WHAT'S NEW!

Louise Penny

Louise Penny's A FATAL GRACE (Known as DEAD COLD in Canada and UK)  has won the 2007 AGATHA AWARD for
Best Novel.

Louise Penny's The Cruellest Month has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis award for best novel.

 

 

 

 

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Lisa Appignanesi

Lisa Appignanesi's SAD, MAD and BAD: WOMEN AND THE MIND DOCTORS FROM 1800 has been longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Nancy Huston has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for her novel Fault Lines

Nancy Huston has been shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction prize 2007

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE BROADBAND PRIZE; shortlist to be announced April 15 at the London Book Fair

Nancy Huston was born in Calgary, Alberta. Her previous books have won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens, the Prix Elle (Quebec) and the Governor General’s Award.  Her novel THE MARK OF THE ANGEL was an international bestseller, which won the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, the Canadian Jewish Fiction Book Award, the Torgi Award and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Nancy Huston lives in Paris with her husband, the writer Tzvetan Todorov, and their two children.

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Barry Callaghan is the writer in residence for Open Book Toronto in April.

We know who "the man of letters" is – he has versatility and range, sound intelligence and taste, dramatic imagination, and a lucid vigourous style – he is the novelist, the critic, the political portraitist, reporter, poet, memoirist, editor, translator …

We know who he is – we know that in the United States the great man of letters in the 20th century was Edmund Wilson, but who among us in Canada is in the tradition of such a man of letters?

It is hard to think of anyone – except Barry Callaghan.

As a writer of fiction – celebrated by Timothy Findley and Marie-Claire Blais, Joyce Carol Oates and William Kennedy – his work of course is in the Oxford Book of Canadian short stories. He is established in the forefront of that tradition. As such his stories have been translated into Spanish, Croatian, Italian, Serbian, Latvia, French …

As a poet, his Hogg poems – celebrated by voices as diverse as Northrop Frye and Margaret Avison, or the great American poet, Hayden Carruth ("this momentous lyrical and epical triumph"), or the Irish poet John Montague ("I cannot easily find anything like it in Canadian literature except poems by Margaret Atwood on love and survival. I would have to turn for comparison to the English poet Ted Hughes' sequence on Crow, or the American poet Galway Kinnell's Book of Nightmares") – holds a singular place in Canadian poetry.

As a memorist, his Barrelhouse Kings (excerpted in The Vintage Book of Canadian Memoirs) is – as Austin Clarke has said – "The literary memory that has set the standard for all of us writers to meet."

As a translator, he has published seven books – from French, Serbian, and Latvian.

As a book editor and critic, he was editor of the Toronto Telegram from 1966 to 1971, and while there – says editor Marq de Villiers – "he set a standard for books pages and weekly criticism that has not yet been matched."….

As a magazine reporter, portraitist, war correspondent and literary journalist he has been awarded seven gold medal National Magazine Awards in Canada, the Pushcart Prize, the White Award, and the Lowell Thomas Prize in the United States.

In television, he not only was a producer of major documentaries over a period of 15 years, but was given the Genie Award as Best Television Host.

As an artist, the prestigious Carleton University Art Gallery staged a month-long retrospective of his work, The Hogg Drawings, with a catalogue introduction by Vera Frenkel.

As an editor, there is only agreement that his literary quarterly, Exile – in operation since 1972 – is one of the great quarterlies of North America. His Exile Editions – devoted to Canadian and international writing – has almost 300 titles in print.

As a teacher, when he retired after 37 years at York University, he was generally regarded as one of the great inspirational teachers in their history and nows holds the title of Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar.

His two collected volumes of literary criticism (Raise You Five and Raise You Ten) have garnered stellar reviews: "literary criticism and cultural history of a high order" said the Globe and Mail.

In May 2007, his greatly anticipated first work of fiction in several years was published - a collection of short stories entitled Between Trains.