September 27th. If you're within spitting distance of Windsor we hope you'll join us. We might not have much by way of furniture, or books for that matter, but we'll have a fine collection of folding chairs and the wine will be flowing freely. 

So. You'll hear lots more about both book launches and the building over the coming weeks, and I imagine there will be entertaining photos of BiblioStaff wielding drills, etc., helping to quench good old Thirsty's thirst. For now, though, I'd like to raise a virtual glass to Dan and Alexis on the new purchase, and to say congratulations on behalf of us all.