Photograph (C) Denis Sinyakov/AFP/Getty Images

In the above photograph, it’s clear that piracy advocate and international bestseller Paulo Coehlo is not hurting for money and attention. He’s sold millions and millions of his many, many books. He’s also joined forces with the notorious free file sharing website, Pirate Bay, where you can get just about any eBook, movie, song, TV show, or software program with the click of a button. By joining forces, I mean he’s shouting, “pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written.”

Why? Because if Russia has proven one thing to the world, lately, it’s this: Piracy is seemingly not hurting authors. Or publishers. Coehlo’s The Alchemist was Russia’s number 1 pirated book for several years there … and has sold a whopping 12 million copies to date.

How? Piracy is about discovery, not thievery. We live in the age of Internet samples: YouTube and Grooveshark are ways to sample music, IMDB and movie trailers inform us on movies … but books? it’s only recently some publishers are wise enough to offer a first chapter online. This I guarantee you: that’s not giving anything away for free. It’s letting me sample, and if I like I buy. But if I can’t sample, I don’t buy. Why would I? I don’t trust critics and jurors, they’re not me. And backcovers, meh. Sampling is like the first date: is there chemistry between me and the first page? Do I want another page/date? Without access to a sample, I can’t tell. That’s how I’ve come to understand how piracy and sales are going hand in hand. That and the sheer convenience of piracy: Any book, music, movie, or show I want, right there right away. I equate it to the mixtape days. I never made a mixtape for my crush to streal royalties from Kurt Cobain, I shared his music out of sheer enthusiasm, so people would go buy his records. Do I like the idea of being pirated? Not really. But what I’d hate more is being unread and inaccessible to anyone interested.

“If I wasn’t a pirate I never would read your books! I consider it a preview, if you like it, buy it!” – Guy on Pirate Bay in reaction to Coehlo’s partnership with them

A large part of Coehlo’s argument is simply that writers want to be read, and being accessible makes that easier. In turn, publishers making file sharing impossible, in the interest of their and their authors books, is strangely and counterproductively damaging for exposure of these books. To quote the man who has opened my mind on the subject, Sean Cranbury, “What we call piracy is a basic function of the Internet.” But copyright protection and its people have not yet accepted that reality. Or embraced it in the fruitful, productive ways the music industry has.

Here’s Neil Gaiman on why he’s converted to be pro piracy:

Robbie MacGregor, Publisher at Invisible Publishing, on Piracy

Piracy concerns me not at all. I’m the head of a publishing firm that owns the ‘exclusive world right’ to publish, distribute, etc. the words of a bunch of authors, forever-and-ever, and piracy concerns me
not at all.

Digital systems facilitate sharing, they make the act of copying utterly trivial and have since sometime around when the unix command ‘dd’ came into popular use (approximately ten years before I was born, and some 25 years before something resembling the commercial internet really got rolling).

It doesn’t make sense to enumerate all the new and interesting ways in which users can share and copy a set of bits, losing sleep over the myriad ways your files could end up in the hands of unknown others for free. A job like that would be way too big, hopelessly futile … and it would be wrong-headed to boot.

In my opinion, producers, promoters, creators, should be focusing on ways to deliver better service, better files, to make things easier. When someone searches for an album, a book, whatever, make sure they find you first. Have the file there, ready to go, and don’t stick too many obstacles, logins, etc. between visitors and the stuff they came for. That’s how you win on the aggregate. It’s not that complicated. What’s the alternative? To engage in some massive, and likely futile attempt, at terraforming the web? The internet wasn’t built for commerce. Attempts to reshape it, to make it reflect and support more traditional ideas of exchange or protect the established business models of media companies will fail. Those who support these kinds of projects will invariably end up looking impotent, ignorant, stupid. Again, I’m saying this as someone who runs a fairly traditional media company in many respects.

It seems more sensible to accept the network’s biases, try to realize some net benefit in (unauthorized) sharing, in so much as it might facilitate discovery or supplement direct promotional efforts, maybe try to get your files/ideas/stories into the mix. That’s probably the best you can do.

Kimberly Walsh, All-around Industry Insider, on Piracy

Personally, I agree with Gaiman. Obscurity, particularly for a debut or new author, is a challenge. In a way, we can think of illegal copies as marketing in these cases. It costs money to make money. At BookCamp in Halifax this year, I was part of a break-out session that discussed the correlation between book purchasing after reading frees copies. Librarians, book bloggers. readers, and booksellers all said that if they enjoy the book, they’ll buy a personal copy. I’ve been in the same situation where a friend has loaned me a book and, if I loved it, I went out and bought a copy even if I wound up not reading it from cover to cover again.I don’t think I’ve seen any quantitative data on this hypothesis but the theory is that people who do “steal” your work and never pay for it are the ones who never would have paid for it to begin with. That’s not a lost sale. In some cases, piracy is actually about distribution channels. We’re living in a society of instant gratification. If a reader can’t get a book at the moment s/he wants it, that’s a lost sale. Sometimes we’re talking about bridging a gap with a “pirated” copy until a legal one can be purchased.

Here is a list ofthe most stunning bookstores in the world, with the photos to back it.

Here are 25 tips on opening a bookstore.

And here’s why Barnes and Noble are not supporting Amazon as a publisher, by not stocking their titles.

If Goose Lane isn’t Atlantic Canada’s finest publisher, it’ll give any competition a run for its money: a standard for quality literature and good-looking books, that get national media attention, with some wild success stories, like Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven, Joan Thomas’s Reading by Lightning, and Douglas Glover’s Elle. They also happen to be Canada’s first independent publisher: admirable.

In 1994, before everyone had computers, let alone the Internet, these guys made history by becoming one of the first publishing houses in the world to launch their own website. Since that time, they’ve continuously made changes to it, to evolve and meet your needs and industry demands. Like being able buy ebooks right off their site (which you ought to be doing, when you buy any book, by the way! Buy direct).

As of today they’ve officially launched a sleek, pleasure-to-browse website that makes discovering and buying book a breeze. It’s got new features, like ongoing staff blogs, new content, like sample chapters, and a new promotional kick-off. Exciting stuff.  To celebrate the launch, they’re extending a special offer. For every day the week of January 30, they’ll be offering one book a day at a special discounted price. Every day of the week one of these titles will be “drastically discounted to help celebrate the new website and attitude,” so get it then. Roadsworth, YOU comma Idiot, The Famished Lover, Miller Brittain, The Black Watch, Beaverbrook: A Shattered Legacy, and Ganong: A Sweet History of Chocolate 

Like a good workout, there are perks to writing, but like a good workout, it’s exhausting once you really get into it. I’m not the first writer to occasionally ponder why I’m even doing this. George Orwell once likened writing to a curse, an addiction he tried to fight against. One of the reasons I keep at it came up in Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s new book. Lorri is a former Haligonian Poet Laureate. Her new book, entitled, Threading Light: Reflections on Loss and Poetry, contained a quote I thought I’d bounce off a handful of writers.

In Lorri Neilsen Glenn’s new book, Threading Light, she says, ‘Language is a hinge that connects us to the flesh of our experience.’ Much of my own writing is a conversation with myself, on a topic I’ve steeped in the guise of a story. At the end of the day, what is it that compels you to write? What percentage of the urge is an attempt to better understand the world?”

Kathleen Winter (Annabel, BoYs)

“There’s an underground stream running through my body, underneath the contact my body makes with life and the earth, and that underground stream contains inchoate material from two sources, like estuary waters: inchoate material or silt from within myself, my inner life, and inchoate material from the world that appears to be outside myself. These two kinds of silt or stardust swish around together and form incoherent messages which grow more and more insistent. What are they saying? What do they mean? Before they ignite and blow me to pieces, I try to catch them and join them in a delicate line which, if I’m lucky, become words, become some sort of message, become my writing …”

Chris Benjamin (Drive-by Saviours, Eco-Innovators)

“There is a push and a pull factor at work. The push is a love for reading and stories that is either innate or developed at a very young age in me. I wrote my first story when I was six. It was about a dinosaur, and it was essentially a ripoff of Danny and the Dinosaur, a children’s book about a dinosaur and boy who paint the town red together. Within a few years I was more creative but still aping, writing stories about the age-old person-monster war. I loved a good yarn, and was equally adept at telling my friends tall tales on the playground. And in high school I discovered poetry and realized how you could play with form and the words themselves, twist them and make them mean different things than even you intended, bring them alive. When I sit down with a pen and blank paper the thrill is the same, the excitement that there is something in my head and heart and eventually something will be on the page, possibly similar but only writing it down will tell. It’s fun.

The push factor is that stories are everything. They are what we think and feel, and how we understand the world. They are our passions and beliefs. We think ourselves rational but that’s just a story – we’re making 99 percent of our decisions based on stories we’ve learned and thus values we’ve internalized, memories we have of what felt right. If I’m not part of that conversation, who is? Whoever they are they’re really fucking things up. My stories are my way to study that question and understand not only the way things are, but how they got this way, and how we fix them. And it’s also my wee little attempt steer this vessel away from the monsters. ”

Russell Wangersky (The Hour of Bad Decisions, Burning Down the House, The Glass Harmonica)

“I don’t know that I write to try and better understand the world – I think it’s more that I’m trying to explain. Explain what I see, explain why I behave the way I do, explain myself – and I think I need to do it because I’m remarkably unable to explain myself in spoken words, especially to the people I care about. If language is a hinge, it’s a hinge on a door that I otherwise keep closed, simply because I find it really hard to let people open it and look inside at me in any sort of real time.”

Leslie Vryenhoek (Scrabble Lessons, Gulf)

“Not so much an attempt to understand the world–more an attempt to understand what the hell it is I really believe. That’s close to 90% of the impulse, anyway. Most of the rest, of course, is an attempt to convert others to my way of thinking once that way has revealed itself to me. Either that, or it’s to ask forgiveness for thinking such things.”

Lorri Neilsen Glenn (Combustion, Lost Gospels, Threading Light, and many more)

“What compels me to write?

Paul MacDonald of Cox & Palmer congratulates Randy Drover, winner of the inaugural Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award

Randy Drover is, in my opinion, one of the best emerging writers in the country. And I’ve been a fan for years. In 2008, to grow as a writer, I took a creative writing course at MUN,  and on the first night there, Randy read a piece. It was some of the best writing I’d ever heard.  Not a word out of place: evocative, lush, and perfect enough that I felt pretty small as a writer, and fondly jealous of the guy. I wrote an article in a local paper at the time, saying he’d be one of the next big names out of Newfoundland, filling the daunting shoes of our Lisa Moores, Michael Winters, and John Stefflers. And since that time he’s won some awards, published some poems and short stories, and is currently the poetry editor for Canada’s hippest new literary Journal, Riddle Fence. He’s an old soul and the exciting new voice out of Newfoundland.

This Sunday past, Randy won the inaugural Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing Award. It’s an award for a current or recent graduate of Memorial University’s Creative Writing Program who seems set for success, and there were many to choose from. MUN’s creative writing program is taught by the likes of Mary Dalton, Larry Mathews, Robert Finlay, Jessica Grant, and Don McKay, among others. The award, sponsored by the law firm, Cox & Palmer,is given out as part of the annual SPARKS literary festival in St. John’s every year. SPARKS is a fantastic, day-long festival, broken up in to 4 sessions with 4 Newfoundland writers a piece, that was borne out of Memorial’s Faulty of Arts, and is spearheaded by the admirable, internationally acclaimed poet, Mary Dalton. It started in 2010, and since then, has featured more than 30 of Newfoundland & Labrador’s finest writers, alongside our newest writers. Mary and others have been building more and more excitement around the festival, including video productions, radio broadcasts, and two awards: one for the best haiku involving fire imagery, and now, as they’ve committed to doing this again, the Cox & Palmer SPARKS Creative Writing award. I could not be more impressed with Mary Dalton for spearheading what St. John’s had been truly  needing, and for going so far above and beyond.

Randy agrees. I sent him an email of congrats and a few questions about the award and SPARKS in general.

Mary Dalton’s effort in bringing this festival to life is nothing short of extraordinary. I’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of this festival since its inaugural year, as a reader, a volunteer and audience member, and the crowd drawn each year certainly lends credence to the fact that this is something that St. John’s needs. When you mix emerging writers with multi-award winning novelists, playwrights and poets, you attract a diverse audience, and offer a great escape on a cold January day. There is such a rich arts community in Newfoundland, and to have a yearly showcase for this talent is merited and incredibly worthwhile.

Earlier, I mentioned the calibre of caring, insightful, and talented professors MUN”s creative Writing Program has amassed, of which Randy had this to say, “The creative writing program at MUN is responsible for many of the successes I have seen in my writing life. The program offers a variety of courses in many disciplines and when testing these waters you really find your niche. Working with peers, writers, and professors on a weekly basis makes these courses a joy to participate in, and lends encouragement to any emerging writer. And a little encouragement stretches a long way when beginning.”

Poet, MUN professor, and SPARKS’ festival co-ordinator Mary Dalton shares my enthusiasm for Randy’s bright, crisp work. “Randy Drover is a gifted young writer,” she says, “who has done outstanding work in  the creative writing program. This award will buy him some time and foster the writing energies, we hope.”

While I wasn’t surprised Randy won the Cox & Palmer award, I’m glad to hear he was surprised and excited. “More than anything, [I was] awakened. To win an award like this is a huge motivation to continue. Thanks go out to SPARKS and Cox and Palmer for their support of the arts community and my future within it. It’s an exceptional boost for a fledgling writer.”

Without further ado, since he’s ambi- or -tridextrous, like most people coming out of MUN’s creative program, I’ll close this with a poem and a short story of his …

Before Going Out
……………………Two Tankas

Ten lines to doll-up
the hearsay woman, old crow
with gimlet eyes. Ear
to the telephone, hands on
the clothesline. Patch quilts, patch quilts.

Five now, to straighten
jars and jars, pickles and jam,
turn the moose soup down.
Juice glass with lilac perfume.
Homemade cream near the face pan.

Of Sidney

The mill is always cold, even on days where lightning-beaked gulls snatch ice cream out of sweaty hands. The paint has faded and is rotting with the wooden exterior. Those boards were sawed and shaved by grandfather’s hands. There is no electricity now, and when the kerosene lantern is lit, the inside stone walls appear dusted black. Light reveals wooden pulley wheels and still saw blades, sharp as they were twenty years ago. The engine room is a museum of rusted thumb wrenches, files, moonshine bottles of oil, and the engine that hasn’t started since Sidney died.

Rumor is that Joseph Tad dug up the corpse one late night in July. Carried Sidney in a wheelbarrow, over seaweed and lichen, and laid him in the water. Many believe he should have been buried at sea. After all, he was born on a trawler. It was a pleasant surprise for grandfather, dancing over rolling logs to see his son. The happiest log driver’s waltz. Men say that Sidney had gills. He could dive deeper than any man, swim farther and faster. He is Jonah. He is Nemo. A pirate, with lobster pots out all year. The fables and books conjure images of him. Sixteen, though he lived ten years longer, fit and trim like the photograph that hangs in the mill.

…

When the water was still innocent, and the days were bright and salty, I would perch on the flat stones before the tide swallowed the landwash. Rob was always with me, and we had makeshift bamboo rods and a tin can full of bent hooks we picked up from the wharf. We wanted cod, but usually caught sculpins. We’d beat their heads off rocks then throw them at each other, barbed backs ripping our old shirts.

When the water began to lap at our shoes, we headed to the stage. We could already see bobbing skiffs coming in for dinner. Father was among them, and grandfather, motoring out from some narrow cove. Grandfather was first, and had the most fish. He wore a tailored suit each day under his oilskins. Father followed with Percy, Popeye-grin on his face. I sat watching on blue barrel in the corner of the stage, scales flying like flour at a bakery.

We all had napes for dinner, and afterwards, the men would head out again, leaving us to wander. We would go farther each day atop the jagged and craggy cliffs. The water was infinite then.

In June, we spotted a shack in the distance, down between the hills. It was small and orange, likely abandoned. A short dock with rotting planks, tin chimney flute. Clear water carrying colorations of the sea.

The connection I felt was magnetic, as if I had lived there before, or wanted to. We followed the slender goat path down. It was a clubhouse then, our own. A perfect place for smoking the cigarettes Rob lifted from his parent’s store.

…

April, years later, the sky seemed as if it had gotten dark, but it was the mood that darkened. The water was treacherous, snow still, and flurries. I sat in the front of the dory, cold and sick from the waves and the breeze off the water. It was Easter, and we were not after cod. I was now part of this annual excursion. We motored past the narrows and up past Nelly’s Arm. Percy took bearings from the cliff face that looks like a lady, and pointed out her features. An ear, nose, deep craters for eyes. We traveled east from there, to an abandoned wharf in a small patch of high cliffs. The shack had changed. It had aged.

It happened here twenty years ago, they told me. This was where Sidney died. I wouldn’t tell them that I knew this place well. We docked, and the boat crashing against the rotting wharf chipped splinters of board that floated past in the water. Percy told me that Annie Sheppard used to live here, and always had bread and lassie for anybody who came out this far. We laid a wreath for Sidney and saved one flower for Annie.

Percy took the guitar from the boat and sang Fiddler’s Green. They told me that they were all here when he died, and grandfather was with them. The only day they saw him cry. After the boil-up, they all set out for an afternoon of fishing. Sidney jumped in the boat first, and an errant plank was tossed up, seesaw-like, throwing him onto the jagged rocks beneath the shallow water. The damage was enough then, to hospitalize him. The water though, was what did him in: bobbing underneath the wooden dock.

It was a sad spectacle; a long lament for a man I barely know.

On the way home, the men sensed my uneasiness. When Percy spotted a small shark ahead of the boat, he decided to lighten the mood. He revved the engine and chased it for a quarter of a mile, father leaning from the stern trying to stab it with a grappling hook. When the hook pierced its gills, the fish thrashed, water dyed red. We were poachers, like Sidney, and it felt right.

We stopped then, under the mountains, to clean the shark and cut it into sections that would fit neatly in our coolers and rubber boots. We heard the sounds of livestock from atop the mountain – Ned Angel’s farm. The harsh angle of the cliffs made it impossible to see. Peering over, though, was a kid. Light brown and white. Glancing once out over the ocean and then back again, it leapt, nearly ninety feet down.

We heard the harsh sound of bones ripping. It slid off the rocks, floated towards us like a ragdoll. The guttural bleating came next, from a Billy peering downwards, searching. It wanted to jump, I’m sure, but had other kids, a mate. The bleating continued, long after we hauled anchor and left that morbid place.

…

Sometimes, when the sky is like a beaten tin plate, and heavy with fog, I go there. I don’t take the boat – I never take the boat, but climb over rocks and brambles until I am at the dock. Days like this, when the calm sea carts fog on its back, I can see it drifting by, bleating.

Today, though, father and I are painting the mill. Grandfather has been gone a year now. After dinner at grandmothers, I lie on the old sofa and nap. Sidney is with me. He rows an old dory, the one upturned in the lumberyard. We talk for a while, until he tells me he’s fine. He is searching, though, for his father. For grandfather. I tell him I know where to find him.

In the afternoon, after the second coat is on, we wander inside the mill and open the windows. Light shines on the wooden beams, chiseled with the names of grandfather and Sidney. It has always been grandfather’s pain, never Sidney’s. I know that now, and I know he is here, as Sidney is in the ocean. The engine will start today, I’m sure of it.

The esteemed Patrick Crean, who spent the last dozen years making Thomas Allen one of the country’s finest publishers — recent hits including this year’s Giller winner, Half-blood Blues, last year’s Giller finalist, This Cake is for the Party, and Russell Wangersky’s latest books — will be stepping down. Stepping up to the plate will be the reputable Marc Côté (Who will remain on staff at Cormorant as well. More here.

The latest book book craze is in full swing: CanLit is Sexy, which takes book titles and tries to make them sexy. Warning: it favours quantity over quality, to the point of obscurity.

And, here’s a dozen theater-bound Hollywood adaptations set for 2012.

January needn’t be a bore, in the wake of December’s holidays. Kerri Cull, book blogger with a poetry book out very soon (Soak) is having 5 Newfoundland Artists answer 6 questions about a book by a Newfoundlander they think everyone should read. Then, they all vote — not for their own. They’ll privately rank their adversaries picks 4,3,2,1, and Kerri does the math and you buy the book. Follow it all month-long at http://www.bookfridge.com/

Salty Ink Bestsellers!

One of the survey questions was which specific books have you bought because of Salty Ink, and what a thrill to see responses like, “‘I’m a librarian and have probably purchased about $1000 worth of books in the last 8 months based on Salty Ink rec’s and info.”

Here’s the top six responses in no particular order …

Nicole Lundrigan’s Glass Boys
Samuel Thomas Martin’s This Ramshackle Tabernacle
Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise
Gerard Collins’ Moonlight Sketches
Jamie Fitzpatrick’s You Could Believe in Nothing
Craig Francis Power’s Blood Relatives

Buy one if you haven’t yet! I vouch for them all, honestly.

Surprising Finds … Call for Guest Posts from publicists, etc:

96.6% of you like Salty Ink’s casual, informal tone. Phew. Because half of the other 3.4% got nasty about it. I don’t mind those 1.7% of people casting their haughty eyes elsewhere.

The favourite “type of post” was author interviews, according to 74% of you. Who knew. Let there be more mics-in-faces in 2012.

Thanks for kind words and for the constructive feedback too. “Fewer typos in 2012.” That’s funny and fair and doable, and at least 10 people said so. It does look sloppy on the website and I can’t hide behind “I write these posts in a rush” when it only takes a quick second spell check. Others feel there’s a Newfoundland favouritism. I’ll keep my eye on that. It’s just, I live here, and there’s so many writers from here (statistically, more than any province, hence the slant, to some degree?). But I will be more inclusive of the maritimes. And by all means, I scan publishers catalogues, but if I miss a book this year, get in touch. And perhaps I’ll do a mid-month round-up of open contests and competitions and workshops and the like, since you’ve asked so kindly. I did that in the past, but cut it out for some reason. There’s also a few people who’d like Salty Ink to cover genre fiction. I’m not opposed to genre fiction. I am concerned with branding the website to a certain kind of fiction, but that certain kind of fiction can be genre, absolutely.

The door is now wide open for guest posts. If you’re a publicists at a publisher, tell us all about your new books, if you’re a writer with a new book out, or you just read a great book, whatever. email posts to me: chad@saltyink.com. Publicists: Please prod your authors into writing guest posts … about anything at all related to them or their book.

Happy Holidays, dear readers.

So, 2011 was a great year for books, and strange year for Salty Ink. There was the disappearance in the spring, and the occasional lull as I got distracted with other fleeting blogs, like the On the Line Magazine incident. I really appreciated all the feedback to bring it back and keep it alive. Anyway. Salty Ink wants to return to its 2009/2010 glory days, and be better than ever. To assist, please take 5 minutes to fill out this survey. It is 100% anonymous. You can answer all 9 questions or just a couple, but please do follow the link. Its goal is to make Salty Ink a better thing in 2012. If you’re going to be reading this blog, you may as well like what you’re reading …

Click here to take survey

See you in the New year, January 2nd, and we’ll run through 25 days of the very best of 2011 by Atlantic Canadians. Enjoy the holidays and read yourselves blind.

And an interview on CBC’s Weekend Arts Magazine:

http://www.cbc.ca/wam/episodes/2011/09/11/wam-sept-10-11-new-book—easy-to-like/

Tanya Davis Takes Salty Ink’s 2011 Judge a Book by Its Cover Contest!

Massive congrats to designer Matt Reid

After 757 votes, Tanya Davis’s long awaited-for debut, At First, Lonely, won the 2011 Judge a Book by Its Cover Contest. Interesting that this is her debut, as she was Halifax’s poet Laureate just before her debut hit the shelves!

How?

She’s won the CBC National Poetry Face-Off twice, that’s how, and because of her renowned reputation as a spoken word performer, and for her witty, wonderful lyrics, as Tanya is also a musician. She has an album called Clocks and Hearts Keep Going for God’s sake. How wonderful is that? See her CBC 3 page. And if you’re in Halifax, she’s playing at The Company House on Saturday night.

It wasn’t that long ago that Tanya Davis collaborated with filmmaker Andrea Dorfman to adapt her poem, “How to be Alone.” It  had over a million hits be week’s end. Making her the first Canadian poet to go viral?

Tanya has an uncanny ability to shrink the biggest human emotions, struggles, and sources of joy down to single, spot-on sentences. She pairs this gifted wordsmithery with a stunning honesty (that some critics call vulnerability). She’s distinct, immediately recognizable, what more can an artist hope to be? She’s a national marvel, and it shouldn’t have taken that above video for her to be so heralded. They even had her write and read a poem for the Canada Games. Sports and poems, you know the country loves you when. it’s because her poetry just cracks your heart open and lets her in.

Here’s a song of hers about the artist’s contemplative struggle with making art …

Congrats Again, on Having the The Jivest Jacket:

Kudos too, to the two runners up, hey?

Author Ed Riche in the vines of Chateau Beaucastel, Chateauneuf du Pape.

The main character in Ed Riche’s new novel, Easy to Like, is a screenwriter turned winemaker … Ed knows his stuff, so read up and learn what to serve with your Christmas turkey and then some. Also, buy the book.

If I restricted your wine shopping to three countries, what would they be?

France, Italy, Germany in that order, steeply declining .  I’m tempted to say France, France, France

Name your top three varietals. And one varietal that should not be sold as a standalone.

Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo but as I can no longer afford the best examples from Barolo and Barbaresco I will say instead, Sangiovese.  I’d say Chardonnay, but as I mean only in its manifestation in some parts of Burgundy, I will, instead, say Riesling.

Counoise is a great grape that I had the good fortune of tasting vinified on its own, courtesy (and he was extremely courteous and generous) of Robert Haas at Tablas Creek.  It is weird, like (as I say in the book) raspberry kimchi.  But since having had that pleasure I can detect the note in wines in which it is a tiny part of the blend.

Name three blends you love, and why Elliot is such a fan of Chateauneuf du Papes.

Strangely I don’t like many Chateauneuf de Papes.  They are mostly hugely overblown wines with far too much alcohol for their own good. At their rare best, when made with restraint, they capture the heat and sun of the Southern Rhone so that it can warm a winter meal of roasted meat, so you get a gust of that smell of garrique from the hills down there when you need to be reminded of summer. And while the wine is famous as a blend, some of the best examples are Grenache alone. Chianti blends are great, and some of my favourite wines from Bordeaux have unusually high percentages of cabernet franc or petit verdot (another grape that doesn’t seem to work alone).  Eliot likes Chateauneuf  du Pape because he tasted a great example at a perfect moment in his life, when everything seemed possible.  He believes it is because of the fascinating agricultural alchemy involved.  He doesn’t know it but he is actually driven by the wine’s associations rather than the wine itself, he’s trying the reinvent the past and create a perfect, fanciful, future to resemble it.

Some of the best Côte Rôties are syrah, not only blended with, but co-fermented with small amounts of viognier (there is a good reason to do this beyond taste that is too long to explain here). I used to be able to afford those fantastic wines – nose like a field of wild flowers, inky blueberries, smoked meat and black olives in the mouth – but they’ve gotten too dear for a writer.

What’s your take on Italian “Super Tuscans” and other blends that break rules? Blasphemy or tasty?

Mostly a waste of time and a huge waste of money – they are really pricey.  Sure they are good but they are too much like wines from Napa or Bordeaux most of the time.  Why they would want to mess with brilliant sangiovese magic with additions of merlot and small oak barrels I do not know.   The decision was based on the perceived direction of the market I suppose.  I could be saucy and say “The best are brilliant bores,” but I have also really enjoyed Sassicaia and Tignello – again wines that are now ludicrously overpriced.

What should we drink with our turkey on Christmas day?

Lightly built pinot noir, even try a Canadian example (see below) or top Morgon or Moulin-a-vent from Beaujolais.  Good German Kabinett works.  Nothing heavily built as the meal is too rich and even gluey on its own.  I think I may have eaten enough turkey for a lifetime.

Recommend a few great bottles of wine under $25.

Pelee Island Reserve Pinot Noir out of Ontario will surprise you. It’s not Grand Cru Côte d’Or by any means, but it’s got something going.  Perquita from Portugal is a perfectly good drink for under $15.  A Bordeaux Superior from a great year can often be affordable and surprisingly good – but avoid in a bad vintage.  Any of the Perrin wines from the designated villages in the southern Rhone i.e. Vinsobres or Carainne are great value for people who like wines with some fur on them.  Many of the top makers of the great and costly wines of Piemonte,  Barolo and Barbaresco, also make great Dolcetto d’alba and Barbera d’alba.  The prestige nebbiolo wines are north of $60 a bottle and the dolcettos and barberas south of $25. They won’t be as complex as the more august wines but they are tart, honest wines that are great with food.   Whites are trickier.  A solid bet is a Muscadet but make sure the words “sur lie” are on the label.  Spain makes interesting affordable whites in Rueda.  I can drink the inexpensive Torres white called, I think, “Vina Sol.”

For super bargains go sherry.  Fino or Manzanilla sherry, served cold on a hot day, with a salty snack, are a lavish experience for very little dough.  Same for quality Oloroso or Palo Cortado sherry on a cold night in front of a fire.   Careful though, they have more booze than you think.  On a hot day you can drink a lot of dry sherry fast and get blasted.

Name a bottle or two of wine everyone should treat themselves to over the holidays

If you can get a grower/maker champagne, not big brand name stuff, split one with your partner.   They are usually twice the quality and half the price of brands. Unless you salt them away in good spot in your basement you are not going to be able to buy mature red burgundy, which would be my choice.  The same is true of the Barolos and Barbarescos,  those that are at maturity aren’t to be found in stores, so unless you’ve taken the time to cellar them …

There is usually decent Rioja that is ready to drink in the stores.  Get a decent reserva.

There’s a great quote early on in your book. “The best winemaking is no winemaking at all.” What are 1 or 2 particularly cheap, dirty tricks that taint/enhance wine these days?

Most of the mass produced stuff, the critter labels from Australia for instance, is really made in a factory with all kinds of weird intrusions, added sugars or acids, stabilizing agents etc.  Almost everything is subjected to some sort of sulphur exposure to stop strange things happening in the bottle, but some measure is necessary if it is being shipped around the world.  The thing I most dislike is too much residual sugar and too little acid – tastes like flat Pepsi.

What’s meant by “Dry Farming?”

Not using irrigation.  All fruit that is grown with irrigation at the surface finds it unnecessary to drive their roots deep into the ground in search of a drink.  En route those roots pick up all kinds of trace goodies from the earth that positively affect the taste of your wine.  Put grapes aside and taste the “strawberries” they grow using drip irrigation in the Salinas Valley of California.  They look like strawberries but they taste of nothing. Also stressed fruit must make an extra effort to continue their greedy genes by putting more into their fewer seed bearing packages.

The eco-conscious oenophiles are worried about global warming’s effect on wine. What’s meant by “A Baked Wine?” And how can we tell a wine’s grapes have been “baked”?

The wine has a flabby, over sweet character, there isn’t enough acid to get that bracingly, puckering feeling in your mouth.  Graves apple juice from Nova Scotia has terrific acidic zip but American stuff grown in warmer climes has this flabby character to which I refer. Baked wines have a raisin taste and do nothing to cut through the fat from the meat that was just in your mouth.  Global warming is going to make Prince Edward County in Ontario the best pinot producer outside of Burgundy, and Nova Scotia the equal of Champagne when it comes to bubbly.

Sideways remains the most popular modern film about wine, and its protagonist, Miles, argues that merlot is an over-rated, easy to like, berry-licious grape not capable of greatness, and he loves pinot noir because it so embodies its terroir, and requires such care on behalf of its producers to make a good bottle. Would Elliott agree with Miles on both accounts? What’s your take on Sideways, anyway? I loved the movie, and, like both Miles and Elliot, default to pinot noirs and chateauneuf du papes. Do you have a default wine type, one you can always count on when you can’t make up your mind?

I liked Sideways, it was a good yarn about the way men think, but didn’t care much for Miles’ moronic take on Merlot.  Merlot can make brilliant wine.  Merlot in the right setting can be as much about terroir as the most rigourously biodynamically neo-french-hippy grown Cab Franc in the Loire.

I have a couple of defaults that relate to food.  Inexpensive sur lie Muscadet is default with fried or grilled fish or with mussels, clams and oysters; with game it’s always red Burgundy; with leg of lamb it’s got to be a Bordeaux or one of the few good California knock-offs.

Your protagonist’s vineyard is in California. California is the exclusive source for zinfandels. What’s your take on zinfandels? Elliot didn’t seem a fan, when his help suggested he sell a brand, Zebra Zinfandel, with the zinfandel growing on their property.

Ridge makes a couple of passable Zins but most of it is awful, one dimensional junk.  I now avoid Zin and Australian Shiraz like the plague.   Back in the 90s guys were selling Zin from California with slogans like “no wimpy wines”  or “wines with  giant balls.”   It’s like they were selling bear spray, not something you were going to put in your mouth.  Those Zins are just awful garbage.

When people tell me they find red wine “too harsh,” I assume it’s the snap of tannins turning them off. So I recommend the lowest tannin-containing red, Beaujolais: it’s like drinking a juice box, but it’ll get them started. What would you recommend to white wine drinkers as a gateway into reds?

I’d love to say Burgundy but buying a bottle really requires knowledge, boring wine bore knowledge.  I think some of the less “horsey” riojas people gotta love.  A truly gastronomic rosé from the south of France, like Bandol,  on a hot day on the back deck, munching a few olives and other nibblies has to win anyone over. I don’t care who they are, or what they have drunk in the past a great bottle of red from Burgundy or a mature Paulliac is going to wow anyone.

I’m almost exclusively a red wine drinker. The whites just lack the complexity, boldness, and magic I’m after. Am I missing something? Do you have a readymade suggestion list of whites you can share with me?

Yep, you are missing something.  Get your hands on a good 5 year old Chablis Premier Cru (it’s going to set you back $40) get it cold, DECANT IT, and have it with a great piece of fresh fish.  You’re there.

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This is his second film to star his daughter, Emma. I don’t know what you other dads do with your daughters, but you’re likely not topping Kenneth this year. Not everyone gives their kid movie stardom, maybe just ten bucks to go to the movies … 

The Advent Book Blog is Back!

This seasonal, Christmas-only barrel of fun is pretty much what it sounds like. Every day, Sean Cranbury and Julie Wilson ask a few authors and industry insiders to plug a book. Readers tune in daily, and get to know, not only some genuinely recommended titles, but those recommending them as well. It’s honestly become one of my favourite things about the Christmas season. And if you’re a writer or blogger or working in books or whatever: I believe they’re looking for you. See the website for the format and email to send your plug to. I’ve already plugged one.

Don’t miss this, every day in December: http://www.adventbookblog.com/

Yesterday I stumbled on this:

The 56 Best/Worst Analogies by High School Students

It’s full of delightful redundancy, like “He was as tall as a 6′3″ tree.”

and outright brilliant lines or funny ones. Check them all out, but here’s a few more:

“John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.”

“She was as unhappy as when someone puts your cake out in the rain, and all the sweet green icing flows down and then you lose the recipe, and on top of that you can’t sing worth a damn.”

“He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.”

“McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.”

“The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.”

“The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.”

“She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.”

“It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.”

“Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like “Second Tall Man.””

Telegram publisher Charlie Stacey (left) presents the 2011 Cuffer Prize for short fiction to Grant Loveys Wednesday night at the fourth annual Cuffer Awards Gala and Book Launch at the Johnson Geo Centre in St. John’s. — Photo by Gary Hebbard/The Telegram

Last night in St. John’s, Grant Loveys took home the Fourth Annual Cuffer Prize for short fiction. The Cuffer Prize  has quickly become one of the most exciting and well-thought-out short fiction contests in Canada, awarding not one but three prizes at $2,000, $1,000, and $500. In addition to the contest, Creative Books make an anthology of the top submissions of the year, and, proceeds from this book are donated literacy programs. Grant’s story, “Our Boys,” was based loosely on a series of coincidences surrounding his grandfather’s death. In addition to his fiction writing, Grant is a well-published poet, and recently won an Arts & Letters award (read it here.) His debut poetry collection is soon to be published.

Chad Pelley took second place with an offbeat story of a precocial 12-year-old girl who hangs out in hospitals, and he officially “triple crowned” the Cuffer Prize, having now won 1st, 2nd, and third place over the years. “Someone’s going to win first place every year,” he says, waving a hand like it’s no big deal, “but this Triple Crown thing takes years of devotion. In fact, cough, I believe only one man in the world’s done it, right?” The talented, rising star Eva Crocker took third place for “Tickets.” Just last year she took honourable mention in Salty Ink’s own short fiction contest, for her short story “Swans.” More than 200 submissions were blind judged this year by Joan Sullivan, Russell Wangersky, and Ramona Dearing.

Look out for all three stories in next year’s Cuffer Prize Anthology Vol.4.

For now, check out the best submissions to last year’s contest in The Cuffer Prize Anthology Vol.3 which features 35 great short shorts, including works by celebrated Newfoundland authors like Joel Thomas Hynes, Samuel Thomas Martin, and Leo Furey, as well as exclusive shorts by amazing emerging writers. Randy Drover, for example, might be one of the best writers in the country.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Also, ixnay on this “bowing out” bit. I said this was the last year I was going to submit, hoping to triple crown it or be a two-time winner before walking away …

Enough people convinced me, last night, to keep submitting. I’m a huge fan of The Cuffer, an addict now, and someone’s got to make a dash for the two-timer status …

Like Rocky, maybe I’ll throw my gloves on one last time, take back the title, h0ld onto it, and never let go …? Maybe. But bowing out at the Triple Crown seems appropriate …

Michelle Butler Hallett is a Newfoundland-based writer known for doing what every writer wants to do: Write books that no one else would have conceived and written.The one thing you’ll hear said, consistently, about Michelle Butler Hallett’s work is that it defies categorization.

“Butler Hallett seems often to be creating from a subliminal place, riding on intuition, unencumbered by the counsel of editors.” - Globe and Mail

She launched Deluded Your Sailors last week, and mentioned the title came from a line in a song by The Once, and went on to explain that different parts of the novel were inspired by different songs. And I thought: what a great article. “deluded your sailors unfurls in three parts, Acts of Folly, Acts of Fever and Acts of Faith” she told me. “It tries to explore the weights of the past, the needs to acknowledge the truths of the past, the folly of trying to control history, and the need to heal. Part of that exploration is the woman-disguised-as-a-man-and-goes-a-roving trope, which happens literally in Acts of Fever and metaphorically Acts of Folly and Acts of Faith.”

Kate Bush’s “The Handsome Cabin Boy”

Seeds for this novel blew into my head in 1990, when I first heard Kate Bush’s version of the folk song ‘The Handsome Cabin Boy.’

It’s of a pretty female,
As you may understand,
Her mind bein bent for ramblin
Into some foreign land.
She dressed herself in sailors’ clothes,
Or so it does appear,
And she hired with a captain
To serve him for a year.

Her cheeks they were like roses,
And her hair rolled in the curl.
The sailors often smiled and said
He looked just like a girl.
But eating of the captain’s biscuit
Her colour did destroy,
And the waist did swell of pretty Nell,
The handsome cabin boy

Twas in the Bay of Biscay
Our gallant ship did prow.
One night among the sailors
Was a fearful flyin row.
They tumbled from their hammocks,
For their sleep it did destroy,
And they swarmed about the groaning
Of the handsome cabin boy.

“Oh, doctor, dear, oh, doctor,”
The cabin boy did cry.
“The time has come, I am undone,
And I will surely die.”
The doctor come a-runnin
And a-smilin at their fun.
To think a sailor-lad should have
A daughter or a son.

The sailors, when they saw the joke,
They all did stand and stare.
The child belonged to none of them,
They solemnly did swear.
The captain’s wife, she says to him,
“My dear, I wish you joy,
For ’tis either you or me’s betrayed
The handsome cabin boy.”

So that particular story doesn’t end well.  It’s hard to hide things on a ship. And that got me thinking about complicity and reasons why, which then fantailed out into broader complicities of silence in Newfoundland over the sexual abuse of children – both those in the protection of the crown and those in supposedly nice, safe families. I wasn’t sure how my eighteenth-century girl’s story would end, and once I got to researching, I couldn’t see it ending well. So I chewed on it, drafted and drafted and failed and failed and drafted some more. Meantime, I wrote other things and eventually developed a crucial character for deluded your sailors in Sky Waves: Nichole Wright.

Nichole’s history of sexual abuse is skittishly hinted at in Sky Waves – she’s not ready to accept that it happened — and more fully explored in deluded your sailors, when she’s starting to deal with her own history, starting to heal. The fiasco of Settlement 250 – and, tangled in that, the friendship of Evan Rideout – is a blessing for her, because that foolishness, plus some strange intervention from Reverend Winslow, leads her to a similar story. That story, of the girl who becomes Captain Matthew Finn, allows Nichole safely to vent her own story – and to do something her friend Gabriel Furey suggests she can:

—You’ll make somethin of this yet. Somethin beautiful. Reach deep down inside ya and haul it out.

Apocalyptica’s “I’m Not Jesus”

A song that helped me get safely into the storms and stifled rage in Nichole and Finn, and also in Seth for slightly different reasons, is “I’m Not Jesus,” by Apocalyptica with Corey Taylor. In fact, I’ve got Seth busking that song towards the end. It’s a frightening and very cathartic song, sung from the viewpoint of an adult confronting a minister or priest about sexually abusing him in the past. The music sounds like a warning siren, and then a scream:

Do you remember me?
Do you remember me?
The kid I used to be?
Do you remember?

Do you remember?

When your whole world comes undone
Let me be the one to say
(Good God, he’s lookin down on me)
I’m not Jesus
You can’t run away

And the innocence you spoiled
Found a way to live
(Good God, he’s lookin down on me)
I’m not Jesus
I will not forgive

It’s a huge question for me about any kind of healing: must you forgive the one who hurt you?

Through some weird experiences with Evan Rideout, Seth Seabright, and Reverend Winslow, Nichole cracks her prison of self and learns to listen. [(POSSIBLE SPOILER) She’s commissioned to write a play but has no proper support, and conflicting agendas getting in her way. The play never gets to stage. It looks like she’s defeated. Yet on page 270, very near the end, Seth Seabright recalls Nichole telling him earlier that day how she’s adapting the failed play into a novel. Her source material, shown in “Acts of Fever,” has many parallels with her own experience. Nichole, the struggling bulimic, has reached deep down inside and hauled out her truth. In retrospect, “Acts of Fever,” is Nichole’s novel. “Acts of Fever” is a story on its own, stitched together from disparate sources, but, when seen as Nichole’s novel, it gets into the sparking relationships between history, truth, memory and storytelling. No defeat here.]

The Once’s “Maid on the Shore”

The song that helped me to finish deluded your sailors, and give it shape, and a title, is “Maid on the Shore,” as sung by The Once.

There was a young maiden who lived all alone
She lived all alone on the shore-o
There was nothing she could find to comfort her mind
But to roam all alone on the shore, shore, shore
But to roam all alone on the shore

Twas of a young captain who sailed the salt sea
Let the winds blow high or blow low-o
“I will die, I will die,” this young captain did cry
“If I can’t get that maid from the shore, shore, shore,
If I can’t get that maid from the shore.

I have lots of silver, I have lots of gold
I have lots of costly ware-o
I’ll divide, I’ll divide, with my jolly ship’s crew
If they row me that maid on the shore, shore, shore
If they’ll row me that maid from the shore.”

After much persuasion, they got her on board
Let the winds blow high or blow low
Where they placed her away in his cabin below
Here’s adieu to all sorrow and care, care, care,
Here’s adieu to all sorrow and care.

They placed her away in his cabin below
Let the winds blow high or blow low
She’s so pretty and neat, she’s so sweet and complete
She sang captain and sailors to sleep, sleep, sleep
She sang captain and sailors to sleep.

She robbed him of silver, she robbed him of gold
She robbed him of costly ware-o
Then took his broadsword instead of an oar
And paddled her way to the shore, shore, shore
And paddled her way to the shore.

“My men must be crazy, my men must be mad
My men must be deep in despair-o
For to let her away with her beauty so gay
And to paddle her way to the shore, shore, shore
And to paddle her way to the shore.”

“Your men was not crazy, your men was not mad
Your men was not deep in despair-o
I deluded your sailors as well as yourself
I’m a maiden again on the shore, shore, shore
I’m a maiden again on the shore.”

There is a young maiden who lives all alone
She lives all alone on the shore-o
There is nothing she can find to comfort her mind
But to roam all alone on the shore

Nichole and Finn both, solitary, troubled and trapped on land, are maids on the shore. So are Seth and Gabriel, metaphorically, to counterpoint the metaphor of Nichole disguising herself as a man to go roving, to go storytelling – “her mind bein bent for rambling into some foreign land.” I am not talking about what is in our underwear; I’m taking about power dynamics and domination. How many women and girls can speak freely, tell the truth without getting punished? Men and boys are shunted about and gagged, too, made powerless, made voiceless – that’s what I’m getting at by saying Gabriel and Seth are maids on the shore. Of course, the maid in the song only looks passive to those who view. This is crucial. She wins. She’s back where she wants to be – unharrassed, unmolested, no one’s possession: a maiden again on the shore. She can heal.

That Finn is molested and abducted by a sailor, and that Nichole is molested by a paedophile ring on a yacht – “placed her away in his cabin below” – I was going to say it was an coincidence, but then I remembered I was listening to Anita Best and Pamela Morgan singing “Maid on the Shore” on The Colour of Amber in the early 1990s. I played that disc so much it’s a wonder you can’t see through it, that and Leonard Cohen’s The Future around the same time. “Anthem” is all over deluded your sailors, too, but I only planned an allusion, a salute, in one scene. The Once do “Anthem,” too; I listened to their cover of it almost as much as I listened to their “Maid on the Shore.”  Back to “Maid on the Shore:” maybe the line “I deluded your sailors as well as yourself” was hiding in my head all along, from way back in the early 1990s when I was first gestating what became “Acts of Fever.” Maybe The Once drew it out when the time was right. Best and Morgan’s arrangement is so gentle – it’s lovely, haunting and sorrowful – while The Once just rock it.  I love both arrangements. What attracts me to The Once’s, as far as deluded your sailors goes, is the energy, and, by extension, the strength of the maid. She’s pretty damn smart, and no slouch rowing, stealing a broadsword instead of an oar and paddling her way to the shore. And yet, in The Once’s arrangement, we’re also back where we started, because they repeat the first verse, except, troublingly, in present tense this time instead of past: “There is nothing she can find to comfort her mind but to roam all alone on the shore.” These journeys are neither simple nor quick. The maid, in The Once’s version, her present is her past. You can heal from abuse, become whole again, but you remain scarred.

Blair Harvey’s “Bury My Body in the Pines”

Another song I listened to hard while drafting deluded your sailors is Blair Harvey’s “Bury My Body in the Pines,” from GutterBeGutted. Harvey’s songs burn, grand fires, and that one’s very lonely, to me, and defiant, and, somewhere, pleading. Maybe I’ve totally fucked up how I take that song. The epigraph for “Acts of Fever” comes from “Bury My Body in the Pines:”

I ain’t gotta tear
I ain’t gotta light
I ain’t gotta time or a place
I wish for tomorrow
But its truths are all bound
To the never-ending escape

I also borrow from that song for two chapter titles.

Don’t ask me how – “Bury My Body in the Pines” got totally tangled up in my head with True Rideout, Evan’s grandfather, who’s suffering from Alzheimer’s, and Elias Winslow, who seems to be not quite human and who functions as a guide, muse, deep annoyance and painful prod for Nichole. Winslow’s actions, bizarre and demented as they are, help Nichole crack open of her prison of self – a prison Finn never quite escapes. It’s Winslow who initially tells Nichole the story of Finn; he claims to have played a role in it. And Winslow is so lonely, so much like Evan, Seth and Finn: “I wish for tomorrow but the truths are all bound to the never-ending escape.”

Madison Violet’s”Wake Up”

Part three, “Acts of Faith,” is about stumbling towards some kind of healing and hope, about hard recognitions of suffering and dim recognitions of love.  The epigraph for “Acts of Faith” comes from a Madison Violet song, off their first album, Worry the Jury, called “Wake Up:”

So bitter, so courageous
At times I think you may just
Need to cry

Wake up …

That song, apart from just sounding beautiful, acknowledges agony in another, but also in the speaker. It’s not indulgent, but it’s caring while being self-protective – not quite Corinthians’ “love is not proud” but reaching for that.

“Need to cry” points to submitting when all you want to do is defy. Crying is often perceived as a weak action, a sign of passivity, a visceral proof of defeat. For Finn, Nichole and Seth in particular, submitting to the tears – acknowledging what happened, admitting powerlessness, exposing the wounds – is not only difficult, it’s terrifying. Submitting to tears means returning to the original abuse.

I listened to that song a lot while finishing Sky Waves, too, and I think that might have sowed seeds for Nichole and Gabriel to recur from Sky Waves in deluded your sailors. Sky Waves is about sending and receiving signals; it’s nightmarish that way, characters getting buffeted. In deluded your sailors, Gabriel has woken up from his nightmare and Nichole is starting to. So is Seth. Finn wants to, badly.

Other Songs …

Steve Earle’s “Down Here Below”

Several other pieces got serious workouts on my playlists for this project: Kate Bush again with “Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God),” “Grace” by Apocalyptica with Hotei Tomoyasu, Steve Earle’s “Down Here Below” and his cover of Townes van Zandt’s “Lungs,” “Steps to Your Throne” by Mark Bragg, “Trade Mistakes” and “Ready to Go (Get Me Out of My Mind)” by Panic! At the Disco, “Fat Man and Dancing Girl” by Suzanne Vega, “Pinball Wizard” by The Who, “Working Them Angels” by Rush, “Dirty Knife” and “This Tornado Loves You” by Neko Case, “Nobody Told Me” by John Lennon, “New Goodbye” and “I’ve Been Asleep for a Long, Long Time” by Hey Rosetta, “The Shore” by Basia Bulat, Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band’s arrangement of  John Bunyan’s “Who Would True Valour See,”  and “Rumbolt” by Figgy Duff. All of the music I’ve mentioned here helped me write about evil and grace, faith and suffering. It eats sleeps and shoves me where I need to go.

Have you heard of this great resource yet? Canadian Bookshelf’s goal is to “make it easier for readers to discover Canadian books.” Their motto is simple, “If it’s Canadian, it’s here,” and they are well on their way to living up to that claim, despite a few missing titles. Canadian Bookshelf already houses “the largest publicly available collection of Canadian books and authors ever assembled.” It’s a project produced by the Association of Canadian Publishers in partnership with the Canadian Publishers’ Council, with the website being run by two of the country’s leading book enthusiasts, Kerry Clare (as Editor) and Julie Wilson (as Host/Producer).

Far more than just another literary website, this is an authoritative and interactive resource for readers, that strives to put information about every Canadian book and author at our fingertips. In addition to its user-friendly database of Canadian books, visitors can avail of the website’s many bells and whistles, including a wonderful blog, called Off the Page, that posts thoughtful interviews, interesting guest posts, regular competitions and giveaways, and many other engaging features, all to help you “find your next great Canadian read.”

Their Most ambitious Booklist to Date …

It is the weekly updated, variously themed book lists on their home page I always tune in for. Most of us are born with an interest in themed lists of any kind. This week they trolled Twitter, to compile a list called “The New Generation of CanLit,” asking people to submit the names of authors who published first books since the year 2000 that these readers enjoyed. The eight Atlantic-penned books above wound up on the list. Click below to browse Salty Ink’s archives on these names:

Alexander MacLeod

Samuel Thomas Martin

Jessica Grant

Ami McKay

Darren Greer

Kathleen Winter

Chad Pelley

Johanna Skibsrud

“It’s not so much that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living,’ but that the unexamined life has not yet been lived.” – Mark Callanan

I don’t hesitate at all in calling Mark one of the best poets in Atlantic Canada right now, or one of my personal favorites in the country. Clean, lean, and unpretentious, his poignant poems skillfully dissect their subject matter, peeling back layers to expose rich imagery, metaphor and meaning. His work manages to be lucid and reflective in a small space. In this very interview, he speaks of being drawn to the power of compactness provided by poetry, and at their best, his poems really are nothing short of linguistic firepower. Some poet’s aim to capture a fleeting thought or moment; Callanan tends towards mulling them over for meaning. And it’s what makes his work so powerful. I’m quite often left feeling struck like a bell by his work, so I’ve got no problem suggesting you go ahead and get a copy of his brand new collection, Gift Horse.

“Chicken Scratches” from Gift Horse

Hen-pecked
pencil markings
in a weak hand,

symbols scrawled
across bedroom walls
in manic crayon

or written ten-foot-tall
in spray paint
on a passageway,

cuneiform entrenched
on a baked
sheet of clay,

elegant cursive
pissed in a
snowbank.

Everything written
is doomed
to be misunderstood.

Now, if you will,
your signature
here, please.

A Newfoundland-based poet, Mark has won a Newfoundland & Labrador Arts & Letters award 5 or 6 times now, and his work has appeared in journals and anthologies as notable as Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets and Open Wide A Wilderness. He published his first collection, Scarecrow, in 2003, which was shortlisted for the NL EJ Pratt Poetry Award. Track down a copy, trust me. Or trust The Chronicle-Herald via poet George Elliott Clarke, who said “Callanan has talent to burn … his eye is exact.” It received the ultimate compliment from University of Toronto Quarterly: “This intelligent book will yield more riches with each reading.”

He followed up on that praise with a chapbook last year, published by chapbook champs, Frog Hollow Press. They dubbed it “A nautical tale bent by poet’s logic.” It was shortlisted for the coveted bpNichol Chapbook Award, and quickly sold out. But you can read the whole thing here: http://issuu.com/markcallanan/docs/sealegend

Callanan is back in fine form this fall, with his latest collection, Gift Horse (Véhicule Press). Many of its poems were written in response to his near death experience in 2007, so its poems “offer up the story of a young man whose gratitude at being alive is undercut by Lazarus-like confusion and ambivalence.”  Quill & Quire praised its “understated, thoughtful observances” and wrote, “Callanan’s poetry is not fussy, nor is it driven by ego; it is humble …  There is an exactitude to his art, displayed in the efficiency of his diction and his tightly organized stanzas. [Callanan] should also be applauded for his pitch-perfect rhythm, and his unforced use of metre and rhyme.” Likewise, The National Post praised its “deceptively simple language.”

Click on a Book Cover to Read More about One of Mark’s Books:

Salty Ink: My favourite poetry, and much of yours, dissects fleeting thoughts; it’s about mulling over moments for meaning. So how does the quote, “The unexamined life is not worth living” tie in to why you write? What is it you are trying to do when you sit and write a poem?

Fundamentally, what I’m trying to do is figure out my own thoughts and feelings on a given subject. I don’t really know what I make of anything until I sit down to write about it—more than that, it feels as if I haven’t properly experienced the thing until I try to articulate that experience on paper. Really, in my case, it’s not so much that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” but that the unexamined life has not yet been lived. I’m sure this is probably a deficiency on my part—my inability to parse experience without writing about it—but it’s the way I was made.

According to your publisher, this collection, conceptually, was written in reaction to your own recent, near death experience. What’s the story there, right from the Gift Horse poet’s mouth?

Many of the poems in the collection were written in the aftermath of a brush with death I had back in 2007; the ones written before that have gained greater resonance since the event. To be brief: I contracted Meningococcal Meningitis, was admitted to hospital, and then put in a week-long, medically induced coma. At a certain point, my prognosis didn’t look very good, but I came out of it relatively intact. It’s strange to have missed such a significant event in my life, especially given that, for my friends and family, it was a nightmarish experience. I have trouble reconciling my own experience with theirs. For them, it was a period of complete uncertainty, during which they almost lost me. For me, it’s just missing time—I have no recollection of that week, or of the hours leading up to and following the coma.

 Why might the extinct Newfoundland wolf, and sea legends like mermaids, be prominent in your poetry? 

I was fixated on the extinct Newfoundland wolf a few years ago because of its symbolic potential. Extinction is the death not only of the self, but of all other selves. Martin Amis writes about this in an essay on nuclear warfare called “Thinkability.” He’s talking about a nuclear holocaust being “unthinkable,” not in the colloquial sense of the term, but literally: “the unthinkable is not thinkable,” he writes, “not by human beings, because the eventuality it posits is one in which all human contexts would have already vanished.” On a micro level, neither can we conceive of a world in which we, as individuals, no longer exist. I can entertain thoughts about my own death, but it’s no more real to me for that. Extinction is death writ large; an extinct species like the Newfoundland wolf, then, is a towering memento mori.

The mermaids are part of a wider obsession I had with mythological creatures. There’s a poem called “Kraken” in my chapbook, Sea Legend. Really, they’re all stand-ins for humanity. The mermaids are particularly useful because they’re split between two worlds, and I like thinking about them in relation to Newfoundland, which I conceive of as a liminal space.

“Kraken” from Sea Legend

Past the diorama of the diving birds,
the swimming birds, the birds
perched on a cliff face, the faces
of the cliff besmirched
with splattered egg whites
of faux bird shit;
past the skeleton of the extinct
auk in a glass case, propped up
by a metal rod that pins
his long-dead bones in place;
a tank with riveted metal frame
contains the giant squid.

You’d hardly think its phallic shape,
its length (some porn star’s
money shot at fame) would dredge
more than giggles from the belly’s
depths, but this decaying
length of dick and tentacles
once roiled the waters,
crushed ships in its embrace,
and gripped the minds of sailors,
half afraid, half amazed.

You can’t help but tap the glass
as if the squid might scatter
like a flock of birds,
as if it weren’t a kind of relic
from a time when the bones
of saints could cure
the sick and make the lame
ditch crutches, dance a jig,
as if it were a living thing,
and that its eyes,
the size of doorknobs,
might then turn
on you and see you
looking in on death,
watching your reflection in the glass.

Moreover, a lot of your poetry is rich with animal imagery and symbolism paired with personal experience. As a poet published in the anthology Open Wide a Wilderness: Canadian Nature Poems, why do you think so many poets are drawn to “Nature Poetry.”

I don’t know that poets are drawn to nature any more than they are drawn to other subjects, but the reason we write about nature at all is that we’re horribly aware of the disconnect between the human race and the natural world. Gerard Manley Hopkins has a great line in a poem called “God’s Grandeur”:

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

It’s a poem about nature’s resilience against human destruction, but the crucial bit is that line about our feet being shod: we can no longer feel the earth beneath us, and when you can’t feel the damage you’re doing, it’s much easier to do damage. Ironically, the intellectual abilities that made us succeed and proliferate as a race will probably also precipitate our demise.

In my attraction to writing about the animal kingdom, I’m greatly influence by Ted Hughes. He’s a poet for whom the animal world was a place of violent impulse—Tennyson’s “Nature, red in tooth and claw”: “Nature” being both the natural world and human nature. And part of that human nature is our simultaneous feeling of attraction and repulsion in the presence of violence. We’re amazed at nature’s obliviousness to our human plight—surprised, for instance, when a grizzly kills a hiker, just as it would any other piece of meat—its indifference both frightens and thrills us.

Other than the whopping royalties, what’s drawn you to poetry?

The power to create something that has a life beyond me. That could be said of any art form, I guess, or of procreation. I’m drawn to poetry in particular because of its concision, because there is great power in the ability to say a lot in a small amount of space; and because I like working with such space constraints; and because poems, to me, when they’re working well rhythmically, have an incantatory quality that feels magical. I’m not writing poems so much as casting spells. If I wasn’t writing poetry, I’d probably have to play RPGs to get my kicks.

What’s the biggest misconception about poetry?

That it’s difficult to read. It’s not. It just requires patience and a willingness to engage. We don’t walk into a new relationship expecting a person to reveal their deepest secrets immediately, so I don’t see why we should expect a poem to blurt everything out at once. Actually, though, I guess people are a lot more willing to reveal things about themselves in the era of Facebook. But on the whole, they trade in deathly boring details; I think they still keep the good stuff to themselves.

 If there’s one trait common to all good poetry, it is …

 A sense that these exact words, in the precise order they’ve been set down, are inevitable. See below.

 What is your favourite part of the writing process? Your least favourite?

 I’ve always appreciated that Dorothy Parker quote: “I hate writing; I love having written.” Let that be my mantra. I find writing extremely difficult to do; I’m too concerned with doing it well to actually enjoy myself. That being said, there’s a moment that comes, countless drafts in, when the elements that constitute a poem start snapping into place, when all its little gadgetry suddenly works and those disparate pieces unite to a single purpose, when the trajectory of the poem seems inevitable—that’s the good bit: when the poem works, when it becomes more than the sum of its parts. Otherwise, it would seem like a lot of pointless toil and frustration.

I was asked to be one of the 30 judges who helped craft the top 30, then the top 10 longlist of the best Albums out of Newfoundland this year, for the Atlantis Music Prize.

The Top Ten List is Out. Despite a few glaring omissions I was trying to get behind, and despite the inclusion of that one over-hyped album, it’s a great list that shows a great diversity. There’s something here for everyone, not matter what you’re into, so discover something new …

Visit Atlantis’s website for more info on the albums: Atlantis Music Prize.

A Song off Each Album, for Your Weekend Listening Pleasure:

They are only getting started, and already, Giller Prize Finalist Lynn Coady has been popping up on year end best of lists. Which, of course, is no surprise if you’ve read the thing. Over the course of her career, the headlines about Coady’s work have gone from “One of the best new writers in Canada,” or “One of the most lively writers in Canada” to simply, “One of the best writers in Canada,” because of a suite of trademarked traits.  Those traits have never been more alive in one of Coady’s novels as they are in The Antagonist. Here, they’ve clicked together and made an exceptionally vivacious Giller-worthy read.

Read Salty Ink’s review of her lively novel,  The Antagonist, here: Grand Theft Autobiography

Beattie Picks Coady …

The Quill & Quire, Canada’s premiere book industry magazine, has Steven W. Beattie as its review editor. Not an easy man to impress, but a man of worthwhile opinion as well. He’s published his top 5 picks of there year here: Books of the Year Q&Q Review Editor

“Lynn Coady’s fourth novel, recently shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, is her most stylistically ambitious to date …. [It] simultaneously updates the epistolary novel for the Internet era and provides a striking example of one of fiction’s most notoriously difficult figures: the unreliable narrator. It also solidifies Coady’s reputation as one of this country’s foremost chroniclers of the masculine psyche, particularly that part that is obsessed with violence as a problem-solving technique. “What you can’t account for, when you punch a person in the head,” says Rank, “is how they are going to land.” Coady is a brilliant observer of both head shots and the various ways the recipients land. Oh, and she’s also painfully funny.”

Fourth Novels by Lynn Coady and Nicole Lundrigan Make Amazon’s top 100!

See the full list here: http://www.amazon.ca/gp/feature.html/ref=br_lf_m_1000747361_pglink_1?ie=UTF8&plgroup=1&docId=1000747361&plpage=1

As the image indicates, Michael Winter would be a lot happier if you’d kindly sponsor his Movember moustache. In fact, if you make any sized donation, Michael will post a personalized smile on his Facebook page, like this one, just for you and your benevolence:

"I'm encouraging donors to make me smile. Each donor will receive, on my facebook page, a personal smile."

You can donate here: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/1910806/

In case you haven’t heard, or noticed many a moustached man in your city these days, November is now officially Movember: a month-long moustache fest in the name of men’s health. Particularly prostate cancer. Men grow a mo’ from scratch, and ask people to sponsor their efforts. It raises more than eyebrows: Last year, the Movemebr moustaches dangling from gents like Michael raised 77 million dollars!

I asked Michael about how his team of authors came together, a team assembled by Lawrence Hill, perhaps best known for his multi-award-winning novel, The Book of Negroes, which also won CBC’s Canada Reads Contest in 2009. “Michael Redhill pulled me by the nose into the moustache ring and I’ve been circling around moustache heavyweight poets like David Seymour and Adam Sol. Also, Lawrence Hill.” Of Lawrence Hill, he said “Lawrence seems to have many donors who think it’s hilarious to encourage the man who wrote The Book of Negroes to find time to be fussy when shaving. Which is what I’ve noticed about moustaches. To have one, you must be very very fussy. I’ve always been a lot like my sister, and now I’m finding my inner brother. Who knew”

Again, Michael’s Movember Page: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/1910806/

Get out your credit cards, chip in a little, 10 bucks or 10 grand, whatever.

- 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their life!

- 70 Canadian men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every day

- Merv Griffin gave us Wheel of Fortune, and Jack Layton could have given us a better country.

- Movember can do something to put an end to those scary stats.

- Do something about it. I’ve given out 60 bucks myself, across three moustaches. Make Michael Smile.

Since there are no Atlantic Canadians on this year’s English fiction shortlist, I recommend The Sisters Brothers. And here’s 15 fun facts about The GGs, for your reading pleasure …

UPDATE: Patrick DeWiit, the one I recommended, won!

- The GG Awards were the first Literary Awards in Canada, and this is their 75th year. There’s a pile of categories. This post is about the English Fiction award.

- The first winner of this award was Think of The Earth by Bertram Brooker (1936). Bertram was also a musician, painter, and ad firm executive at J.J. Gibbons Advertising Agency,where he was likely as complex as Don Draper. He wrote books on ad writing, like Copy Technique in Advertising (1930), under the pen name of Richard W. Surrey.

- In 1943, an Atlantic Canadian, Thomas H. Raddall, won the fiction award for The Pied Piper of Dipper Creek. There is now a very prestigious literary award — with a $20,000 purse — in his honour. It is given out to the best work of fiction by an Atlantic Canadian every year. Last year it was won by Kathleen Winter’s Annabel. A novel that was also on last year’s GG shortlist.

- in 1945, Hugh MacLennan won his first GG with Two Solitudes. It would be the first of the record-high 5 wins he would go on to bag.

- In 1950, Germaine Guèvremont won for The Outlander, in  2008, Anansi published a novel by the same name, by Gil Adamson, that won or was shortlisted for more than 5 awards.

- In 1955, Lionel Shapiro won for The Sixth of June. On the 6th of June, 1955, writer/singer/comedian Sandra Bernhard was born. She’d grow up and get famous for mocking celebrity culture and land herself on Comedy Central’s list of the 100 greatest standups of all time.

- In 1959, Hugh MacLennan would win his fifth and final GG with The Watch that Ends the Night. They say he found writing it a cathartic experience, as his first wife Dorothy Duncan was dying while he wrote it. The main female character, Catherine, suffered from a rheumatic heart, as Dorothy did. Dorothy has been credited for kickstarting his literary career, by urging him to write “a more Canadian novel” than his first 2 rejected novels had been. So he did. A little classic something called  Barometer Rising. Turned out she was right.

- In 1968, Alice Munro won for Dance of the Happy Shades, which means Alice Munro’s been on the records, kicking ass, for more than 40 years now.

- In 1970, Robert Kroetsch won with The Studhorse Man, and his publisher really should have insisted on a better title. Or maybe there’s something to horsey titles, because Mordecai Richler’s St. Urbain’s Horseman won it two years later.

- The GG for English fiction was once won by Marian Engel’s Bear. “A tale of erotic love between a librarian and a bear.” I’m not judging the judges right now.

- In 1989, Paul Quarrington won for Whale Music, which went on to be adapted for film, I believe, because of this win. Other GG winners turned into film include Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale.

- 1998 was the first time TWO authors appeared on all 3 major Canadian Literary awards: Wayne Johnston for The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and Barbara Gowdy, for the White Bone. However, Diane Schoemperlen won the GG that year, with Forms of Devotion.

- In 2007, Ondaatje won his fifth GG with Divasedaro, tying Hugh MacLennan’s record. Ondaatje has a novel out this year — shortlisted for the Giller — that would have done the trick. Yet he asked to not be considered for this year’s GG. Were I him, a sixth and record-claiming win might be my new life goal. I have yet to win a GG award in any category.

- This year, Esi Edugyan and Patrick deWitt, two two-time novelists, made 2011 the second year in Canadian history that two authors have been on all three shortlists for the 3 major Canadian literary awards: The Giller, the Rogers Writers Trust Award, and the GGs. So far, Esi won the Giller and Patrick the Rogers Writers Trust Award.

- David Bezmozgis, also on this year’s GG and Giller shortlist, recently made The New Yorker‘s top 20 writers under 40. Rumour has it he’ll win tonight.

Chad Pelley Accepting the 2009 Cuffer Prize from The Telegram's Publisher, Charlie Stacey

Newfoundland’s Cuffer Prize, now in its fourth year,  has quickly become one of the most exciting and well-thought-out short fiction contests in Canada, awarding not one but three prizes at $2,000, $1,000, and $500. In addition to the contest, Creative Books make an anthology of the top submissions of the year, and, proceeds from this book are donated literacy programs. This makes the Cuffer Prize a unique and fantastic contribution to Newfoundland’s literary scene, where recognition for writers ends in money for charity.

Having won both 1st and 3rd place in previous years, and with two stories on this year’s shortlist, Pelley says,

“I really admire what Creative and The Telegram have in place here; it’s a wonderful thing they’re doing for Newfoundland authors. You’re invisible in this industry without a bio, and the Cuffer gives you an award win and a publication credit in their anthologies. I’ve officially benefited enough from this award to stop submitting in the future, but I wanted to try and accomplish one of two goals before bowing out of future submissions. If I win second place, I’ll have ‘Triple Crowned the Cuffer,’ having won 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place over time, or, better yet, I wanted to try and win it twice, so the Telegram has to run an article that says ‘Chad Pelley is a Two-timer.’”

With two stories on this year’s shortlist, he might score both goals before retiring from submitting to the award. Also worth noting: Josh Pennell, on this year’s shortlist, has also won both 1st and 3rd place in the past. Pelley and Pennell have developed a friendly competition over the Cuffer championship. It’ll be great to see if one beats the other to the two-timer claim. Last year’s winner was Joel Thomas Hynes.

This Year’s Shortlist

Annette Conway for “Iteration”
Annette Conway for “Making Bread”
Eva Crocker for “Tickets”
Grant Loveys for “Our Guys”
Chad Pelley for “What the Difference Is”
Chad Pelley for “Walls”
Josh Pennell for “Regal Hill”
Mary Pike for “Why is Margaret Crying So Early in the Morning?”
Dara Squires for Corner Brook for “Raw Turnip”
Deborah Whelan for “Adele”

There were a couple hundred submissions this year, blind judged by Ramona Dearing, Joan Sullivan and Russell Wangersky.

Fun Facts about This Year’s Shortlisted Authors

- Annette Conway, a lawyer, has been shortlisted before. In the award’s inaugural year (2008) for “Unsettled.” Now she’s back with a vengeance this year, twice!

- Eva Crocker took Honourable mention in Salty Ink’s Very own 2010 Short Fiction Contest. And I’ve got no problem predicting she’ll be a new name in Newfoundland fiction soon,  if she so desires.

- Grant Loveys, in addition to his fiction writing, is a well published poet, including a recent win of an Arts & Letetrs award (read it here.)

- Chad Pelley has been shortlisted in all 4 years, and has 2 stories in each anthology. 5 of the 8 will appear in his collection, tentatively called Their Big Red Hearts, which he hopes to be finished writing by the spring.

- Josh Pennell, co-host of Out of the Fog, has won both 1st and 3rd place in the past. Salty Ink’s a big fan, and hopes there’s a near complete collection in the works.

- I did a creative writing course once, and Mary Pike was in the class. She always had something substantially better than me to read. And her work has appeared in a few of these Cuffer Anthologies now.

- Dara Squires writes the column Readily a Parent  for The Western Star.

- Deborah Whelan has been shortlisted for this award three times now!

The Award Ceremony and the launch of The Cuffer Prize Anthology, Vol. 3 will take place November 30th at The Geo Centre in St. John’s, at 7 p.m.

yes, I am aware I spoke of myself in third person again. It’s a one man operation around here ….

And here’s what Jessica Grant provided as endorsement for Wrecked Upon This Shore:

“I fell in love with these characters: saintly and monstrous, wrecked but not lost — castaways all. Kate Story is one of those rare writers who can plumb the darkness and retrieve from the depths a jewel, a truth, luminous and redemptive. A magical and moving novel. Prepare to be transported.” – Jessica Grant, author of Come, Thou Tortoise

I asked her to elaborate on this line from the back cover, “Wrecked upon This Shore deals with life’s most significant tests: loving and dying, broken relationships, the drive to heal and the impulse to be whole.” More specifically, I asked her in what ways are they life’s most significant tests. “Well,” she confessed, “a smarter person than me helped me with the synopsis for the book’s cover, and that’s what she said.”

Hah! But she offered her two cents anyway: “I think I have seen and experienced this in my own life. Life will kick the shit out of you.” Ah, honesty. My favourite trait in a book. ” You can shut down and stop moving in the face of that, and stop trying to keep an open heart, “she says, “Or you can try to keep loving, working, opening, learning.  That’s the nature of healing, I think.  And when I spend time around people who are working at that, I feel like it helps me to heal from whatever stuff I’ve had to deal with.  And of course we are all going to die, sooner or later.  That strikes me as a significant fact, one that our culture and times aren’t so good at helping us live with.”

From the publisher’s website:

At the novel’s centre is Pearl: wild, charismatic, and damaged.  We follow her through the eyes of her adult son Stephen, and also from the viewpoint of Mouse, the girl she fell in love with as a teenager.  Stephen is thirty years old when Pearl is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and in danger of foundering.  Pearl’s cancer becomes a crucible with the power not only to destroy but also to re-forge relationships.

I asked her about why she’d tell Pearl’s story throguh the eyes of her son, and, her former lover. “I didn’t want to go the obvious route; I was more interested in what having a mother like Pearl might be like for a guy like Stephen.  And I realized that neglected kids are sometimes hard to like.  I wanted people to really see Stephen and like him as much as I do.  And then Mouse helps flesh that out a little.  She lets us see Pearl as a young woman, before she gave birth to Stephen.”

Makes sense. Good answer. She adds. “It was also a lot of fun to write from the point of view of a Newfoundlander (Mouse) who is encountering southern Ontario culture for the first time.  I was very bewildered by that whole experience when it happened to me.  Also, I am interested in 1979. I was around for 1979 but I was a kid.  It was fun to research it and find out what 18-year-olds might have been doing or thinking back then.”

“Ultimately,” she says, “I think the book is an emotional mystery: how did Pearl start here and end up here?  What happened to her to make her like this?  And answering that from her son’s point of view, as she is dying, makes that question urgent.”

She told me the book came from the main character. “[Stephen] really wanted his story to be told, but he’s not used to having attention paid to him.  He guilted me out a little, but not on purpose; it felt more like he needed so much to have this story told that, against his better judgement and nature, he kept at me.”  Whereas Ruby, the main character in her last novel, “just seized me by the throat; she was direct and obnoxious.”

As for funny things – a witty friend commented, “Hey, Kate, your first novel’s Blasted and your second’s Wrecked.  What’s the third one going to be?  Wasted?”  Bwa ha ha.

Tell me you’re not intrigued after this article? C’mon. Buy a copy.

Last Year's Giller Prize Finalists: Alexander MacLeod, Johanna Skibsrud, Sarah Selecky, Kathleen Winter, and David Bergen

Tonight’s the Big Night!

Like last year’s Giller Prize shortlist, this year’s list is full of fresh new fiction, offers up a broad range of styles and subject matter, and showcases writers at various points in their career. Excited by the Giller Prize of late, and loving all the 2011 finalists, I asked last year’s fabulous shortlisted authors what they thought of this year’s shortlist, as well as their Giller experience last year.Two things became clear: a pronounced enthusiasm for Lynn Coady (read Salty Ink’s review of The Antagonist here), and that Sarah wore a very nice dress to the gala (see 2 shots below).

The Giller Prize is Canada’s richest literary award. It packs a 50-k purse, but more importantly takes your career to the top floor where even foreign publisher come knocking. It’s a gamechanger. A sales spiker. An overnight sensation maker. The books don’t magically get better, but the writers’ careers do, and that’s the whole point. Like 2009′s winner, Linden MacIntyre said, “It takes a good book, and makes it a successful book.”

2011 has been a particularly fantastic year for good books, and that’s been reflected in the record-breaking number of submissions to this year’s Giller, the record-breaking number of books on the longlist, and the fact there’s 6, not the normal 5 books on the very, very good shortlist. All these books shine for different reasons, and all 6 are worth your cash.  As the judges said: “It’s an eclectic range of astonishingly talented writers.”

… And I’ve been asked to join the pre-gala conversations on CBC Books tonight, Tune in!

http://www.cbc.ca/books/scotiabankgillerprize/2011/11/watch-the-scotiabank-giller-prize-gala-live.html

Johanna Skibsrud Won Last Year’s Giller with The Sentamentalists

“I have a lot of reading to do! I haven’t yet read any of the shortlisted books, but am excited to — it’s a fantastic list.  I was really happy to see that there are 6 rather than 5 books on the list this year — one more book to get the sort attention that the Giller shortlist affords is a truly wonderful thing.  I am also happy to see a list with as much variety as this one seems to have, and also to see that once again there is some short fiction on the list!

What made the experience leading up to the Gillers so special for me was getting to share it with the 4 other Giller finalists. All of them are terrific people as well as terrific writers and I feel really lucky to know them.  For most us, the sort of attention to our work that the Giller spotlight afforded was completely new — often, it could be overwhelming and strange — because of this, it made such a difference to be able to share it with one another.”

Alexander MacLeod was shortlisted Last Year for Light Lifting

“I’m happy for all this year’s finalists, especially Lynn Coady,  but I bet their group won’t have more fun than  we did in 2010. For our crew, with the exception of David, the Giller Prize was a brand new experience.  Since we didn’t have any expectations, we just held on for the ride and laughed our way through the absurdities. The intensity of the whole thing was so fierce that it kind of fused us together.  In the past year, I’ve done lots of readings and events with Kathleen and Sarah and Johanna and each time we get together it feels natural and comfortable and safe. That easy sense of connection worked for us right from the beginning and it survived the media glare and the awards show jitters and their aftermath so I’m pretty confident it will continue for years to come.

Clothes: it took me ten minutes to rent my tuxedo from a shop in Dartmouth that specializes in High School proms, so my outfit for the night really wasn’t anything special, but I certainly remember what the ladies looked like. My wife, Crystal, and Kathleen wore two very different, but very funky blue gowns and Johanna had some fancy black designer thing (I think it was vintage) and Sarah went with a rocking red number.  David shaved his head extra clean, pulled on his super-slim Harry Rosen tux and topped it off rhinestone encrusted spectacles. He looked like a hitman.

I read all the long-listed story collections by Clark Blaise, Michael Christie and ZsuZsi Gartner, and I think more than one of them could have made it through.”

Sarah Selecky was Shortlisted Last Year for This Cake is For the Party

“Five words: Better Living Through Plastic Explosives. This dazzling book of stories is

Said Frills on Sarah's Dress

mad-brilliant. Plus it’s Year of the Short Story, so.

I had my Giller dress made for me by the designers at Magpie, on Queen St. West in Toronto. It had about 8 metres of silk bunched up in the skirt, and I had to be hooked into the corset by someone else. I’ve never worn anything like it before. God, that was fun.

I knew that having my first book nominated for the Giller was a once in a lifetime opportunity, so I decided that I was just going to live it up. I remember the moment I decided to enjoy the whole thing, and not worry about the competition — and it was this decision that made the whole experience a joyful one.”

Kathleen Winter was Shortlisted Last Year for Annabel

“I’m happy to see Lynn Coady on the list, and I’m interested in the other books because of the writers and their subjects. I think this year’s shortlist feels strong, and I wish the authors and their publishers the best. What stands out for me is the glitz of the Giller. This prize is unlike any other Canadian literary award in that it is a glitterati extravaganza made for television lights. That can be a surprise for authors.”

Also, Check out this great article from the Afterword, that has 3 (the most!) people plugging Coady to win tonight.

This Year’s Shortlist:

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is “the world’s largest prize for single work of fiction in the English language,” at €100,000, and “the most international prize of its kind.” Every year, more than 150 selected libraries from all over the world nominate a favourite book, and that’s the longlist. The books must be written in English or translated into English, and published in the prior year. It’a big deal’ a big honour. So a big congrats to Beth and Kathleen, two lovely ladies.

They’re up against about 150 books, including a slew of award winner, like 2011′s Pulitzer Prize winner, A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan) and the 2011 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winner, The Memory of Love (Animatta Forna), and what many would call the international powerhouse of the year, Room by Emma Donoghue, which was nominated by the most libraries worldwide (20), including libraries in Ireland, England, France, Maldives, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, and Canada!

The Sea Captain’s Wife by Beth Powning

Nominated by: Saint John Free Public Library, New Brunswick, Canada

What they had to say: A favourite local author delivers a sweeping panorama rooted firmly in a New Brunswick coastal village. A gripping narrative supported by thorough research, propelled by memorable characters dealing with complex relationships. Elegant, lyrical prose – intuitive & reflective. Nominated for Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize.

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Nominated by; and what they had to say:

Calgary Public Library, Canada

Winter’s luminous debut novel is a deeply affecting portrait of life in Labrador, Canada, and the trials of growing up unique in a restrictive environment. Touching, inventive and ultimately brave, “Annabel” is a beautifully told, fully-realized tale of a mysterious child gifted or cursed by a rare condition at birth. Governor General’s Award finalist 2010 and shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize 2010.

Newfoundland & Labrador Public Libraries, Canada

Fascinating story / novel about a child born in remote Labrador, with 2 sexes, and the consequences of choosing to raise that child as a boy. Well researched and captivating from page 1.

Saint John Free Public Library, New Brunswick, Canada

A transgender tale told with tenderness and sensitivity, set in Labrador, Newfoundland, where isolation and landscape are integral to the story.

Ottawa Public Library, Canada

Compelling debut novel by Atlantic Canadian author. Reviewers praise complex themes, rich characters, sense of place and time, and graceful language. Won Independent Literary Award, shortlisted for Giller, Rogers Writers Trust, Governor General’s Fiction Award, Orange Prize and others. Also on several best book lists.

Vancouver Public Library, Canada

This compelling and beautifully written story is about an inter-sex child growing up in Labrador. Born in 1968 and raised as a boy named Wayne Blake, the child does not fit into the hunting and fishing culture of Croyden Harbour – much to his father’s dismay. As Wayne matures to adulthood, that pull of a “shadow self” he calls Annabel, becomes stronger and stronger.

The Shortlist will be out in April of 2012, on the 12th … and the big winner will be crowned on June 13th, 2012.

Since its inception in 1996, the award’s been won by 2 Canadians, Alistair MacLeod for No Great Mischief and Rawi Hage for DeNiro’s Game. I suspect one of these two ladies will be the big number 3.

It’s not just that we were born in the same year that makes Johanna Skibsrud special. She also happened to win a little something called the Giller Prize last year, and since it’s Giller Gala Eve , it seemed like the right day to plug the fall release of Skibsrud’s collection, This Will Be Difficult to Explain. The cash, glory, and international fame she got a year ago still hasn’t trickled out: She’s just getting back from the Norwegian launch of The Sentamentalists.

She was also given a two-book deal with Penguin Canada’s literary fiction imprint, Hamish Hamilton. And I’ll use the Globe and Mail’s summary to pique your interest in the first of these two books, now on shelves near you:

Although most of the stories were published previously in small literary magazines, they couldn’t have been planned better to upset the snob’s view of Skibsrud as a dewy-eyed hippie poetess lost in her own tender feelings. In their economy and complexity, their intimately observed details and crystalline insights into human motives and feelings – not to mention their sheer assuredness – Skibsrud’s stories stand boldly at the door of the Canadian short-fiction pantheon: Alice Munro, prop. If nothing else, they affirm her as a major new voice in Canadian literature. – John Barber, Globe and Mail

There was a great quote in that same article, from Skibsrud: “A short story is like a microscope, but what’s revealed is the complexity of that small area you’re focusing on.”And I admire her sticking to her guns, citing “Virginia Woolf’s most challenging novel, The Waves, as a major source of inspiration for her own work, which likewise demands concentration from readers. ‘A lot of times people don’t want to pay that attention,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. That’s not how I read, so that’s not how I write.’”

And The Globe wasn’t the only paper comparing her to Munro. Toronto Life said:

“Her prose is as taut as Alice Munro’s, her plots as spare as Mavis Gallant’s. Her characters have startlingly vivid inner lives. Skibsrud’s new book … [has] emotional punch.” —Toronto Life

Now Magazine summarized the conceptual scope of the collection as being focused on  “the limitations of perspective and the difficulties of communication. As in the best short fiction, Skibsrud plunges us head first into the worlds of her varied characters, leaving us to do the work of catching up while she paints and probes their tragicomical mistakes.”

Skibsrud is also the author of two very well received collections of poetry, I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being and Late Nights With Wild Cowboys, and she’s currently finishing her phD, with a focus on the poetry of Wallace Stevens. She is at work on her second novel. As if having released 4 books in the last three years, while doing grad school wasn’t impressive enough.