It looks like it's shaping up to be a pretty good year for McDermid authors! We're proud to represent 5 out of 12 of the National Post's 'not to be missed titles':
Vincent Lam, The Headmaster’s Wager (Doubleday Canada, April) Matt Lennox, The Carpenter (HarperCollins Canada, February) Grace O’Connell, Magnified World (Knopf Canada, May) Steven Heighton, The Dead Are More Visible (Knopf Canada, May) Kevin Chong, My Year of the Racehorse (Greystone, April)
“We’re all of us judges incredibly proud of Edugyan’s book as the winner. This is a book of international standing. It will be around for a long time, and we’re delighted to have given it the recognition that it deserves.” -Andrew O’Hagan, Giller Prize judge 2011
Nov-09-11 - 08:02
DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS WINS MATT COHEN AWARD
Congratulations to David Adams Richards, who was the recipient of the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life at the 11th Annual Writer's Trust Awards ceremony. The Matt Cohen Award is presented to a Canadian writer in recognition of a lifetime of distinguished work. To go along with this prestigious acknowledgement is $20,000! Congratulations David!
Esi Edugyan, nominated for 4 literary prizes including the 2011 Man Booker, discusses and reads from her novel Half-Blood Blues in this video interview with The Telegraph.
It's been quite a ride for Ms. Edugyan. A finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and the Roger Writers' Trust Prize, it was announced this morning that Half-Blood Blues is also one of the six finalists for the Giller Prize!
Congratulations are also in order for Michael Christie. His short story collection, The Beggar's Garden (HarperCollins Canada) was longlisted for the 2011 Giller Prize.
Sep-06-11 - 08:41
dropCapLiterary launched
Anne McDermid and Associates, Ltd. is pleased to announce the launch of dropCapLiterary, a consultancy service for authors seeking advice and instruction on marketing, promoting and selling their work in the new digital age.
dropCapLiterary provides professional help to writers to meet the changing demands of the publishing industry and the literary marketplace. With the author, we will develop a customized strategy, which may include any of the following services:
-Building and enhancing an author’s online platform
-Developing an online marketing strategy tailored for each book, targeting key sites and augmenting an author’s online interaction
-Managing ebook and enhanced ebook rights, if they are not or no longer controlled by a print book publisher
-Determining marketing strategies for ebooks
-Collaborating with print publishers regarding a writer’s ebook rights to maximize sales
“Reading, writing, bookselling and publishing are changing rapidly; new reading technologies and new publishing platforms are helping to transform the ways in which writers connect with readers. It is vital that writers make the most of the opportunities that are out there, and dropCapLiterary is poised to help us do just that.” – Kate Pullinger, winner of the Governor General’s Award for The Mistress of Nothing
"The world of ebooks and epublishing has more questions than answers, and hopefully more potential than peril for the working writer. To have a team of experts on one's side, with the whole of the virtual world at their disposal, is a blessing indeed." – Robert Wiersema, author of Before I Wake and Bedtime Story
“dropCapLiterary offers new and empowering opportunities for writers. Instead of being the very literate serfs of the vast publishing empires, the new digital frontier offers writers more of a position to call our own shots.” Susan Swan, former head of The Writers' of Canada
The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll, The Globe and Mail
"Andrew Westoll provides an opera of dramatic events, heart-rending tragedies and uplifting triumphs. For anyone interested in empathy and recovery, his book is required reading."
"[S]tark, stunning and profound...the construction of this novel is brilliantly conceived, and flawlessly executed. This is Richards at the height of his powers, which is very high indeed. The word masterpiece is not too strong."
-National Post
"Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul is a page-turning thriller delivered by Richards in his finest form yet."
-Telegraph Journal
"Markus Paul’s story, centred on several 'incidents' that prove fateful for him and fatal to others, is not related in the detached, clinical manner of a police account, but with the searing emotion and stirring probity we have come to expect of an author fighting to stave off anachronism’s claim to right and wrong, good and evil... In the immediate sense, this makes for classic tragedy, but Richards’s larger picture includes a moral lesson at once topical and timeless."
-The Globe and Mail
"Markus Paul is a solid offering with timely insight from one of Canada's most acclaimed storytellers."
-Winnipeg Free Press
Congratulations to Nicholas Ruddock whose novel The Parabolist (Doubleday Canada) is nominated for the 2011 Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel.
Apr-29-11 - 08:17
BOOK TRAILER FOR 'THE CHIMPS OF FAUNA SANCTUARY' BY ANDREW WESTOLL
Apr-13-11 - 08:59
IMPAC SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED
Congratulations to Michael Crummey, who is nominated for his novel, Galore (Doubleday Canada/Other Press), and the only Canadaian to make the cut.
Galore is featured on The April 2011 Indie Next List Great Reads, Crummey has an interview in Publishers Weekly, and ForeWord Reviews says "[Galore]...sizzles with an edge of the fantastic… Capturing the speech and temper of a primitive world, and communicating it perfectly, the writer delivers a masterpiece.”
Galore has also been recommended by Vanity Fair in their April issue and is an Amazon Book of the Month pick for April.
Apr-01-11 - 10:40
GIBB'S 'THE BEAUTY OF HUMANITY MOVEMENT' PUBLISHED IN THE US AND THE UK
The sweeping tale by Camilla Gibb, set in Vietnam, has made its debut in the US and the UK to stunning reviews:
"Gibb’s fictional portrait of contemporary Vietnam should be essential reading for anyone mulling a visit to Hanoi, whose profusion of motorbike traffic and culinary aromas issues from these pages with graphic verisimilitude."
-New York Times
"Gibb fluidly takes the reader from the bitter years of war to the Hanoi that has emerged in the reform era, which, despite all its modernzation, is still a mystery to many of us."
-Booklist
"Well written and engaging, with characters that represent the participants and consequences of a country in the middle of great change."
-Library Journal
"Camilla Gibb drapes her story over good strong bones — characters (including the grandson of a poet friend of Hung's) that span several generations, the nobility of the artists in contrast to the war and its political players. But the true beauty of the novel radiates from the details — the smell of the soup, the feeling of the early-morning streets, the sense of community in poverty and the community woven by memories."
-L.A. Times
"Part history lesson, and part social commentary on Vietnam’s past to future, Movement’s flawlessly constructed characters satisfy like a warm bowl of pho after a wicked-bad hangover. ...an absorbing read...Gibb’s thoughtful and intricate writing weaves an unforgettable portrait of the past and present, and her observations of humanity make clear the similarities in all of us."
-Seattlest
"...delicious little novel... Inspired by the real-life Nhan Van affair, it achieves one of fiction's greatest aims: making the personal universal, and vice versa."
-The Independent
Mar-24-11 - 09:47
THE MALAHAT REVIEW ANNOUNCES 2011 FOUNDERS' AWARDS WINNERS
Congratulations to Steven Heighton who won the 2011 P. K. Page Founders’ Award for Poetry for his poem “Jetlag,” which appeared in the Summer, 2010 issue (#171).
Feb-23-11 - 03:02
MIKE CHRISTIE INTERVIEWED BY SHAW TV
Former professional skateboarder turned writer Michael Christie was interviewed by Fanny Kiefer on Shaw TV's Studio 4 and discussed his debut book The Beggar's Garden-- a collection of short stories set in Vancouver's downtown eastside.
Michael Christie is already getting an amazing amount of attention for his first short story collection, The Beggar's Garden (HarperCollins Canada). The National Post calls it "A sympathetic and compassionate examination of modern urban loneliness and disaffection." And vancouverisawesome.com says "I knew Mike Christie as a damned fine skateboarder and now I know Michael Christie as a damned fine author."
You can catch Michael on tour at the following literary festivals:
Vancouver Writer's Fest- Jan 26
BC Book Fair- Feb 14
Galiano Island Literary Festival- Feb 25-28th
Vancouver is Awesome Book Club Launch, Waldorf Hotel- February 28
Launch at Sitka Books, Vancouver- February 4
Authors at the Harbourfront, Toronto- March 9
Ottawa International Writer's Fest- Spring; Date TBA
Jan-28-11 - 08:21
MICHAEL CRUMMEY'S HAT TRICK
Three rave reviews in the lead-up to the American publication of Galore:
"Dazzling... Crummey’s prose is glorious throughout, unflinchingly honest and unsentimentally magical... Newfoundland author Crummey’s award-winning third novel... affirms that our lives are always astonishing. It’s been justly compared to Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. It also calls to mind Graham Swift’s Waterland and Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria, as well as William Faulkner’s epic Compson novels, and will appeal to readers who enjoyed those works."
-Library Journal (starred review)
"Crummey returns readers to historic Newfoundland in his mythic and gorgeous latest, set over the course of a century in the life of a hardscrabble fishing community. Crummey lovingly carves out the privation and inner intricacies that mark his characters' lives with folkloric embellishments and the precision of the finest scrimshaw."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Ghosts, gangsters, mermen and a Christ-like healer who emerges from the belly of a beached whale are among the attractions in a boisterous, one-of-a-kind folk epic about feuding intermarried clans in Newfoundland...the singular world [Crummey] creates is special...A lively, eccentric, mythmaking novel."
-Kirkus
Jan-12-11 - 10:57
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
We're kicking off 2011 with a bang!
Andrew Pyper's new novel The Guardians (Doubleday Canada) was published this week. Chatelaine calls it, "[h]auntingly good...Andrew Pyper's The Guardians will chill you far more than winter ever could." Look out for upcoming reviews in the Vancouver Sun and Macleans this week, and interviews with the author in the National Post and The Globe and Mail on Saturday. And catch Andrew's interview with Shelagh Rogers on CBC Radio, Monday January 10th at 1PM.
Kate Pullinger's novel,The Mistress of Nothing(Touchstone), which won the 2009 Governor General's Award for fiction, is making its US debut this week and will be, in the coming weeks, reviewed by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. It has already been reviewed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which called it, ""...a great recipe for romance and tragedy baked in the blistering oven of British morals and prejudice... full of colorful descriptions and appeals to the emotions."
Though it won't be published in the US until April, Michael Crummey has already begun to receive praise for his novel Galore(Other Press). "Crummey returns readers to historic Newfoundland in his mythic and gorgeous latest, set over the course of a century in the life of a hardscrabble fishing community. Crummey lovingly carves out the privation and inner intricacies that mark his characters' lives with folkloric embellishments and the precision of the finest scrimshaw." -Publishers Weekly
Jan-04-11 - 12:42
AMERICAN CONSUMER NEWS INTERVIEWS NINO RICCI
Dec-08-10 - 10:48
LISA MOORE'S FEBRUARY AMONG THE NEW YORKER'S BEST OF 2010
The New Yorker has named Lisa Moore's novel February to its Best of 2010 list.
Lisa Moore for February
Michael Crummey for Galore Jessica Grant for Come, Thou Tortoise Kate Pullinger for The Mistress of Nothing Diana Fitzgerald Bryden No Place Strange
Nov-15-10 - 09:16
CANADA READS 2011
Congratulations to all of our authors whose books have made the list of Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade.
EVERY LOST COUNTRY SHORTLISTED FOR THE BANFF MOUNTAIN BOOK AWARD
Congratulations to Steven Heighton, whose novel EVERY LOST COUNTRY has been shortlisted for the Banff Mountain Book Award. Winners announced in Banff on November 4.
Oct-20-10 - 08:15
TORONTO BOOK AWARD
Congratulations to Mark Sinnett, who was named the winner of the 2010 Toronto Book Award for his novel The Carnivore (ECW Press). The announcement was made by Mayor David Miller at a public reception held at The Toronto Reference Library on October 14.
Oct-15-10 - 09:12
GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD SHORTLIST
Congratulations to Sandra Birdsell, whose novel Waiting For Joe (Random House Canada) has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Fiction.
Nominees for the 2010 Toronto Book Award were announced today by mayor David Miller. Among those shortlisted were McDermid Agency clients Mark Sinnett for The Carnivore (ECW Press) and Lauren Kirshner for Where We Have to Go (McClelland & Stewart).
Congratulations!
Sep-16-10 - 09:53
HOW TO SHORTEN A MANUSCRIPT, BY MICHAEL WINTER
Sep-08-10 - 09:18
BOOK LAUNCH: NOAH'S TURN, BY KEN FINKLEMAN
Last night at The Spoke Club, writer/director/actor Ken Finkleman and friends celebrated the launch of his first novel, Noah's Turn (HarperCollins Canada).
Photo Credit: JANICE PINTO/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Sep-08-10 - 02:28
SANDRA BIRDSELL HONOURED WITH ORDER OF CANADA
Novelist and short story writer Sandra Birdsell, who was also the founder of the Manitoba Writer's Guild, was honoured with the Order of Canada by the Governor General, Michaëlle Jean, on Friday morning. Congratulations, Sandra!
"In a tremendously satisfying dénouement, our principal players are united partly by war, partly by the dissolution of empire, but mainly by a mother-and-child reunion — the dimensions of which can only be imagined within the pages of this marvelous and compelling tale." --Toronto Star
NATIONAL BESTSELLER (Globe and Mail & Maclean's lists)
"Camilla Gibb's previous novel, the Scotiabank Giller Prize short-listed Sweetness in the Belly, with its examination of Lilly, a white Muslim woman in Ethiopia and London, flew off bookstore shelves, and it's likely that The Beauty of Humanity Movement will as well...Gibb has created her own 'Beauty of Humanity.'"
-The Globe and Mail
"Another winner from Gibb."
-NOW Magazine
"...[Gibb] isn't satisfied with merely creating convincing characters and a bold plot. She educates and enlightens the reader whose grasp of Vietnam's history and culture may be based on little more than the vague recall of old headlines."
-Montreal Gazette
"...a dynamite read."
-Post City Magazine
"Gibb writes with a disarming simplicity well-suited to her story... Gibb's largely unadorned writing is... delicious for its austerity and complexities."
-Telegraph Journal
Aug-25-10 - 02:00
MARK MEDLEY'S INTERVIEW WITH PETER DARBYSHIRE
Darbyshire: "It's always been, if it bleeds, it leads ... but now it's like, if it bleeds or it's American Idol, it leads...There's an interest in the spectacle, but it's always at the expense of somebody else. And I don't think we're engaging with issues any more."
Christopher Shulgan's upcoming book Superdad: A Memoir of Rebellion, Drugs and Fatherhood (October) was a Globe and Mail buzz book on Saturday.
Camilla Gibb graces the cover of the July/August issue of the Quill and Quire, in the lead-up to publication of her novel The Beauty of Humanity Movement (August).
Todd Babiak's Toby: A Man was chosen as a Sizzling Read by the Chronicle Herald.
Steven Heighton received yet another rave for Every Lost Country:
"Deliriously good . . . The plot is suspenseful, in itself enticing enough to make Every Lost Country a good read . . . but the quality of the language elevates the novel to beautifully complex literature. Heighton is a superb writer."
-Edmonton Journal
Jun-21-10 - 10:35
STARRED REVIEW FOR DEREK LUNDY'S 'BORDERLANDS'
"Lundy employs a wry sense of humour that keeps the pages turning as the miles fly by... Borderlands is well-balanced, both in terms of interview subjects and the exposure given to the northern and southern U.S. borders.With typical Canadian self-deprecation, Lundy worries that the Canadian border will hold none of the adventure and mystique of its southern cousin. Not so. While the book is primarily a travelogue commenting on America’s growing security obsession, in the borderlands between politics and memoir a fine history lesson exists, and Lundy is an excellent teacher."
-Quill & Quire
Jun-15-10 - 02:44
BOOKNET BESTSELLERS: NEW CANADIAN FICTION IN HARDCOVER (VIA QUILL & QUIRE)
"...a violent, darkly comic satire of our media-saturated society... its unmistakably contemporary touches make Palahniuk's book feel dated... Darbyshire has a gift for imagining the absurd."
-The Globe and Mail
"The short snappy chapters move the story at just the right pace for the YouTube-conditioned reader, making this pop culture treasure trove a fast-paced, even addictive read."
-Winnipeg Free Press
"To the ranks of such transgressive, mind-screw masterpieces as George Bataille’s The Story of An Eye, the fiction of Kathy Acker and the early novels of Chuck Pahlaniuk, one must now add The Warhol Gang... one of the finest, and most important, Canadian novels in recent memory."
-Edmonton Journal
Peter will also be guest editing The Afterword, presenting his five “writing lessons.”
May-25-10 - 08:24
BOOKNET BESTSELLERS
Steven Heighton's Every Lost Country and Joan Thomas' Curiosity make BookNet Canada's new Canadian fiction bestseller list!
"Heighton creates a poetry of people in violent motion . . . Like Joseph Conrad (whom he increasingly resembles in important aspects), Steven Heighton takes the bare bones of an event occurring on the borderlines of most of our geographical, political and moral experiences, and refashions it into a novel that offers readers more than [just] big ideas and beautiful language . . . Every page, minor character and plot twist matters. Every Lost Country not only rivets readers to their seats, it challenges them to rethink the David-and-Goliath inequalities of this new millennium . . . [The novel] is more un-put-downable than many escape tales because the action and reactions of the pursued and the pursuers never break faith with reality. . . . How many other novelists in this country . . . choose words so carefully or narrative strategies with such intelligence?
-Globe & Mail (T.F. Rigelhof)
"Simply put, In the Fabled East is a winner, drawing on disparate elements to create a singular, stunning whole. It is beautiful, and haunting; brutal, and realistic; it is strange and alien but fundamentally familiar and human; it is thoughtful, and suspenseful, meditative and action-filled. It is the sort of book that not only becomes a bestseller but is passed from hand to hand, shared among readers."
-Vancouver Sun
"Canadian writer Ricci's fifth novel, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, is a masterly coming-of-age story... Highly recommended, especially for fans of fellow Canadian writer Alice Munro, with whom Ricci shares a knack for irony and a talent for characterization."
-Library Journal
“Daring and well executed. … Most will likely fixate on the sex in Girl Crazy, and why not? Smith writes it well; nary a cringe-worthy adjective, and raw enough to be real. But Girl Crazy is more about class than it is about sex. … Girl Crazy is a hot floor show for those of us desperate for the present to finally get its time in the Canadian literary spotlight.”
-Globe and Mail
“His best novel yet. …What Smith is saying here is that the literate, liberal culture … is all but dead, replaced by loud, brash surfaces, primitive emotional needs and an almost demonic suburban sprawl. … Girl Crazy is a frank and funny novel. The depiction of an emotionally stunted man’s undignified lust for an even more immature young woman is disturbing and almost note-perfect. A lot of people won’t like the novel’s message, but they’d better learn to deal with it. The future is here and some might find it sexy, but it sure ain’t pretty.”
-Toronto Star
“Girl Crazy rips a mile a minute. Smith has pulled off the sort of author-reader telepathy that lesser writers can only dream about. The book is ridiculously visceral. … Smith has a good ear for dialogue and a finely honed sense of just how much detail to put in. And he writes a mean love scene. … For all its graphicness, the most compelling thing about Girl Crazy is its honesty. Despite its raunch and raw emotion, the story’s reality check stays firmly engaged. … You’ll probably have a hard time putting down Girl Crazy. It powers on to a conclusion that’s both satisfying and oddly disquieting.”
-The Gazette (Montreal)
“A darkly comic study of fractured masculinity. … The nicely ambiguous conclusion can be seen as either the recognition of a kind of atavistic male impulse, or a cautionary tale about the perils of pursuing desire to its most dangerous extreme.”
-The Walrus
May-06-10 - 02:25
AMAZON.CA FIRST NOVEL AWARD
Hot on the heels of her Winterset win, last night Jessica Grant took home the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Congratulations, Jessica!
Apr-28-10 - 08:05
WINTERSET AWARD
Jessica Grant has won the 2009 Winterset Award for her first novel Come, Thou Tortoise.
Congratulations, Jessica!
Mar-26-10 - 01:49
DARWIN'S BASTARDS PROMO VIDEO
Social satire, fabulist tales and darkly humorous dystopian visions, this new anthology published by D&M features stories by Jessica Grant, Lee Henderson, Pasha Malla and Adam Lewis Schroeder.
Mar-17-10 - 10:58
MICHAEL CRUMMEY, COMMONWEALTH PRIZE FINALIST
Congratulations to Michael Crummey whose novel Galore (Doubleday Canada) won in the Canada/Caribbean region.
Mar-11-10 - 12:46
WINTERSET PRIZE
Michael Crummey, Jessica Grant and Lisa Moore are the three finalists for the 2010 Winterset Award, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council announced. Crummey, who won the award in 2001 for his debut novel River Thieves, is a finalist for Galore (Doubleday Canada). Grant is nominated for Come, Thou Tortoise (Knopf). And Moore, a two-time finalist for the Giller prize, is nominated for February (Anansi).
Mar-04-10 - 12:46
AMAZON FIRST NOVEL AWARD
Congratulations to Damian Tarnopolsky, Goya's Dog (Penguin), and to Jessica Grant, Come, Thou Tortoise (Knopf), who both made this years' shortlist!
Mar-04-10 - 08:38
ATLANTIC BOOK AWARDS
The shortlists for the 2010 Atlantic Book Awards have been announced. Congratulations to Michael Crummey whose novel Galore (Doubleday Canada) has been nominated for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award as well as the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award. David Adams Richards has also been nominated for the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award for, God Is (Doubleday Canada). And another congratulations goes out to Stephen Kimber, author of IWK: A Century of Caring for Families (Nimbus Publishing), nominated for the Dartmouth Book Award for non-fiction.
Mar-02-10 - 02:02
TODD BABIAK ON TOUR
Todd Babiak was promoting TOBY: A MAN in Canada this week with successful events in Montreal, Toronto and Calgary! He also had fantastic interviews on shows including Breakfast Television, CBC Radio’s “Q,” “The Next Chapter,” and “Daybreak Alberta”
Books by Russell Smith, Lisa Moore and Kevin Patterson make Amazon's fifty best books of the decade 2000-2009.
Feb-16-10 - 10:59
TODD BABIAK READS FROM TOBY: A MAN
Feb-01-10 - 02:32
Feb-01-10 - 01:49
JANE URQUHART 'DOWN BY THE LAKE'
In this weekend's Globe and Mail, Jane Urquhart tells us what she's reading at her summer place on the shores of Lake Ontario: "Up at the house I have just finished reading Lisa Moore's February and Michael Crummey's Galore, both marvellous. I will bring a different self to these books when I reread them five or six years from now, but I know that I will reread them, likely here beside the lake where I've been reading all my life."
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