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March 2014

Tuesday March 11, 2014
Catriona Strang and Simon Smith at the Paper Hound!

Tuesday March 11, 2014
“Albertine, En Cinq Temps” by Michel Tremblay at Théatre du Nouveau Monde

Wednesday March 12, 2014
Talk by Stephen Collis in Vancouver, BC

Friday March 14, 2014
Adeena Karasick at the Pages Festival & Conference in Toronto

Wednesday March 19, 2014
Natalie Simpson reads at UBC’s Play Chthonics series

Wednesday March 26, 2014
“Seeds” by Annabel Soutar at Ottawa’s NAC

Thursday March 27, 2014
“Waiting for the Parade” by John Murrell in Kamloops, BC

Friday March 28, 2014
George F. Walker’s “The Ravine” in Niagara Falls, ON

April 2014

Friday April 4, 2014
Adeena Karasick Speaks in Long Island, NY

Friday April 4, 2014
Jordan Abel Reads at Okanagan College, Kelowna

Thursday April 17, 2014
“textual vishyuns: image and text in the work of bill bissett” (Gallery Showing in B.C.)

Friday April 18, 2014
text bites & textual vishyuns: a reeding & dialog with bill bissett

Saturday April 26, 2014
Introduction to Poetry with Jordan Abel, an SFU Continuing Studies Course

Saturday April 26, 2014
Adeena Karasick in Providence, Rhode Island

May 2014

Friday May 2, 2014
Bev Sellars at the Creative Nonfiction Collective Society Conference, Calgary

Wednesday May 14, 2014
Adeena Karasick at the Tribeca New Music Festival

Friday May 16, 2014
Lucia Frangione’s “Espresso” at the Pacific Theatre, Vancouver

Saturday May 24, 2014
“Dead Metaphor” by George F. Walker in Toronto

June 2014

Tuesday June 3, 2014
George F. Walker’s “The Burden of Self-Awareness” in Ottawa, ON

Friday June 20, 2014
Adeena Karasick in Toronto!

July 2014

Wednesday July 2, 2014
Billy Bishop at the Blyth Festival, Ontario

August 2014

Monday August 18, 2014
Adeena Karasick at the KlezKanada Poetry Retreat in Quebec

November 2014

Friday November 7, 2014
Adeena Karasick Speaks at Brock University, ON

Tom at the Farm Shortlisted for Lambda Literary Award

The Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF) in Los Angeles announced finalists for the 26th annual Lambda Literary Awards today. Out of more than 746 submissions (a new record) in 24 categories, Michel Marc Bouchard’s play, Tom at the Farm (2013), was one of three nominees in the Drama subcategory.

The Lambda Literary Foundation nurtures, celebrates, and preserves LGBT literature through programs that honor excellence, promote visibility and encourage development of emerging writers.

The Lambda Literary Awards identify and celebrate the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books of the year and affirm that LGBT stories are part of the literature of the world. The Awards ceremony will be held Monday, June 2nd, 2014 in New York at The Great Hall at Cooper Union.

See the full Lambda Literary Award List online.

Poetry and Garry Thomas Morse, Together Again

Author Garry Thomas Morse, having launched last fall the second book in a series of three books that comprise five “nodal” novels, now revisits poetry as a recurring commentator on Jacket2. His commentary, appearing March through May, highlights 36 poetry books published in Canada. The first installment shines the spotlight on The Book of Marvels by Lorna Crozier (Greystone Books, 2012).

Morse also exchanges his novelist cap, and sets aside his critic cap, to don again his poet cap: four new poems by Morse appear in the latest online issue of The Puritan – and are accompanied by audio versions! Read and/or listen to them here.

A review by Phoebe Wang was also recently published in The Puritan: “‘Three Passages West’: A Review of Brian Brett’s The Wind River Variations, Garry Thomas Morse’s Discovery Passages, and Evelyn Lau’s A Grain of Rice ”.

Essay: Arc Poetry Magazine on The Place of Scraps

Arc Poetry magazine recently published an essay by Margaret Christakos on Jordan Abel’s remarkable book of poetry, The Place of Scraps (Talon, 2013). Brief extracts give a sense of this essay’s wisdom and depth:

I have tried to re/view this book with the attention it deserves, and tried to resist the critical efficiency protocol that requires me to sum up a complex work with one or two authoritative sentences that claim to identify first what the book is and what it does. Jordan Abel has moved a poetics of erasure into an inventive and deeply unsettling, stir-it-up interdisciplinary modality. … this is a book that can assist in an organic decompositional journey of cognitive dissonance and resonance, to shred and shed language toward sound and song, which could be considered the primary questions poetry has to offer.

The full essay is available online: “Weight, Rise and Riffle: Jordan Abel’s Exuberant Excisions in _The Place of Scraps_”.

They Called Me Number One Shortlisted for the George Ryga Award!

Congratulations to Bev Sellars! Her memoir, They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School, has been shortlisted for the 2014 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature, a British Columbia book award.

The George Ryga Award is given each year to a British Columbia writer who has achieved an outstanding degree of social awareness owing to a new book published in the preceding calendar year. Books chosen for the shortlist are outstanding works of both literary and social value that open up discussion about social and cultural issues.
Learn more about George Ryga or this award.

This year’s shortlist also includes The Earth Remembers Everything by Adrienne Fitzpatrick (Caitlin Press) and Dirt of Ages by Gillian Wigmore (Nightwood Editions). The 2014 award will be presented in late March, hosted by Okanagan College.

Review: Arc Poetry Magazine on Singed Wings

rob mclennan for Arc Poetry Magazine has recently reviewed Singed Wings (2013) by Lola Lemire Tostevin, which he praises and savours:

For those who admire her poetry, you’ll find that Singed Wings maintains her structures of the sequence-fragment; the book’s composed of six extended meditations on art and life that wrap around and through fragments that accumulate into something very much in the compositional unit of the book-length poem. … I, for one, am very pleased about Tostevin’s return to poetry. Just how soon is too soon to ask for more?

The full review is available to read on the Arc website.

This Weekend! The Galiano Island Literary Festival

British Columbia’s beautiful Galiano Island hosts its annual literary festival this weekend, starting today!

A number of Talon authors are participating! Audrey Thomas leads a fiction-writing workshop on Friday afternoon (today). Thomas gives a reading on Saturday afternoon, as do Grant Lawrence, Chris Arnett, Bev Sellars, and George Bowering. Amber Dawn appears with Dina Del Bucchia on Sunday in the late morning.

The full program is online, and there is still time to register!

The First Spring 2014 Book Has Arrived!

If we live by publishing seasons and not natural seasons (and Wiarton Willie), then let us rejoice, for the first bud of spring has arrived! It’s M.A.C. Farrant’s latest set of very short stories, The World Afloat, and it’s the prettiest little thing – that also packs many punches. (Read a miniature from this book here on Meta-Talon.)

This slim, elegant volume is available now from Talonbooks.com for $12.95 (and the ebook edition will be available on April 1).

Wigrum Wins!

The font called Wigrum, which was designed by Raphaël Daudelin and Anouk Pennel of Studio FEED for the novel Wigrum, has been named one of the 12 best graphic design projects of the year by Grafika, which annually acknowledges excellence in graphic design in Quebec.

In the words of Wigrum author Daniel Canty, “woo-hoo (with a W)!”

See all the winners, the top 100, on Grafika’s website.

This Weekend: Bev Sellars in Seattle!

Chief Bev Sellars, author of B.C.’s bestselling memoir, They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School (#2 this week on the BC Bestsellers list!), will read from her book and discuss the Native American boarding schools experience with audiences at the Search for Meaning Book Festival (Saturday Feb. 15) and the Seattle Public Library (Sunday Feb. 16). If you are in the rainy city, don’t miss this opportunity!

Right-click on image to enlarge.

Review: Theogony / Works and Days in the Glasgow Review of Books

The Glasgow Review of Books never fails to provide thoughtful, artful reviews that contextualize and intertextualize. One of its latest reviews Theogony / Works and Days, written by Hesiod in ancient Greece and recently translated by C.S. Morrissey (2012). The review, written by Calum Gardner, was published on January 25, 2014 and is available online for your reading pleasure: “MYTH AND METAPHYSICS: Hesiod’s ‘Theogony’ and ‘Works and Days,’ in a new translation by C. S. Morrissey.”

Portrayals of Mental Illness in Literature, From Tennyson to Today

Mental illnesses are various, and surely none is like the other. Yet how easy it is to paint all afflictions and conditions with the same brush. One such brush is the word “sick.” From Alfred Lord Tennyson in his 1855 poem “Maud” to Joan McLeod’s latest play, The Valley (Talon, Spring 2014), this word is commonly found in literature as well as in our vernacular. The words we use to describe mental illness may be the same, but surely our understandings have evolved since the Victorian era?

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Wanting Cake: A Miniature from The World Afloat

Today on Meta-Talon we feature a miniature from M.A.C. Farrant’s latest book The World Afloat.

Wanting Cake

It’s funny out today. There’s a mild grin in the air. It’s like the chirping sparrows are really laughing their heads off.

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In the Lil’Wat Footsteps of Charlie Mack: An Interview with Trekker Brian Couche

Educator Brian Couche was recently interviewed by Chloë Filson of Talonbooks about his Fall 2012 trek through the wilderness of British Columbia with a young companion. In this interview, Brian wields his considerable power as a storyteller to share personal challenges and anecdotes from their twenty-seven-day journey.

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Review: Anna Quon on Joan MacLeod’s The Valley

For Meta-Talon, Anna Quon shares her reflections on Joan MacLeod’s latest play, The Valley (coming in April from Talonbooks!).

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