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February 2015

Monday February 2, 2015
Maylis de Kerangal Speaks in London, UK

Thursday February 5, 2015
Play: “The Road Forward” by Marie Clements in Vancouver, BC

Wednesday February 25, 2015
Garry Thomas Morse at the Manitoba Indigenous Cultural Education Centre, Winnipeg

Friday February 27, 2015
Adeena Karasick in Louisville, Kentucky

March 2015

Wednesday March 11, 2015
Nikki Reimer at Twisted Poets Literary Salon, Vancouver

April 2015

Tuesday April 7, 2015
Nikki Reimer at the Art Bar Reading Series, Toronto

Wednesday April 8, 2015
Nikki Reimer at Pivot Reading Series, Toronto

Wednesday April 15, 2015
Poetry Reading: Catriona Strang at SFU Lunch Poems, Vancouver

Thursday April 23, 2015
Play: “In Piazza San Domenico” by Steve Galluccio in Sudbury, ON

Thursday April 23, 2015
Talonbooks Spring 2015 Poetry Launch!

A Juno for Tomson Highway?

Congratulations to playwright and composer Tomson Highway, who has been nominated for a Juno! Highway, who independently produced the soundtrack to his musical play, The (Post) Mistress (Talon, 2013), is nominated for a 2015 Juno Award in the category of Aboriginal Album of the Year. The nominees include:

• “The Whole World’s Got the Blues” by Crystal Shawanda (New Sun*Fontana North)
• “For The Light” by Digging Roots (Sugar Bush*Outside)
• “Heart of the People” by Leela Gilday (Diva Sound*Outside)
• “Animism” by Tanya Tagaq (Six Shooter*Universal)
• “The (Post) Mistress” by Tomson Highway (Independent)

See all the 2015 nominees here, visit Highway’s website, and find “Patricia Cano Sings Songs from The (Post) Mistress, a one-woman play” on iTunes.

CBC’s “15 poetry collections to watch for in 2015”

CBC has chosen fifteen forthcoming poetry books to get excited about in 2015, and Jordan Abel’s Un/inhabited has made the list! Read a brief introduction to this book and see it CBC’s gallery.

Un/inhabited is Abel’s second book, following upon his award-winning The Place of Scraps, and is co-published by Project Space and Talonbooks. It is available now for $24.95.

Book Review: Birth of a Bridge in the Vancouver Sun

Special to the Sun, M.A.C. Farrant reviewed Maylis de Kerangal’s novel Birth of a Bridge (translated by Jessica Moore) last weekend. She writes, among other things, that

The book’s themes are mythic; its prose, symphonic.

The novel concerns humankind’s hunger for glory, and our drive to “master space,” a desire we will go to any length to fulfil. In the novel, this plays out through the building of a “superstar” bridge, “a technical epic,” one that is painted vermilion, a brilliant shade of red. The eventual job of the bridge is to bring two landscapes together, but, during the building it comes to resemble, with its miles of veinlike red cable, a living organism, a kind of monster powered by the energy of a hot and nervous people.

Read the full review: “French novelist explores mythic themes in ‘Birth of a Bridge’”

Christina, the Girl King, now the Diva

Michel Marc Bouchard’s latest play, Christina, The Girl King (Talon, 2014), will be turned into an opera by the playwright himself and Montreal composer Ana Sokolovic. Commissioned by the Canadian Opera Company for 2019-2020, La Reine-Garçon will be an operatic version of his play about the 17th-century Swedish queen, Christina.

Read more in the Globe & Mail (from January 15) and on BroadwayWorld.com# (January 16).

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Announcement: New Books for Spring 2015!

Can you believe it? Spring is just a few months away. It’s true. No matter how cold or grey it is today, spring will come.

Along with spring, get your hopes up for new Talonbooks! The Spring 2015 Talonbooks catalogue is now online. Browse our upcoming titles and our full backlist. Also see forthcoming books in the right-hand column of this website, or click on “Go to story…” to read a little bit about each of our forthcoming books.

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Winners and Losers Is a Winner!

Marcus Youssef and James Long’s two-man, partly improvised new play, Winners and Losers, opened at Manhattan’s Soho Rep. on January 6 and runs until February 2. The show is generating enthusiastic response all over town. Fans include:

• The New Yorker
• The Village Voice
• The Villager
• Time Out New York
• The New York Post
• Flavorpill
• TheaterMania

General consensus is that Winners and Losers is a winner! If you’re in New York, or know someone who is, catch this show while it’s in town.

Look forward to the publication of Winners and Losers by Talonbooks in Spring 2015.

Book Review: Michel Tremblay’s Crossing the City in the Montreal Gazette

Ian McGillis reviewed Michel Tremblay’s latest novel for the Montreal Gazette on January 14, and he’s clearly a fan! We are so pleased to see this delightful book and its excellent translator, Sheila Fischman, lauded. Read the full review online – “Michel Tremblay’s epic chronicle rolls on” – and see highlights below.

Throughout, what strikes perhaps strongest is something that has been evident with Tremblay right from the start: few men write about women with his empathetic immediacy and emotional acuity. The way they talk to each other, the various masks and voices they adopt according to the needs of the moment, their deep reserves of humour and compassion — the Desrosiers sisters, and indeed the young Nana, are so alive on the page that you all but hear them speaking.

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Listen: M.A.C. Farrant reading from The World Afloat

The ides of January … time for a little light reading? Or a little light listening? The World Afloat by M.A.C. Farrant can suit both needs!

Thin Air, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, has published a recording of M.A.C. Farrant’s reading from last September: ABSURDITY LOVES COMPANY TOO. Featuring: MAC Farrant, Eric McCormack, Maurice Mierau, Denise Roig, Nicholas Ruddock, Kathleen Winter. Farrant’s part begins at around the 15-minute mark.

Also see this great write-up by Wendy Donowa about The World Afloat, which appeared in the Federation of B.C. Writers publication, WordWorks (Winter issue, pages 24 & 25). From the review:

Some reviews refer to The World Afloat as a short story collection, but these 75 short fictions seem an entirely different kettle of fish. Farrant calls them miniatures, and most are well under a page in length – collages of humour, sharp observation, brilliant absurdity, and irreverent commentary. …

If there is a constant in our response to this collection, it is perhaps our astonishment. On almost every page we find ourselves sitting up, pop-eyed, thinking did you just say that? …

The wackiness appears wildly spontaneous, but belies the polish with which each character is made vivid, each event sharp-edged …

The World Afloat is quite a gorgeous little book, with a handsome cover, as enigmatic as the miniatures it encloses. I should also mention it is very reasonably priced.

Three Talon Poets in “Canada and Beyond” Periodical

Three Talon poets – Cecily Nicholson, Jordan Abel, and Phinder Dulai – had poems featured in the Creative Writing section of the 2014 volume of Canada and Beyond, an academic journal out of Spain. Their work was curated by Larissa Lai. (Bonus: a fourth Talon poet, Oana Avasilichioaei, who will be published in Spring 2015, is responsible for the image on the cover of the issue.)

This issue is now available online; find the table of contents here.

Meet Chief Bev Sellars, Bestselling Author

Meet Bev Sellars, chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) First Nation and author of They Called Me Number One. This memoir was a BC bestseller for 44 weeks in a row; it recently won 3rd Prize in the 2014 Burt Awards for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Literature; it was last year shortlisted for the 2014 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (B.C. Book Prizes); and it won the 2014 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. This book is not to be missed. Shaw TV in Northern British Columbia agrees:

Seventh Report on the Instability of Cities

By Daniel Canty

Canary Wharf, 2014 (Photo by Daniel Canty)

Daniel Canty_, author of Wigrum (2013) and Les États-unis du vent (_to be published in English by Talonbooks in 2015), recently completed a six-month residency at the Studio du Québec, in London, England. In this series of dispatches, Canty shares his reflections on some of the city’s foggy history and the sometimes foggy process of writing.

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Sixth Report on the Instability of Cities

By Daniel Canty

Manchester Museum reconstruction of Pete Marsh a.k.a. Lindow Man

Daniel Canty, author of Wigrum (2013) and Les États-unis du vent (to be published in English by Talonbooks in 2015), recently completed a six-month residency at the Studio du Québec, in London, England. In this series of dispatches from London, Canty shares his reflections on some of the city’s foggy history and the sometimes foggy process of writing. Today on Meta-Talon, his sixth dispatch.

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A Visit to the Printing Press (and Snowy Saskatoon)

Have you ever wondered how books are made? I have. Over the winter holiday, I had the privilege of visiting and touring Houghton Boston Printers in sunny Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Kelly Boon, our customer service representative, kindly gave me a full tour of the premises. Best of all, they were in the midst of printing a Talon title at the very moment I arrived! On Meta-Talon today I share some photos from the inside of a contemporary printing operation.

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Fifth Report on the Instability of Cities

By Daniel Canty

Daniel Canty, author of Wigrum (2013) and Les États-unis du vent (to be published in English by Talonbooks in 2015), is completing a six-month residency at the Studio du Québec, in London, England. In this series of dispatches, Canty shares his reflections on some of the city’s foggy history and the sometimes foggy process of writing.

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