Do you love to discover new voices and fresh fiction? Well, look no further than the New Face of Fiction program, now in its 15th year. The NFOF is devoted to bringing spectacular first-time Canadian writers to readers everywhere. Each year Knopf Canada and Random House Canada editors get to choose a handful of books written by new authors that they feel really passionate about, and whose work exhibits an exceptional quality of writing and remarkable storytelling ability. While each book is quintessentially ‘Canadian’ in its own unique way, the program pushes the boundaries and parameters of CanLit to showcase a true diversity of writing styles and settings; everything from a tale of true love set amidst the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, to a heartbreaking but optimistic journey through the underground railroad, to the words and ways of an outspoken Acadian midwife. (Can you guess which books I’m referring to? Follow the links to see if you know these famous stories.)
Last Monday I was on television for the first time in my life.
I’m a magazine editor by day, crafter by night, and I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I’d be sitting on the set of CityTV’s Breakfast Television, waiting to tell the world about the brand-new craft book I’d co-edited, Create, Update, Remake.
Oh the life of a publicist. Booking hotel rooms, arranging flights, juggling media schedules, the early mornings, late nights… Not so glamorous. But when you’re asked to do these things for Hollywood royalty like Suzanne Somers, somehow it seems a little better. What’s not to love about Suzanne? She read poetry to Johnny Carson, sang on a Vegas stage with Frank Sinatra, and starred in one of the most loved TV shows of all time. She has done it all.
Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God, was in Toronto recently to promote her newest book, Twelve Steps To a Compassionate Life. In the green room at Toronto Public Library’s Appel Salon, with 450 people waiting to hear her speak, we noticed that both she and CBC’s Mary Hines, who would do the onstage interview, were wearing purple. Then Karen’s literary agent, Anne McDermid, entered the room, also wearing purple. I looked down at myself, realizing that I too, was dressed in the “colour of royalty”. By the time Toronto Public Library Program Director Tina Srebotnjak entered the room, also in purple, we were in fits. Coincidence?
I still remember sitting in my first meeting with a network of book club members who called themselves Read for the Cure. It was spring 2007, and in the Random House boardroom this group of women astonished me with their passion, creativity and vision. Amongst them were cancer survivors who, during their rough journeys, found comfort and support through their book club.
Their vision was this: transforming their love of books into a fundraising effort for cancer research. It was brilliant — rather than raise money by running or walking for the cure, they were going to read for the cure!
That was nearly four years ago, and we’ve been making each event bigger than the last. It’s been my pleasure to have developed an author series with Read for the Cure that has raised well over $300,000 for The Cancer Research Society. Included in the ticket: three books, food, wine, and an unforgettable outing that allows readers to engage with the community, discover new authors, and help conquer cancer.
In 2010, the wider community took notice. Canadian Living magazine featured the back story of Read for the Cure in their October 2010 issue. And The Globe and Mail featured photos of our unforgettable evening at the Liberty Grand in Toronto, with Margaret Atwood, Karen Connelly and Joy Fielding. (Click here to see them)
You must watch this fantastic video created by Loading Doc Productions that captures the spirit of a Read for the Cure event.
Visit www.readforthecure.ca to learn more about this remarkable cause that I am so proud to be a part of.
What are Andrew Pyper, Jane Johnson, Nicolas Dickner and Tom Rachman reading now that their books are finished? We asked them: What’s on your nightstand?
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A Field Guide to Demons. – Andrew Pyper, author of The Guardians. |
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A bit of a tottering pile! I’m happily rereading A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin (which I published in 1994) ahead of the big Sky dramatization in spring 2011; a biography of Charles II; the diary of John Evelyn; and A New History of the Crusades by Christopher Tyerman. – Jane Johnson, author of The Salt Road |
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Ill Fares the Land by Tony Judt and Silas Marner by George Eliot. |
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The imposing Mordecai: The Life & Times by Charles Foran. (My nightstand is actually leaning.) I’m also rereading A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle, before viewing the BBC redux. And Deep Café by Malcolm Reid, a book about Leonard Cohen and the counterculture in Montréal in the mid-sixties. |
Want to learn more about the reading and writing habits of our authors? Check out our
20 Writerly Questions feature!
I saw Toronto for the first time when I was 6. For the decade that followed, the city was not much more than a portal to reunion with family visiting from back home—Pearson Airport—or the site of monthly pilgrimage for bread, tea and dried herbs not found in small-town Ontario grocery stores. In high school, Toronto was downtown—as my friends and I took the train into the city to pick up new vinyl at Rotate This or trolling Kensington, munching on mango cakes from Patty King and digging through racks of musty tweed, gaudy polyester and army fatigues. During my university days I frequently hopped on the Greyhound from Guelph to catch Hip Hop shows at the Kool Haus or attend thought-provoking talks and conferences on the city’s many campuses.
For a long time, Toronto was little more to me than a collection of shops and events. Living here has shifted my perception, but not nearly as much as reading literature that writes the city like a living, breathing entity—one that is alight with histories, lives and structures.
The Publicity Department is responsible for getting early copies of books into the hands of the “talkers”: those people who will read a book in its early stages and then tell all their friends about how great it is. Our hope is that word of mouth will cause such excitement that people will be bursting at the seams wanting a copy of their very own as soon as books hit store shelves. When that happens, life is great.
You may perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worthwhile to be tormented for two or three years of one’s life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. – Jane Austen
1. I come home from kindergarten in a quivery state of awe. “Michael Pearce can read!” I announce. “He read a whole book for Show and Tell!” My eyes fill with tears of bitterest envy: all I can do is look at pictures while I wait to be read to. Like a baby.
My grandfather says he will teach me to read. After dinner, he sits with me at the kitchen counter and begins sounding out words. “C-A-T, cat,” he says, writing it out. “R-A-T, rat.” Now it is my turn: B-A-T, he writes. “What does that say?”
I have no idea. Cat, rat…. “Catches,” I guess. No. Chases? No. Hits on head with giant rubber mallet? Thirty minutes later, I am thoroughly sick of learning to read. Also, I have not learned to read. Also, my grandfather is not a patient teacher. I am in tears.
But he persists, night after night at the kitchen counter, and eventually, I can read. The best day of the week is library day. The best days of the school year are when Mrs. Smith, the district librarian, comes to our class to tell us about the new books in our library. Sometimes she has to bore us to death with the Dewey Decimal System first, but she never leaves without reading. She is the best reader I have ever heard, changing her voice and accent and pitch as she shifts from character to character.
Unusual events carried me to a remote corner of the North African continent, events that were to change my life completely. I had travelled to Morocco (my first time ever in Africa) in order to research piece of family history. In a raid in 1625 an ancestor of mine was stolen, along with 59 other men, women and children, out of a church in Penzance by Barbary corsairs and sold into the white slave markets of Salé/Rabat in northern Morocco. (The subsequent novel was published as The Tenth Gift and sold in 24 countries.) A curious combination of coincidences carried me to a remote Berber mountain village in the far south-west of Morocco.
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