Leonardo Padura coming into his own...

I was so happy to see this Jon Lee Anderson piece on Leonardo Padura in the New Yorker last week. I've been writing about Padura for a while, before he even came to our Festival in 2012. His events didn't get as much buzz as I'd have liked and I was pounding the pavement with his books, trying hard to sell them and sell his events, but his participation lacked the buzz that some other events had.

This is a tricky part of programming a literary festival: of course, my job is to "sell" all the events and writers associated with the festival each year, but the public and the media seem so fickle at times, and it's not always easy to predict which authors will capture the public's imagination or interest. And every year, naturally, I have my favourite books or authors that I try hard to get the public and media interested in. It doesn't always work.

So I thought I'd take this opportunity to sell Padura again: he truly is one of the most interesting writers working today, not only in Cuba but in the Caribbean broadly. He writes these almost 19th century crime novels that present a complex and intricate view of life in modern Havana. Because his characters live in Cuba, there are no smart phones or Internet so the novels recall the past in tone and function. His novel Havana Fever shows his protagonist, Mario Conde, as he adjusts to his retirement. He becomes involved in book selling (which sets up a beautiful metaphor about the role that books play in modern life) and then comes across an article about a mysterious bolero singer who disappeared in the 1950s.

Padura has also written a more political novel (as of yet untranslated into English) as well as a book on Hemingway. As Anderson puts it in his piece, "For Cuba's intellectuals, and for its professional class, a new Padura book is as much a document as a novel, a way of understanding Cuban reality."

New Yorker Festival

So I am off to New York this weekend for a few meetings and to catch a few events at the New Yorker Festival. They do some very interesting shows and, naturally, being in New York, get some of the best writers in the world.

I am looking forward to Faith: a conversation with Nathan Englander, Marilynne Robinson and Chris Adrian. I'm a big fan of Nathan Englander and I love his book The Ministry of Special Cases. And Marilynne Robinson's work is always raved about though I've only read Gilead. Home has been on my list for a few years now but I've still not managed to read it. There was such an interesting conversation going around about her work when Home was published: about faith today, about being an older female writer with a best-seller today, about being a literary writer in today's climate. At any rate, the three of them in conversation about Faith today.

Also looking forward to seeing Alison Bechdel and Judith Therman. Bechdel was all over the literosphere in the summer for her new memoir, Are You My Mother. She lives just across the border in Vermont (or has a place there, at any rate) and has been on our radar for a few years now. As noted in my last post, I'm a big fan of the comic/graphic novel, but I fear Alison Bechdel is a tough writer to land at this point in her career.

For those wondering why we don't always have writers like Bechdel and Robinson and Englander (though we try), as usual, it's a matter of $$. Writers who are currently being buzzed about are highly in demand and can get upwards of 60 invitations a week! A friend of mine (a well-known writer) says that after a while, one starts to feel a bit depressed and overwhelmed at so much attention so raising prices of speaking fees is the only way to determine which invitation is priority. I guess I get that...then agents get involved...it isn't pretty!

Unfortunately, what it means for a Festival like ours is that inviting big name writers with buzz in the literosphere can be pricey! Every year we try to bring at least a few if we can...

There are a few more shows on my list for the next few days and a few I wanted to see but couldn't make work because of other things going on in New York this weekend. But glad to have the chance to hang out in one of most favorite cities in the world for a few days.

We start our planning...

Yes, it's time to start thinking about 2013 already. Actually, we have four writers confirmed already so that helps.

I am considering novelists, poets, memoirists, essayists and even those who haven't published a book recently (or, in fact, at all). Books are a key part of what we do but they certainly aren't the only reason to bring a guest who has something interesting to say if it fits in line with our programming tracks.

That's all so vague but I have to be careful at this point not to give away too much. We are still very early in the process, naturally, and our planning goes through several revolutions before it starts taking shape in mid to late October.

In the meantime, I am reading and planning a few upcoming trips:

Been reading Taras Grescoe's latest, an excellent book about the damage the automobile has done to cities and our quality of life generally. Also recently read Nelly Arcan's Exit (which was highly readable though I wasn't in love with the narrator's whiny persona), a book about common daily life history called Hoping for the Best, Preparing for the Worst about early life in Canada, Against God by Patrick Senécal, The Sweet Sixteen by Concordia prof Linda Kay (about the founding of the Canadian Women's Press Club - sounds dry but it's actually quite compelling), and of course finding time for reading for fun, naturally. Also was captivated by Gods and Soldiers, an anthology of contemporary African writing, edited by Rob Spillman (of Tin House fame). Read a lot more besides...

And I've got a huge stack of additional books to get through as well in the next several months. Never a shortage of things to read around here!

In terms of traveling, headed to Berlin in a few weeks for The Berlin International Literary Festival, then to NYC for the New Yorker Festival and wrapping it all up in Portland for Wordstock. Busy fall!

Emily Hahn Finds her Congo Legs

A new book out by McGill-Queen's Press has been enthralling me the last few days, that kind of book that you have constantly in the back your mind, finding it hard to wait until you have a few extra minutes to sit down (today, mid November, it was warm enough to sit outside on a park bench!) and read at lunch.

The book is a "re-edition" of a book originally published in 1931, but which was so censured and cut that it lacked a real narrative integrity. Apparently (according to the introduction), the writer and mainly publisher were worried about living people suing about certain portrayals (factual portrayals, nothing acrimonious) so cut out certain passages which made the original edition much weaker.

I knew a bit about Emily Hahn before I encountered this book, from a few of her books about China. But I had no idea that she was such an engaging (and funny!) writer.

Hahn traveled in 1931 to what is now Congo (and what was then the end of the Belgian occupation of the country) and she writes about her experiences there, a single female traveler, encountering the locals in a clinic where she assisted a doctor for several months. She is very much a woman of her time in many ways though she is also quite modern in other ways.

The difficulty in reading this comes with the knowledge that the Congo is actually poorer and less developed than it was 80 years ago, a result of colonial betrayals, corrupt leaders, violent civil war, and general government incompetence (despite being wealthy in resources). It's a terribly sad tale, what happens after 1931.

But here is one of the joys of reading: in our violent-saturated, "Africa the basket-case" media worlds that forego complexity and humanity for overly simple (or total lack of) analysis, it takes a book like this to make the Congo (for me, who's never made it to Africa so far) come alive: its rivers and jungles, its children, its wildlife, its struggles, its humour.

It's been a while since I came across a book I was so engaged in. I have no idea how (or even if) this book distinguishes itself in terms of something "new" (it's not really clear what was cut out of the earlier edition) but it's lovely to just have the opportunity to discover a new writer, a writer who has largely been forgotten. And to hear her in her own words.