A 36-seat plane delivered me to Halifax the next morning. No reception committee was there to meet me. Big city, I thought, setting out to explore on my own. Lonely and hungry by late afternoon, sure no dinner would be in the offing, I treated myself to a giant steak and garlic mashed potatoes. Back at the inn, my phone rang. It was my host, Alexander MacLeod, arranging to take me to the reading. Young, hip, intelligent - it was too much to expect old-world gallantry. But maybe not - he dashed ahead to his car to open the passenger door for me.

The reading took place in St. Mary’s University Art Gallery, a fantastic backdrop, and Alexander’s introduction was superb. When it was over, he and fellow faculty member Stephanie Morley insisted on taking me out for dinner. Alexander regaled us with insider tales about local writers. Romans-à-clef, the pastoral versus the gritty, new “comers” versus the old guard, defections to Upper Canada, writing clans and outsiders, scandals and feuds—this was juicy stuff. The pints of beer were being drained and I felt, for a moment, like an honorary member of the Atlantic tribe.

I gulped down more Shiraz. “Why am I the only one who orders wine?”

“Too snooty,” they told me, grinning. “People here don’t have money for wine. It shows you’re from away, not from here.”

In my head, names of fiction writers were swirling: Wayne Johnston, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Bernice Morgan, Lynn Coady, Michael Winter, Lisa Moore, Joan Clark, Michael Crummey, Ami McKay, Donna Morrissey, Don Hannah, Mark Jarman, Edward Riche, and Alexander himself, son of Alistair MacLeod of Cape Breton Island. Add in the poets Anne Compton, George Elliott Clarke, Brian Bartlett, Anne Simpson, and Ross Leckie’s new ice-house gang. And that’s just the tip of the eastern iceberg. It hit me that the Atlantic is experiencing a boom surpassing anything across the country. A renaissance, if that isn’t too snooty a term for it.

Driving me back to my inn, Alexander detoured to the citadel to show me Halifax at night. Although I’d missed Saint John’s reversing falls, I would journey back to the other ocean buoyed up by Maritimes hospitality and the rising tide of Atlantic literature.

For more about Mary and Conceit visit www.marynovik.com.

In January, I hopped an Airbus in Vancouver wearing new snow boots and carrying a down coat with a hood. I was heading to Saint John to read from my novel Conceit (Doubleday 2007) in the hugely successful Lorenzo Series, organized by poet-in-residence Anne Compton, the tastemaker of the Maritimes. Anne had arranged to bring me in a day early, in case of storms. Her last e-mail warned, “We are in a deep freeze here. You’ll need that new warm coat of yours.”

In Ottawa, the departures monitor showed flights cancelled to Halifax, but not to Saint John. I trudged across the snowy tarmac to board a Dash 8 55-seater, which taxied ominously into a de-icing bay to get sprayed. The 31 minute bumpathon came to a halt in Montreal.

“I wasn’t going to fly into Saint John even if told to,” confided the pilot, as we deplaned, “not in this weather.”

After four hours sleep, I was back at Montréal-Trudeau trying to fly standby. I’d missed my interview on CBC, but was damned if I was going to miss the reading. After two more aborted attempts to get to Saint John, I finagled my way onto a Dash 8 headed (after de-icing) for Fredericton. Once there, I jumped into a taxi and sped south on icy roads to the Fundy city.

Watch out for moose, a sign said. I could barely decipher the driver’s accent - soft, seductive, determined to entertain although I was clutching the door handle and straining my eyes for large mammals ahead. Soon, I had surrendered to the lilting rhythms of tales about the harsh life of the Miramichi and its famous son, novelist David Adams Richards.

I had heard him called the Canadian Faulkner. “What do you think of him?” I asked.

“I went to school with him. His books are all about us, his family and friends. A good man, well liked, still lives here.” (Richards has actually lived in Toronto for the past twelve years.)

When the taxi pulled up at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John, forty minutes late, the coffee and desserts were gone, but eighty people were waiting patiently. Chilled to the bone, I walked straight to the mike, glugged a small bottle of water, and began to read from the Great Fire of London in 1666.

Afterwards, I had my first taste of Atlantic hospitality. The enthusiastic readers lined up to get copies of Conceit signed, then Anne put me into a taxi to the Delta Brunswick, and told me to curl up in bed, watch a bad movie, and order anything I liked from room service. My tray arrived with a glass of pinot gris, poached Atlantic salmon, and a large thermos of hot chocolate.

The next morning, I caught a bus back to Fredericton, which was a balmy minus10°. Waiting to escort me to lunch was Ross Leckie, creative writing chair at UNB Fredericton. Listening to Ross talk about writers he admired, I picked up a purity of motive, a cultivation of language for its own sake, refreshing after the Vancouver writing scene. Fredericton is a city of poets, a culture going back to poet-in-residence Alden Nowlan and to the Confederation poets. Poets aren’t marginalized here as they are in the rest of Canada: they are the centre. Today, Ross’s talented students meet in the ice house where the ice-house gang, a group of writers that included David Adams Richards, workshopped in the early seventies.

Mark Jarman, the fiction half of the creative writing team, took me to dinner where we were joined by novelist-in-residence, the Irish writer Gerard Beirne. They ordered pints of beer and we dove headlong into another literary conversation. That night, I was asked to read long passages, something people squirm through in large cities, yet the audience was attentive. Afterwards, the faculty took me to Alden Nowlan’s house, now a clubhouse for grad students, where I was handed a pint of ale and taken round to look at the memorabilia by Brian Bartlett.

I flew to Toronto on the back of a great global wave of optimism and enthusiasm sparked by the publication of my new book - The Optimist: One Man’s Search for the Brighter Side of Life. Strangely enough, this coincided with the inauguration of America’s new pres, Barack Obama. I wonder if - deep down - Obama knew what he was doing, scheduling his launch so as to dovetail with mine. Still, even I was surprised to note the impact that my work seemed to be having. When I arrived in Toronto after my short flight from London everyone I encountered seemed cheerful, upbeat - despite the so-called ‘ecomonic meltdown’. The customs officials came across as courteous and polite; the taxi drivers talkative and warm. It was as if the section of their brains reserved for cynicism and impatience had been surgically removed. Was it the US election? Was it my book? I had no idea. Perhaps it was just Canada. It was my first time in the country.

The tour itself was wonderful: So much attention, so much conversation. There I was, staring at the great face of George Stroumboulopoulos, on TV, happy that I had not yet peed myself from stage fright. And he had actually read my book! Let me tell you something - in the UK, even if you are one of the most fashionable writers in town - people don’t have time to read your stuff before interviewing you. They’re way too busy planning their next piece of business. Believe me, even Obama has this problem. And it makes a big difference. There’s nothing like having a proper conversation to distract you from your stage fright.

We went to Niagara. We stared down on the primal beauty of the crashing ice. I sighed with envy as the icy water plummeted to its end in the chasm below. Ah life, ah death… I could already feel the next book forming itself in my mind. It would definitely have something to do with Canada, and Obama and… Why was my publicist tugging my arm? Is there something wrong with stripping off your clothes in the face of so much raw beauty?

Ah, Canada!

Though it may surprise some of you to read this, I have never before gone dress shopping with a bestselling author. Not once. Fortunately, my bestselling-author-dress-shopping virginity was taken gently and with good humour this last Friday by the lovely Joy Fielding.

After a brief and dignified struggle with the softly accented concierge, we made contact with Ms. Fielding in the lobby of her uptown apartment building. Outside we hailed a cab and cruised downtown to Fashion Crimes, a Queen west boutique store with a lot of dresses and two very tall wooden doors, which had generously offered to clothe and style several authors for this Thursday’s Book Lovers’ Ball (As I’m on comfortable terms with my feminine side, I didn’t feel at all out of place as we walked in). Instead I put myself to good use watching the coats and purses while Ms. Fielding and her tenacious publicist Adria Iwasutiak began their search for the perfect dress.

With the help of the store’s constantly moving staff several candidates were soon found. I continued to make myself useful by testing out potential accessories and became particularly fond of a daring feathery hair-clip. In the selection process Ms. Fielding showed a love of colour (particularly purple), a stunning figure and a charming, self-effacing sense of humour. In the interest of not letting the cat out of the bag I have wisely forgotten what her final choice looked like, but I know that it was elegant and if I was Joy Fielding I would have chosen it, too. Needless to say, I was sad to go back to the office and I would definitely go dress shopping with best-selling suspense author Joy Fielding again on a moment’s notice.

Last week at the Ontario Library Association’s Superconference, the Dewey Divas and the Dudes were thrilled to receive the OLA’s award for Leadership in Adult Readers’ Advisory. For six years we’ve been traveling around the province giving targeted book talks to staff at public libraries and school boards. We let them know about our favourite upcoming reads, forgotten gems and the new writers - especially Canadians - about to break out. We know how essential librarians are at spreading the word about books and there has been a ton of recent focus among them on developing readers’ advisory skills. So this award was truly an incredible honour, going as it did to a bunch of publishers’ sales reps instead of to a librarian. We accepted the award at the conference’s awards night dinner (buzzed with excitement and from a pretty large and tasty piece of chocolate cake) and thanked our library wholesalers for their support and the many libraries who have welcomed us so warmly over the years and passed on our recommendations to their patrons.

Here we all are on our big night. From left to right: Susan Wallace (Oxford University Press Canada), Cindy Weir (President of the OLA), Janet Murie (Scholastic Canada), Rosalyn Steele (H. B. Fenn & Company), Maylin Scott (Random House of Canada), David Macmillan (HarperCollins Canada), Saffron Beckwith (Kate Walker & Company), Sharron Smith (OLA Readers’ Advisory Committee), Eleanor Denny (Simon & Schuster Canada), Ann Ledden (McArthur & Company) and Lahring Tribe (Random House of Canada).

Last night I attended a This Is Not a Reading Series event at the Gladstone Hotel with Bryan Prince, author of A Shadow on the Household: One Enslaved Family’s Incredible Struggle for Freedom, and interviewer Rachel Harry.

Prince has been studying slavery and the Underground Railroad for about thirty years, and his knowledge is vast. It was an important and timely conversation that looked at black history from the days of slavery up to Obama’s win.

The audience was intrigued to learn that Prince’s hometown, Buxton, started as 9,000 acres in southwestern Ontario dedicated to fugitive slaves and free black people. For people who had been so beaten down, the settlement offered a chance to raise families, own property, build community, and receive a high-level classical education at the local school. Prince is a farmer and is himself a descendant of slaves, as are many in the community. His book tells the story of the Weems family, who were torn apart in the mid-19th century when their slave master died, and then their long journey to reunite in freedom.