| Calgary’s Judd Palmer and part-time Calgarian Karen Hines are among the nominees for this year’s Governor General’s Literary Awards. The short list, announced October 26, includes Palmer’s children’s book The Wolf King and Hines’s The Pochsy Plays.
Alice Munro’s short story collection Runaway is sure to be among the favourite nominees in the fiction category. The other fiction nominees are Winnipeg author and local favourite Miriam Toews, for A Complicated Kindness; David Bezmozgis for Natasha and Other Stories; Trevor Cole, for Norman Bray, In the Performance of His Life; and Colin McAdam, for Some Great Thing.
Edmonton poet Tim Bowling was picked for his book The Memory Orchard, along with poetry nominees David Manicom, John Terpstra, Roo Borson and Jan Zwicky. In drama, Edmonton’s Mieko Ouchi (a former Calgarian) finds herself with Hines, Robert Chafe of St. John’s, Toronto’s Michael Healey and Vancouver’s Morris Panych.
Not surprisingly, Lt.-Gen. Roméo Dallaire’s painful memoir Shake Hands with the Devil was nominated for the non-fiction award. In fact, the non-fiction list is dominated by dark topics, with both Jane Jacobs’ Dark Age Ahead and Christopher Dewdney’s nocturnal meditation Acquainted with the Night: Excursions Through the World after Dark getting the nod. Poet Jan Zwicky’s Wisdom & Metaphor earns her second nomination here, alongside Anne Coleman’s I’ll Tell You a Secret: A Memory of Seven Summers. And in kid’s books, there’s Palmer of course, but also High River’s Martine Leavitt, nominated for her book Heck Superhero. The other children’s lit nominees are Sharon E. McKay, Kenneth Oppel and Ange Zhang. And that’s just the English-language awards for text.
You can find all the nominees (and jurors) at www.canadacouncil.ca/news/releases/2004/_finalists_finalistes.htm.Final decisions will be made public in Ottawa on November 15 (kids’ books) and 16 (everyone else).
Just because book events with national and international celebrities fill the coming week, that’s no reason not to start with two important local events. Well, half-local, in the case of the Coach House Press reading with Calgary poet Julia Williams and Toronto poet Mark Truscott this Thursday, October 28 at McNally Robinson at 7 p.m. Her book is The Sink House (see the story in this issue). His book is Said Like Reeds or Things.
The next night at Pages on Kensington, Ken Rivard launches a new book of short fiction called Whiskey Eyes. A young boy and his family find their "Aged Ps" (as I think Dickens’s Wemmick called his) moving back into the house. Sounds at once serious and funny. That’s Friday, October 29 at 7:30 p.m.
The first two evenings in November are especially heavy on reading-related events. It’s as if someone thought, "How could a person get signed copies of some of this fall’s big books and have their Christmas shopping for bookish relations complete by November 3?"
On Monday, November 1, Russell Banks returns with The Darling, his new novel set in Africa. Banks is always popular with Calgary readers. Let’s hope the infuriating airport customs hassles of his last visit are not repeated. (Although authors at this year’s WordFest were not entirely spared.) Go to the John Dutton Theatre, at the W. R. Castell Central Library, well before the start time of 7:30 p.m. if you hope to get a seat for this free event. Aritha Van Herk will be the guest host.
Then on Tuesday night, November 2, Will Ferguson provides a break from tiresome chat about "the greatest" Canadian – he wrote the book on How to Be a Canadian after all – with his new book Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada. That’s also free and at 7:30 p.m.
On the same pair of nights, as if stepping from the pages and screens of major national media, the highly recognizable persons of Charlotte Gray, Sheila Copps and Margaret Wente will all materialize at McNally Robinson. On Monday, November 1 at 5:30 p.m., former deputy PM Copps arrives with the controversial story of her career, complete with insider knowledge of Liberal party goings-on. Then at 7 p.m., Gray presents a different side of Canadian national life with her book The Museum Called Canada: 25 Rooms of Wonder. The next night, November 2, at 7:30, columnist Wente brings her book An Accidental Canadian, about her travels from suburban Chicago to the pages of The Globe and Mail.
Novelist Kathy Page used to live in the U.K., but now resides in B.C. Her move back down the alphabet makes her near-local now. She’s at Pages on Wednesday, November 3, with her new novel Alphabet, the followup to her Orange Prize-nominated novel The Story of My Face. Natalee Caple is at least temporarily local, as this year’s Markin-Flanagan Writer in Residence, and she reads the same night from her smart and gripping crime novel Mackerel Sky. It all starts at 7:30 p.m.
Look to the west. What do you see? Some stranger drinking a coffee? Your bedroom wall? All right, try going to someplace like a viewpoint or lookout and look west again. Now you see mountains, right? Local topography. And it’s the subject of its own book festival in Banff from November 3 to 5.
Both before and after the Banff Mountain Book Festival, you can also catch the Mountain Film Festival. But sticking with books for now, this year’s writers include Between a Rock and a Hard Place author Aron Ralston, who had one of those nightmarish, yet transforming, outdoor experiences when trapped by an 800-pound boulder that pinned down his arm. How did he escape? Even if you have already heard the story, it’s worth hearing from the man himself on Thursday, November 4.
On Friday, November 5, Vivien Bowers shares the story of a Selkirk Mountains avalanche in 1988 and the aftermath. Photos and film footage from the 1924 Mallory-Irvine Mount Everest expedition will also be on show when Sandra Noel presents work by her father, the expedition’s photographer, in Everest Pioneer: the Photographs of Captain John Noel.
With so many events, some held on weekdays and others during evening sessions, how can you navigate the offerings at this year’s Mountain Book Festival? The Banff Centre’s web wizards are offering a searchable website at www.banffcentre.ca/mountainculture/festivals/schedule/highlights/. That’s a good place to start, or call the box office at 1-800-413-8368.
Finally, after all this talk about celebrities, only now do we get to an event involving the best-known and best-loved celebrities of recent decades, across North America and beyond: the Simpsons, of course. Pop-culture reporter Chris Turner reports from Planet Simpson (it’s not really a planet, just the title of his book) on Friday, October 29, at 7:30 p.m. at McNally Robinson. |
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