Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman shortlisted for the CAA Poetry Award

We are proud to announce that Goran Simic's Sunrise in the Eyes of the Snowman was shortlisted for the CAA Poetry Award. The prize recognizes excellence in Poetry for collections “honouring writing that achieves excellence without sacrificing popular appeal.” The finalist will be announced on July 28th 2012.
Congratulations to Goran and all the shortlisted poets and authors!

Visit the Canadian Authors Association website to see the full shorlist.

Why Not? longlisted for Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction

All of us at Biblioasis are proud to announce that Ray Robertson's Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live was longlisted for the $25 000 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. The prize recognizes excellence in Non-Fiction for books that combine "subtlety of thought and perception" with elegant style and mastery of the English Language. The Shortlist will be announced on January 10th 2012 and the finalist on March 5th 2012.

Congratulations to Ray and everyone who made the longlist!

Check out the longlist and read the full story here.

Titles

One of our Fall books is a collection of short fiction by Newfoundland writer Kathleen Winter. Kathleen won the 2nd Metcalf-Rooke Award last year. When John started working with her, he discovered that there were dozens of other stories no one had seen and asked to see them. They were, in John's words, a goldmine, and several have made their way into this collection. Kathleen has also penned a few others over the past several months, and a couple of these have also made the final cut. The result is that the final collection I'm currently reading is substantially different from the initial one, but much, much stronger for the changes.

We have finalized the collection, then, but a title for it continues to evade us. We've narrowed it down to three:

boYs,
You can keep one thing, or
I was visiting my parents in hell.

We are leaning, I think, towards boYs, though I also very much like You can keep one thing.

On Kathleen's blog, she has asked which title people respond to, so I thought that I would ask the same question here.

For those of you who would like to check out Kathleen's author blog (we drank cachaca and smoked the green cheroot), it can be found here: http://kathleenwinter.livejournal.com/. There's an interesting entry on one of the stories in her collection.

Relit Awards

Two Biblioasis titles have made the Relit Longlist: Leon Rooke's Hitting the Charts: Selected Stories, in the story category, and David Helwig's Saltsea in the Novel. Disappointed not to see Patricia Young, Mike Barnes, and David Hickey there, as there's no doubt that each is better than many that have made the cut, but t' is the way of these things.

Speaking of those three, we'll be doing a new book by all of them in the next year or so: Patricia Youngs' first poetry collection in nearly a decade, a brilliant and very moving memoir on art, memory and madness called The Lily Pond by Mike Barnes, and David Hickey's wonderful first children's book.

Last year, both of our titles by Goran Simic made the Relit longlist, and his From Sarajevo, With Sorrow made the shortlist for poetry (losing out to Leon Rooke's first poetry collection, Hot Poppies.) For those of you who have not read From Sarajevo, With Sorrow, you should order yourself a copy. It's powerful stuff.

And while I'm speaking of '08 (& beyond), we have another Simic collection in the works, a selection of his best pre-war poems, which will be made available (with a few exceptions) for the first time in english. In Canada (& elsewhere in the english speaking world), Goran is known solely as a poet of war and immigration. But he had a varied and successful career as a writer and poet before the war, and we are hoping to broaden the understanding, appreciation and audience of Simic with this new book.

BIBLIOASIS POET ON GERALD LAMPERT SHORTLIST

David Hickey has been nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for his first collection of poetry, In the Lights of a Midnight Plow (published August, 2006).

David Hickey’s In the Lights of a Midnight Plow (ISBN: 1-897231-09-1, $18.95) is a beautiful collection of carefully crafted poems. It has been well reviewed on Good Reports and the Danforth Review, and was included as one of the best recent Canadian books of poetry by Alex Good in his Year in Review. A graduate of UNB, David has lived in P.E.I. New Brunswick, Labrador and Quebec. He currently lives (& watches the stars) in P.E.I.

In the Lights of a Midnight Plow is available from any fine independent bookseller (including The Reading Well in PEI and Wordsworth Books in Waterloo, Ontario), at Chapters and Indigo and online at amazon.ca, abebooks.com, and via the Biblioasis website at http://www.biblioasis.com/.

Other shortlisted authors and titles include:

a broken mirror, fallen leaf by Yvonne Blomer (Ekstasis Editions), Tacoma Narrows by Mitchell Parry (Goose Lane Editions), Anatomy of Keys by Steven Price (Brick Books), Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists by Angela Rawlings (Coach House Books), and Every Inadequate Name by Nick Thran (Insomniac Press).

The jury consisted of Heidi Greco, Brian Henderson and Alison Pick.

The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award is given in the memory of Gerald Lampert, an arts administrator who organized authors' tours and took a particular interest in the work of new writers. The award recognizes the best first book of poetry published by a Canadian in the preceding year. The Award carries a prize of $1,000 and is sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets.

The winner will be announced at the League of Canadian Poets Annual General Meeting, June 9th, in Edmonton.