Yesterday, we published a post titled The Canada Council’s six not so scary ideas. Here, Stephanie Small of the publishing house The Porcupine’s Quill responds: Changes are afoot, ladies and gents. As many of you may know, particularly if you follow the arts and culture scene — and even more particularly, if you are up […]
The Alice Munro effect
Alice Munro has won the Nobel Prize for literature. In the Sept. 15, 2001 edition of Saturday Night magazine, Frank Moher, backofthebook.ca’s editor, wrote with tongue only-slightly-in-cheek about the great volume of short story collections published in Canada, perhaps inspired by having the great Ms. Munro among us. His suggestion for a short-story moratorium did […]
Jill Wiznoski and the small town journalists
By Frank Moher J-Source.ca has a melancholy wrap-up story on the case of Jill Wiznoski and the displeased MP — melancholy because I expect this is the last we’ll hear of a matter that should have received a lot more national press attention than it did. Wiznoski, you will remember, was the reporter fired by […]
The Giller Prize deserves an award
By Frank Moher A bunch of years ago now, I wrote an article for Saturday Night magazine decrying the fact that the Giller Prize was a captive of big name publishers and authors. On the basis of the long list for the 2012 Giller that was released last week, as well as the one from […]
Terry Fallis gets it all wrong, brilliantly
By Mark Leiren-Young Somebody has to tell Terry Fallis how publishing works. When he couldn’t find a publisher for his debut novel – the story of a reluctant campaign manager managing an even more reluctant candidate for the Parliament of Canada — Fallis released his story a chapter at a time as a podcast series […]
The sentimental publishers of “The Sentimentalists”
By Frank Moher Okay, so I was set to go all crazy right-wing on Gaspereau Press and suggest that its federal funding should be pulled because of its refusal to capitalize on its Giller Prize victory. Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists won the $50,000 award on Tuesday night, and immediately her Nova Scotia-based publisher, who handcraft […]
Why I won’t listen to Canada Reads 2011
By Steven W. Beattie Thirty seconds. That’s the approximate amount of time it took after the announcement of the 40 titles in contention to appear on the 2011 edition of the CBC’s “Canada Reads” program for Twitter to explode with tweets from authors, publishers, friends, and fans, all of them advocating for one title or […]
The Write Huff
By Rachel Krueger An infinite number of bloggers on an infinite number of netbooks blathering for a handful of years have produced an entirely new face for marketing. Whereas widely-spread opinions could once only be held by those with credentials, now anyone with dial-up can wax judgmental about any old thing. And it’s driving some […]
The Terrifying Tale of Textbook Tammy
By Eric Pettifor I was chatting with a friend about the high cost of textbooks, and he recalled a young woman of his acquaintance from his university days who made some extra cash by selling photocopies of textbooks. I didn’t ask how she did this. Did she hang around on campus wearing a big raincoat […]
Not so fast, Google
By Brian Brennan The CBC called. Would I like to go on the radio and talk to Donna about the Google book settlement? Hey people, you’re talking to an Irishman here. Of course, I would like to go on the radio and talk about the Google book settlement. I would like to go on the […]
