Bookmark Interview: Ian Sheldon: Cambridge Footsteps

Edmonton artist Ian Sheldon has achieved a rare honour. His architectural paintings of Cambridge University and the surrounding city have been selected as the subject of a book commemorating the 800th anniversary of the founding of the university. The book, featuring 55 Sheldon paintings, is entitled Footsteps: A Passage Through Time and is published by Cambridge University Press.

You can listen to my recent interview with Ian by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Rowland Lorimer & John Maxwell - the Future of Book Publishing

Rowland Lorimer is Director of the Master of Publishing Program at Simon Fraser University and also Director of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing. John Maxwell is assistant professor in the SFU publishing program and a specialist in Internet and New Media technologies. They presented a seminar in September, 2009, at the Look Beyond the Book Conference, hosted by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta in Banff. The seminar, entitled Imagining Publishing 2.0: Strategic Organization for New Realities, sought to galvanize the thinking of book publishers around the imminent possibilities of a digital technology and environment that will inevitably and profoundly change the nature of publishing as we have known it. I sat down afterward with Lorimer and Maxwell to overview their presentation. You can hear that interview by clicking the Title of this Blog Entry.

Please note that Maxwell begins speaking first. You will have to sort out Maxwell's and Lorimer's voices for yourselves, which I'm sure you'll have no problem doing.

Bookmark Interview: Don Hunter: Incident at Willow Creek

Don Hunter’s latest novel is a well-paced and vivid mystery, complete with strong characters and a powerful climax. Incident at Willow Creek, published by Edmonton’s NeWest Press, is the story of a woman who inherits a mystery upon her mother’s death. Through records found in a safety deposit box, it is discovered the mother had secrets, secrets that involve a German prisoner-of-war camp in southern Alberta during the Second World War.

I dropped in on Don Hunter at his home in Fort Langley to talk about his terrific new novel. You can hear that conversation by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

For many years, Don Hunter was a senior columnist with the Vancouver Province newspaper. Upon retiring from the paper in 1996, the journalist and former teacher let no grass grow under his feet, instead devoting his talents full-time to creative writing. An earlier memoir Hunter had published of his years as a teacher in Northern British Columbia enjoyed new life as a television mini-series 9B. He also enjoyed success with a popular collection of short stories called Spinner’s Inlet, which centred on a host of unusual characters living on an unnamed Gulf Island.

Bookmark Interview: Rich Vivone: Ralph Klein Could Have Been a Superstar

Long-time political pundit at the Alberta legislature, Rich Vivone, has come out of retirement long enough to publish a no-holds barred book about Ralph Klein’s years in provincial politics. Vivone, who for many years was publisher and editor of the much-read newsletter Insight Into Government, telegraphs the tough text in the title of his book, Ralph Klein Could Have Been a Superstar. Vivone, who now lives in Ontario, returned to Edmonton recently to visit friends and promote the book. We sat down to talk about the book, including why Vivone ultimately decided to publish it himself. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Thomas Trofimuk: Waiting for Columbus

Thomas Trofimuk is a novelist and poet based in Edmonton--a man who, on first encounter, struck me as refreshingly modest and good-humoured. The founder of Edmonton’s locally notorious Raging Poets Society, Trofimuk has toiled in recent years as a writer of novels. His first two novels, The 52nd Poem and Doubting Yourself to the Bone, were published by smaller Canadian literary presses and enjoyed significant critical acclaim but otherwise were typically Canadian in their commercial success. Now in the fall of 2009, Trofimuk’s third novel appears destined to follow a very different trajectory – of the kind that gives birth to fame and fortune.

Waiting for Columbus tells the story of a man arrested by police in Saville, Spain, in 2004 and sent to a local insane asylum. The man is charismatic, handsome and full of wit and intelligence—but he believes and insists that he is THE Christopher Columbus, anxious to get the ships he needs to sail out into the Unknown western ocean on a quest to find a shorter route to the Orient. What follows is an amazing weave of reality and delusion, of the 15th century and the 20th, of love and doubt and of transformation and healing.

The Canadian publishing rights for Waiting for Columbus were acquired by McClelland and Stewart. Then, Knopf-Doubleday ponied up $200,000 for the US rights. European publishers followed quickly behind. To top it off, a Hollywood film production company has developed a screen play of the book and has sent scripts to no less than actors Daniel Day Lewis and Penelope Cruz for the lead roles.

Thomas Trofimuk and I sat down recently over coffee in his comfortable home in a modest enclave of north Edmonton. We talked about Waiting for Columbus and whether he has any concern that both his personal life and his life as a writer may be about to change. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Susan Minsos: Squire Davis and the Crazy River

Squire Davis and the Crazy River is a delightful historic novel that romantically revolves around a young Scottish immigrant living near what is today Brantford, Ontario, and a young, handsome Mohawk man known as Squire Davis, whose family has come with Joseph Brant to settle along the Grand River. The time period is 1845 and we discover that Ontario is a far wilder, more adventurous and dangerous place than is commonly considered. There’s no shortage of conflict and intrigue. The Scots are not the only ones to have settled in the region. In the fall-out of the American Revolution, United Empire Loyalists and many of the Iroquois Six Nations, including the Mohawk, have fled the American colonies to Ontario. Ontario also is sanctuary for escaped black slaves, and we discover that bounty hunters think nothing of crossing the border into Canada to try to capture the runaways and take them back.

The author, Susan Minsos of Edmonton, has written two previous books--both are acclaimed non-fiction works about culture and socialization: Weird Tit-for-Tat: The Game of Our Lives and the other, Culture Clubs: The Art of Living Together. Minsos’ new book appears on the surface to be a radical departure from her past work, a historical fiction set in 19th century Ontario. Minsos says, however, that this novel does feature continuity with her past work. You can listen to my interview with Susan Minsos, which first aired on Bookmark on 13 September 2009, by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

The publisher of this book deserves special mention. Jerome Martin of Spotted Cow Press in Edmonton is an enthusiastic adopter of new communications technologies and his support for Squire Davis and the Crazy River certainly reflects that. The book itself is not only available in print form but also has been produced as an e-book in both basic and enhanced formats. The launch for the book was held simultaneously in two different locations: at the University of Alberta Bookstore in Edmonton and at Titles, the bookstore at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Both bookstores happen to be locations for the Espresso Book Machine, a potentially revolutionary new device for printing books on demand. Linked by full video-conference facilities, the two bookstores began printing Minsos' book at precisely the same time. Then Minsos gave a reading from the book, seen and heard in both Edmonton and Hamilton, and those attending the launch who were in McMaster were able to ask the author questions. Jerome Martin, of course, couldn't resist calling the launch the first "Double Espresso" book launch in history. To learn more about the wonderful world of Jerome Martin go to www.spottedcowpress.ca

Thank you to all BOOKMARK supporters!!!

As followers of BOOKMARK radio broadcasts on the CKUA Radio Network may be aware, the program almost didn't make it to Season 3. The recession took something of a toll on CKUA fundraising efforts during the public broadcaster's spring 2009 campaign. Station management had little choice but to look at budget cuts. On the programming side, it was concluded that spoken words are much more expensive to produce than music programs and that they likely would have to bear the brunt of cuts in that area. In June, your humble servant was notified by CKUA's program director the station was reluctantly looking at cancelling the program.

I asked if management would reconsider that decision if I was able to raise the necessary budget through donations from Alberta's literary community or if corporate underwriters for the program could be found. Station management gave me until the end of July to raise the necessary money -- otherwise, that was it.

I put out the word and, to my delight and amazement, within 21 days authors, literary organizations, publishers, all donated money to sponsor a show, and corporate and public sector underwriters came forward to put us over the top. We raised $25,000.00, covering about two-thirds of the program's budget. CKUA gave us the green light and on September 13th, 2009, we aired the first broadcast of the third season of BOOKMARK.

My sincere thanks to every one of you who thought this program important enough to support with your hard-earned money. We'll do our best to be deserving of your faith in us. And now a public thanks to the following people and organizations who stepped forward and made a donation or committed to becoming a corporate underwriter of the program:

DONORS

David Chereos, artistic director, Edmonton LitFest
Alberta branch, Canadian Authors Association
Edmonton author, English professor and biker Ted Bishop (Riding with Rilke)
Brindle & Glass Publishing, Victoria, BC
Kate Walker Agency
University of Alberta Press
Canadian Literature Centre, University of Alberta
Kingsley Publishing, Calgary
University of Calgary Press
Douglas and Sharon Barbour
The Historical Society of Alberta
Wind Eye Seminars of Edmonton
Edmonton poet Alice Majors and author Gail Sidonie-Sobat

CORPORATE UNDERWRITERS

Edmonton Public Library
Alberta Views Magazine
Maclab Enterprises

Bookmark Interview: Pierrette Requier: details from the edge of the village

Each year the publisher Frontenac House of Calgary selects four collections of poetry and presents those four volumes as its Quartet for the year. Among the four poets so honoured in Quartet 2009 is Edmonton poet Pierrette Requier. Her selected volume is entitled details from the edge of the village. Former Edmonton poet-laureate Alice Major says of this collection

“Pierrette’s work is about speaking from the margins – from the almost forgotten fringes of French on the northern prairies, and from the liminal lingual space where English and French talk to each other.”

Pierrette Requier reads from the collection for Bookmark and speaks about her work. You can listen in by clicking the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Peter Atkinson: Making Game

Among the books on the 2009 list of Athabasca University Press is a slender, quite odd volume that defies easy categorization. It's called Making Game: An Essay on Hunting, Familiar Things, and the Strangeness of Being Who One Is, written by independent American scholar Peter Atkinson. Be warned - in some respects, it's not easy reading. On the other hand, it is full of passages that frequently are nothing short of breath-taking. If I were to compare it to anything I’ve read before, I might be tempted to say Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig but that comparison doesn't really do it justice. Atkinson has blended personal memoire and philosophical treatise with a writing style and literary skill that has resulted in a work of rare originality. At heart, it is above all a book about the nature of nostalgia and grief.

Atkinson himself has a Ph.D. in Philosophy built on academic training in the phenomenological tradition, a trail that wanders from Husserl to Hegel to Heideger to Jean-Paul Sartre. His Master of Fine Arts degree is in Poetry. He has taught literature and philosophy at the University of Salzburg. Atkinson also has been a New York City apartment building developer, a private investor, a U.S. naval officer, a contract manager for a large defense contractor, a carpenter, a guitar teacher, a high school teacher, and a yoga teacher, not necessarily in that order. He has been married three times and has two sons by his first marriage.

In Making Game, Atkinson the writer and philosopher attempts to understand why it is that he hunts wild game. The pursuit of that understanding leads him through some profound terrain about family, history and the values of our modern times. Peter Atkinson published Making Game with Athabasca University Press as a result of a personal friendship. Visiting Edmonton in the late spring of 2009 for an international conference on poetry, Atkinson sat down with me to talk about Making Game. You can listen to that conversation by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Marty Chan and Lorna Bennett: True Story

Well-known Edmonton playwright Marty Chan and illustrator Lorna Bennett have collaborated to create a new book for young children entitled True Story, essentially the tale of two mischievious cats based on Marty’s personal trials and tribulations with his own domestic felines. While the book is a self-published effort, Marty has taken a smart, professional approach to everything from the quality of the publication to the marketing and distribution. I sat down with Marty and Lorna recently and received some worthwhile insight on what it takes to be a professional writer and artist in Alberta, above all the willingness to do whatever it takes. You can hear that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.