Gaspereau Press Release
July 2, 2008

Gaspereau Press is delighted to share the news that author George Elliott Clarke has been appointed an officer to the Order of Canada. Clarke has been recognized “for his contributions as a poet, professor and volunteer who has brought his original voice and his perspective on the Black experience to contemporary Canadian literature, and who has generously shared his time and talents with young and emerging writers.”

Says Clarke, “I am honoured and delighted to accept this appointment on behalf of my parents—and as a poet, to enjoy this approval of my compatriots.”

Governor General Michaëlle Jean announced the new appointments on Tuesday. Seventy-five appointments were made, with five companions, 26 officers, 43 members and one honorary officer. Other notable inclusions in the arts fields this year were musician and radio personality Randy Bachman, author Audrey Thomas, and publishers Tim and Elke Inkster of The Porcupine’s Quill. Established in 1967, the Order of Canada recognizes outstanding achievement, particularly in service to Canada. The order’s motto is Desiderantes Meliorem Patriam (They desire a better country). The new appointees will be presented with their insignia in a ceremony to be held later this year.

 

The 8^th annual ReLit Awards longlist was announced recently, and Geist was proud to find many of our contributors on the roster.

The Awards’ motto is Ideas, Not Money, and Canadian authors whose literary works have been published independently are eligible for recognition under the categories of short fiction, novel, and poetry.

See below for the nominated Geist contributors’ names and a selection of their past contributions to the magazine. Be sure to check the ReLit Awards website in the coming weeks for the announcement of this year’s winners!

Short Fiction

M.A.C. Farrant “The Breakdown So Far”
Salvatore Difalco “Black Rabbit”
Kathleen Winter “BoYs”

Novel

Brian Joseph Davis I, Tania
Teresa McWhirter Dirtbags
Zoe Whittall Bottle Rocket Hearts
David Chariandy Soucouyant
Jessica Westhead Pulpy & Midge
Maya Merrick The Hole Show

Poetry

Sean Horlor Made Beautiful by Use
Susan Stenson My Mother Agrees with the Dead
bill bissett ths is erth thees ar peopul
Gary Geddes Falsework
George Bowering Vermeer’s Light
Agnes Walsh Going Around with Bachelors
Donna Kane Erratic
Rob Winger Muybridge’s Horse
Emily Schultz Songs for the Dancing Chicken
Stuart Ross I Cut My Finger
Patrick Friesen Earth’s Crude Gravities
Ian Roy Red Bird
Herménégilde Chiasson Beatitudes
Rick Crilly The Tablecloth Trick
Patrick Lane Last Water Song
David W. McFadden Why Are You So Sad?

House of Anansi Press Release
June 12, 2008

Canadian novelist’s first book wins world’s richest literary prize

De Niro’s Game by Canadian Rawi Hage has won the 13th annual International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the world’s richest literary prize—€100,000 (or about $160,000 Canadian) for a single work of fiction published in English. The win was announced today in Dublin, and marks the first time a debut book has won the prize. Hage is only the second Canadian to win the award, after Alistair MacLeod in 2001 for his novel No Great Mischief.

Click here to read an excerpt from De Niro’s Game at geist.com.

“To all those women and men of letters, and all artists who have gone beyond the aesthetics of the singular to represent the multiple and diverse, to all those men and women who have chosen the painful and costly portrayal of truth over tribal self-righteousness, I am grateful. We should all be grateful.”

The IMPAC award caps a whirlwind ascent to literary stardom for an author whose book was pulled from publisher House of Anansi’s slushpile, and was written in the Montreal resident’s third language, English (he also speaks Arabic and French). Nominated for prestigious literary prizes in Canada and abroad—including the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book—De Niro’s Game has so far been sold in fifteen territories, and can be read in a dozen languages. The French edition of De Niro’s Game recently won the Prix des libraries du Quebec in time for its release in France, where Hage will appear at Festival America in Vincennes in September.

In 1992, Hage emigrated to Montreal after having lived through nine years of the Lebanese Civil War. Only two years ago, Rawi Hage was working as a cab driver and photographer. All that changed with the publication of De Niro’s Game. With its haunting first words, “Ten thousand bombs had landed,” Hage’s novel crafts a beautiful and explosive portrait of young men who have been shaped by lifelong experience of war.

The IMPAC award is not only lucrative for the author, it is especially meaningful for readers because the books selected are nominated by public libraries from around the world. De Niro’s Game was chosen by
the Winnipeg Public Library and triumphed in the competition over 137 nominated titles by 162 public libraries from 45 countries.

Rawi Hage will appear in Toronto at Book Expo Canada, Sunday, June 15, 2008 at 11:00 a.m. at the Toronto Convention Centre, booth 908.

Click here to read an excerpt from De Niro’s Game at geist.com.

In conjunction with the PuSh Festival and the play Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut, Faith Moosang will speak on the act of collecting vernacular photography and the myriad reasons why one might be obsessed by such a fruitless endeavour.

Faith Moosang is a photographic artist who has amassed a large collection of vernacular photography that includes photo albums numbering in the hundreds, numerous home movies, slide collections and other ephemera related to the domestic sphere and the remembrance of family. She is currently creating a work about the empire of media, dirty money and the amassing of classical statuary which is based on a slide collection created by an unknown tourist who visited Hearst Castle in the 1960s.

Moosang is offering a money-back guarantee that you will be fascinated by her talk.

Performance Works, Granville Island
Saturday February 2, 2008
2:30 p.m.
Free admission, satisfaction guaranteed

The talk precedes the matinee performance of Clark and I Somewhere in Connecticut, a play based on found photographs.

 

Stephen Osborne’s Letters to Subscribers are now available online.

• Read the infamous summer fiction rant.
• Learn how photos can trigger memory.
• Find out how Geist’s original name went down the toilet.

To catch up on what you’ve missed or reread your favourites, click here.

The Squamish Chief and the Squamish Writers Group invite entries to the 2008 Sea to Sky Literary Contest in any of five categories. Entries should involve the Sea to Sky region in some way—recreation, history, natural beauty, etc.

Contest is open to residents of B.C.
Deadline June 1, 2008.
Cash prizes and publication awarded.

For more information, click here.

Call for Submissions
to a forthcoming Anthology of Short Fiction from Invisible Publishing
www.invisiblepublishing.com

INFRASTRUCTURE

“Make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers.”
—Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

A story is a collection of words—old, used words, chewed over by a million million mouths—that a man somehow uses to lay down a foundation of what is particular only to him. Networks, neighbourhoods, relationships, language. How do existing structures—material, social, psychological, imagined—allow for things to take place? How do we use them? What does it mean to live nested within systems that were not created by you, or even for you to use? A woman rides her bike the wrong way down a one-way street—is it resistance? rebellion? careless habit? A story.

Created spaces encourage certain activities and repel others: the city of Seattle created a water-staircase so spawning salmon could follow uninhibited the maps laid out in their fish-brains. In Montreal indigent people are banned from public parks after midnight. Large areas of urban Detroit are reverting to prairie. We are looking for short fiction and creative nonfiction that addresses and works with these ideas of built systems—telephones, plumbing, gossip, suburbs—and the practices that take place within their grasp. Pieces that experiment with text and language as an infrastructure are encouraged, but “traditional” fiction is also warmly welcomed. Up to 5,000 words.

INVISIBLE PUBLISHING is committed to working with writers who might not ordinarily be published and distributed commercially. All submissions will be considered. Chosen writers will be compensated for their pieces.

Submissions must be postmarked December 31st, 2007.
Send Word files to anna@invisiblepublishing.com , or mail to
Invisible/Infrastructure
c/o #3-765 Champagneur
Montreal, QC H2V 3P9

Selected from over 1, 300 magazines, newsletters and journals, Geist has been nominated for the 19th Annual Utne Independent Press Award for Best Writing. Other Best Writing nominees include: The Believer, Maisonneuve, The New Republic, and Virginia Quarterly Review.

Click here for a complete list of this year’s nominees.

Winners will be announced in the January-February 2008 issue of the Utne Reader, so stay tuned!

 

Vancouver memory collective

announces the
L A U N C H
of the

Memory Festival

An ongoing festival of events and exhibitions
that share a central focus: memory
and the questions that memory provokes.

at the

LISTEL HOTEL, 1300 Robson Street, Vancouver

November 11, 2007, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Co-sponsored by the Listel Hotel

SFU Writing and Publishing Program, Harbour Centre

The Geist Foundation (Geist magazine)

Rumble Theatre Productions

 

After a year of brainstorming, debating, tweaking and tinkering, the all-new geist.com has leapt into the cyberworld. Hats off to Dave Egan for direction and programming, Bay Dodd for design and redesign, and to Sarah Maitland, C. E. Coughlan, Patty Osborne, Carra Simpson and Laura Potter for content-wrangling. The Geist Foundation, noted for putting the North back into North America since 1990, welcomes you to a site where you can always expect a salubrious mix of ideas and culture, 100% made in Canada.