| Novelist David Bergen has won this year’s Giller Prize (the 12th) for his novel The Time in Between. The novel, a story about a soldier who returns to Vietnam nearly 30 years later, won over Joan Barfoot’s Luck, Camilla Gibb’s Sweetness in the Belly, Lisa Moore’s Alligator and Edeet Ravel’s A Wall of Light. This is the first year the prize has been underwritten by Scotiabank, which has doubled the cash, with the winner getting $40,000 and each finalist $2,500. The prize is regarded by many as one of the most difficult to predict – certainly the jurors (who this year were authors Richard Wright, Elizabeth Hay and Warren Cariou) are given a difficult task, whittling 94 books down to a short list of five. This year’s jury was more democratic than usual – all of the authors (except for Moore) were nominated for the first time.
Still with awards, Karsten Heuer's Being Caribou picked up the $2,000 grand prize at this month’s Banff Mountain Book Festival competition. Heuer's book chronicles his 2003 journey with his wife, filmmaker Leanne Allison, into the caribou calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
On the reading scene, McNally Robinson has Lorenz Peter presenting his new graphic novel, Dark Adaptation, a family drama dealing with cancer and death, on Saturday, November 12 at 8 p.m. And B.C. lawyer and author William Deverell (who also created the TV drama Street Legal) returns with a new novel, April Fool, on Monday, November 15 at 7 p.m. The story features legendary attorney Arthur Beauchamp, who finds his new activist wife and a scary ex-client are interfering with his quiet island retirement.
Pages also has a few readings this week, the first on Thursday, November 10 at 7:30 p.m. when Montreal novelist-playwright Colleen Curran reads from Guests of Chance, her latest comic novel about singing waitress Lenore Rutland. On Wednesday, November 16 at 7:30 p.m., Pages’ writer-in-residence, Laura Cutler, launches her new short-story collection, This Side of Bonkers, and the next night, Thursday, November 17, also at 7:30 p.m., B.C. author and critical favourite Keith Maillard (The Clarinet Polka, Gloria) presents Running, the first novel in his new four-book cycle Difficulty at the Beginning.
Calgary playwright Sandra Dempsey (who recently won an award at the Becket Playwrights Festival in Massachusetts for her black comedy Armagideon) is presenting a free public performance-reading of her new play, Per Ardua (detailing officer training in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War), as well as a selection from her other works. She’ll be at the Memorial Park Library on Thursday, November 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Local publisher Brindle & Glass and the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters are joining together on Thursday, November 17 at 7 p.m. for the launch of Standing Together: Women Speak Out About Violence and Abuse, a new collection of 103 poems and stories written by Alberta women and edited by Linda Goyette. The event is being held at the Art Gallery of Calgary, in the Archie Key Gallery on the second floor. |
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