Kenneth J. Harvey celebrates the 10th anniversary of the ReLit awards by signing with an independent Canadian press. Harvey published his last two highly successful novels, Inside and Blackstrap Hawco with Random House, but will be returning to an independent press with his latest, Reinventing the Rose, which is already a Russian bestseller. Harvey’s been supporting Canadian independent presses for 10 years now, via his highly successful ReLit awards initiative, but this move is what they call practicing what you preach. Considering his name in Canada and his wild international success — Harvey is published in 15 countries – he can pull this move, sure, but it’s really quite something that he actually did. So, may the move have a karmic marketing effect for you, Kenneth.
Reinventing the Rose “features a pregnant artist whose gynecologist boyfriend takes her to court in order to force her to abort her fetus. Alongside the main story is the detailed day-by-day development of the embryo.” Dundurn, which Harvey chose after a number of bids from other publishers, will release it in Spring 2011. Michael Carroll was the acquiring editor, whom Harvey’s worked with in the past. Carroll had this to say of Harvey: ”I’ve worked with Kenneth twice before with two previous publishers and have always been struck by his no-holds-barred commitment to his craft and his intense, vivid, and searing vision. In Reinventing the Rose, Kenneth, as always, challenges readers and sweeps them along in a never-to-be-forgotten probing of life’s verities and falsehoods.”
“I have been published by any number of presses in Canada, both large and small,” said Harvey, “and I look forward to working with my old editor, Michael Carroll, and to revisiting the independent press environment. As for supporting the independent presses, I thought it time to put my money where my mouth is.”
Harvey is a good guy and a talented writer with a clever business sense. Here’s a sample of what he’s accomplished: an international bestselling author with books published in Canada, the US, the UK, Russia, Germany, China, Japan, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and France, who has won awards like: the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Winterset Award, Italy’s Libro Del Mare, and has been nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and twice for both the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
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