Photo from Kathleen Winter's Book launch courtesy of Gavin Will (of Boulder Publications) / stolen off Facebook

 There’s been well over decade’s worth of literary proof that Newfoundland is the literary capital of Canada. A fertile ground for fresh, new fiction. 

Case in Point: This photo was taken 10 nights ago at the legendary, “The Ship.” A pub no bigger than your living room.  

In this photo, left to right, a full spread of diverse, distinctive, literary firepower: 

Michael Crummey, Michael Winter, Kathleen Winter, Russell Wangersky, and Leslie Vryenhoek. 

 Skirting this photo’s range: 

Jessica Grant, Janet Russell, Libby Creelman are hidden behind that pole. 

George Murray had just left the building. 

A mini-pack of Burning Rockers, Lisa Moore, Claire Wilkshire, and Larry Mathews, are just off to the side. 

And the person taking the photo is pretty well stepping on the toes of  Chad Pelley and Samuel Thomas Martin, members of a recently formed writers group whose name, The Cold Stone, is a shamelessly pun-intended homage to the legendary Burning Rock fiction group. (The homage, of course, is a witty professional nod, not fanaticism?)

(And then some. Including at least a half-dozen emerging names you’ll know soon enough.)

So, all the publishers and agents are in Toronto, sure, but we all know where all the talent is. The joke is that “Take a picture in St. John’s and there’ll be a writer in the background.” Jacked it up. “Take a picture in St. John’s and there’ll be four or five writers in the background.”

From Danila Botha’s publisher, Tightrope Books: “A startling and original new voice that owes as much to Black Flag and Bikini Kill as it does to J.D. Salinger and Heather O’Neill.  Botha’s prose is compassionate, provocative, often funny, and always fearless.” Danila’s debut collection, Got No Secrets, hit the shelves this season. Check out her posts at The Afterword Here, or her last guest post on Salty Ink here. 

For today’s guest blog, I’m thrilled she chose to interview a Salty Ink favourite: Metcalf-Rooke winner, Amy Jones. her debut, What Boys Like, blew Salty Ink’s mind, remember?

“I think that most fiction is really just piecing together little bits of reality in different ways.”

 Amy Jones  (http://listophelia.blogspot.com/) is a fantastic writer. Her first book, a collection of stories called What Boys Like is the most exciting book I’ve read in ages- a diverse group of utterly convincing, uniquely voiced characters whose pain, restlessness and triumphs are entirely relatable, and whose voices are fresh and vital. Both the dialogue and internal monologues are spot on.

I had the chance to chat with her recently about her writing process, inspirations and what she loves about writing short stories.

 1)      You write from so many perspectives so well- from the perspective of a young kid living with her teenage mom in How To Survive Summer in the City (I loved that story, it cracked my heart open) In A good girl, from the perspective of a waiter, Alex, who is in love with a much younger woman, in Miriam Beachwalker, a teen trying to figure out who she is and what she wants from life, and a girl who realizes how unrequited her love is in All We Will Ever Be. Do you find it difficult to get into different character’s minds? It reads so seamlessly. What is the process like for you? How do you get the characters to seem so relatable, so real and so human?

Well, for one thing, I spend a lot of time people watching. I’m kind of obsessed with what’s going on in other people’s lives, and I’m always wondering “What’s that single mother at the grocery store thinking?” Or “What’s that guy with the super young girlfriend thinking?” My stories are all attempts to answer those questions.

2) How did the story “The Church of the Latter Peaches” come about? In it a bereaved widow tells the story of how she and her young fiancée met, and what their relationship with each other, and his family was like prior to the funeral. Was the chocolate fortune part inspired by the Caramilk secret? I’m wondering what your inspiration was. I found it wonderfully inventive.

I had this image of a pregnant widow sort of rolling around in my head for months, but the story really started to come together for me when I found Marty Peach. That story, more so than any other, went through a huge revision process — at one point I think it was 50 pages, at another point it was only 8 — and the whole Caramilk secret thing was just an experiment to throw in something kind of crazy in order to help me crack the thing open. But I ended up really liking it! So it stayed. I don’t know; it’s the most polarizing story in my collection, but I have a soft spot in my heart for it.

3) I can see why. It’s experimental for sure, but a very touching and realistic seeming story. You make a lot of local references- to Halifax, Wolfville, other parts of Canada. Do you think setting is really important in short stories? Do you plan to set more in Halifax? I loved all the references, especially in How To Survive, it really hit a nerve with me. I’ve  met a lot of kids like that, and moms like Stacy.I don’t know if setting is important to all short stories, but it certainly is for mine. When I was writing What Boys Like, I was very conscious of the fact that I was writing about a city rarely fictionalized, and was careful to portray it as honestly as I could. That my Halifax friends say I got it mostly right means a lot to me! And yes, I’ve got way more Halifax up my sleeve. It’s what I know. I don’t know if I feel comfortable enough with any other city yet to settle into it with stories.

4) That makes sense. I don’t know if I’ve lived in Halifax for long enough yet to write about it. Are the stories mostly fictional, or are they based on people you’ve known? Have you ever been afraid to reveal parts of other people’s lives that were told to you in secret, or did they come purely from imagination? I ask this because to me they felt unbelievably vivid and real. Have you ever been afraid to expand on, or tell other people’s stories, and how did you resolve it?

I steal people’s stories all the time! But I totally consider everything I write about completely ficticious. If someone I know has had something interesting happen to them, it might find its way into a story but in a totally different way and to a totally different character. Or that little quirk that a friend of mine has, it might show up in an 80 year old man instead of a 30 year old woman. I think that most fiction is really just piecing together little bits of reality in different ways; even if you imagine something, it’s probably someone’s reality somewhere. Also, one thing I’ve learned is that people are going to see themselves in your stories no matter what, even if you consciously try to avoid it. Like, my mother thinks that every mother I ever write about is her. Eventually, I just had to stop writing about mothers.

5) That’s really funny- it happened with my mom too. It must be a mom thing.

I was reading that you love short stories, and that you want to write another book of stories next (which I am frankly thrilled about, and can’t wait to read) What do you say to people who say that short stories don’t sell? (I think it’s ridiculous myself. There’s a great Zoe Whittall poem where she says she’s told that, and so she decides to call her next book Go Ask Alice Munro).

I definitely love short stories above all else, and the reason I write is because I love to do it, so what sells isn’t the first thing on my mind (except maybe around the time rent is due!) I think short stories sometimes require more work from the reader, and definitely a more open mind, and that’s why I love them. I had a person tell me recently that they didn’t like short stories because she liked character development and dialogue, and in short stories there was no chance to develop either (actually, she said “well, sometimes you know what they’re saying to each other, but you don’t know why!”) But that’s really what I love about short stories: how much of it is in the subtext, how your own interpretation of it as a reader can be your own little beautiful secret. Also, I’m pretty much up for any challenge, so if someone says to me, “short stories don’t sell” it makes me want to say “oh, yeah?!”

6) Yeah, I love the subtext too. That’s a beautiful way to put it. Who are your main literary influences? Have you read anything fascinating or great that’s changed your life lately?I love Aimee Bender, Rick Moody, Lorrie Moore, Steve Almond, Miranda July, Lisa Moore… and about a hundred other short story writers. Rebecca Rosenblum, who won the Metcalf-Rooke award the year before me, continues to astonish me with her short stories. I’m reading The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz right now and it’s the first novel in a long time that is completely blowing my mind.

7) Your dialogue is so fresh, and sharp. Is it something you acquired through practice, or does it flow naturally for you? What is your writing and editing process like?

I really attribute my ability with dialogue to the years I spent as an actress, learning how other people talk, how the rhythm of their conversations flow, how they say so much in what’s not said. Also, like I said before, I eavesdrop a lot! That’s really where my stories start, with the dialogue — I hear the characters speaking in my head, and it’s not until I can clearly hear their voices that I can put anything down on paper. Once I start, I usually just vomit it all out onto the screen as fast as possible, and rarely do much rewriting, because I do so much of it in my head before I even start.

Darryl Whetter’s A Sharp Tooth in the Fur  

For every pack of young writers out there striving to be the next Lisa Moore or Michael Winter, there ought to be another hoping to be as fresh and crisp as Darryl Whetter. Though critically acclaimed (this book was a Globe and Mail Book of the Year), Whetter remains undersung, in that each and every Canadian who hasn’t read a story like “Profanity Issues,” has missed out on the kind of literary entertainment only a finely crafted short story can offer up.

Joey Comeau’s Overqualified 

People use the term “very original” too freely. They waste it as a descriptor. Example: Joey Comeau has written a collection of linked short stories, all of which are in the form of cover letters to places like Irving Oil and HBO. THAT’S original. And Goddamn funny. If you haven’t read Joey Comeau’s Overqualified, it is a lesson in innovation, a laugh-out-loud stab North America, an occasionally unexpected heartbreaker. It is a book for everyone with an iota of life in them.

A friend said, “I am heading out of town for a while. Suggest a book; give me my literary summer fling. Make it something funny but profound and unforgettable.”

A literary summer fling, she said, and I thought of this book, because The Darren Effect is the best-looking book I’ve ever laid eyes on, and, a truly unforgettable read. I don’t remember every book I read in 2008, but  this one’s never left me. So I suggested Libby Creelman’s The Darren Effect. Described by Lisa Moore as “Pepper-hot and Coolly comic,” it fit her request for the perfect literary summer fling.

The Globe and Mail said it best: “ The novel marries the tragic and comic to wonderful effect in developing the complexity of ordinary lives.”

With its scenes of women stalking a man stalking birds in the woods, and a weird teenager who crawls on all fours, I would have to re-read the novel, twice, to do it justice, but I think its publisher does as good a job as possible in pitching the book:

“An affair. A marriage. Accidental encounters. A secret spying mission masquerading as research for a short story on desire. This is the rich ground from which The Darren Effect springs, carrying us through the complexities, tragedies, and unanticipated triumphs of love and loss. The Darren Effect is a miraculous novel, in which the characters coalesce and crisscross in awkward, surprising, and hilarious ways. Damaged by grief and circumstance, Heather, Isabella, Darren, and Benny offer each other heartbreak, love, and redemption at a time when all previous points of reference have vanished. Creelman’s writing snaps with wit. Spinning a cunning plot, she upends reader’s expectations in a devastatingly funny novel that entertains with ticklish tenderness and keen perception.”

The Hour of Bad Decisions by Russell Wangersky

The consistent sentence-level craftsmanship in this collection is a rarity. A solid display of literary talent. A sentence-after-sentence assurance this man earned that Giller nod. Engrossing stories and compelling subject matter. Raw human emotion swimming through dynamic diction.

 Michael Crummey’s Flesh and Blood

Overshadowed by Crummey’s highly acclaimed novels, Flesh and Blood is a work of linguistic mastery in every way: the style, structure, and barebones writing in these stories are as assured as the hawk that never misses in sinking in those talons. This is the work of a literary genius. I mean it as no slight to Michael’s great novels – but this is his best book.

Mark Anthony Jarman’s My White Planet

People hail Jarman as the country’s most original short fiction writer in the country. But original doesn’t cut it; original implies he is the first of our generation, but he is beyond this generation of writers. He is the first of the next to come. He is post-original. It is like he is ten years in the future, writing from a place where language and story has evolved to, and none of us are quite there yet. Inevitably, a reader will sometimes get lost trying to find him (find a story inaccessible), but when you do find him and keep up, you know you’ve just experienced something no other writer in this country is offering.

A Nova Scotian favourite,  Lesley Crewe, is set to release her fifth novel with Nimbus Publishing this fall.

The struggle to capture the essence of a novel and be visually appealing to a reader can be a tough challenge that a good publisher takes seriously.

For Crewe’s Her Mother’s Daughter, they’ve gone through 5 covers, all nice in their own way, having found this book cover a particular challenge.

Click here to hop on over to their great blog and read all about the evolution of this cover, the rationale behind desgining and then ditching each cover, and the reason why number 5 was the lucky number … and all you have to do to win a FREE ADVANCE COPY is join Crewe’s Facebook fanpage leave a comment on which cover you like the most!

AND/OR! Respond on Nimbus’s blog by July 22nd to win a copy of one of Lesley’s other books! You get to choose between, Relative Happiness, Shoot Me, Ava Comes Home or Hit & Mrs. (Speaking of book covers, Hit & Mrs. was shortlisted for Salty Ink’s Judge a Book by Its Cover contest last year, based on public voting!)

 Many people have done the “suggested playlist,” thing, but as far as I know, Salty Ink’s Chad Pelley was the first to get permission from 15 musicians for a mutually benefical CD Soundtrack. Want a copy? email chad@saltyink.com with the header “Soundtrack” to enter the draw.

This CD went out with certain review copies, and I fired it off to some university radio stations, etc. There are explanations below for why each song made the cut.

I intentionally dropped names in the book so I could make a soundtrack. Won’t do it again, as it is a little obtrusive, and, as one critic said, after calling me a music snob, ” … might, in ten years time, date the novel.”

Click Here to read all about Away from Everywhere and watch a trailer

01.) The Weakerthans – Left & Leaving

- In an old draft / deleted scene, Owen used lyrics from this song for the epigraph of his short story collection Four Letter Words

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02.) Joel Plaskett – Heartless, Heartless, Heartless

- Another scene cut out of the novel: When I first wrote the scene where Hannah and Owen come to St. John’s, they went to a Joel Plaskett show at the Ship, and were spotted being a little too friendly by an old friend of Alex’s.

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03.) Pilot to Bombardier (Bryan Power) – Lifetime Behind

- This song captures some elements of the book well. It’s brooding and reflective in an atypically warm, disarming way. Like a few parts of the book.

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04.) The Album Leaf – Always for You

- This would come on as the credits rolled up. It just thematically encapsulates much of the novel, particulalrly the closing revelation.

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05.) Damien Jurado – Sheets

- See page 58, where Hannah mentions he is Owen’s favourite musician and they lay on her couch listening to and discussing him. (And lyrically, this song really suits the book.)

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06.) Blair Harvey ft. Joel Hynes – Dozen Beer

- See page 176. ” … get a drink downtown. Get out of the house. Blair Harvey and Mark Bragg were playing at The Ship.”

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07.) Brian Borcherdt – Motel

- See page 276. Emily was listening to Brian the night Andrew stumbled into her studio and …

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08.) Mark Kozelek – Up to My Neck

- See page 284, when the power goes out. “We could go out in my truck and chat. Maybe take a few CDs out with us and flick the dome light on. I’ve got some Mark Kozelek, I think you’ll like him. And The Great Lake Swimmers.”

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09.) Mark Bragg – Amanada Lies

- See page 176. ” … get a drink downtown. Get out of the house. Blair Harvey and Mark Bragg were playing at The Ship.”

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10.) Eric Bachmann – Lonesome Warrior

- See page 282. What Owen and Emily are listening to when the power goes out.

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11.) Hayden – Home by Saturday

See page 256, where Hannah talks about her crush on Hayden / the night Alex took her to a Hayden concert.

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12.) Great Lake Swimmers – Changing Colours

- See page 284, when the power goes out. “We could go out in my truck and chat. Maybe take a few CDs out with us and flick the dome light on. I’ve got some Mark Kozelek, I think you’ll like him. And The Great Lake Swimmers.”

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13.) Damien Jurado – Everything Trying

- See page 58, where Hannah mentions he is Owen’s favourite musician and they lay on her couch listening to and discussing him. (And lyrically, this song really suits the book.)

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14.) Wintersleep – Listen (listen listen)

- Not mentioned in the novel, but lyrically, and mood-wise, it was the perfect song to use in my trailer for the novel. But, then, didn’t.

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15.) Songs: Ohia – Being in Love

- See page 120. The Jason Molina lyrics Owen quotes are from this song. Songs:Ohia are also mentioned by Hannah on page 20.

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16.) The Frames – True

- Mentioned in a rough draft, this song just really captures a few different elements of this novel.

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17.) Hayden – Between Us to Hold

- See page 256, Alex takes Hannah to a Hayden concert. 

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Disclaimer: This is an unofficial soundtrack. These songs / this CD will never be sold or made available for download by the author (who sees this as a mutually promotional marketing tool) and to my knowledge, permissions for this have been granted. If any musician or label representative would like the author to deactivate the audio sample of their work, email chad@saltyink.com.

Jon Tattrie first caught my — and Canada’s — attention with his Christmas at the Airport project. A month later, I was impressed after sharing a venue with him in Halifax, as he read from his 2009 debut novel, Black Snow, a novel that Halifax Public Libraries declared a book of the decade (alongside titles like Lullabies for Little Criminals). It also spent time as #2 on the Chronicle Herald’s bestseller list, and took silver in The Coast’s annual “best of Halifax” poll for a local writer/book.

Tattrie is back, already, with a 2010 release: The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery.

Who is Eddie Carvery? Eddie Carvery was born in Africville, Nova Scotia, an African-Nova Scotian seaside village  bulldozed in the 1960s under the guise of “urban renewal.” Its people were relocated by the city of Halifax, except for Eddie, who returned to Africville in 1970 and pitched a tent in protest, aiming to and to reclaim his people’s land and history. “Forty years, three families, seven heart attacks and numerous attempts on his life later, he remains living on the land where he was born. He’s been shot at, had his residence set on fire and been run off his land countless times. His struggles with his demons of addiction and violence have cost him his families and his entire adult life.”

Salty Ink: This is a pretty amazing story. Tell us about Eddie Carvery and your inspiration to write this story.

Jon Tattrie: 

I was covering the Africville summer reunion as a reporter in 2009. The city had just renamed a service road ‘Africville Road’ and I was in search of a quote who could tell me how great the recognition was 40-odd years after the destruction of the black Nova Scotian community. Instead, I got Eddie Carvery. He spoke passionately about Africville, about his protest and about racism for 45 minutes, at which time my digital recorder’s battery ran out. Eddie concluded by saying, ‘But your readers don’t want to hear about that.”

I disagreed. I went home, filed my story (with an abridged version of Eddie’s complaint) and could barely sleep that night. Eddie’s been camped out in the abandoned fields of Africville for 40 years and he started moving into my brain that night. In later months, I had dreams where I could see Eddie sitting in his trailer sitting in my brain.

I came back two days later and proposed collaborating on a book about his life. He agreed on the spot and that started an extraordinary partnership. I had been looking for a story like this all of my adult life and he was ready to talk. I started going to his camp three or four days a week, interviewing him for an hour or two at a time, over four months. I wrote the interviews up every day and the deeper we got into his story, the more astonished I was.

Eddie’s a man like no other I’ve ever met – he’s straight out of the Old Testament and lives a life most of us can’t imagine. Listening to him grow quiet as he re-lived his dark days as a drug addict and violent man took me into my own city’s hidden darkness. Hearing how Africville saved him thrilled me and gave me hope for Halifax.  

Africville has become a home of sorts for me. I still visit Eddie most weeks to hear his latest adventures, to ask his opinion on things and to just enjoy his company. When I’m frustrated with work or entering a patch of bad life weather, I go see him. Sitting in plastic chairs, gazing out at the Bedford Basin, talking to whomever stops by – it puts things into perspective. Eddie has walked in the darkest valleys and visited sun-drenched mountain tops. Few people survive such extremes or emerge with such understanding.

As a writer, The Hermit of Africville is a dream project. Eddie’s a gifted story teller with a sensitive mind for natural parables and so for the most part, turning his stories into words was a matter of listening closely. Because of the high-profile battle he and his brother (and co-protester) Victor had with Halifax in the run up to the 1995 G7 meeting here, he is a well-known figure, yet almost nothing is known about him. The same is largely true of the Africville he grew up in.

Eddie’s conviction at the protest, and his inner courage in exposing his soul at the same time he exposes the soul of the city, makes this book magic. I hope it will give people a better understanding of what we all lost when we lost Africville. The love Eddie has for his home has sustained him through 40 winters, 40 summers, 40 springs and 40 falls. He’s slept on frozen fields, risked his life and lost his families, but he’s never lost Africville.

I hope my book can offer even some of that love to others.

Jon will be launching The Hermit of Africville at 2 p.m. on July 24th, at the Africville Summer Reunion in Halifax. The launch will include a reading, words from Carvery, and a performance by jazz singer/judge Linda Carvery.

 ……   

On Larry and his latest novel

Larry Mathews is credited as the founding member of the Burning Rock Fiction Collective. A writer’s group that includes names like Lisa Moore, Michael Winter, and Jessica Grant. Credited perhaps because in his inaugural year of teaching creative writing at Memorial University, him, Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, and some others, didn’t want to stop meeting and swapping writing once the class had finished, and from there began Canada’s most legendary writer’s group.

Mathews is, as described by Mark Anthony Jarman, “A Searing and silver-tongued wit.” His latest novel came out a few months ago, The Artificial Newfoundlander, and Salty Ink made it May’s Book of the Month. Read that article here. It’s a gut-busting, fast-paced, pleasure-to-read story, in which an amusingly introspective and disgruntled professor is surrounded by absurd characters as far-fetched as life itself, as his role as  a father, lover, and academic is put to the test.

On his pleasure-to-read The Sandblasting Hall of Fame.

The Artificial Newfoundlander left me needing a little more Larry Mathews. For years now, I’ve been wanting to read his debut collection of shorts, The Sandblasting Hall of Fame, but we all know how that goes: 20 new books hit the shelves each month, burying the old ones deeper down in the to-read pile. Bookstores are frustratingly quick to send anything a year or two old out the door, so you have to order online, etc.

Don’t be lazy like me about this book. GO. Get it.

Few books have the abundance out laugh-out-loud moments, the sheer, glistening wit of it. The sheer “joy of reading.” Oh, and from a writer’s viewpoint: the clever narrative construction and the lack of throwaway sentences: his style is punchy and gripping: a great combo when you throw his wit in the mix. Mathews plain has fun with language here, in the way Jessica Grant does in her heralded (exquisite!) writing. If people are going to be consistently comparing Burning Rockers Michael Winter and Lisa Moore’s attention to detail, they ought also to be comparing Grant and Mathews’ clever wordsmithery and pleasure-to-readedness.

What he does with his endearing misfit characters acts as a way to do with fiction all the things I like seeing done with fiction. A distinctive voice, engaging from start to finish, that hauls you into a story, keeps you there, clipping along at a good pace, and you hit the ending like a brick wall. (Because that’s how accidents happen: you forget about your surroundings, absorbed in something else, like, say a Larry Mathews’ story.)

His characters might be oddballs or they might not be. They’re certainly great to spend time with. Larry is masterful, yes, masterful, at what the old books call character development. In an opening paragraph: you know the characters, right away, just like that. They’re off-kilter, yet fully realized and convincing, and plain fun. They’re also unabashedly human.

Mathews, on his characters, “My guys are clowns in the sense that they see the Fall of Man whenever they slip on a banana peel. Then they take you backstage and you can see that, without makeup and costume props, they’re not much different from you and me.”

The Sandblasting Hall of Fame was longlisted for the 2003 ReLit Award, and features stories that have appeared in various esteemed literary journals, including Prairie Fire, Grain, and Fiddlehead. “Hanrahan Agnoistes” was anthologized in Coming Attractions 02′.

There are countless book bloggers in the country, but there’s about a dozen busybodies who really stand out, and do some truly exciting things. In the case of Erin Balser and Jen Knoch, some of these bookish types do multiple great things. Like Books in 140 seconds: a Keepin’ it Real Bookclub co-project between Jen and Erin. They video the two of them reviewing a book … in 140 seconds. They do it well, a great blend of summary and selling points. Watch their take on Jessica Grant’s multi-award-winning, so-very fantastic Come, Thou Tortoise, and Joey Comeau’s — yes, that guy from asofterworld.com – One Bloody Thing After Another.

BOOKS IN 140 SECONDS ON COME, THOU TORTOISE

BOOKS IN 140 SECONDS ON ONE BLOODY THING AFTER ANOTHER

I had no idea Joey Comeau was originally from Halifax. Until today. I’ve been a fan of his work on http://www.asofterworld.com/ for years. If you haven’t heard of  asofterworld.com: Basically, since 2003, Joey and PEI’s Emily Horne pair up and post these weekly: (note: their website seems to be temporarily broken.)

Click images to enlarge and read them

Joey’s Latest Books

Overqualified (2009, ECW Press) – A Collection of Shorts so Good they Caused a (ten-grand) Danuta Gleed Literary Award Scandal!

Joey’s 2009 collection of shorts — a collection of shorts in the form of cover letters – was so good it was shortlisted for one of the country’s top literary awards — the $10,000 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, for a first collection of shorts. Unfortunately, after being shortlisted, the issue of Overqualified not having technically been his first collection of shorts came to the surface: he’d self-published a book of shorts a few years earlier. A book called It’s Too Late to Say I’m Sorry.

“A collection of wry, clever and demoniacal job-application letters, teeming with knife-edged malice and stomach-tearing hilarity. If Comeau’s rebel-yell manifesto catches on like old Prometheus’s gift did all those years ago, human resources will never be the same again.” – Globe & Mail.

“Overqualified by Joey Comeau is a collection of satiric cover letters handcrafted to make any HR worker cringe and every job seeker smile. Ranging from pithy and heartwarming to darkly funny and bizarre, the letters sparkle with the inappropriate use of unabashed personal honesty in a traditionally dry and humourless form. . . . [Overqualified is] beautifully executed satire, perfect for anyone who needs a good laugh (like the unemployed).” – Geist

One Bloody Thing After Another (ECW Press 2010) - A Short Novel Blending Comedy, Literary Fiction, and Horror

From an excerpt on ECW’s website: Charlie worries sometimes that his dog is an idiot. When Mitchie wants to lie down, he just falls over on his side. When he gets excited, he pees a little. But what can Charlie do? You can’t take a dog back after fifteen years and say, “You gave me a lemon.” Charlie’s too old to find another dog, anyway.

ECW’s summary: Jackie has a map of the city on the wall of her bedroom, with a green pin for each of her trees. She has a first-kiss tree and a broken-arm tree. She has a car-accident tree. There is a tree at the hospital where Jackie’s mother passed away into the long good night. When one of them gets cut down, Jackie doesn’t know what to do but she doesn’t let that stop her. She picks up the biggest rock she can carry and puts it through the window of a car. Smash. She intends to leave before the police arrive, but they’re early. Ann is Jackie’s best friend, but she’s got problems of her own. Her mother is chained up in the basement. How do you bring that up in casual conversation? “Oh, sorry I’ve been so distant, Jackie. My mother has more teeth than she’s supposed to, and she won’t eat anything that’s already dead.”

“For a zombie novel featuring a monstrously ravenous mother chained in the basement who won’t eat dead food — so her daughter steals live kittens for her to gnaw on — this is a remarkably tender novel. Quirky to a marvelous fault, Comeau’s fourth book is an intricate exercise in offbeat storytelling.” – Q Syndicate

Danila Botha’s short fiction collection, Got No Secrets, is on the shelves and much buzzed already. She is guest blogging on The Afterword this week, so follow along.

Publisher’s note: 

A startling and original new voice that owes as much to Black Flag and Bikini Kill as it does to J.D. Salinger and Heather O’Neill.

A South African copywriter is transplanted to the urban jungle of Manhattan. A recovering rape victim tries to resume a normal life. A Toronto nurse cuts herself to fill her emptiness. In Got No Secrets, Danila Botha takes us into the private lives of twelve different women, with only one question in mind: What if these women were you? From addiction to abuse, from childhood to suicide, from Hillbrow, Johannesburg, to downtown Toronto, Botha’s prose is compassionate, provocative, often funny, and always fearless.

Click Here to buy Got No Secrets

“Mesmerizing scenes worthy of a national epic. Its meticulous construction and control contain a breadth of incident and characterization seen only in the most ambitious and imposing novels.” – The Globe & Mail

With more than ten books under his belt — books that showcase an astounding versatility in style and story, from creepy slipstream to innovative literary fiction — Kenneth J. Harvey has become an international icon, and “Canada’s heavyweight champion of brash and beautiful literature.” His signature style, and his graceful-but-gritty delivery has been emulated but unmatched. His career took off from the get go, long before Newfoundland was the country’s literary goldmine and publishers were lining up for a pieces of that gold. His first book, Directions for an Open Body, was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize (Canada and Caribean Region). Impressive career highlights:  His 2003 release, The Town That Forgot to Breathe, has been published in over a dozen countries. His 2006 mega-hit, Inside, remains the only Canadian-authored book to have won Italy’s prestigious Libro Del Mare Award, and his latest book, not even available in Canada, is currently a Russian bestseller. Kenneth is also the man behind the ReLit awards: the country’s most meaningful literary award.

Blackstrap Hawco, his 2008 release, a work fifteen years in the writing, has been declared the #1 best book out of Canada in 2008 by Amazon.com, it then made Amazon.ca’s top 50 books of the decade. A Giller and IMPAC finalist, and a Globe & Mail and Quill & Quire book of the year, Blackstrap Hawco is an epic, 848-page family saga about  Newfoundland’s working class, and spans more than a century.

From Random House’s website: “Named in a moment of anger, Blackstrap Hawco is heir to an island dominion picked over by its adoptive nation … [and] the family legend might be all his people have left to live for. But as Blackstrap Hawco – a novel that will consume you in its dazzling swirl of voices, legends and beautiful hearsay – testifies, a story this haunting, this powerful, might just be enough.”

“ A masterpiece … brutal, poignant, stunning, infuriating, heartbreaking and hopeful, hard to read and harder still to put aside.” – The Chronicle Herald
 

Blackstrap Hawco also features Kenneth’s own narrative invention, the transcomposite narrative, which transcomposes passages of non-fiction with fiction. It takes the exact wording of newspaper articles, journal entries, or letters written by real people and attributes them to supposedly fictional characters. Kenneth says, “The transcomposite narrative tries to mirror what we actually see in our memories, because what we see in our minds is always a mixture of fact and fiction or history and myth. It is never entirely one or the other.”

~~~

Salty Ink: Blackstrap Hawco has been dubbed your masterpiece, and it is certainly epic in every way: The unique transcomposite narrative, the fact it was fifteen years in the making, the fact Amazon.ca included it as a top 50 books of the decade, or that Amazon.com called it the #1 book out of Canada in 2008. What’s been the biggest thrill for you about Blackstrap Hawco.

Kenneth J. Harvey: The biggest thrill was having legendary editor, Geoff Mulligan publish Blackstrap in the UK under the Harvill Secker imprint at Random House UK.  Geoff edits Jose Saramago, J.M. Coetzee, Joseph O’Connor, Louis de Bernieres and other renowned authors. It was an honour to be published by him.

Salty Ink: As a versatile author of more than 10 books spanning many genres and styles of writing, what sets Blackstrap Hawco apart from your other work, in your mind?

Kenneth J. Harvey: The 15 years of torment it caused me.

Click here to buy Blackstrap Hawco now

- Possibly Canada’s coolest magazine, The Walrus, recently asked 10 top-notch Canadian authors to write “the most Canadian story” they could think of for their summer reading issue.  Click Here to see that list, which includes new stories by Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, and Linden MacIntyre. 

- Speaking of new Michael Winter: if you haven’t heard, being the innovative writer he is, he has something new and different coming your way in the fall: The Death of Donna Whelan.

- There’s a particularly great article / interview / review combo of Annabel in The Chronicle Herald today. So good, I’m linking to it for you.

- Are you a writer and WANL member, living in Newfoundland, with a newly released book? If so, WANL are looking for submissions to their new reading series: Spring Tides. get in touch by September first.

- Have a novella on your hands? Get it in the mail by June 30th, to Quattro Books, for their Ken Klonsky Novella Contest.

–> Last year’s co-winner of the Ken Klonsky Novella Contest, by the way, was Binnie Brennan’s Harbour View. A nice read that was also shortlisted for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. Sheree Fitch on Harbour View, “Brennan’s writing is symphonic in nature and scope, her characters so fully human you may think you hear them whisper in your ear. Here is prose filled with surprising microscopic observation; sometimes funny, other times poignant, these details are heart-stopping in their truth and beauty.”

Jesse’s Bio:

Jesse Patrick Ferguson currently lives in Fredericton with his wife and son. Jesse has published poetry and reviews in ten countries, in both print and online formats. Recently, his poems have appeared in Canadian Literature, Prairie Fire, The Walrus, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry and Harper’s. His work also appears in the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry, 2009 and Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament. Jesse is a poetry editor for The Fiddlehead, and he plays several musical instruments. In 2009, Freehand Books published his first full-length poetry collection, Harmonics.

Publisher’s Note on Harmonics:

Jesse Patrick Ferguson melds music and words in this compelling debut collection of poetry. Modeled on the harmonic series, carefully placed poems riff on each other and individual words resonate sympathetically, with all the energy and buzz of a firmly plucked mandolin string. Throughout, Ferguson pays playful homage to poetic traditions, infusing age-old forms like the sonnet and the villanelle with an astute and contemporary political sensibility, a unique and fresh aesthetic energy, and a breezy, brazen East Coast swagger. In dense and vivacious language, he tunefully explicates a range of subjects from climate change to rent cheques to various incarnations of love, offering us a tin can telephone to the raucous and beautiful symphony of everyday life.

Anne Simpson on Harmonics: “Jesse Ferguson’s vibrant poetry not only makes music, it is music: in this collection, poems resonate with one another as if they were part of the harmonic series. Here’s a poet who shows us how to put an ear to the world and listen.”

Sample Poem from Harmonics:

Work

 Men tickled work beneath the chin,
he shat out pellets for them to burn.
They took pictures of their wives in front of him,
work made abandoned petrol stations of their pride.
The men staged protests at each of his orifices,
work’s belly grumbled like a distant gravel mill.
They drove their picket signs into his hide
with mallets improvised from their fathers’ bones,
he taught them to pronounce Behemoth.
They blew whistles through megaphones
directly into his ears,
but then had to line up for tetanus shots.
Cars on the highway were coerced
to honk if they hate work,
but he had just bought a new iPod.

Finally, the strongest man from each province
was given a bullwhip to lash work and learn ’im,
but like a hippo he’s surprisingly fast on land.
He loped across the Laurentian Shield,
each footfall an open-pit mine, his trail
red and corrosive as nickel tailings.
He built a fleet of supertankers then sailed
it to China, leaving the delegates
whipping Atlantic foam
somewhere on the banks of Nova Scotia.
The long-faced men regrouped at Union Headquarters
where Mr. Speaker offered to let him
eat the soft leather lining of his wallet.
But as work hung up on the conference call
Mr. Speaker’s bullwhip knotted itself to a noose.

There’s only seven days left to vote, if you haven’t yet: http://saltyink.com/atlantic-canada-reads-competition/

I polled a variety of people this week to see who they voted for.

Steven Beattie, Review Editor for the Quill & Quire, and the man behind That Shakespearean Rag:
Blackstrap Hawco was my favourite Canadian novel of 2008. It’s epic in scope and in ambition: the fractured narrative, the multiple points of view, the scenes that get recapitulated and refashioned such that the truth of the narrative remains elusive. It’s a long book that never wears out its welcome, and its aggressive, punchy style is a welcome respite from the kind of recondite lyricism that characterizes much CanLit these days. It’s a bruiser, which in my mind is a compliment. Oh, and it’s also very funny.

Book Blog guru Julie Wilson, of Book Madam and Seen Reading fame (among other fun stuff). 
I’m voting for February by Lisa Moore. I’ve had a soft spot for Lisa for years, and got to work on behalf of February while I was at House of Anansi. Alliances aside, as a reader I’ve been vocal that I thought this book was horribly overlooked when first published. It’s the book that got away. Quiet and fierce, it sneaks up on you like tragedy. It’s a short read that sticks for a long time. I don’t doubt that February is the kind of book that readers will reference over their lifetimes.

Diane Faulkner, Marketing Manager for Nimbus Publishing.
I voted for Annabel and Blackstrap Hawco. I haven’t read any of the books yet, but after reading through the essays, I am looking forward to cracking open these two.

Samuel Thomas Martin, brand new author of a solid collection of shorts, This Ramshackle Tabernacle.
I’m at a bit of a disadvantage on the list, as I have only read half (looking forward to Annabel though, but I haven’t got to it yet). My vote is for Lisa Moore’s February.

Random email from a Salty Ink reader:
I think you should be able to vote for all six books. I think they all deserve to win. A diverse list and hard to choose from. Well introduced and sincerely defended. people can vote for whatever they want, but I’m reading all six this summer.

What’s a semi-sequel?

When you don’t have to have read the first book to read the second, or the third, or the …

 They share characters, setting, backstory, history, whatever: But are not linked by a cliffhanger or rigid continuation of any kind. They can be read non-sequentially, independently.

I.e – if you are left wanting more, more exists, and that makes for non-stop great summer reading.

David Adams Richards’ “Miramichi Trilogy” (McClelland & Stewart)

David Adam Richards is a Canadian powerhouse of literature,and the only man to have won the GG award for both fiction and non-fiction, the man who won the CBA Libris award for Book of the Year and Author of the Year in 2001. A Giller winner, a CBC Canada Reads finalist. He is by anyone’s standards and icon. Many say his career really took off after this “Miramichi Trilogy,” and these three books have been recently re-released by McClelland & Stewart

Nights Below Station Street

- Winner of the Governor General’s Fiction Award.
- “A warning label should be attached to every copy: You’ll hate for this book to end.” – Halifax Daily News

“A powerful tale of resignation and struggle, fierce loyalties and compassion. Set in a small mill town in northern New Brunswick, it draws us into the lives of a community of people who live there, including: Joe Walsh, isolated and strong in the face of a drinking problem; his wife, Rita, willing to believe the best about people; and their teenage daughter Adele, whose nature is rebellious and wise, and whose love for her father wars with her desire for independence. Richards’ unforgettable characters are linked together in conflict, and in love and understanding.”

Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace

- Winner of the CAA Literary Award
- “The richness and resonance of Richards’s voice is unique in Canadian fiction. Strong and passionate, moving and compelling.” –Quill & Quire

“Cindi and Ivan Basterache have been married only twenty months. There is a disagreement over a loan, and rumours of violence in the ensuing quarrel begin to spread throughout the northern New Brunswick mill town in which they live, setting in motion a series of events and misunderstandings. As Ivan struggles to reconcile with Cindi, the community turns against him, fuelled by his father’s self-deluded lies and misguided attempts to set things right, exposing the other side of good intentions and leading to the novel’s powerful conclusion.”

For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down

- A Finalist for the Governor General Fiction Award
- “There are few writers anywhere, and certainly none in Canada, who write with the raw power that Richards summons up.”  –Now

“A suspenseful and moving novel which has at its centre one of Richards’ most memorable and haunting characters. It is the fall of 1989 in a small Miramichi mill town. Jerry Bines is acquitted of murder and returns home to his estranged wife and young son, with hopes for a new beginning. But when he learns that Gary Percy Rils has escaped from prison, he has good reason to fear for his own safety and that of others. In his attempts to protect his family from Rils by taking him under his wing, Bines sets in motion a series of events that ultimately leads to tragedy. Vivid in its sense of place, this penetrating chronicle of lives is both dark and redemptive, devastating and comic. This novel was made into a Gemini-award-winning movie.”

M.T Dohaney’s “The Corrigan Women Trilogy” (Goose Lane)

They say M.T. Dohaney — a winner of the coveted Thomas Head Raddall Award – is Newfoundland’s answer to Frank McCourt. A flattering comparison, I suppose, but I’m not sure what that implies, really. I do know that The Corrigan Women is one of the best novels out of Atlantic Canada. And I can’t be alone there, because the critical and public response to The Corrigan Women — people literally asking her how she thought her main character’s life panned out after the end of the novel — led her to pen a trilogy.

The Corrigan Women

- This novel would make Salty Ink’s top 25 book out of Newfoundland. Easily.
- “If Dohaney never writes another novel, she can rest assured that her first has been worthwhile.” - Globe & Mail

“This intense family drama opens in pre-Confederation Newfoundland, on the eve of the First World War. Fifteen-year-old Bertha Ryan leaves home to work as the hired girl in the troubled Corrigan household in a larger village, called The Cove. There, she is browbeaten by her employer and assaulted by the deranged son. Terrified, Bertha marries her assailant’s brother, a tragic figure named Ned, with whom she is in love. But the war intervenes, and when her husband returns, nothing is the same. Bertha’s daughter Carmel fares no better.  The weight of accumulated shame eventually falls upon Carmel’s daughter Tessie, who reaches adulthood caught in the crossfire between the ways of The Cove and the world beyond Newfoundland.”

To Scatter Stones

“Fits the pace and tone of the story with its sense of the past and loss and hope. The Corrigan Women trilogy deserves a new and broader audience.” - The Telegram
“Lucid, humourous, witty, and sad.” - The Newfoundland Quarterly

“In this novel, Tess Corrigan, newly divorced, has moved from Montreal to St. John’s as manager of a travel agency. On a visit to her birthplace, a tiny outport called The Cove, she agrees to stand as the Liberal candidate in the forthcoming provincial election. Little by little, she becomes wrapped up in the lives of her childhood friends and neighbours.  In addition to the uncomfortable echoes from her past, Tess’s politics stir up conflict in the traditionally Tory village. On top of these external crises, Tess must deal with her own conflicting emotions and the love of youth, Dennis Walsh, now a priest, who reappears in the Cove. To Scatter Stones spans from the 1960s into the 1990s, marking not only the life changes of the last of the Corrigan women, but the radical changes as Newfoundland moved from paternalism and an economy based on the fishery to a more equitable political ideal.”

A Fit Month for Dying

- “M.T. Dohaney is a literary treasure.” – Halifax Daily News
- “Dohaney’s unfailing ear for dialogue and use of dark humour create characters almost too vibrant to be contained by the page. A Fit Month for Dying – which can be enjoyed without reading the preceding novels – is easily the best of the trilogy.” - Quill & Quire

“Originally from the village of The Cove, Tess is now comfortably ensconced in Newfoundland’s capital city of St. John’s. Urged on by her husband’s mother,Tess sets out to unravel her convoluted family tree. She searches out her natural father who is living in a retirement community, or as he calls it a “raisin farm,” in Arizona. Ed Strominski was an American serving at the Argentia Naval Base when he married Tess’s mother Carmel. Charming and outgoing, his one flaw was neglecting to reveal the small detail that he already had a wife. The stigma of growing up as the daughter of the abandoned “poor Carmel” has shaped Tess’s life.  Involved with her own family problems and with her political work, Tess has no inkling of trouble when Brendan begs her to let him quit the Altar Servers’ Association at their St. John’s church. Always forthright, Tess insists that he fulfill his responsibilities to the organization. Her decision sets into motion a series of betrayals, revelations and realizations that change forever her family and the village of The Cove. After a confrontation with the father of one of Brendan’s friends, Tess is shattered by the disclosure that her son has been abused by their trusted priest, Father Tom. Shame and grief envelop the family and their world becomes as turbulent as the seas of Newfoundland.” 
 

Atlantic Author Day – June 26th

Atlantic Author day is a massive book-signing bonanza in bookstores all across Atlantic Canada, featuring authors whose new books have been showcased in Atlantic Books Today’s Atlantic Summer Reading Guide. Get out and check out some new books, meet some authors, have a good time, etc. For signings happening in Nova Scotia, click here. For signings happening  in Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and PEI, click here.

And –> Atlantic Author Day will be featured on Breakfast Television , Tuesday, June 22nd: Tune in and catch Atlantic Publishers Marketing Association Executive Director, Peggy Walt, chatting Atlantic Canadian Books!

The Allan Street Reading Series – June 30th

Pop by 6232 Allan Street in Halifax on Wednesday, June 30th, for the “wine and nanaimo bar edition” of this curated reading series.

This month’s series will feature:

The fiction of Coast journalist/editor Carsten Knox
The fiction of Banff Centre writing resident Kelsey McLaren 
The poetry of the much-anthologized, multi-award-winning poet Matt Robinson
& the fiction of Charlotte D’Arcy

$1 wine! Nanaimo bars! (Suggested donation of $1 at the door.)

Raymond Fraser — aka the man with five books in Clare & Adams’ Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books — just released a new 2-in-1 book. Basically, it is two novellas, and the book is titled The Trials of Brother Bell, because as Ray tells me, “the rascally character Brother Bell appears in both novels.”

In 2009, Fraser won the the inaugural Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for High Achievement in English Literary Arts, a 20,000$ award designed to “recognize the outstanding contribution of individuals to the arts.” He also released his eighth novel in 2009, In Another Life, of which Leap Magazine said “Think Catcher in the Rye meets Hemingway and Bukowski.” (Click here to read another Salty Ink article on Fraser.)

If I’ve done my math right: 9 novels + 7 books of poetry + 2 biographies + a memoir + co-editeing the anthology East of Canada, The Trials of Brother Bell is the man’s 20th book!

Salty Ink: Hot off the heels of In Another Life, you release a two-in-one novel. Tell us about The Trials of Brother Bell.

Raymond Fraser: Well now, The Trials of Brother Bell consists of two novels, Repentance Vale and The Struggle Outside. There’s quite a long story behind The Struggle Outside which I’ll just touch on. I started it in 1969 at the time the Tupamaros guerillas were active in Uruguay, their most publicized tactic being kidnapping politicians. I thought it would be interesting to introduce a fictional movement of the kind to my home province of NB – start writing it and see where it led…. I finished a version in 1970 and it was probably good enough by Governor General Award or Nobel Prize standards, but it wasn’t up to my own standards so I took it apart and re-did it very carefully, making the characters and scenes as vivid as possible in a somewhat surrealistic atmosphere – what you might call surrealistic realism (as life often is). While I was working on this second version, Hugh Garner who had read my first fiction book The Black Horse Tavern, wrote me via my publisher Ingluvin to say he considered me the best of the Montreal Story Teller writers, and indeed one of the best of my generation, and a writer he predicted would make it big one day (still hasn’t happened) and offered to recommend my next book to his publisher McGraw-Hill Ryerson. I took him up on it and sent it to them when it was ready and the editor there said he loved it and they would publish it and he kept telling me this and then one day a year later the MS came back in the mail with a note saying he was sorry but they weren’t going to publish it after all. I was naturally quite irate and wrote a detailed account of the outrage and sent it around the country including to the president of McGraw-Hill Ryerson and he wrote back apologizing at how I’d been treated and asked to see the novel again and I sent it and they gave me a thousand dollar advance and published it in hardcover the next year, 1975. When it came out they had me up to Toronto and I was on Canada AM and so forth doing various interviews and I think the book sold about 1,200 copies and disappeared … and now it’s back (with further improvements!). I could go on, but I’ve gone way past my word limit.

I wrote Repentance Vale more recently. It’s not long but it took me at least a year and half to do it to my satisfaction. The original impulse came from a story I wrote for the tabloid Midnight in the sixties. The editor used to call me up with a headline and a description of the photos they had and with that information I’d compose a news story. The headline for this particular one was something like “Jilted Lover Kills Bridegroom, Feeds Corpse To Wedding Guests.” Years later I bought my first computer and would write things on it to learn how to use it, and one thing I started was a short story based on that old “news” story which I’d run across in my files. It didn’t amount to anything, but from that germ I later did this short novel which has nothing at all to do with the original tabloid piece.

P.S – The book is called The Trials of Brother Bell because the rascally character Brother Bell appears in both novels.

- In May of 2010, readers elected themselves to defend a favourite novel by an Atlantic Canadian. A three-person panel selected six of these books, with the intention of showcasing a diversity of Atlantic Canadian writing

- Salty Ink has introduced all six books, authors, and their nominators

- All six books have been defended by their nominators

- The poll is now open until midnight, June 30th. Go vote for the book(s) that entice you the most, and the book, by an Atlantic Canadian author, that you think the country should read this summer!

- Follow the competition here: http://saltyink.com/atlantic-canada-reads-competition/

Mark Callanan — Award-winning Poet and the Face of Riddle Fence — Up for the bpNichol Chapbook Award

Mark Callanan, well-known for his solid work as a critic and as the face of Riddle Fence – one of the country’s hippest, youngest literary journals — also happens to be a damn good poet. His first collection of poetry, Scarecrow, evoked reactions like “Callanan has talent to burn” from The Chronicle Herald, and “Breathtaking, such mastery in a poet so young” from The Fiddlehead. In 2009, he released a chapbook with one of the country’s finest chapbook publishers, Frog Hollow Press, and now Sea Legend is up for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. A great and necessary award, it seeks to “inspire, encourage and support” Canadian poets and the presses who regularly publish chapbooks. Editor Shane Neilson’s remarks on Sea Legend: “Mark Callanan has written a nautical tale bent by poet’s logic, replete with Newfoundland’s beauty but also its mystery … but theme is secondary to the skill with language.” The 2,000$ prize will be awarded to its winner on June 23rd.

Icon Tom Dawe Makes the CAA Poetry Award Shortlist the Same Week he is Crowned St. John’s Poet Laureate

Tom Dawe, considered by many to be the best Newfoundland poet of his generation, is a Newfoundland & Labrador Arts Council Hall of Honour inductee. He is is also one of the founding members of Newfoundland’s first publishing house, Breakwater Books, and Newfoundland’s premier literary journal, TickleAce. On May 8th, it was revealed that his latest book of poetry, Where Genesis Begins, a poetry-art collaboration with Gerald Squires, has been shortlisted for the Canadian Author Association’s Poetry Award, a prestigious award that has been handed out to the likes of Alden Nowlan, Michael Ondatjee, and Leonard Cohen. To top that off, earlier this month, Tom Dawe was crowned Poet Laureate for St. John’s, a role he takes over from Agnes Walsh. As Poet Laureate, Dawe will work with the provincial Tourism Department in promoting the city and the city’s vibrant literary scene.

Mike Heffernan, Salty Ink’s unofficial “Newfoundland Emerging Author of the Year,” released two books in 2009: he is was the man behind the great anthology Hard Ol’ Spot, featuring the likes of Michael Crummey and with a foreword by Kathleen Winter, in addition authouring Rig. If you haven’t yet heard of Rig: An Oral History of the Ocean Ranger Disaster, you should have. Hailed by Lisa Moore as “a powerful and important book,” and a recent nominee for the Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing, Rig is a stellar, well-crafted, sensitive, heart-wrenching oral history of the 1982 Ocean Ranger disaster — the worst maritime disaster since the Second World War. Heffernan approaches oral history masterfully, like the art form it is, with empathy, understanding, and professionalism. He is currently at work on a new oral history, sure to garner a great diversity of readers: The Other Side of Midnight: Taxi Cab Stories.

Writer, critic, editor, and playwright Joan Sullivan recently adapted Heffernan’s Rig, and Trinity’s very popular Rising Tide Theatre will be putting it off from July 3^rd to September 11^th. Salty Ink found the adaptation of Rig an interesting move, and certainly a great project. So I asked Joan about it.

Salty Ink: Adapting a work of non-fiction cannot be as straight forward as adapting a work of fiction. What were some of the challenges, and what about this book drew you to this challenge?

Joan Sullivan: I had been reading a lot of documentary theatre as part of some studies I’m engaged in at MUN (M. Phil program). I am really fascinated by works like “Talking to Terrorists” or “Stuff Happens” — these are also called “verbatim theatre,” as they are scripted/sculpted from interviews and research. When I read Rig, the voices were so powerful I knew it could work. My own challenge was to rearrange the words so the event unfolded chronologically. Mike Heffernan had done such a superb job with the interviews, they were already so crafted, so calibrated, that the play came together very quickly. In fact I feel in some ways as if it just passed through me, that I didn’t write anything at all.

~~~

And then I caught up with Mike himself.

Salty Ink: Tell us about the inspiration for the book, the process of collecting people’s stories and writing the book, and how great it must feel to have your first book adapted.

Mike Heffernan: I grew up with the Ocean Ranger disaster as part of my broader family history. My father’s cousins worked on the rig and in the Mobil office here in St. John’s. Ron Heffernan’s body was one of the twenty-two recovered. His story was kept alive by my mother. I wrote a short story about the rig, and realized there was next to nothing written on the disaster. I had studied oral history in university and my writing was going in that direction. I thought, Will anyone connected to the disaster even want to speak to me? I distinctly remember calling that first person and feeling a real sense of trepidation and anxiety. But I was lucky. I was only turned down twice during a process which lasted the better part of two years. Interviewees were open and honest and frank; most of the people I wanted to speak with, remarkably, still lived in St. John’s. It was emotionally exhausting. It weighed heavily on me to get the stories right, to be honest, while creating a work of creative non-fiction.

When I think back on my experiences, it’s as a participant. I sat in living rooms, kitchens, coffee shops and board rooms listening to people speak. Grief has a way of attaching itself to you, and I took those feelings home with me. They were often terribly upsetting. But to hear an actor speak those words will be something pretty special. I’ll be an observer this time. And theatre is a shared experience, not the sequestered experience of writing. I really don’t know how I’ll react.

I’m very grateful that Rising Tide Theatre picked up Joan Sullivan’s adaptation. Right from the start, I envisioned my book on the stage. I made some attempts with several other writers to create an adaptation, but with no experience in that area, felt doomed. That’s when Joan stepped.

A Salty Ink Introduction to Lesley Choyce and The Republic of Nothing

Lesley Choyce, TV show host for Off the Page, has written more than fifty books, ranging from fiction to poetry, and non-fiction to children’s lit. He is also runs Pottersfield Press, teaches at Dalhousie University, is a recording musician, and is known for his year-round surfing in the Atlantic Ocean. With so many books under his belt, he has won the same award more than once. (Examples: The Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the Ann Connor Brimer Award.) The people of Halifax have voted for him as their best writer six years in a row (2001-2006) in the hip, arts-friendly newspaper, The Coast.

Dubbed a “triple-decker of a yarn” by The Globe & Mail, and “a national treasure” by The Ottawa Citizen, The Republic of Nothing won the Dartmouth Book Award, and is a bestseller that continues to find new readers over a decade since its initial release in 1994. Goose Lane Re-released it as a Reader’s Guide edition in 2007, with an afterword by Neil Peart.

“The fact that the book has lasted for 10 years is a testimony to its popularity in these days when few books retain any life or fame after a year.” – The Chronicle Herald

From Goose Lane’s Website: A small Canadian island declares its independence to the world and benign anarchy reigns. The island’s inhabitants are drawn into politics, the Vietnam War, and the peace movement. Sound impossible? Not on Whalebone Island, aka the Republic of Nothing. Where else can a dead circus elephant, a long-dead Viking, the discovery of uranium, a raven-haired castaway who may be psychic, an anarchist turned politician, and refugees fleeing from the United States all be part of everyday life? Where else is eccentricity embraced with such open arms? Lesley Choyce’s novel about resilience, independence, and anarchy comes alive, leading readers to discover once again that everything is nothing and nothing is everything.

The Republic of Nothing was nominated by, and will be defended by, Stephen Patrick Clare

Stephen Patrick Clare is a journalist, author, poet, photographer, broadcaster, musician, and activist in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

His work has appeared over 120 local, regional, national and international publications.

He is the co-author of Atlantic Canada’s 100 Greatest Books.

(Follow the Contest Here: http://saltyink.com/atlantic-canada-reads-competition/)

Novels

- Debut novel from the man whose last two books won more than a dozen awards: Russell Wangersky’s The Glass Harmonica.

- A new novel from the winner of the Lt-Governor’s award for High Achievement in the Arts: Raymond Fraser’s The Trials of Brother Bell

- Debut novel from the winner of the 2008 Winterset Award and 2007 Metcalf-Rooke Award: Kathleen Winter’s Annabel. 

- Re-release of Lynn Coady’s 1998 GG-nominated, Atlantic Bookseller’s Choice Award winner, Strange Heaven. 

Short Fiction

- Danila Botha’s Got No Secrets.

From the publisher’s website: “A startling and original new voice that owes as much to Black Flag and Bikini Kill as it does to J.D. Salinger and Heather O’Neill. Botha’s prose is compassionate, provocative, often funny, and always fearless.”

- Samuel Thomas Martin’s This Ramshackle Tabernacle.

“Sam Martin is an exceptional writer. In all ways this is a highly original work.” 
-David Adams Richards, award-winning author of Mercy Among the Children and The Lost Highway.

“Sam Martin puts God in a full-nelson, brings the miraculous down to earth, and makes you feel the sacred in the shadow of a telephone pole. You will laugh and be lacerated. You will need stitches. A profound, funny, and exquisitely crafted book.”  
- Jessica Grant, award-winning author of Come, Thou Tortoise and Making Light of Tragedy.

Poetry

- New poetry from former Halifax poet laureate: Lorrie Neilson Glenn’s Lost Gospels.

- New poetry from the Winner of the 2007 Atlantic Poetry Prize: Steve McOrmond’s The Good News about Armageddon .

- New poetry from internationally published and acclaimed poet Anthony Christie: Of Love and Drowning.

- New poetry nationally acclaimed poet and former Fiddlehead poetry editor: Sharon McCartney’s For and Against.

Internationally acclaimed playwright Robert Chafe has once again paired up with multi-award-winning director Jillian Keiley and a local theatre company with national reach – The Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland. This time they have adapted a short story by the highly acclaimed, nationally bestselling Newfoundland author Michael Crummey (River Thieves, The Wreckage, Galore). The play has been getting rave reviews all across the country. Tornoto’s NOW Magazine called it “a marvel to watch and hear … shockingly good,” Toronto Star called it “elegant, intricate [and] innovative, ” and the Globe & Mail hailed it as “Relentlessly Inventive … creepy and compelling.”

The short story, “After Image,” comes from Crummey’s remarkable book of short stories Flesh and Blood, a collection of stories set in a fictional Newfoundland town, Black Rock, “a community of exiles, of characters estranged from their home, from their families or, just as often, from themselves.”

“After Image” is the story of how an accidental electrocution forges and shapes an atypical family of five. The story opens with Lise, a fortune-telling hospital worker, watching nurses try to soothe Winston’s badly burnt body after he’d accidentally touched a powerline on the job. She was told he’d “Lifted the bucket right into the wires. Sixty-thousand volts. It’s a wonder he’s alive at all.”

“She saw it in her head then, blue flames extending from his neck and shoulders like the wings of an angry angel … [and] the sight of the man’s ruined body filled her with pity and something like desire, a feeling that she wanted to lie beside him, to feel the ghost of the voltage still coursing through his limbs.”

From there, this remarkably well-written story is shot through with constant images of fire and electricity played off in parallel with the love story of Lise and Winston and their atypical family, focussing on a personal strife, a sense of alienation, experienced by one of their three children. “Leo was the middle child. Quiet and withdrawn, he lived on the fringe of the family like a victim of leprosy living on the outskirts of a city in the Bible.”

The adapted play will take place at the LSPU Hall every night at 8 p.m. from May 26^th to May 30^th and from June 1^st to June 5^th for twenty dollars, in addition to two “pay what you can” matinees on May 30^th  and June 6^th  at 2pm. Tickets can be purchased from the LSPU Hall, call 753-4531, or book them online at www.rca.nf.ca.

Composer Jonathan Monro has even created a unique instrument exclusively for the play, which integrates guitar and piano strings into the copper wire set. A musically inclined eight-person cast tell this story on a stage literally flowing with live electricity.  See more, including a trailer, here.

A Sharp Tooth in the Fur by Darryl Whetter (Goose Lane, 2003)

- a 2003 Globe & Mail book of the Year.

- “Whetter’s a master of one-liners, a king of openings. He has great instincts for the moment, an excellent ear for dialogue.”
- Hal Niedzviecki, broken pencil

“He forges a prose style with tremendous flair and bravado. His most successful achievement is a playfulness and verbal wit.”
- Joan Givner, The Malahat Review

“Edgy short stories with unusual settings and interesting twists. Whetter’s writing has exciting poetic power and unpredictability.”
-Atlantic Books Today

 Watching the Road by Lee Stringer (Killick Press, 2008)

“Stringer has a keen ear for dialogue and though he flavours his stories with the Newfoundland dialect and idioms, it’s never overdone or impenetrable.
While we may like to think that our lives are very different from these people who struggle with poverty, addiction and cruelty, Stringer manages to make the themes universal. His characters are as human as we are, and as much as it hurts at times to read about them, it is also illuminating.”
- Atlantic Books Today

Muscular writing. Fleshy characters. A palpable world. Lee Stringer navigates round the comedy, tragedy and archetypal conflicts tangled up with the absurdity of the human condition.”
- Michelle Butler Hallett

Rattling Books, Based in Newfoundland, is a top-notch audiobook publisher. 

Opting for a “so small they’re fine” approach, Rattling Books has done a great job branding themselves as a reliable source of quality writing. When you see that headphoned Razorbill on the spine of a book, you can trust it is a quality publication. Titles are published based on their literary merit and nothing more. How refreshing. In looking over their catalogue, I’d have to agree that they are not only selective, but also skilled in knowing which books can translate well into the audiobook realm: literature which is suitable for – if not better as – an audio book. Visit their website here. To date they’ve published books as varied as Lisa Moore’s Open and Joel Hynes’ Down to the Dirt. Classic poetry, like John Steffler’s The Grey Islands, through to classic  non-fiction, like Lure of the Labrador Wild. More impressively, to make your iPod a little more literary, you can buy “singles,” right off their website: An Agnes Walsh or Michael Crummey poem or an exclusive Jessica Grant or Kathleen Winter short story.

That’s my focus here: my favourite project of Rattling Books: their EarLit Shorts series.

* Note: You can buy individual stories or the full collection right off their website.

Earlit Shorts 1

Joel Thomas Hynes infamous one-man play “Say Nothing, Saw Wood.” 

Carmelita McGrath (3 shorts)

Kathleen Winter (3 shorts)

Click play to sample Hynes’s “Say Nothing Saw Wood”

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EarLit Shorts 2

Prudence Grieve’s “Last Rights”

Catherine Hogan Safer (4 shorts)

Russell Wangersky (2 shorts)

Claire Wilkshire (2 shorts)

Click play to sample Wangersky’s “McNally’s Fair”

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EarLit Shorts 3

Richard Cumyn’s “My Future in Insurance”

Jessica Grant’s “The Princification Process”

Steven Heighton’s “The Dead are More Visible”

Susan Rendell’s “Little Lambs”

Patrick Warner’s “Doubleness, The Disease of Life”

Emily White’s “Granite”

Click play to sample Jessica Grant’s “The Princification Process.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

EarLit Shorts 4

Chris Benjamin(1 short)

Michael Collins (1 short)

Robin Mcgrath (1 short)

Rebecca Rosenblum (2 shorts)

J.J. Steinfeld (1 short)

Leslie Vryenhoek (2 shorts)

Click play to sample Michael Collins’ “Slip” (read by Joel Thomas Hynes)

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* EarLit Shorts 5 and 6 are already in the works.   

Mark Anthony Jarman’s My White Planet

Steven Beattie on My White Planet:

“The pieces in My White Planet more closely resemble prose poems than traditional Chekhovian stories; conventional notions of character and plot are less important than the jazzy, jangling music of Jarman’s language.  The language here is all sinew and muscle, tough and fibrous. The primary focus on language results in a kind of defamiliarization that challenges a reader’s expectations about what a story can be or do.

Michelle Butler Hallett’s The Shadow Side of Grace

Michael Crummey on The Shadow Side of Grace

 “A rare debut, a collection that takes more risks than some writers take in a lifetime. And Michelle Butler Hallett has the talent to match that courage. She has command of an astonishing range of voices, places and era and never shies from confronting the thorniest, most troubling questions about what it means to be human. More please, ASAP.”