Relaunching the Biblioasis International Translation Blog

When the Biblioasis International Translation Blog was created in 2011, it was with the ambition of becoming an online forum for literary translation in Canada and beyond. Although we got off to a decent start, with feature articles from the likes of Douglas Glover, Alberto Manguel, Scott Esposito and others, a litany of minor priorities—running a press? editing a magazine? launching a brick and mortar bookstore? teaching university courses?—kept getting in the way. Go figure. Finite resources, limited energy, and ambition make for a precarious dance. We're still working out the kinks in our steps.

When I arrived in Windsor a few months ago—idealistic, full of dreams, both shoes likely untied—I confess I immediately gravitated toward the idea of reviving this dormant beast of a translation blog. As a former bookseller in Montreal with a focus on world literature and small press, I believe that works by Biblioasis authors like Horacio Castellanos Moya and Liliana Heker are as exciting and vital as anything coming out with specialty presses in the UK and the States. I also know from experience that there is a subculture of impassioned and intelligent readers of literary translations in Canada, but for whatever combination of reasons (Narrow Aesthetic Mandates? The Myopia of Grant Culture? Jingoism?) the books they love are rarely met with any media attention or sustained pedagogical engagement. Literary translation devotees deserve more forums. And literary translators—all too often nudged off of covers in deference to backward and superstitious so-called marketing wisdom—deserve increased visibility.

It is our hope that by providing a combination of excerpts from new/forthcoming works in translation from publishers in Canada and abroad, as well as a selection of reviews, short-essays, interviews and other assorted notices by way of a weekly feature every Tuesday, we can in some small measure help bring visibility to the translation community here and beyond. It seems only natural to me that as the online face of our translation activities this blog should reflect the unique blend of freshness and surprise that writers of diverse geographic and linguistic cultures can accord readers in English. (On a more selfish note, it also means I get to read more books from my favourite publishers and pester them for excerpts).

At its best, translation creates the potential for continuity where before there was simply a rift or silence. It disseminates truths about other cultures that are sometimes unprecedented, it broadens our aesthetic palate, and so it makes us better readers and writers both, and may even increase our capacity for empathy. Yet, I wouldn't want to make all this sound too wholesome or edifying: disclosures from other cultures—testaments of world views, ways of life and sensibilities foreign to our own—can initially be deeply uncomfortable and even jarring; Translation is where we grapple as squarely as possible with the fact of the Other. It's a conversation that happens against all odds, and it would not occur at all without a mixture of civility, pantomime, admiration, occasional bewilderment, and something approaching alchemy. Its difficulties are proportional to its rewards.

We already have some great excerpts forthcoming from the likes of experimental Canadian poet/translator Erin Mouré, cult Quebecois icon Nelly Arcan, Angolan novelist and 2013 Jose Saramago Prize-winner Ondjaki, as well as essays on the work of Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector and prominent Dutch translator Sam Garrett, and much else besides. If you are a publisher or a translator and would like to contribute a 1500-2000 word excerpt, or if you are a writer and would like to contribute a 750-1000 word review/essay/notice on a literary translation title, please do not hesitate to contact me at jeckerlin@biblioasis.com. Today, we relaunch with three charming and whimsical poems from contemporary Polish poet Dariusz Sośnicki, as well as a piece by Quebec's Jean-Claude Germain chronicling his mid-century encounter as a bohemian youth with the volatile and soused "Canadian Mozart," Andre Mathieu.  I hope you will enjoy what we have to offer and will feel inclined to check back every Tuesday.

—Jesse

"Africa's Bracing Chorus": Tuner of Silences in Wall Street Journal

We had a short but sweet nod to Mia Couto in the Fiction Chronicle this weekend in the Wall Street Journal. It was part of a round-up of recent African literature. The WSJ site security is pretty tight, so you won't be able to see it without a subscription, but here's a taster:

"For a long time, when people spoke of contemporary African literature, they were mostly talking about just two countries. South Africa, of course, with its canonical authors like J.M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer. And Nigeria, whose prolific literary scene grew from the pioneering work of Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. 

"But in recent years English readers have been bombarded by voices from all over the continent, bracingly enlarging our popular conception of Africa. Just recently we had both the redemptive, made-for-TV-movie fare of Ishmael Beah's Radiance of Tomorrow, about post-civil-war Sierra Leone, and the subtle and elegant metaphysics of Mia Couto's The Tuner of Silences, unpacking the legacy of Mozambique's wars for independence. Last year NoViolet Bulawayo's jagged and fragmentary We Need New Names gave an impressionistic glimpse of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, and Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go—one of the best books of 2013—was an ebullient drama of emigration and birthright."

You might also want to keep your eyes peeled this Friday, when The Tuner of Silences goes head to head with The Good Lord Bird in The Morning News's Tournament of Books. Fingers crossed!

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Book Spotting Returns with More Beautiful Books in the Biblioasis Bookshop

It has been quite some time since I made a Book Spotting post. In fact, I think it might have actually been warm outside (you mean the thermometer climbs above the freezing mark occasionally? Above the negative double digits? And I had lost all hope of that ever happening again!) the last time I strolled the bookshop and photographed some of the beautiful books that come through the front door. Lately, there have been just too many lovely pieces of design in the shop for me to resist talking them up.

Perfect for your coffee table, next to your vintage tea set

First off, a book I've been admiring for months (we've had a few copies in and sold them, but it's back in store now in case you want to pick one up,) The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz (Harry N. Abrams, 2013). If they made the endpapers into wallpaper, I would probably use it to decorate my apartment. The illustrations are lovely, the colour pallet is wonderful (I find myself endlessly drawn to the colours in Anderson's films) not to mention the content itself, which features ephemera, full-page photographs and behind the scenes tidbits. 

Admit it, you'd buy it for the endpapers alone

This design has legs...

 Second on the list of books to which I've been gravitating lately is this new translation of Kafka's Metamorphosis by Susan Bernofsky (Norton, 2014). British Designer Jamie Keenan took what sounds like one of those great design ideas that fall completely flat in execution, and made it brilliant. The typeface is intricate while also clean, impressive even if it weren't masterfully nudged into the shape of a cockroach, complete with legs and antennae. What is so striking about this one is the way Keenan balances the elements of the design, which could easily become muddy or overwhelming, given the baroque nature of the type treatment. This is one of the best covers of the year so far (yes, I know it's only just March) and I'd hazard that it will remain a contender for my top spot even with all the releases to come in 2014.

Simplicity at its best

New Directions impresses again with these releases of short works that they call Pearls. The series is a lot of fun, using bold colours and simple geometric designs that grab the eye and also tempt you to collect the lot. Designer Rodrigo Corral has a great sense of how to make the minimal pop without slipping into the mundane.

Faber, Faber, Faber. Your books have this irresistible quality that make me feel like I just have to have them. Faber has re-released The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath with its original cover design by Shirley Tucker, but in a sturdy hardcover metallic gold edition (Ariel is also part of this re-release and comes in black and silver). I have a soft spot for Plath, but even if I didn't, the Faber back catalogue revival is enough for this one to draw me in.

Faber. I can't resist you.

My last two book choices share something in common, and it is certainly not the subject matter. First, Connecting the Dots: Tyree Guyton's Heidelberg Project (Wayne State University Press, 2007) is a work of art itself. The cover, uncluttered by title and author attribution, cuts straight to the artwork: the houses that make up the Heidelberg project in Detroit. The screened unbleached cover featuring one of Guyton's houses and a large pink spot remind me of Guyton's art of recycling and combining the unlikely into something unexpected. Without trying to compete with the interior in providing a representative cross-section of the project, the cover design instead acts like a pink front door, grabbing your attention and drawing you toward what's inside.

What's the book called? I don't care because I want it regardless.

What's in a name anyway?

Finally, Pedlar Press takes the same risk with Juanita Wildrose: My True Life by Susan Downe (2013). There's no denying that this is a striking cover and a beautiful photograph. Perhaps because most books have titles and authors listed on their covers there's something startlingly bare about this one, especially in the black and white, that makes you feel like you can't avoid those eyes. It's a daring move for sure, but I'd argue that it pays off because I can't get this cover out of my head. 

All of the above are currently available at Biblioasis (1520 Wyandotte St. E., Windsor, ON).
Look out for more Book Spotting to come!

Kate

Blogging from the Bookshop: On the Strugatsky Brothers' Definitely Maybe

"....the white July heat, the hottest it had been in two hundred years, engulfed the city. The air shimmered over red-hot rooftops. All the windows in the city were flung open, and in the thin shade of wilting trees, old women sweated and melted on benches near courtyard gates."

—from Definitely Maybe

Ah, the old Neversink over the face. A signature indie bookseller move.
I claim no originality, but false modesty aside, I do think it looks good on me.  

Definitely Maybe, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Translated by Antonina W. Bouis. Melville House Neversink Library, 2014. 160 pages; 15$. A strong case could be made that the Strugatsky brothers are among the most important sci-fi writers of the 20th Century. Their cult 1971 novel Roadside Picnic, in which government-patrolled remains of alien crash sites known as "zones" birth a subculture of young urban exploration renegades called 'stalkers' who smuggle dangerous contraband alien technology on the black market, was the basis for filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's mystical art house sci-fi classic Stalker, for which the Strugatskys also wrote the brilliant screenplay. We can count among the Strugatskys living champions Ursula K. Le Guin, Theodore Sturgeon, Hari Kunzru and many others. They wrote high-stakes, philosophical and speculative sci-fi under close scrutiny from censors within the Iron Curtain, brazenly defying and satirizing the very real and dangerous ideological fervour of the Soviet era in which they lived with sly social commentary and searing wit. (A fascinating afterword to the 2012 reissue of Roadside Picnic, written by surviving brother Boris, chronicles in detail the oppressive creative conditions of the time and the novel's close brushes and daring escapes among the authorities—the consequences of artistic transgression and not toeing the Party line were very real indeed, and a mixture of ingenuity, fortitude and luck allowed Roadside Picnic and other Strugatsky novels find their way into print). Luckily for English readers, their books are also beginning to find their way into translation: Definitely Maybe is the latest addition to Melville House's always golden Neversink Library, and the occasion marks both it's first appearance in English, and the first time it has been published in a completely unexpurgated version.

It tells the story of astrophysicist Dmitri Malianov, who has sent off his family in order to isolate himself so that he can work distraction-free on the project he is certain will win him the Nobel Prize. And yet he just can't seem to get down to business. Once the Interruptions begin, they don't seem to want to stop. An unexpected delivery of a crate of vodka and caviar, a beautiful young woman in a provocative short skirt—and then several of his peers and friends show up, also claiming they were on the verge of a major discovery when...Is there something in the air that wants to forestall human progress? Is it the disembodied will of the universe? God? Or are the distractions engineered by a far less mysterious force? And what will happen when Dmitri begins to seek out the cause? Definitely Maybe is political satire by way of probing speculative fiction, a suspenseful nail-biter that asks how one can hope to "explain fantastic events without a fantastic hypothesis?" 

Idle Hands are the Devil's Playthings

Mike Landry tackles Zach Wells's Career Limiting Moves in The Telegraph Journal and finds much to admire:

V-Day? More like FREE Day.

(For those of you looking closely, yes, that IS an
excerpt from The Bell Jar. Someone on the
interwebs was having a laugh.)

Good afternoon, all, and a happy, hearty, TGIFfy St. Valentine's to everyone. (Am I the only one to own that T-shirt that says Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone?) In lieu of chocolates, flowers, or cinnamon hearts—which thanks to Douglas Coupland we all know are REALLY used to mask the smell of decomposing flesh—Biblioasis would like to tell you about this nifty little app, which we probably should have told you about ages ago, but, well, here we are. Better late than never. Thirsty, meet BOOKSLINGER. Bookslinger, Thirsty. Bookslinger's a frisky lass who, thanks to our pals at Consortium, now slings (flings?) out one free story a week to her readers. All pieces drawn from independent presses across North America. The app is available (also for free) through the iTunes store. And guess what? Today, which is also International Book Giving Day, it seems Bookslinger's slung our very own "About Love." For those of you who are new, that's one of our three Chekhov tales that was translated by David Helwig and illustrated by Seth. So go at 'er, folks! Happy hearts!

(Though, um, I should say that if you really are looking for a happy day, you may want to hold off reading the Chekhov til tomorrow.)

Blogging from the Bookshop: On Lynn Darling's Out of the Woods

"Getting lost is easily avoided, say people who never get lost." - Lynn Darling

Note: objects are not necessarily to scale. The vivacious red of the oak leaf overlaid on the map beneath is not in fact larger than the landscape.  Failure to realize this could result in one becoming lost.

Out of the Woods: a Memoir of Wayfinding, by Lynn Darling. Harper Collins, 2014. 288 pages; 31$. Widowed ten years earlier, and finding herself quite suddenly alone and freed of parental responsibilities after her college-bound daughter leaves home, longtime New Yorker Lynn Darling suffered a crisis of personal identity and took to the woods in Vermont looking for self-knowledge and answers. Hoping to find direction in nature, she paradoxically finds new ways to get lost and reflect upon her past and what Geraldine Brooks calls "the often-treacherous switchbacks of the second half of life". A lyrical and vulnerable memoir of discovery in the tradition of Walden and Annie Dillard, Out of the Woods is one modern woman's reflection on the crisis of Dante's "mid-point of the path through life," and a manifesto and testament on the ways in which we might hope to find our way back.  

   

Biblioasis at Incite Vancouver

For 25 years the Vancouver Writers Festival has strived to connect authors with their readers, and present the public with the very best of literature. In the Spring, through their Incite reading series, they provide an atmosphere to promote the exchange and cultivation of ideas, encourage reluctant readers to crack open a book and present opportunities for lovers of literature to get in contact with their favourite writers. In keeping with this tradition, Biblioasis author Andrew Steinmetz will be making an appearance on Wednesday, February 19 as part of the Incite reading series, to discuss his Hilary Weston Prize-nominated biography This Great Escape.

This Great Escape is the story of Michael Paryla, a Canadian actor with an uncredited 57 seconds of screen time in the 1963 blockbuster The Great Escape, and his history—from childhood flight from Nazism to suspicious death twenty years later—intersects bitterly, ironically and movingly with the plot of Sturges's great war film.

This opportunity to connect with Steinmetz and learn about the process behind the writing of This Great Escape is not to be missed. Also appearing are Catherine Bush, shortlisted for Ontario's Trillium Award, and Adrianne Harun, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.

The event starts at 7:30pm and is located in the Alice MacKay Room of their Central Library. Admission is free.

Visit their website for more information about upcoming events and to RSVP. And stay tuned for more Biblioasis authors at InCite: Cynthia Flood on March 5th, Kathy Page on April 2nd, and Ondjaki on May 8th!

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Blogging from the Bookshop: On Olivia Laing's The Trip to Echo Spring

"I'd been banging my head against these questions for months, years. The three-way relationship between childhood experience, alcohol and writing. I'd read paper after paper about early life stresses and mediating factors, about the hand-me-down catastrophe of genetic disposition and the unearned luck of genetic resilience. I'd read about castration complexes and death drives and how Hemingway's mother was the dark queen of his internal world and in the midst of all these things I could hear the stripped-down elements of Berryman's poem: five words, clicking like beads on an abacus. 

Hunger, liquor, need, pieces, wrote."

- Olivia Laing

Although a tumbler of good scotch and a lit cigarette might seem like the height of romance,
this still life follows on the heels of some unimaginable disaster. 

The Trip to Echo Spring On Writers and Drinking, by Olivia Laing. Picador, 2013. 352 pages; 30$. In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing finally brings two of our favourite pastimes together. Focusing on the lives and work of famous male writers and notorious drunks F. Scott. Fizgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman and John Cheever, Laing explores the disquieting connection between manic creativity and the often debilitating influence of alcoholism in the life of each, embarking on a journey that takes her from Cheever's New York to Carver's Port Angeles. Having grown up in and struggled with an alcoholic family herself, Laing's interest here is not purely academic, and her journey forms "a topographical map of alcoholism, from the horrors of addiction to the miraculous possibilities of recovery." Mixing memoir, travelogue, and literary biography and coming with endorsements from the likes of Nick Cave and Hilary Mantel, The Trip to Echo Spring looks to be one of the most original non-fiction titles of the year. It's quickly making its way to the top of more than a couple reading lists around here.

Blogging from the Bookshop: On Barry Miles's Call Me Burroughs

"Every man has inside himself a parasitic being who is acting not at all to his advantage"

 -William S. Burroughs

Is that Peter Weller? Nah, it's good ole' Bill Burrahs grabbin' some much-deserved r&r after having exploded the depths of human consciousness. 

Call Me Burroughs: A Life, by Barry Miles. Twelve, 2014. 736 pages; 35$. With this 700+ page bio, Barry Miles looks to have written the definitive account of the life and times of famous denizen of Interzone and Beat legend William Burroughs. Undertaken with full permission from the writer's estate and the first bio to describe in detail the last decade of Burroughs's storied life, Call Me Burroughs "takes a panoramic view of the twentieth century" that follows Burroughs from his roots as a conservative Midwestern youth in the 20's and 30's to his formative sexual encounters with the Harvard gay scene, his galvanizing role in the Beat movement at Columbia, his rampant creativity and unhinged bohemianism at The Beat Hotel in Paris, his exotic travels in Mexico, Peru, and Tangier, and his vital role in many of the major artistic movements of the latter part of the 20th century including the Punk scene. Burroughs's exciting, shocking and often stranger-than-fiction life in many ways embodies the fruition and bizarre metamorphosis of counterculture in the 20th Century. Released on the centenary of the author of Naked Lunch's birth, and told through the lens of Burroughs's uncompromising quest for his "Ugly Spirit" through a heady combination of drugs, sexual misadventure, and transgressive literary technique, Miles's comprehensive biography of a true American original is sure to please even the most rabid fans of Beat literature and experimental fiction.

Canary makes ALA's 2014 Over the Rainbow List

Halloo, all. Apologies for the blog hiatus, but as some of you know, I was penned for 5 days in Philadelphia, surrounded by thousands of American librarians (er, not to mention foot-longs that come wit onions & whiz). I'm happy to say that on Saturday afternoon the GLBT Round Table announced that Nancy Jo Cullen's Canary was selected as part of its 2014 Over the Rainbow List, which provides citations annually for the ALA's favourite LGBT titles for adults. NJC's in pretty good company, too—alongside Canary in the short story collection category is Everything Begins & Ends at the Kentucky Club, which received an honourable mention at the Stonewalls the very next day. Congrats to Nancy Jo and her "often comic" collection.

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World TVO Premiere of Why Not? Doc Airs Tonight

Amendment: Documentary airs NEXT Wednesday. Sorry folks. The 29th.

15 Reasons to Live, the collection of fifteen short films by documentarian Alan Zweig that was inspired by Ray Robertson's Why Not?, has its TVO premiere tonight at 9 p.m. and midnight EST. Here's the bumpf: "[...] Zweig embarks on a personal journey to find out what makes life worth living. Featuring 15 short stories that represent Zweig's unique interpretation of reasons to live, the film 15 Reasons To Live is a thoughtful and searching examination on the nature of human happiness, and the profound events in life that can unexpectedly change the course of a person's destiny." It's also airing Thursday at 10 and Sunday at 11. You can check out the trailer below. 

Eucalyptus reviewed in Publishers Weekly, The Rover

Afternoon, all, and TGIF. A quick word before we all scatter for the weekend, to say that the reviews for Eucalyptus keep tumbling in: this week we've got one up at Publishers Weekly and another at The Rover. The PW one is actually one of the best we've seen from our trade mag cronies. Congratulations to Mauricio and Donald (who, by the by, got some much-deserved praise for the seamlessness of his translation) and a very merry Friday to you all. Be danged to you, Polar Vortex II! We're feeling GOOD.

From Publishers Weekly

"Segura writes with a poetic economy of language, using very few words to create meaningful images ... Winkler's masterful translation is so seamless, readers will think that the novel was written in English ... Segura's novel and his original voice are important additions to the Canadian canon." 

From The Rover
"Ably translated, well-paced, teeming with interesting characters that often speak for whole chapters, and written in a prose that is both lucid and hallucinatory, Eucalyptus is a remarkable, thought-provoking novel with the accessibility of a page-turner."

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Bookbinding Workshop at Biblioasis

We're two weeks into 2014, and struggling to stick to resolutions like: getting organized, eating healthier and exercising more. While you're at it, why not indulge your creative side and learn the art of Japanese stab binding? On Sunday, February 9^th Biblioasis will welcome Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild Instructor Dan Mezza, who will be teaching this ancient form of bookbinding that's still in use today. For only $65, you can take part in Dan's one-day class from 10am to 4pm.

What's that? You don't own silk thread and Japanese Chiyogami paper? Fear not, everything you'll need to make one book is included in the price. Soon you'll be able to bind your own artful books using techniques that date back from the fourteenth century.

Instructor Dan Mezza has been involved in the field of bookbinding for more than 20 years. He specializes in book repair and conservation, working out of his bindery in London, Ontario. Dan is a past president of the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists' guild and is active in the Southwestern Ontario Chapter (London) where he continues to offer classes with an emphasis on traditional methods and historical structures.

If you'd like to take part in this exciting workshop, please contact us at Biblioasis and register with payment before February 1^st. Stop by our store (1520 Wyandotte St. E., in Walkerville), call (519-968-2206) or email for more information (info@biblioasis.com).

A Poet's Debut at L'Opéra National

The Grand Salle at L'Opéra Bastille,
one of the homes of the Opéra National. Designed
by a Canadian architect, by the way.

As many of you know, Biblioasis poet and sometimes-editor Zachariah Wells has successfully raised $2321 in a “Francs for France” indiegogo campaign to get himself (and his mother) to Paris. The occasion? He’ll be visiting the Opéra National, where his poetry will be performed in song settings by Canadian composer Erik Ross. These three pieces, as sung by baritone Phillip Addis with piano accompaniment by Emily Hamper, premiered in Toronto on December 19th. For more information see the story in Quill & Quire  or watch an interview with Zach on Global Halifax’s Morning News.

Mia Couto to Engage in Cockfight; LA Times Tells All

"The rooster is back, and the rooster is famished," begins a press release issued today by The Morning News. 

2014 marks the tenth anniversary of The Morning News's cocky and off-kilter NCAA-style Tournament of Books, reports the LA Times. This year Mia Couto's The Tuner of Silences has been named one of 14 contenders. 

For anyone unfamiliar with the ToB (or college basketball, for that matter), well, here’s the 411: a panel of judges (including musician John Darnielle, writers John Green, Mat Johnson, Roxane Gay, Jami Attenberg, Hector Tobar, Lydia Kiesling, Jeff Martin, John McElwee, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Schulman, Jane Hu, Roger D. Hodge, John Freeman, publisher Lizzie Skurnick and Tumblr's Rachel Fershleiser) will each be assigned pairs of titles, one of which will ‘advance’ to the next round, until a winner (i.e. “The Rooster” is declared); the process is accompanied by play-by-plays from Kevin Guilfoile and John Warner. 

The competition is pretty stiff, but we DID crow a little to see ourselves already ranked before one of either Kate Atkinson or Fiona Maazel, both of whom have been relegated to a pre-tournament playoff.

Ahem. 

So. Place your bets, folks. May the best bird win. 

The Tournament of Books X Competitors List

"At Night We Walk in Circles" by Daniel Alarcón
"The Luminaries" by Eleanor Catton
"The Tuner of Silences" by Mia Couto
"The Signature of All Things" by Elizabeth Gilbert
"How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia" by Mohsin Hamid
"The Dinner" by Herman Koch
"The Lowland" by Jhumpa Lahiri
"Long Division" by Kiese Laymon
"The Good Lord Bird" by James McBride
"Hill William" by Scott McClanahan
"The Son" by Philipp Meyer
"A Tale for the Time Being" by Ruth Ozeki
"Eleanor & Park" by Rainbow Rowell
"The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
"The People in the Trees" by Hanya Yanagihara
[Winner of the Pre-Tournament Playoff Round]

Pre-Tournament Playoff Round
"Life After Life" by Kate Atkinson
"Woke Up Lonely" by Fiona Maazel

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Precision-Crafted Machines Spring Anticipation

Over at The Afterword, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway by the inimitable Alexandra Oliver is one of Michael Lista's four Canadian Poetry Books of the year for 2013, cited for "precision-crafted" poems at once  "[t]heatrical, funny,  [and] formally ingenious."  Also listed alongside the stellar cast of Oliver, Sara Peters and Karen Solie is Amanda Jernigan, author of the much-lauded 2011 Biblioasis debut Groundwork, for her most recent book All the Daylight Hours from Cormorant. Congrats to all!

& for those of you hoping to beckon the thaw with anticipation/wishful thinking, here are The 49th Shelf's most anticipated books of Spring 2014, among which distinguished company you will find mention of not one but two of our forthcoming titles: Novelists, a new short-story collection by the enigmatic C.P. Boyko, and I Was There the Night he Died, the new novel by "the Jerry Lee Lewis of North American letters," Ray Robertson.

Colette Maitland, Right With a Click

In what many forecast will be the year of Alice, it was lovely to hear Karen Schindler invoke her when talking about one of our quiet gems from 2013. "Reading [Keeping the Peace]," Schindler writes in the latest Malahat, "it’s easy to be reminded of Alice Munro’s analogy of a short story being more like a house than a road, where you go inside and explore the rooms, 'wandering back and forth and settling where you like.' Munro’s story-as-house metaphor works well here. Maitland manages to create a 'what do I see?' momentum, rather than 'where is this going?'"

And as if THAT isn't a laurelled comparison, she also invokes Yeats' line about how a good poem will "come right with a click like a closing box," and suggests that Colette's best stories end with that exact type of precision. Thanks to Karen for the thoughtful work, congrats to Colette, and a very happy[/snowy/shatteringly cold] Epiphany to all. 

"The Fragility of the Place One Calls Home": Benjamin Woodard on Mauricio Segura's Eucalyptus

Over at Numero Cinq, Benjamin Woodard praises the "breathtaking execution" and "strong cinematic elements" of Mauricio Segura's Eucalyptus, translated by GG winner Donald Winkler. The most recent title in Biblioasis's International Translation series, Eucalyptus is "an existential whodunit" that is part murder mystery, part dictatorial thriller, and part exploration of racial and identity politics in Chile and beyond.

As protagonist Alberto Ventura, a Chilean born writer living in self-imposed exile in Montreal, returns to his 'homeland' in order to attend the funeral of his father Roberto - a contentious man whose various legacies as student radical, hospital director, manual labourer and farmer provoke contradictory and occasionally hostile response from intimates and acquaintances - he comes to realize that the circumstances surrounding his father's supposedly natural death seem to be far more complicated that he initially bargained for.

What follows is Alberto's self-imposed detective hunt, mediated by a chorus of unreliable narrators whose accounts "seamlessly segue, à la a film dissolve, into representative scenes[...]luring the reader and resulting in a ghostlike journey: passing through bodies, into minds, and then back again."

Citing Segura's avoidance of "you can't go home again" clichés and his "fascination in more oblique questions: What is home? Who truly belongs to a parcel of land?" Woodward finds that Eucalyptus culminates in "an adventurous, hypnotic read." Hurrah!

- Jesse

Reposted from the Biblioasis International Translation Blog

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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From the Back of the Bookshop: The Strength of Bone Start to Finish

Way back in March, when the snow likely leaked through my boots and road salt tracked its way through the bookshop just as it is doing now, I started what I had the best intentions of making a series about the cover design process at Biblioasis. Since my initial post, which ran through the many varied concepts on the way to producing the final cover for Nancy Jo Cullen's short story collection Canary (Biblioasis, Spring 2013), I've designed many a cover, but the blog "series" on cover design has not moved beyond its first installment.

Today, I present the second part of what I still have the best intentions of making a series: "From the back of the bookshop."

This time, I'm featuring a book from our fall 2013 list, The Strength of Bone by Lucie Wilk. Her debut novel, The Strength of Bone follows the interwoven stories of a Canadian doctor in Malawi, a Malawian nurse, and a young Malawian boy whose mother is receiving treatment at the hospital. What struck me most about Wilk's writing is the way she balances clarity and medical precision with some truly beautiful imagery, making cells on slides as stunning as her landscapes, all while avoiding lapsing into cliche.

Despite my great enjoyment of the novel, a fitting cover design evaded me for a long while. I tend to gravitate towards designs that are minimal, clean, and sometimes quite stark. All of these qualities seemed to be precisely the wrong direction for this cover, so I knew it would be a challenge from the start.

My first thought was to grab one of the images that stood out the strongest to me in the novel, the yellow walls of the hospital. While I rarely use photos in my cover designs, this book seemed to demand a photographic treatment, so I went searching for something that would fit the content and mood of the book. I found a photo of a hospital gurney in a run-down hospital, in front of bright ochre walls.

Great colours. Not so great decor.

Unfortunately, while there were a couple things I liked about the design, such as the type treatment and that fantastic colour, the overwhelming reaction was that the gurney gave more the impression of a torture chamber than a hospital. Since we weren't promoting the latest Saw flick, this idea was not going to work.

Next attempt: photos of people.

Another issue with the first cover concept was that it didn't represent the human interactions that are necessary to the novel. The broken gurney was definitely too bleak and, while I wouldn't call it sterile, it lacked warmth. My next move was to try to incorporate people, and as Iris, a Malawian nurse, features heavily in the book, I tried a concept based around a photo of a Malawian nurse tending to a patient. However, this cover put a bit too much focus on one character, and since the novel splices together the lives of three main figures, there was a problem with balance. I tried a similar type treatment on the photo and played with the focus, but while it was a striking photo, it wasn't right to represent the whole book. Next.

And we're back to cold and clinical again.

 In my continued search for inspiration, I came across this photo of nurses training in Africa. I thought the image had a great visual impact, but I still wanted to incorporate the yellow wall Wilk describes in the novel. I made a couple attempts at overlaying some yellow graphics, but as the image was too stark and cold again I didn't end up working with this one even long enough to do much with the type. Onto something else. 

That typeface keeps coming back.

With this concept, I was still clinging to the typeface from the first cover, which I thought was fitting in that it's nice and clean but also round enough to avoid being too harsh. I also liked the idea of the text appearing almost in negative with the photo showing through. The photo was again intended to emphasize a more human element, with a nurse treating her patients. However, the photo didn't seem to stand out enough for a cover image and the eye had too many places to look all at once. I was sent back to my photo search once more.

Different character. Same issue. Not representative of the whole book.

As with the photo of the single nurse treating her patient, this shot was deemed too specific to one character. Again, since the photo wasn't working, I didn't do much with the typeface, and quickly changed gears.

I walked away from my design attempts for this cover for a couple days and went back to the book. What could I try that I hadn't yet to reflect something broader about the story. This is when I started looking into photos of Mount Mulanje, which plays a prominent role in the novel, to the point where it almost becomes a character itself.

A couple nights' sleep means a drastic shift in concept.

I found this wonderful photo of the mountain, with the lush greenery in the foreground and mists rising above. While it wasn't a hospital, or even a person, there was something about that image that seemed to speak to the novel and give the right impression of its tone. I thought the way the text interacted with the image was also quite organic, for example the overlay of the word "bone" onto the mountain face. This was working better than anything I'd tried to date, but it was not quite right yet. It was time, at last, to re-visit the type treatment.

And we have a winner!

The final cover (above) used the same image of Mount Mulanje but played up the contrast between the greenery, the mountain and the mists to a greater extent. I drew on the way "bone" played against the mountain to do something similar with "strength," darkening it to give it a more dramatic appearance against the mist. One of my favourite aspects of the type treatment is the way "of" appears out of the mists. Add a blurb at the bottom, and the cover is good to go.

From too harsh hospitals, to human interaction, to more harsh hospitals, this was a long haul of a cover design. In the end, the mountain that looms over the story looms also on the cover. And I think it works.

Keep an eye on this spot for more book covers as they progress start to finish. Hopefully in fewer than nine month intervals this time. I have the best intentions.

Kate

Late Night Conversation

In the wake of the Debut-Litzer Prize, you can join winners Anakana Schofield (fiction, Malarky), Benjamin Busch (creative nonfiction, Dust to Dust) and Natalie Diaz (poetry, When My Brother Was an Aztec) as they discuss their work with executive director Paul Martone and reviewer Patrick McGinty. Listen to the podcast here.

Munro's Books

Pssst. For those of you out west, there's a little celebration happening on Thursday night in honour of Alice Munro; if you have a minute, or forty, or three hundred plus, I'd say it's worth going attending. Here's the description (courtesy of Rod Mickleburgh). Go! Fête! Celebrate!

To mark this wonderful moment in our literary history, a few of us have organized a night of appreciation and readings devoted to Alice Munro’s prodigious body of work. The list of speakers/readers is impressive:

Shaena Lambert; Hal Wake; Anakana Schofield; Sandy Garossino; Actor Tom Scholte; Caroline Adderson; Anne Giardini (novelist and Carol Shields’ daughter); Cynthia Flood; Cathleen With; Aislinn Hunter (Alice’s cousin); Betsy Warland; Fiona Lam; Elise Partridge; and me.

Host for the evening is the Globe and Mail’s superb arts correspondent, Marsha Lederman, while the tireless Kerry Gold has been chief motivator.

We are calling the event, Munro’s Books, with the kind permission of her ex-husband, Jim, who runs the great bookstore of that name in Victoria. 

It takes place Thursday night, 7 o’clock, at The Tangent Café, 2095 Commercial Drive. Snow or no snow. Craft beer on tap. Free admission. Y’all come, now. It should be quite the evening. 

To whet your appetite, here is a 45-minute interview with the great Alice Munro, just posted on the Nobel Prize website.

Cullen in Vancouver Sun; Wilk on 49th Shelf

Afternoon, all, and happy Monday. We've had a lovely weekend chez Windsor, as (much to the balm of our Post-Holiday-Party Heads) there were a couple nice hits for Biblioasis titles. Nancy Jo Cullen's Canary was selected by Mary Ann Moore as one of her favourite reads for 2013 in The Vancouver Sun, while our own Cynthia Flood singled out Lucie Wilk's The Strength of Bone as her holiday gift pick on 49th Shelf. Both lists have lots of great suggestions, from presses big and small. Enjoy!

Oh. And because it wouldn't be me if I didn't say something: Happy Birthday, Milton. Best wishes to that glorious Form, that Light insufferable, And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty—with love from all of us chez Biblioasis. 

Flood, Wilk in National Post

Morning, all, and happy (Cyber?) Monday. The National Post was full of Biblioasis this weekend, with a piece running on Lucie Wilk's The Strength of Bone, plus what I'd call an all-out love-song to Cynthia Flood's sparse, strange short fiction. Thanks to Steven Beattie for the latter (and for doing his best to debunk the phrase "writer's writer," which as we all know gives with one hand and slaps with the other). "Flood is a highly accomplished stylist," writes Beattie:

whose technique is tightly calibrated and precise ... Anything superfluous is ruthlessly pared away, resulting in a presentation that frequently resembles pointillism ... discrete elements congeal to create something recognizable and aesthetically pleasing, but the whole is utterly dependent on the interaction of its parts: change one thing and the entire piece suffers.

Pretty heady praise to begin with. But then he continues: "The stories in Red Girl Rat Boy are brief, but dense, requiring concentration and attention ... [yet are] as emotionally engaging as any flat-out storyteller."

As for the Wilk review, yes, it was more qualified, more cautious, it eventually moves past its hums and haws to call The Strength of Bone "masterfully literary." Keep an eye out for more Wilk reviews in the coming weeks.

What else is on the horizon? Our second annual Holiday Party is coming up this Friday, with a 10% store-wide discount; we've got hockey events coming out our ears (including Bob Duff at the Walkerville Tavern on the 10th); we have FLASHY NEW T-SHIRTS and more of our FLASHY OLD T-SHIRTS; we hear rumour that Anakana Schofield was positively resplendent at the GG dinner; and and we swear that copies of the new CNQ will be arriving at the doorsteps of subscribers, you poor dear patient much-enduring subscribers, within DAYS. Stay tuned!

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Last Week Was Actually Pretty Great.

You wouldn't know it from the Thirsty blog (ahemcoughsorry), but last week was actually a pretty great one over here at the Bibliomanse. So a happy Monday to you all! See below for the movings, shakings, news, reviews, and gossipy tidbits that got our follicles tingling ca. Nov. 11 to Nov. 15th, 2013. On the 16th we at the Bibliomanse celebrated ONE FULL YEAR in our wonderful new bookshop and office, and admittedly got a little distracted preparing for that, but you know what? We had a heckuva good time. Paul Vasey, Bob Duff, and Rino Bortolin joined us for author signings, and—as an extra-special geek treat—we had bookbinder extraordinaire Dan Mezza come in from London to do on-the-spot book appraisals and make repairs suggestions on old volumes. Thanks to the book doctor for making the trip south, and thanks to all of our wonderful customers who came in to support us here at the shop. We couldn't do it without you.

On to the media!

1. We had a lovely endorsement of Ray Robertson's David from the Historical Novel Society, as well as a half-hour interview with Ray with Bill Kenower, editor in chief of Author Magazine, on Author2Author;

2. Mauricio Segura's Eucalyptus was reviewed in the Montreal Review of Books and was named an Editor's Pick/Amazon.ca Top 100 Books of the Year for 2013;

3. Lucie Wilk, whose Strength of Bone was also an Editor's Pick/Amazon Top 100 book, was reviewed in this month's Quill & Quire. Quoth Kamal Al-Solaylee: “If you suppose [The Strength of Bone] is a love story across racial and political lines, you’re underestimating the inventiveness and grace of Lucie Wilk’s meditative debut. Wilk instead works with what is unspoken, hinted at, and left to the imagination … anything but typical.”

4. A "Book News" piece by Annalisa Quinn is circulating on NPR.org and NPR affiliates for Mia Couto's Neustadt win:
Book News: Mozambican Writer Wins Neustadt Prize, 'America's Nobel’: on NPR.org’s “The Two-Way,” Nov. 5
Repeated on WWNO.org, Nov. 13

5. In the wake of the furor surrounding Garth Hallberg’s massive Knopf advance, I thought I’d mention that yep, that is in fact the same Garth who blurbed Traymore so handsomely for The Millions. Traymore was also singled out for its first line over the weekend by the San Francisco Chronicle. 

6. Friday was a lovely wonderful rare day for us here at Biblioasis, with our first full-length poetry review in Michael Lista’s “On Poetry” column. For the poetry enthusiasts out there—heck, for everybody—the whole thing’s worth reading in full. Congratulations to Alexandra Oliver.

“An incredible feat of vision and voice … technically, nothing is out of Oliver’s grasp. Her go-to iambic pentameter can swallow anything in its path. Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway should go a long way toward establishing Oliver as one of the country’s best stanza makers, with a fluidity and ambition aspiring to Dylan Thomas or Yeats … When she succeeds, she succeeds entirely.”

7. Last but not least, the following from KD Miller, whose new collection All Saints will be forthcoming with Biblioasis in Spring 2014:

Recently I was interviewed by CNIB volunteer Ann Saunders for Accessible Media Inc. about my experience of recording some of my own books for The Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Included in the interview are excerpts of me narrating Holy Writ (The Porcupine's Quill, 2001); actor Deborah Kipp narrating Brown Dwarf (Biblioasis, 2010); and Ann Saunders herself narrating The Other Voice (Stonebunny Press, 2011.)
If you'd like to listen in, just click on the word "online" at the end of this sentence: "The November 2013 episode of Choice Words, featuring an interview with K.D. Miller, is available for listening online."