Griggs and Echlin and Sabatini -- Oh My!

Sigh...

How I wish we had a Different Drummer in Windsor. For those in the Burlington area, most of us envy you.

Good Stuff: Books as Type

from Fubiz.

Introducing Bunion and Hormone: The Gatekeepers

THE GATEKEEPERS of Havlock House were snarling and yipping behind the dungeonesque front door, hitting the high notes like tiny aggrieved castratos. Although only Bunion qualified for that role, seeing as Hormone was a grrrrl. Chellis could hear her nails clicking on the foyer's parquet floor as she danced and yapped, her nails painted some trendy canine colour, like Bitch Black.

-- from Terry Griggs's upcoming Thought You Were Dead.

Diana Athill Podcast

Over at the Anansi website, there's a podcast, taken from a BBC interview, with the wonderful Diane Athill. I've not yet read her Somewhere Towards the End, but her Stet ranks as one of my favourite memoirs. I'll be picking up Athill's latest soon: for now, there's this podcast.

The Montreal Storytellers

Over at the Vehicule Press website I came across this great photo of the Montreal Storytellers. John Metcalf to the left there. Not sure who's beside him, though Ray Smith is left-centre, and I think that's Ray Fraser beside him. A young Simon Dardick, I'd wager, behind these two, dead centre. Clark Blaise coming up to Fraser's shoulder, with perhaps Tim Struthers behind him, Hugh Hood bringing up the right. That's the best that I can guess.

The Storytellers consisted of Metcalf, Smith, Fraser, Blaise and Hood. If the stars align, we might publish three of them in 2010: Clark Blaise's and John Metcalf's next collections of short fiction, alongside the next installment of Ray Smith's Bottomly Series. Should this happen I think a world tour -- or at least a Canadian one -- will be absolutely necessary, complete with tour shirts. Now: if only we could get The Dead Milkmen back together: then I'd be truly happy.

CNQ: On the Globe & Mail's Newstand

Speaking of punching above circulation weight, the latest issue of CNQ was highlighted, alongside the current New Yorker and NYTBR, in James Adams's On the Stand in Saturday's Globe & Mail:

The Scotiabank Giller Prize (until 2005 just the Giller Prize) marked its 15th birthday last November. Old enough, in other words, for those so inclined to winkle out patterns and themes among the roughly 80 finalists and 16 winners and co-winners selected thus far.

Last year, much was made of the relative newness, output-wise, of the five finalists - three were sophomore novelists, one a rookie to the novel form, the fifth the author of a debut collection of linked short stories. But, asserts Steven Beattie here, plus ça change, plus ç'est la même chose. Review editor for Quill & Quire, Beattie provocatively contends the 2008 Giller jury "reverted to type" by anointing Joseph Boyden's novel Through Black Spruce the champion. The Giller has usually gone to a book that, in Beattie's words, "cleaves to the traditionally accepted CanLit pieties: obsession with geography and our psychic relationship with the land, staunch naturalism and lyrical, poetic prose." For Beattie, the more worthy finalists for last year's $50,000 first prize were Rawi Hage's Cockroach and Mary Swan's The Boys in the Trees. Alas, historical determinism meant neither "stood a chance."

Murals

Explanation.

In Peril

The subject of the proposed cuts to Canadian Heritage support of art and literary magazines is something that I've been meaning to write about for weeks. When the cuts we're announced, I received a call from Q&Q for comment, and spent much of the next two days trying to get a handle on things. But I've found even the thought of the ensuing battle to help sustain funding exhausting. During the last month it's been hard enough to keep on top of the day-to-day: the editing and copy-editing of spring books, the grants, the early publicity for spring titles, the accounting, the fall catalogue and bibliographic data for the US distributor, the early editorial work CNQ 76 requires, just to name the most obvious things. The life of your minor literary functionary is, alas, never done: I've not had the energy to wade into the fray on this, though wade in I need to.

There has been some excellent coverage of the issues surrounding these proposed cuts, and what it will mean for art and literary magazines. Nigel Beale has several smart posts on this, as does Kerry Clare over at the Descant blog. There's been coverage of it in the Globe, on Bookninja, Career Limiting Moves, and many, many other places. The proposed changes -- which will end Canadian Heritage funding to any magazine with a yearly circulation of under 5000 copies, or, really, all but a handful of literary and cultural magazines in Canada -- will have drastic, if not actually devastating effects on CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries: close to 25% of our budget comes from the SALM program. The loss of the $9000.00, should this go through, may not result in the folding of CNQ -- we can always reduce the page count accordingly, go to cheaper production standards, pay writers less, and these changes just might make up the bulk of the difference in the production of the journal -- but there is no doubt that these would be moves in the wrong direction for a literary journal I feel is only now beginning to hit its stride, one of the only critical journals of its kind remaining in the country. There are certainly those out there who would probably love to see CNQ cease publication, but I don't think I'm being too egocentric to state that its loss would be felt out there in the wider literary community by many. So too would the loss of Malahat, The New Quarterly, Fiddlehead and others.

Part of what I've had trouble getting my head around here is how the Minister of Culture and his team define cultural relevance. It seems to me that the introduction of a circulation cap of this sort equates cultural relevance with some definition of commercial viability. A magazine or journal that can't reach 5000 people over the course of a year can't be worthy of sustained public support. It shows an incredible lack of understanding of the industry, and of the nature of art and literary magazines, both historically and currently. Many of the most important literary and critical journals both at home and abroad, from T. S. Eliot's Criterion to The Tamarack Review, would have had difficulty making this type of circulation threshold. It matter less how many people pay to read the individual magazine as who those people are, what influence the magazine has, what services it provides the greater community, literary or otherwise. Many of the best literary writers Canada has produced began their careers with the small magazines now threatened: we all, to paraphrase Norman Levine, begin in small magazines. The nature of these cuts are further evidence of the same ignorance and arrogance many associated with Stephen Harper's comments about Canadian artists during the election. And it is a further sign that we need to be on our guard here: if Harper's conservatives ever get the majority they want I expect we will see much more of this.

I would have less of a problem with these cuts to Heritage support of magazines -- though the attendant financial difficulties for CNQ would be the same -- if it had been across the board, if they had folded the program entirely, or changed it in some other fashion. What sticks a bit -- who am I kidding? it stick a lot -- in my craw is the fact that the refashioned program, either purposely or ignorantly (and I'm not sure which is worse), targets the arts and literary programs a cultural agency like Heritage Canada should be supporting ABOVE ALL OTHERS. We are, after all, CULTURAL MAGAZINES. We are not commercial magazines. Whereas the CNQs and Malahats of the world may find themselves without the financial wherewithal to keep going after 2010, those wonderful contributors to the Canadian cultural landscape Canadian Biker ($26,139), Fashion ($133,881), Flare ($156, 560) Inside Motorcycles ($31,510) and Today's Parent ($125, 374) will be safe under the currently proposed program. And these are only a few of the commercial magazines which will continue to receive taxpayer funding while cultural journals like CNQ are left to flounder. How taxpayer funding of Inside Motorcycles contributes to a greatly enriched Canadian cultural life is well beyond me. Perhaps Minister Moore might explain it to me.

But then again, according to the Conservatives, we're just whiny artists. The fact that we're also business men and women capable of running a business on a shoestring and punching well above our circulation weight, that we show absolute responsibility and accountability for every dollar we're entrusted with, seems to be ignored. Or, perhaps, this is one of the reasons why government bureaucrats and politicians seem to have such a problem with us: we make them look bad. Very bad. CNQ received approximately 35,000 in government/taxpayer funding in 2008-2009: on this we put out three issues of a critical journal totaling more than 312 pages. We'll have paid more than 12,000 to writers and artists, 15,000 to printers, 1500-2000 to Canada Post, 4500 to typesetters, with the rest of the funding and subscription dues going to basic administration, office supplies and marketing. Not a dollar has gone to the publisher or editorial personnel in the three-plus years Biblioasis has run it. Despite our rather lackluster, at least according to Canadian Heritage standards, circulation numbers, one of these issues became a flash point, according to the Toronto Star, for one of the sharpest literary debates Canada has ever seen, resulting in a national discussion about canon making and the importance of the short story in Canada, as well as international coverage. Journals like CNQ, in terms of financial accountability, responsibility and efficiency, are models other businesses might learn from, especially in these troubled times. A point which should actually result in calls for increased funding, instead of further cuts. If we can do what we do on $35,000, imagine what we might pull off on $50,000, or $75,000.

Yes, yes: I know. Fat chance.

There are other reasons why these cuts and their underlying logic should be cause for grave concern to anyone who cares for art and literature in Canada. The same sort of commercial arguments being used to justify funding cuts to art and literary magazines could be used the next time a cultural program is being evaluated to cut funding to, say, literary presses or art galleries. Why should we fund the likes of Brick Books when so few Canadians care about poetry anyway? Who, outside, of course, of a handful of whiny artists would miss them? And as far as galleries go, how many Canadians really care for abstract or experimental art, derive any benefit from exhibitions of the work of Tony Calzetta or Adele Duck or David Urban or the Painters Eleven? What? Only three hundred people showed up for an exhibit of the work of Richard Gorman? Thaddeus Holownia? Only two hundred people showed up to a book festival in Windsor? Hardly seems worth the investment. Better to earmark such funding to those responsible titans of industry, GM and Chrysler. Now there's real bang for your buck.

When I first learned about these proposed cuts from Scott MacDonald at Q&Q, I did some calling around, and spoke at length to some people at Magazines Canada. I learned, thankfully, that this is not set in stone, that the ministry is aware that the current solution "might not be perfect." That the funding may yet be preserved in some fashion. But it was also stressed that the best way to ensure that this happens is to get in touch with members of parliament and to make the case for sustaining the funding to art and literary magazines. The good thing, this manager at Mags Canada told me, is that us artsies aren't afraid of making a little noise. So I urge anyone who reads this post to make all the noise they can, to make it clear to the government that the proposed changes to Heritage funding are not acceptable. This should be a flashpoint for one of the sharpest cultural debates the country has seen. Because this is not just about arts and literary magazines: it is about how the current government evaluates cultural endeavors and enterprises in the country. The consequences, should they get away with it, may prove much farther reaching than anticipated.

More Dead Roughs

From the hand of Nick Craine.

Page to Screen

Spent the last two days in Toronto to attend a Page to Screen conference put on by the OMDC. I've never been to something like this before, and went to it with extremely low expectations. Also, rather fearfully: I'm a book guy, don't know my movies or television well at all, and wasn't sure how the producers we would be meeting would react to what we had to offer.

It was set up as a sort-of speed-date, and we proved very, very busy. 16 regularly scheduled appointments, 3 double bookings, and 3 additional informal meetings, for a total of ... 22! I've never talked so much in my life, which, as I'm a bona fide rambler, is saying something. But it proved an exhilarating, if exhausting, experience. And rewarding: to see so much interest in Rebecca Rosenblum's Once, Mike Barnes's The Lily Pond, Terry Griggs's Dead, as well as work by Friedman, Helwig, Simic, Robertson, Smith(s), Orchard, Eichner, Flood, and Buday, as well as others. Gave away dozens of books, have dozens of follow ups to do over the next few weeks, as well as another dozen or so packages to mail out to film producers we didn't get a chance to meet. Nothing may immediately come of these meetings -- though I feel as if something just might -- but it taught me to look at what we are doing here a little differently, and gave me a sense of who out there might be interested in some of it. That I need not wait to have a bound book in hand before pitching some of my writers or their work to producers. That eventually, and of this I have no doubt, one of these pitches just might take.

Additionally, I had the opportunity to spend two evenings with the near irrepressible Rebecca Rosenblum, who's rose-coloured take on things always proves so refreshing, and saw a few other friends, including an old high school friend, Jeff Boulton, new LPG ED Jack Illingworth and former LPG sales manager -- and the person who first got me thinking about the importance of marketing books properly -- Margaret Bryant. Picked up Steven Millhauser's Dangerous Laughter and Fallada's Every Man Dies Alone from Chris Reed at Pages. Good food. Overall, though it is good to be back home, a complete success.

Introducing Chellis Beith

A first look at literary researcher/slacker/reluctant detective/experimental lab rat Chellis ( to be or not to) Beith, the ... err ... hero of Terry Griggs comic-noir bibliomystery Thought You Were Dead. As envisioned by Nick Craine.

Event Calendar - March/April/May

Here's a list of upcoming Biblioasis events for the next couple of months, though more are likely to be scheduled in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

March 11th: Mike Barnes, The Lily Pond. University of Toronto, Hart House, Common Room, 12-1:30 pm

March 21st: Patricia Young, Here Come the Moonbathers / Airstream. Cadboro Bay Bookstore, Victoria, BC.

March 28th: Lorna Jackson, Cold-cocked: On Hockey / Flirt: the Interviews, Words on the Water, Campbell River BC, 2:30-4:00 pm

April 1st: Bruce Jay Friedman, Three Balconies, Harbourfront Reading Series, Toront, 7:00 pm

April 5th, Mike Barnes, The Lily Pond & Rebecca Rosenblum Once at Gritlit, Hamilton Ontario

April 14th, Mike Barnes, The Lily Pond, Equilibrium, Evangel Pentecostal Church, 1450 Rebecca Street, Oakville, 7:30 pm.

April 18th, Mike Barnes, Diana Kuprel, POW Festival, Cobourg

April 22nd, Norm Sibum, The Pangborn Defence, Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore, details TBA

May 5th, Terry Griggs, Thought You Were Dead / Quickening, Different Drummer Books, Burlington, details TBA

May 13th, Terry Griggs, Thought You Were Dead / Quickening, Landon Library, London, 7:30 pm

Poem in a Bottle.

Poetry London is having a fundraiser tonight. It is one of the best run poetry series around, and the organizers have brought in a couple of Biblioasis authors over the years, including David Hickey, who's Broadside in a Bottle, pictured above, is one of the items. Not sure what else will be available, though the bookseller in me wants to know.

Poetry London will also be bringing in Patricia Young in 2009.

For that reason -- let alone the fact that the biblioholic in me wants the Hickey item -- I'm starting the bidding at $50 on the Broadside in a Bottle. I don't think I've spent $10.00 so far this year -- now that we have a cappuccino/espresso maker at the bibliomanse, there's not much reason to leave -- so even in my current penurious condition can roll the pennies and nickels and dimes and quarters in the Laphroig cannister under my desk -- Laphroig! Those were the days! -- and should be pretty close.

Lorna Jackson & Words on the Water

Just received word that Lorna Jackson will be appearing at the Campbell River Words on the Water Fest on Saturday, March 28th. Details can be found here.

Orchard's Smelly Pirates

Eric Orchard's illustrations for the Terrible Horrible Smelly Pirate have been nominated for an Atlantic Book Award (the Lillian Smith Award for Illustration). wish it had been for the lovely work he did in Anything But Hank!, but well-deserved nonetheless. Congrats Eric!

In Praise of the Sales Force

Over at Locus, Cory Doctorow writes about the most under appreciated group (outside of publishers, that is), in the biz: the Sales Force.

( For the record, my own definition of 'publishing' is also, as I've said elsewhere, making work public: not, alas, that that is always easy to do. But we keep trying...)

Hardly a day goes by that I don't get an e-mail from someone who's ready to reinvent publishing using the Internet, and the ideas are often good ones, but they lack a key element: a sales force. That is, a small army of motivated, personable, committed salespeople who are on a first-name basis with every single bookstore owner/buyer in the country, people who lay down a lot of shoe-leather as they slog from one shop to the next, clutching a case filled with advance reader copies, cover-flats, and catalogs. When I worked in bookstores, we had exceptional local reps, like Eric, the Bantam guy who knew that I was exactly the right clerk to give an advance copy of Snow Crash to if he wanted to ensure a big order and lots of hand-selling when the book came in (He also made sure that I got ARCs of every Kathe Koja and Ian McDonald novel — Eric, if you're reading this, thanks!).

This matters. This is the kind of longitudinal, deep, expensive expertise that gets books onto shelves, into the minds of the clerks, onto the recommended tables at the front of the store. It's labor-intensive and highly specialized, and without it, your book's sales only come from people who've already heard of it (through word of mouth, advertising, a review, etc.) and who are either motivated enough to order it direct, or lucky enough to chance on a copy on a shelf at a store that ordered it based on reputation or sales literature alone, without any hand-holding or cajoling.

The best definition I've heard of "publishing" comes from my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who says, "publishing is making a work public." That is, identifying a work and an audience, and taking whatever steps are necessary to get the two together (you'll note that by this definition, Google is a fantastic publisher). Publishing is not printing, or marketing, or editorial, or copy-editing, or typesetting. It may comprise some or all of these things, but you could have the world's best-edited, most beautiful, well-bound book in the world, and without a strategy for getting it into the hands of readers, all it's good for is insulating the attic. (This is the unfortunate discovery made by many customers of vanity publishers.)

For the rest of the article go here.

Canada Reads Day Two

As I said, I only listen to CBC when in the van; indeed, when I'm in my own van, as Alexis's new one has Sirius Radio and I much prefer the BBC. So I missed the first day of Canada Reads, though judging from Day 2, I'm not at all sure that is a bad thing. Heading back from the kids' swimming lessons tonight, I caught the last two thirds, and it was enough to set the proverbial on edge. By the end of it the only book I could even imagine reading was Tremblay's Fat Woman -- indeed, I am fairly certain I will (perhaps after i finish Absurdistan) -- as the panelist defending it is the only one I can stand.

Besides, Fat Woman is published by Talon, and us literaries need to stand together. Much rather see them get the sales than Bertelsman.

At home, I checked in on what the boys over at TSR think, and must say that I stand almost shoulder to shoulder with Steven. Go here for Beattie’s (& Good's slightly less) crabby, cranky, curmudgeonly Day 2 roundup.

Quickening

The last couple of days I've been re-reading, before sending them off to Terry, the proofs to Quickening(1990), Griggs's first collection of short fiction. Nominated for a GG award, but long, long, long out of print. Already there seems to be a bit of buzz about it, mainly tied, it seems, to the Salon controversy last summer (yes, Sina: seems at least a few people did discover the Salon writers for the first time through that endeavour). Terry has penned a short Foreword to the collection I thought I'd post here, as I think it captures so many of the joys that reading Griggs offers, along with the first page from Suddenly, the first story in the collection, to whet your appetite. Revisiting these stories has been one of the highlights so far of 2009, and I envy those of you out there who will be discovering them for the first time.

FOREWORD

Having been afforded this indulgence, this luxury, of republication, I thought I might as well add an extra two cents worth of explanation as to why. Quickening was first published in 1990 and contains a gathering of stories that I’d been working on for some time, which I suppose makes this introduction more a backward than a forward, although I’ll try for enough headlong encouragement to propel you into the text.

So, what are these stories; what do they have to offer; are they worth the trouble? Times have changed since they first sidled into the world. Spare, no-nonsense prose, continues to be much lauded, while what falls into the “poetic” category is much less so. Too much work, too flowery–artiness cluttering up the story or disguising its deficiencies. Nothing herein will make your teeth ache, I don’t think, but I do like language. Adverbs, adjectives, syllable-encrusted gems plucked from the word-hoard, tricky turns of phrase–all good stuff. A writer needn’t turn purple in the effort, but frankly, works of miserly, verbal monogamy have never brought me much pleasure. One can be spendthrift and still be precise–a more all-embracing precision. If, as the masterful William Trevor says, “stories, far more than novels, cast spells,” then surely one’s requirements would include a range of wordly wizardry. And true enough, making an entrancing word-woven thing is of great interest to me. Style, life in the line, entertainment of a kind that strikes more than just a glancing blow to the head or heart.

Okay then, suffice to say that the stories in this collection were not written by the Elements of Style rule book. I see them as being fairly straightforward, although the writing can be somewhat textured or layered, what a friend once described as a “thicket.” If the gist of any particular effort here seems overly elusive, a reader might need to venture in like a beater and drive out the game.

Another friend has described these stories as “wide tales” as opposed to tall ones, and that nicely covers the stretch in them. I’ve always been a bit of a fantasist, wanting to let in what lurks on the edges of vision, just beyond view. The droning realism of the everyday? Meh.

Let’s let language be an instrument of expansion, of seeing farther and more and deeper.

I’d write some of these stories differently now (or not at all), but I’ve left them unmolested, and laziness not the only reason. They are what they are; they deal with matters that absorbed me at the time, including some exploratory ways of approaching narrative. Some zig and zag, others host other stories in their innards, and a few are packed like a bulging suitcase, ready to pop open into a longer form. What scant autobiographical detail there is generally morphs into metaphor; here and there germinal fact sprouts into fiction. The imagination has done its work. If nothing else, Quickening represents the start of a writing life that does seem to determinedly persist. As a bonus–or booby prize, depending on one’s view–I’ve also added a story called “Tag” that was written shortly after the collection came out and was first published in What! magazine.

The dog out front with the nick in her ear and the patiently enquiring expression is called Fable.

William Trevor again: “The modern short story may be defined as the distillation of an essence.”

Ah yes, so welcome to my distillery, feel free to sample the brew. Old stuff, well aged, but not, I trust, gone skunky quite yet.

And, from SUDDENLY:

AWAY WE GO.

Went, I mean.

Snowflakes streaking past our eyes, stars jiggling up there in the sky.

Foop, into the snowbank.

Buck was laughing to split a gut, and he said, ‘Marsha, you're a kook,’ and I suppose he was right, considering. ‘Exhilarator! Haw, haw.’ He was smacking his hand on the dashboard. Did I say that? I expect I did. You know, words zip out of my mouth assbackwards half the time. Like then, when I hit the, excuse me, accelerator instead of the brakes and couldn't even get the swear­ing right. Probably because I was trying to pray at the same time, ‘Holy Shitface Mother of Bob, not the fender, please not the headlights.’ What we're talking about here is Daddy's brand new Comet GT with the Luxury Decor Option – cut-pile carpeting, colour-keyed vinyl roof and wheel covers, reclining contoured bucket seats – all the spiffy features Daddy couldn't stop jawing about that I'd just parked in a huge fucking snowbank.

‘Shut up, Buck!’ Though I shouldn't have said that, either. Way to impress a guy, eh?

I'd been working on it, too. ‘It’ being Buck and me, some­where alone. Not in a snowbank, I'll admit. That wasn't exactly what I was after. Getting my mitts on Daddy's car hadn't been easy. Getting Buck in it hadn't been easy. He's had his mind, such as it is, on other things lately. Two things, Trudy's, and they keep changing sizes, that's the joke. I nearly had to run him over. ‘Hey, Buckaroo, wanna go for a ride?’

What I wanted from Buck was simple. I wanted his undying love, his thrashing gushing heart in my hand (no matter it was likely cold and blue as a ball of ice), and I wanted to sing in his band, the Tomcats, New Year's Eve at the Lantern. I wanted this pretty bad. Feature me down on my knees every night: Listen up, Bob, you gotta do this for me. I'll wear my black dress, the one I bought in Reitman's in Sudbury with the ruffles around the hem tickling my kneecaps. Hot stuff, or what? I promise I'll be buried in it. You set me up and I'll do the rest.

Mike Barnes Reading at the U of T Wedensday March 11th

Mike Barnes will be discussing The Lily Pond at the University of Toronto a week from Wednesday, at Hart House. If you've not yet attended one of his talks please do so, as they are among the best I've been part of. If you have, you know what I am talking about; but you should also know that each one is considerably different from those that precede it.

Here's an excerpt from his latest talk, in Waterloo last Thursday (which can be found on his blog):

About drugs I have only one thing to say. It is a very recent insight, but it offers a glimpse into a wealth of possibilities. It's not about drugs per se, but about dosage. Over the years, I've tried a huge spectrum of drugs–from phenothiazine tranquilizers to antidepressants to various mood stabilizers–but all of them, even the ones that seemed to help, had side effects I couldn't tolerate. So I've become very wary of drugs. My psychiatrist doesn't push them–"I'm here to advise; the decisions are yours," she says, which is one of the reasons I trust her–but she does sometimes suggest, especially when I get backed into a particularly bad corner, that there might be a drug that could help. Last fall, I got backed into such a corner and she suggested quetiapine (or Seroquel, its brand name). But when I tried it, at the lowest standard dosage of 25 mg, it zonked me out so thoroughly and for so long–the familiar "zombie" effect–that I realized I could not possibly function in any normal way on it. I cut the pills in half, then into quarters; though better, it still knocked me too far under. So I dropped the trial. But my doctor happened to mention that she knew a couple of people who were helped by extremely small doses of this drug. And then my wife's doctor said the same thing, that she'd heard of people who were aided by a mere "whiff," as she put it, of quetiapine. So my doctor wrote me a prescription for 1 mg–we would start from that baseline. The trouble came when I tried to fill the prescription at Shopper's, only to be told by the pharmacist, very insistently, that the lowest dose sold was the 25 mg tablet and it was unobtainable in 1 mg strength. "But that's the prescription my doctor wrote," I said, pointing at the slip. "You might try a compounding pharmacy," he muttered, then looked past me and said, "Next?" To make a long story short, in all of Toronto I found only two old-fashioned compounding pharmacies who could make up the prescription in the lower strength. I have been trying it for a few weeks now...it shows promise. But my point is (or rather, my two points are): 1) Cui bono? Who stands to gain if drugs are only sold in higher-strength amounts? You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see that drug companies would not want it widely advertised that minute portions of their brands might help some people. Would any drug seller want it known that some buyers got by on a "whiff" of his product? Would he want to pay for the tests to discover such a possibility? 2) Which of my many failed drug trials over the years might have stood a chance of success at a dosage of one half, one quarter...one sixteenth...of the normal range? A "tincture of this, a tincture of that," as the old saying went.

A bit of this...a bit of that. Even tiny pieces can have an important place in the mosaic.

“Alle Ding sind Gift und nichts ohn Gift; alein die Dosis macht das ein Ding kein Gift ist” [all things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison]. Paracelsus's famous dictum usually receives a negative stress, i.e. Many things are poisonous except in small amounts. I have been reminded lately of its more positive face: Some things are beneficial precisely in small, even minuscule, amounts.

Though You Were Dead: Craine Sketches

Above, some rough endpaper sketches for our upcoming Terry Griggs's novel Thought You Were Dead. Dead is a bit of a departure for Terry, a comic-noir biblio-mystery, the first in a projected series of mysteries about literary researcher/reluctant detective/slacker Chellis Beith. The novel turns the mystery form on its head, bludgeoning flat language and puritanical sensibilities with evident glee. It's one of the silliest, funniest, word-drunk books I've read in quite a while, a linguistic joyride, a Griggsian romp. The Globe once reviewed an earlier book of Griggs's, saying it was like reading Robertson Davies on speed: if that's the case Thought You Were Dead would be Christie on crack.

This will also be our first illustrated novel. In addition to the endpapers, there will be another half dozen or so full page illustrations by Nick Craine, giving the book an appropriate pulp feel. Should have some of the final drawings to show you in the next week or so.

We'll be republishing Terry's first collection of short stories, Quickening, alongside Dead, complete with a previously unpublished -- unless you were one of the 26 people who bought the story from Metcalf's Magnum Reading series 17 years ago -- story, Tag.

Bibliorgy

Ah, yes, nothing like the thrill of the hunt. Reminds me of my booksale days. I wore custom-fitted elbow pads, sharpened to a point. In one of Seth's books -- It's a Good Life, perhaps -- he talks about the booksellers and their elbows. Well, I was ashamed to admit at the time that I was likely one of them. I've not always been the mild-mannered publisher you know and loathe.

Spent a couple of hours on Saturday, after my early afternoon squash match, going through Windsor thrift shops, and must say, did my old bookseller self proud, finding several late-19th early-20th century African travel books for a song, as well as some good local history, literary criticism and technical books. I've started scouting again here and there, to keep my online stock up and, really, just for the fun of it. Intend to do some of the booksales again for the first time in near five years in 2009. Used book sales still keep Biblioasis running, contributing $350-500 a week to the proverbial pot, though I still maintain the (faint) hope that these sales will one day end up in the proverbial pocket. Much more likely, that, than the press actually paying for more than itself in the foreseeable future.

Actually, these photos sort-of remind me of my basement. Minus the people.

For those who actually want the story behind the photos, rather than an online (former B&M) bookseller's tepid reminiscences, they can go here.

PS: Thanks to Zach at CLM for the link to this.

Canada Reads ... Again

It's that time of year, Canada Reads. Now, in the past, I've only listened to the broadcasts a few times myself, usually when I'm in the car: though many have pointed to the Canada Reads model as an alternative to the closed-room horse-trading which goes on for other literary competitions and awards, if this is an example of what the discussion is often like then I think it's best that we don't really know. It leaves a little room, at least, for hope. But I never fail to read the attendant discussions, and the best of them has started again over at That Shakespherian Rag, where Steven Beattie and Alex Good weigh in on this year's list, which can be found here. And if this year is like last, it will be updated on a daily basis. Perhaps we might petition the CBC to have Good or Beattie on the panel next season: that would have me tuning in promptly.

Cool Poster, for a Cool Reading Series

Over at Rebecca's aptly-named blog, Rose-coloured, I found what must be the coolest Reading Announcement poster a Biblioasis author has yet to appear on. (Second one down. The train, not the bleachers. No, not the one in the middle. Her hair isn't that big. I think she's the one in black.) She'll be reading this week, Tuesday March 3rd, at Gallery 1313. I won't be in Toronto for about another 46 hours, so I will have to miss it, though anyone in the GTA might want to consider heading down: anyone who can put together a promotional poster like this is worthy of our support (even, on the off chance, that isn't Rebecca on the stairs.)

UPDATE:

I have it on very good authority that the woman in black is not Rebecca, but Kathleen Brown. Still: a fine poster, and I urge you all to attend the reading.

Hans Eichner's Kahn & Engelmann

One of our Spring titles, the third title in the Biblioasis International Translation Series, is Hans Eichner's Kahn & Engelmann. Translated by Jean Snook, it is multiple-generational saga of heart-breaking domestic tragedy, set against the backdrop of the Anschluss, and is also a major contribution to Holocaust literature. Though it seems awfully early to begin broadcasting reviews, the book has received its first, a starred review in the forthcoming April issue of Quill & Quire, which I'll post below. Kahn & Engelmann should be available by mid-April: we're just finalizing the last of the text now before going to press.

Kahn & Engelmann

by Hans Eichner; Jean M. Snook, trans.

Publisher: Biblioasis
Price: $21.95 paper
ISBN: 978-1-897231-54-8
Page count: 336 pp.
Size: 5½ x 8½
Released: March

An emeritus professor of German romantic literature living in Rockwood, Ontario, Hans Eichner published this, his first novel, at the tender age of 79, then had to wait almost a decade after its critical and commercial success in German before seeing it translated into English. Better late than never. Following the rough trajectory of the author’s own experience, this astounding, ambitious work is a paean to the Viennese Jews driven out of their country when Austria merged into Nazi Germany in 1938.

The novel spans three generations, beginning with the migration of narrator Peter Engelmann’s grandparents, on foot – twice – from Hungary to Vienna. In Engelmann’s view, travelling is “the involuntary national sport of the Jews.” There is Engelmann’s flight to England via Brussels and, postwar, to Canada, then Israel. The experiences of Engelmann’s family in the garment trade feature prominently, in particular the poisoned relationship between his uncle (the Kahn of the title) and father, which eventually leads to the latter’s suicide.

Midway through the novel, Engelmann notes that “the taste of quince reminds me of my childhood, albeit without awakening such a world of memories as Proust’s madeleine.” Yet Eichner’s novel is nothing if not a “world of memories” written, Proust-like, in stream-of-consciousness peppered with self-analysis. Eichner has an enjoyably sardonic sense of humour, a weakness for rabbi jokes, and a fondness for Jewish tradition, which he lovingly details, while nevertheless maintaining a deep skepticism about issues of religion and race.

The Holocaust hovers over the text like a thug with his fist raised: we wonder only when the blow will come. But the novel takes an unexpected turn, and Engelmann’s large family emerges from the war relatively unscathed. Engelmann himself, however, suffers from a deep-seated guilt about the willful abandon with which he consumed the literature of his people’s executioners even as Jews died in droves in the camps. Engelmann’s developing awareness of the Nazi atrocities precipitates a career change – from professor to veterinarian – a crisis of faith that is only one potent ingredient in this original, moving novel.

Reviewed by Emily Donalson (from the April 2009 issue)

Bryson on Blaise

Over at the Underground Bookclub, Michael Bryson considers Clark Blaise's Selected Essays. The whole post can be found here. Here's an excerpt:

If I had to pick one essay as the best, I'd choose: "Kerouac in Black and White." It's the only essay I've read about Kerouac that starts from the point of view of the end years of Kerouac's life. The lonely, angry, reactionary, and as Blaise makes clear, the overtly racist years, though it is a racism consistent and persistent throughout Kerouac's career. Kerouac engaged, explored and wrote about "the other" consistently and persistently, but the exploration didn't lead to reconciliation; it led to entrenched alienation and the ultimate failure of Vanity of Duluoz (1968).

Amazon provides the opening sentence:

All right, wifey, maybe I'm a big pain in the you-know-what but after I've given you a recitation of the troubles I had to go through to make good in America between 1935 and more or less now, 1967, and although I also know everybody in the world's had his own troubles, you'll understand that my particular form of anguish came from being too sensitive to all the lunkheads I had to deal with just so I could get to be a high school football star, a college student pouring coffee and washing dishes and scrimmaging till dark and reading Homer's lliad in three days all at the same time, and God help me, a WRITER whose very 'success', far from being a happy triumph as of old, was the sign of doom Himself.

Blaise provides the context:

An impotent, alcoholic, ruined, middle-aged, mill-town Franco-American living in Lowell, and finally in St. Petersburg with his jealously protective, corrosively ignorant and loudly bigoted mother, or with a wife he alternately loved and hated while tying to divorce, is not a candidate for progressive opinions on race, class, or sexual politics. Forget Kerouac in his youth, the beautiful boy with his breathless tales of breaking away from canadien catholicism nightmared in Doctor Sax or tapestried in Visions of Gerard; forget the trips he took us on, like swatted rubber balls on their widest orbit in On the Road and The Dharma Bums and Mexico City Blues before they crashed back to the paddle that propelled them. That was then; this later, much later.

Which Blaise later expands:

Race, in the normal American black/white sense, was never a reality for Kerouac, never part of his early personal history -- only a metaphor for freedom, or temptation. He carried his blinkered childhood within him like a malignant unborn twin,and a white, Catholic, lost, pure French empire was part of that childhood. But for the likelihood of Indian blood, which he (like most French-Canadians) embraced, Kerouac was pur laine, a proud, full-blooded, full-culture French Canadian: ("Go back,"he wanted to call to his Breton fishermen ancestors,"ils vous I . jouent un tour." That is, America's going to play a trick on you.) Against the backdrop of the Church, and his own monochromatic background, "Negroes" offered only occasions for sex, drugs and music. And since those are also occasions for merging identities, they specifically challenge the corrosive dreams of racial and religious purity. Gerald Nicosia, in Memory Babe, mentions that Jack would have married Mardou Fox, the heroine of The Subterreaneans, if she'd been white. A strange inhibition for a Beat. "Purity" rose up early, and late consumed him, his vulture-twin pouncing on a helpless host.

You can start to see here that in Kerouac, Blaise has a precursor: a French Canadian border-crosser who struggled with multiple identities and modernity ... but who failed (found in the end only bitterness and collapse), whereas Blaise survived and tells us things Kerouac never could.

Ray Smith: Back in the Thought Control Centre of Cape Breton

From this week's Cape Breton Oran...

Writer Ray Smith leans back in a chair at the kitchen table of his family home in Mabou, takes a puff on his cigarette and begins to recall some of his earliest experiences with the written word.

“When I was a young boy the older folks got me a series of books by Thorton W. Burgess, and they’d read to me even before I learned to read. In many of the stories the characters would always go to see the wise old Grandfather Frog to help them solve their problems. I was up over the hill here one day as a child, and I looked at those frogs, and it became pretty damn clear to me that they couldn’t talk. That meant it was all made up. I thought that was pretty interesting, but I realized I was still involved in those stories, and it still seemed like a lot of fun to me,” he recalls.

Born in Inverness in 1941, Ray is the eldest of the three Smith boys born to Fred and Jean (MacMillan) Smith.

“Dad was in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and Mom and I lived here in Mabou during the war years until he got out in '45,” he says.

Fred worked as a banker but qualified for flight training during WWII and piloted Liberator supply planes on some of the longest and most dangerous missions of WWII in places like Ceylon and Malaya.

Ray began school at age five in Mabou at a small school near the Hawley house, just a few houses down from what is now the Red Shoe Pub. At that time the schools were still segregated by religion, and the Smiths were members of the Hillsborough United Church.

“The Red Shoe building was built in 1865 by Colin MacMillan, my mother’s great-uncle. Colin ran it as a store until it passed to Allan MacMillan from 1868 to 1905, and from that time until the early 1940s it was owned by my grandfather, Jimmy MacMillan. So it just feels like going home when I go down to the Red Shoe to enjoy a drink or listen to some music, and I really enjoy it when my sons Nicholas and Alexander come home and they want to go there or to the dances in Glencoe or West Mabou,” he says.

When the war was over, Fred returned to a career with the Royal Bank, and Ray attended schools in Sydney, New Glasgow and Halifax. The family always spent summers in Mabou, and Ray’s parents continued to live there after Fred’s retirement. Fred kept up his commercial pilot license until his death in 1993 and logged as many as 2800 hours in the air in his career. Ray still keeps his father’s two flight logs and wrote a fascinating feature on his father’s life as a pilot for the Inverness County Partici-paper in 1993.

Smith attended Dalhousie University where he completed a BA with honours in English and years later completed his master’s at Concordia.

“My first serious attempt at being a professional writer was in a hotel in Spain in May of 1964. I used to write poetry but moved to short stories and novels after that. I knew that not too many people make a living from writing, so I soon got into teaching, and I taught at Dawson College in Montreal from 1971 until my retirement in the spring of 2007. Mordecai Richler once told me that I should get out of the teaching business. He said it would just eat you up, but I knew I wasn’t like Mordecai. Besides being a novelist, he could make a decent living as a free-lance writer, but I write slowly, I follow my own interests and I knew that working as a free-lancer wasn’t for me. So I stuck with teaching,” Smith adds.

Smith’s first book of short stories, Cape Breton Is The Thought Control Centre of Canada, won him early critical acclaim. It was considered a postmodern work, but Smith decided after its publication to adopt a style less demanding on the reader.

“I decided after that I would write things that were a lot more user-friendly, and if I was going to play games they would be more underneath the surface. As far as major influences, I always enjoyed Nabokov’s playfulness, Jane Austen’s beautiful economy and Tolstoy’s power,” he says.

For a couple of years in the early seventies Smith was part of the Montreal Storytellers group of writers that began to bring their works to larger audiences through public readings. Living in Montreal and being part of the literary community there and the Writer’s Union, Ray met and befriended many of Canada’s most influential writers, including Richler, Atwood, Margaret Laurence and Mavis Gallant.

Upon retiring from Dawson College in 2007, Smith decided to “retire” to the family home in Mabou. Writers however seldom retire, and Ray is no exception. He set up an office in the family home that he inherited and is now busy working on another novel, a sequel to The Flush of Victory: Jack Bottomly Among The Virgins. The new work, It Floats: Jack Bottomly Among The Politicians, is typical of many of Smith’s works in that it features various locales.

“There’s a section of it in New Zealand; it moves to Edinburgh, London, Berlin; and then ends up in Venice. Still, I’m a Canadian and it’s a Canadian novel,” he says.

He admits he surprised some people by returning to Mabou after forty years in Montreal.

“I suppose conventional wisdom should have dictated that I’d stay in Montreal and perhaps help my landlord pay off his mortgage, but my health is good. I guess the timing was right. It’s home after all, and I can garden in the mornings and write in the afternoons. I have some old friends here, and I’m meeting new people all the time. And I enjoy having friends and family visit throughout the year. My two sons are grown, they’re busy in Montreal, they’re able to take care of themselves, and we keep in touch by phone, e-mail, and we visit and travel together on a regular basis,” he says.

Many of Smith’s books are being reprinted and re-released by his publisher, Biblioasis, giving him the opportunity to gain new audiences around the world. He still travels frequently, conducting readings throughout North America, Europe and the world but appears somewhat uneasy about promoting his work.

Smith says he considers Century his best work, and for the most part, the critics have tended to agree.

“Century got some pretty solid reviews, and I believe it’s my best work but as a novelist. It’s not uncommon for your works to be received in Canada with stony silence. I once asked Farley Mowat why he wore that kilt, and his answer was: “Have you ever tried to get any attention in this country?” But if I had to do it all over again I don’t think I’d do it any differently,” Smith concludes, perhaps with a feeling that his best work may still lie ahead.

Ray Smith’s published works include: Cape Breton Is the Thought Control Centre of Canada (1969), Lord Nelson Tavern (1974), Century (1986) and A Night at the Opera, which won the QSPELL Hugh MacLennan Award for Best Novel of 1992, The Man Who Loved Jane Austen (1999) and The Man Who Hated Emily Brontë.

Biblioasis Renditions #4: Ray Smith's Century

Released late last month, Ray Smith's Century marks the fourth entry in our Biblioasis Renditions Reprint Series. I think this is a stunner of a novel, by far the best work Ray has done. But don't take my word for it: Charlie Foran thinks as highly of it, and penned an introduction to the book which states the case with more eloquence than I have at my disposal. If this doesn't convince you to pick up a copy of Century and give it a shot, then there simply isn't that much life left in you: my condolences.

An Introduction to Ray Smith's Century, by Charles Foran

As a novice reader in late 1970s Toronto, I struggled with many of the novels being heralded as evidence of the exciting new phenomenon known as ‘Canadian Literature.’ Two questions lingered in my mind about the anointed books. Why so formally and linguistically conservative, and why, why so glum? The qualities seemed connected. They seemed of a piece with stiff Canadian movies and unfunny CBC comedy shows. They seemed only too true to how people around me talked and thought. But I was just a teenager then, and shy. I held my critical tongue.

Likely I was simply reading the wrong novels. (Mordecai Richler was one roaring exception; I remember blushing in my suburban bedroom at rude Cocksure.) Whatever the reason, I came of age accepting that if I wanted my literature nervy and witty and willing to meditate on its own nature, I’d best look south to those restless Americans, such as Donald Barthelme and Thomas Pynchon, or across the ocean to language punks like Martin Amis and English-rattling post-colonials of the Salman Rushdie variety.

My views were pretty much set by 1986, when I first read Ray Smith’s Century. So great was the shock of it, I disbelieved my own eyes. I had to go find Smith’s earlier books, Lord Nelson Tavern and Cape Breton is the Thought Control Centre of Canada, to be convinced that here indeed was a local writer burdened by neither a plodding sense of the novel form nor the apparently unbearable heaviness of being Canadian. Better still, here was a maker of fictions content that his books abandon the pretence of verisimilitude for the dare of showing themselves to be, well, fictions; sly, purposeful arrangements of narratives into sequences that told many things – a ‘good story’ being just one.

Century is a collection of six such fictions, set mostly in Europe between the near arbitrary parameters of a hundred year span – 1893-1983. Connections between the tales are minimal – a filament tied together by the family of the character called Jane Seymour – and concerns remain embedded in the Proustian textures of the stories themselves. Matter of fact, the textures may be the meanings; Smith has too much respect for language, and too little patience with theme-speak, to insist any overarching concerns upon these smart, bright words. At moments, he might even be counting on musicality to serve as medium and message alike. Take the book’s opening line: “In the night, Heinrich Himmler came to her as she lay waiting for sleep.” In partner with its no less cadenced follow-up – “He came from behind, stepping slowly, carefully in the unfamiliar dark” -- the sentence sounds all sorts of resonances. Here is dark night, time of dreaming and nightmare, and here is menace both specific, in the spectre of a dead Nazi, and general, in the helplessness of sleep, where humans “lay waiting” for such visitations.

Does the reader need further direction into the tonal labyrinth of Century? Much will depend on the reader. The entire novel, or collection of linked stories, or sequence of fictions – call it what you like; naming a thing can often limit how it is viewed -- will sound similar high, pleasing, occasionally harsh notes. The closest Smith comes to announcing a theme comes, appropriately, in the final piece, ‘The Continental,’ a dazzling faux-homage to Henry James, via various prankster satirists. The louche American Kenniston Thorson’s exchanges on modernist art, aesthetics debated with luminaries Toulouse Lautrec and Frank Harris, echoes backwards into the book, suggesting the enshrinement of absurdity and instability into the 20^th century consciousness from an early date. Conventional unities of theme and action will need be intimated once again from the prose itself. How else can Century end except with a further invocation of darkness gathering:

“Laughter spilled, trilled from Lulu’s red mouth, laughter like clinking crystal, laughter like cinder sparks whirling from her, brief in the winter night, like snowflakes whirling, filling the night, chill in the swirling dark all about, multitudinous, lost.

How else, too, can language behave, except to simultaneously sing, T.S. Eliot-like, of the looming catastrophe(s) while celebrating the wonder of its own lovely, largely innocent being. The ‘shock’ I felt on first reading Century was both aesthetic and moral. I had read books before whose formal virtuosity, quickened by charged prose, had set my heart racing. But never before had one of those writers been Canadian. Similarly, I had recently wrestled with a few giants of European modernism, Thomas Mann and Robert Musil among them, admiring their often colossal books for engaging with the volcanic, still unfolding century. Writing decades later, and doing so from the New World, Ray Smith wished to engage as well. Of course he couldn’t write as Mann or Musil had done. Of course he required a new form for New World meditations on, in effect, the Old World’s cataclysms. (Heinrich Himmler must travel to Montreal to unsettle this particular Jane Seymour.) The form would be post-modernist and would be meditated upon, or perhaps simply mediated, through music rather than through plot. This was language and structure as morality; this was serious literary craft.

Ray Smith was, and still is, an artist of great seriousness and, I sometimes think, greater sadness still. Nearly a quarter century after its publication – that word again! – Century continues to stand alone in Canadian Literature, apparently too singular, strange and unclassifiable. Out of this sad truth comes a happy one: the book remains to be discovered. Here it is.

A Thaw Foretold reviewed in The Fiddlehead

It is nice to see Mike Barnes's poetry collection, A Thaw Foretold, starting to get a bit of attention. It did not receive its due when it came out nearly three years ago -- I'm sure we share some of the blame for that -- but there have been a few reviews in the last several months, all of them glowing. The latest can be found in the current Fiddlehead, issue 238. Here's an excerpt.

Consider an introductory sampling of lines from Mike Barnes’ second book of poetry: “You held my arm for a moment/ as we kissed, and asked me to be careful.” Also “Fate is an oldfashioned word, you murmured.” These are the things lovers say to one another in A Thaw Foretold: though the collection begins in January, indeed with the poem “January”, and progresses onward, the poems in this book don’t presage any thaw, because the lovers it is populated with, the eternal and utilitarian “I” and “You”, are already having a deep, warm conversation. Barnes asks in “Sprawl”: “Is there time for a small poem just now,/ amid the numb or frenzied packing, the voices sounding/ last call?” And this small poem then goes on to answer in the affirmative. And this affirmative is brave, but tenuous; again addressing his love in “Meshaw Falls”, Barnes says, in a poem about his muse standing on a bridge, “I will hold this vision of you as you/ for as long as wind and planking will allow.” This introduces the real coldness of the two sections of the book: love has stakes, love has risk and is arrayed against risk, there are complications and unruly external forces that wish to impose their say on the poet’s say. But pain is merely only threatened here, or is in the past, is a making of memory; as Barnes puts it in the irregular sonnet “Abdication,” “Despair, you have held sway with me too long:// though nothing can slake the bloodless thirst for/ loss that is you, know this: our rule is done.” It’s a deft move: Barnes sheds the prophecy of despair as he admits he was complicit with it. Or as he writes in “K”: “.[N]ight will fall as it should, hugs/ and kisses back, and stories to tell…” Thus the threat Barnes is always alluding to, the threat that permeates this collection, is tempered by human conversation, is held at bay by what two lovers say to one another. Thus there is anecdote, skeins of anecdote, punctuated by and ultimately capped with lyric. In this way Barnes arrests by variation.

...I

In conclusion I give this review over to Barnes’s talkative –and therby ultimately hopeful-poetry, in perhaps the ur-comment on the love impulse in “First Stab”: “A better [illness] could cure this stuff,/ whispered a voice, dismissing love.” This is the real thing, announcing itself, telling us, admonishing us, “Why write a poem…/ if its lines could/ not breathe in your ears?”

The "new" New Quarterly

Once a Salonist, always a Salonist... If you needed any further proof that CNQ & TNQ (or Biblioasis and TNQ) share certain ...aesthetic leanings, look no further than the latest fab issue of The New Quarterly. Of particular note, there is a feature on the work of Robyn Sarah, with a spread of five poems from her upcoming fall poetry collection Pause for Breath. Editor Kim Jernigan interviews Robyn about her forthcoming book, and poetry in general; TNQ also has reprinted W. J. Keith's excellent review of Robyn's essay collection Little Eurekas. This alone is worth the cover price.

But there's more, of course. There's a contribution from the wonderful Peter Sanger, and an essay on his poem by CNQ contributing editor Amanda Jernigan; a wonderful little piece by regular CNQ reviewer Mark Callanan; three poems by Jason Guriel (who, along with Callanan, contributes poetry to the current CNQ; and three stories from Dave Margoshes's Metcalf-Rooke nominated Stories from my Father. The cover photo is by the wonderful John Haney.

Patricia and Terence Young at the UBC Bookstore

Thanks to Zach Wells for posting a reading over at CLM of Biblioasis authors -- current and future -- Patricia and Terence Young. We've published a couple of excellent books by Patricia, her first collection of short fiction the Metcalf-Rooke Award winning Airstream, and her last collection of poetry, from which she reads here, Here Come the Moonbathers. We'll be publishing a new collection of short fiction from Terence, likely Spring '10.

You can check out the reading here. A bit of background noise, so you'll need to turn up the volume, but well worth a listen.