Hisham Matar, Colm Tóibín, Edmund White, Sergio Ramirez

Four more videos are making the rounds, videos of four big-name authors who took part in our 2013 Festival.

Colm Tóibín talking about Ernest Hemingway.

Hisham Matar talking about Marcel Proust.

Edmund White talking about Collette.

Sergio Ramirez talking about Don Quixote.

Highlights of our 2013 Festival

So the 2013 Festival's been over for over a week now and I am finally resurfacing. Every year it amazes me: build up build up build up for over a year and then boom, it's over so quickly.

But we had an amazing Festival: our ticket sales were phenomenal, our events were well-attended, good media coverage.

Some highlights with the benefit of hindsight:

Introducing Colm Toibin

Colm Toibin at the Grande Bibliotheque, interviewed on stage by Eleanor Wachtel. (Sold out!)

The Walrus Talks at McCord Museum. (Sold out!)

The incredibly charming Hisham Matar on-stage with Paul Kennedy (Sold out!) and chatting with him in the authors suite over the weekend.

Janna Gur at Appetite for Books. (Sold out!)

This Really Happened! (Sold out!)

Alain Mabanckou on stage with Marie-Louise Arsenault.

And much more...

At any rate, we are putting 2013 to bed now and already well into our 2014 planning!

In the meantime, I've been reading something completely unrelated to Festival planning: Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters. Nice escape ...

Thursday: Colm Toibin and Histoires Berlinoises

As usual, I hope I can write every day from the Festival front-line but as usual I underestimate how busy things are and how I have little time for anything other than putting out fires.

That said our first few days have been booming. Starting with Etgar Keret events on Sunday (both

Michel Labrecque

sold out) we were off and running: the opening cocktail on Monday was packed and lots of fun. We gave away two homage prizes to Sheila Fischman and Judith Mappin, in addition to welcome the Quebec Ministre of Culture, Maka Kotto who charming and lovely.

Tuesday we had a smallish but very devoted and enthusiastic crowd at our almemar.org launch party to celebrate our first year of publishing on the Jewish arts of Montreal. Made some great connections and we discussed some interesting ideas for our second year.

Wednesday was slower though we had two events which stood out: Straphangers with Taras Grescoe and Michel Labrecque (of the STM) was really fascinating: two experts on transportation, one Francophone, one Anglophone, discussing the future of Montreal`s public transportation system and what it means for us, commuters. The affinity between them was really lively and interesting because though the come from different backgrounds, have different agendas and live with different assumptions in certain ways, both agree on core issues in regards to the best way to let our city develop and change into the future. What happened after this event is the kind of thing I always hope for: a small group of enthusiasts stayed over, stood in the corner and continued debating the topic for a long while.

At the Grande Bibliotheque tonight at 6:30 pm

The other event was our Perfume Stories event which had almost 200 people, a band, models, readers and a lovely hostess introducing excerpts from books which feature perfume. Definitely a highlight of our Festival this year and the smiles on everyone`s face as people made their way out of the event: priceless.

Today, day four, is about Colm Toibin at the Grande Bibliotheque. There are about 17 tickets left (in a space for 300) so it`ll definitely sell out...this will be a conversation on stage between the Irish writer of Brooklyn and The Master and Eleanor Wachtel. Then it`s off to dinner to honor Mr. Toibin, then back to the hotel to welcome all the arrived authors into the authors` suite.

Tonight we also have Histoires Berlinoises at Hotel 10. This one is in French and will be a discussion between Regine Robin, Eric Dupont (La fiancee americaine), director Daniel Briere. Hosted by Manfred Stoffl of the Goethe Institut. This starts at 6pm.

To win tickets to Colm`s event (there are only a handful of tickets left) and the big event with Edmund White on Saturday at the Grande Bibliotheque, check out the Blue Met Facebook page in a little while: you could win four tickets!

Busy day but I look forward to what is in store...

Three Events you Must See at Blue Met 2013!

In our annual survey each year, we ask our Festival-goers how many events they saw. The  majority see around three. So which three should be at the top of your list this year? (Note: this is HARD for me, they all feel like my children so, yes, I'm choosing my favorites!):

Grand Prize Event: an onstage interview with Eleanor Wachtel and 2013 Grand Literary Prize Winner, Colm Toibin. Thursday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Grande Bibliotheque (475 boulevard Maisonneuve East). $15 Tickets here.

A Tribute to Phyllis Lambert, readings from her new book, Building Seagram, and with Deni Y. Bechard as host, Eleanor Wachtel, Alan Shepard, Annemarie Adams, Linda Leith, Dimitri Roussopoulos, Cameron Charlebois and more! Sunday, April 28 at 5:00 p.m. at Hotel 10 (10 Sherbrooke St. West). $10 Tickets here.

Baseball and Beer: sit around a big table, beers in hand, and talk about baseball and literature with Molly O'Neill, The Gazette's Richard Burnett, Dave McGimpsey, and Chad Harbach (who will be there via Skype). A beer's included in the price! Saturday, April 27 at 3:00 p.m. at Hotel 10 (10 Sherbrooke Street West). $20 Tickets here.

None of these include sold out events (which are many, this year our pre-sales have been phenomenal) though it's likely all of these events above will sell out so it won't hurt to be safe and get your ticket early.

To download the entire PDF programme, click here.

Mothers Who Leave....Nancy Richler at Blue Met 2013

Nancy Richler's book, The Imposter Bride, got some great buzz going when it was nominated for the Giller Prize back in the fall. In all honesty, I had the book sitting on my bookshelf for months and didn't pick it up until well after her nomination and I have to say that I enjoyed it. I passed it around to some friends who all read it and raved about it. It's been a long time since a book by a Montreal was so well-received by boots-on-the-ground Montreal readers.

Here is a brief article I wrote on the book back in the fall.

Nancy Richler has two events at the Festival: one is a staged reading of her book produced by the Montreal Review of Books. This event is on Saturday, April 27 at 9pm. It'll be a great opportunity to meet Nancy and see a scene from her book performed by actors. $10

The other event is an event that is likely going to sell out. It's on Saturday afternoon at 1pm  and is called Mothers Who Leave, a round table with Shelley Pomerance (the host), Colm Toibin, Nancy, and Arnon Grunberg. $10

Gianrico Carofiglio: Italian crime-writing at its best

One aspect of running a literary Festival's programming is the opportunity to bring well-known writer to our public. But equally exciting is the chance to introduce authors that our public may not know about but should. Gianrico Carofiglio, though quite well-known in Italy, particularly Italian crime-writing circles, is one such writer.

Gianrico Carofiglio

On Friday, April 26, Marianna Simeone will interview Carofiglio on stage at Hotel 10. Carofiglio is an interesting figure: a former anti-Mafia judge, he left his judicial career and became something of a sensation: a crime writer with years of experience in Italy's notoriously bureaucratic legal system. His best-selling series featuring Prosecutor Guido Guerrieri have both a crime writing twist and legal thriller angle as well.

Bitter Lemon Press, based in the UK, specialist in international crime writing, his his main publisher in English and anyone who's interested in international writing generally or crime writing in particular should check out their website. A great tour of the world for any fans of the genre. Their crime fiction map allows you to choose the area or region you want to focus on, and they recommend books from authors in that area (personally I am fascinated with the notion of Polish crime writing though I have yet to read any).


The event is hosted by one of our favourite people, the gorgeous and always charming Marianna Simeone and is in English. Fans of crime writing, legal thrillers or even those just longing for Italian sunsets or Mediterranean cuisine: all will have a great time hearing about an established writer in a booming genre. Make an evening of it: the event starts at 5:30 on Friday, April 26 at Hotel 10. Then walk up afterwards to Amelio's (on Milton and Ste-Famille, just a few blocks from the hotel) and have a pizza to discuss...

Tickets are $10 and available here.

Deni Béchard, Dinaw Mengestu, Yejide Kilanko and our Unforgotten Lands

Deni Béchard

Last night I went to the launch of the French translation of Deni Béchard's Cures for Hunger and it was an all-star Montreal writerly event. Translated by Dominique Fortier, an excellent writer in her own right (Du bon usage des étoiles, among others), Béchard's book caused something of a stir when it came out a year ago. The book traces the history of Béchard's relationship with his father, André, and meditates on the influence the senior Béchard had on his son's entire life.

André Béchard was an assumed identity, and the man had a colorful, criminal, adventurous past, robbing close to 50 banks in Quebec and running from the law. Deni grew up negotiating a fraught relationship with his father (who lived in Vancouver) and his mother (in Virginia) and also inherited a love of adventure from his father. The book is a really beautiful and moving tale of loss and love.

We were very happy that Deni Béchard was in this neighborhood during our Festival because he agreed to host an event on African writing. Anyone who keeps up with Deni's Facebook page will know that the man is always on the move: Afghanistan, Tanzania, the Middle East, so he seemed like a natural choice when we were looking for a host for an event entitled Unforgotten Lands: Writing and Remembering.

This event is scheduled for Saturday, April 27 at 11:00 a.m. and will be discussion with Dinaw Mengestu and Yejide Kilanko.

Mengestu is an interesting figure: born in Ethiopia, he came to the US when he was 2 years

Dinaw Mengestu

old and his first novel, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, zeros in on an Ethiopian man living in Washington, trying to come to terms with his past and his rootlessness (there's a Ulysses-like quality to the book as the protagonist wanders the city, always on the move, unable to let the past go: in a certain way, it set the stage for Teju Cole's amazing book Open City a few years later). The book got great reviews and Mengestu followed that a few years later with How to Read the Air, a novel that has, according to Montreal writer Miguel Syjuco in the New York Times:

"...forged something meaningful from his cultural perspective. The book lingers in the mind as personal - not in the characters' specifics, but in their frustrated dislocation in the world. Now that the remarkably talented Mengestu has successfully explored these ideas in two books, one looks forward, excitedly, to watching the author's gaze expand to the world beyond his own experience."

(Yes, a slight dig there at the end, but a constructive and hopeful one.)

Mengestu, incidentally, was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Grant for 2012, one of the most prestigious honors given to a writer (among other professions).

Yejide Kilanko

The other writer involved in the above event is a Canadian-Nigerian novelist called Yejide Kilanko whose book Daughters Who Walk This Path got some good reviews but also some stinging criticism for its portrayal of Nigerian society and, in particular, the role of and violence against women. The book portrays contemporary life in Nigeria, a perspective that for years was uncommon but is now, thankfully, becoming more accepted.

This is a great opportunity to hear three young writers with vastly different backgrounds at early stages in their careers. Tickets to the event, Unforgotten Lands: Writing and Remembering, with Dinaw Mengestu and Yejide Kilanko, hosted by Deni Béchard, are a steal at $10 and can be purchased here.

A Tribute to Phyllis Lambert

Phyllis Lambert is a Montreal powerhouse. Born here, she studied architecture at Yale and had her hand in the building of the Seagram Building on Park Avenue in New York. Lambert herself selected Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson as the architects and was instrumental in getting Mark Rothko to create the mammoth installation which was part of the lobby's construction.

The building has often been called one the 20th century's most iconic and innovative structures. Novel at the time, the building was constructed slightly off the street which allowed a large public space to be opened up and filled with sculpture, benches, fountains. It was a very democratic milestone for urban architecture, making a private building part of the public space, the public consciousness. It has been widely mimicked since.

Yesterday's New York Times has a piece about the building and about Phyllis Lambert's new book (Yale University Press), Building Seagram, which talks about the launch of the book.

And what a beautiful book: it tells the story of the construction of the Seagram Building (with all kinds of fascinating anecdotes about Picasso, Philip Johnson, Brancusi, and Mark Rothko). One constant is Lambert's strong personality: her challenge to her father, Samuel Bronfman (she rejected all his ideas on what should be built on the site with a letter that started, "NO NO NO NO NO NO!" Later Bronfman invited her to New York, from where she'd been living in Paris, to advise on the project.), and the process by which Lambert was instrumental in choosing Mies from a pool of some of the most famous architects of his day.

Canadians love these kinds of stories, make no mistake: local girl/guy makes it big in New

York (or London or Paris) and now we must pay attention to them. But in Phyllis Lambert's case, this really is a big deal: the book, her story, her role in building one of the most famous and influential buildings in 20th century architecture. She really is a major figure and our city should be proud to call her one of our native daughters...

All this to say that it's a rare treat we'll have to hear Phyllis in person at a 2013 Festival event, A Tribute to Phyllis Lambert. Eleanor Wachtel will be there. Deni Bechard will be there. Many important notables, architects, writers, artists, Montrealers, New York-a-philes and assorted groupies - all there to celebrate the book's publication, to hear Phyllis read from it, to hear hilarious anecdotes about one of the coolest cities in the world, to make a toast in her honor.

A Tribute to Phyllis Lambert, in our official closing Festival event on Sunday, April 28 at 5pm at Hotel 10, 10 Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal. Click here and then click on the ticket price to get tickets (you'll be redirected to the website of La Vitrine). Tickets are $10!

What do Chad Harbach, Edmund White, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath have in common? Blue Met 2013 Meal Events and Food Workshops

Due the success of our "food" events last year, we've expanded them slightly in 2013 and have some interesting events involving meals, drinks, and snack foods.

First, we have two breakfast events, one in French featuring the diary of Virginia Woolf. This

Bell Jar fan? Sylvia Plath Breakfast!

one will involve each participant reading a provided page from Woolf's diary and then there will be a discussion of her diaries after everyone reads. This event is on Saturday, April 27 at 11am at Hotel 10 and is hosted by Marie-Andree Lamontagne.

We have another breakfast reading event on Sunday, April 28 on Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. This one, too, will be a discussion over breakfast on the work with some reading samples provided. Hosted by Magnificent Octopus' Isabella Kratynski.

Tickets for both events, $25 each, include breakfast. Last year both our Jane Austen and Ernest Hemingway breakfasts were sold out and highly acclaimed.

We have an Edmund White brunch on Saturday, April 27 at 12:30. What a great opportunity to sit at the same table, break bread, chat, laugh, and listen to one of America's best-loved writers talk about his career and his works. Hosted by Peter Dube. This one costs $45 and includes brunch.

An Israeli Cooking event is planned for Thursday, April 25 in the evening at Appetite for Books in Westmount. This will be a really lovely evening: wine, conversation, and Jonathan Cheung, the owner of Appetite for Books, will prepare a meal while participants sip wine and listen to Janna Gur, one of Israel's top food writers. The best part is that the $125 ticket includes a copy of her gorgeous book The Book  of New Israeli Food. Personally, I think this will be a memorable evening that should be a Blue Met highlight.

Janna Gur will also teach a workshop on Saturday, April 27 at the hotel on magazine

writing and how to balance the necessity for recipes while maintaining the creative side of cooking spontaneously. This one is 90 minutes long and will be a great opportunity to talk to Gur about how to approach food writing.

In addition to Gur, we have food critic (formerly of the New York Times) Molly O'Neill in a workshop on cookbook writing. This will allow a great chance for those who dream of writing their own cookbook: how to develop a persona, how to pitch a book, how to sell yourself and your book. Should be fun!

Baseball and Beer with Chad Harbach

O'Neill will also do an event at the hotel called Baseball and Beer with Chad Harbach (author of the best-seller The Art of Fielding. Harbach will beam in via Skype), David McGimpsey and hosted by The Gazette's Richard Burnett. The event will be a discussion about baseball in literature and writing. With a big frosty one, the event will be a great chance to hear about baseball writing from some literary baseball fanatics. This one costs $20 and includes a beer! Saturday, April 27 at Hotel 10.

Finally, our closing breakfast on Sunday morning gives you your chance to send the 2013 Festival off into history, a large table shared with writers, editors, publishers and lovers of literature to talk about highlights, lowlights and all the other lights in between.

All tickets can be purchased at bluemetropolis.org or at LaVitrine.com

Hisham Matar and Colm Tóibín doing what they do....

Hisham Matar, our 2013 Blue Met Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Prize winner was interviewed the other day by Fresh Air's Terry Gross.

He also has a piece in this week's New Yorker.

Check them out and then come check him out in person as part of our 2013 Festival. Matar will be interviewed by CBC Ideas' Paul Kennedy on Friday, April 26 at 7pm. Tickets are $15 and are selling quickly! You can get them here while they last!

And our Grand Prize winner, Colm Tóibín, had an excellent short story in the New Yorker from a couple of weeks' back. Tóibín is on-stage with Eleanor Wachtel at the Grande Bibliotheque on Thursday April 25 at 6:30pm. Get tickets here.

Jonathan Goldstein, Vincent Lam and other big names headline The Walrus Talks at Blue Met

This year, for the first time, Blue Met and The Walrus have joined forces to bring you one of their ever-popular Walrus Talks. This year the discussion centres around the theme of "Building Bridges" and will consist of several short (5-7 minutes each) talks by various writers and intellectuals with national and international reputation. This year, the talk will feature:

Jonathan Goldstein

Jonathan Goldstein: broadcaster, journalist, writer, contributor to This American Life, Goldstein's last event at Blue Met was standing room only.

Cameron Charlebois: Vice-President of Canada Lands and a trained architect, Charlebois will present his ideas of Building Bridges in a very real-world way given his role and also since bridges and Montreal are two subjects inextricably linked, particularly the last couple of years with talk of rebuilding the Champlain.

Alison Pick: writer of the really fantastic novel, Far to Go, Pick is a writer who I've been watching for a few years.

Vincent Lam: Giller Prize-winner and author of The Headmaster's Wager, Lam is a medical
doctor with a unique point of view given his background. And it's paid off: his books have been both critical and financial successes.

Pasha Malla

Saleema Nawaz: one of this year's "It" girls for the buzz surrounding her latest book (and first novel), Bone and Bread. Nawaz will, in fact, launch her book in Montreal tonight, Thursday, March 28, at Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore in Mile End, starting at 7p.m.

Pasha Malla: author of the collection of stories, The Withdrawal Method, Malla's new book, People Park, was short-listed for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award.

Will Straw: head of McGill University's Canada Institute, Straw is a good friend to Blue Met and has done several events with and for us in the previous years (including last year's much talked event, Montreal's Most Notorious Crimes and Criminals.

Saleema Nawaz

Henry Mintzberg: head of McGill University's business school, Mintzberg is an international expert on strategic planning.

Rachel Giese: writer and Senior Editor at The Walrus.

The event will be held Saturday, April 27 at 2pm at the McCord Museum. Seats are very limited and there is no doubt in my mind that this event is going to sell out very quickly so don't say I didn't warn you if you can't get tickets for waiting too long! Buy them now while we still have some left. More information at the Blue Met website.

This event is in association with The Walrus, Blue Met, McGill University, Canada Lands, Enbridge and the Segal Centre.

Come check out some of the most interesting, innovative and exciting voices in contemporary Canada...

Arab Prize-Winner, Blue Met 2013

We are really thrilled that we have managed to land Hisham Matar as our 2013 Al Madjidi Ibn Dhaher Blue Met Arab Prize winner. Mr. Matar is one of the youngest and most haunting voices coming out of the Arab world the last number of years and his presence on the international literary stage is considerable.

When I saw him in New York in October as part of the New Yorker Festival, in conversation with a few other big name writers, I knew that our jury had awarded him the prize but was bummed that I couldn't share it yet because on stage he was fascinating: articulate, funny, dry, intelligent.

His book In the Country of Men haunted me for weeks after I read it years ago. The book tells the story of a young boy growing up in Tripoli until his father disappears into the Libyan prison system. The novel was short-listed for a slew of prizes, including the Booker Prize, and translated into dozens of languages.

On the occasion of his last book, Anatomy of a Disappearance, Matar passed through Canada though we didn't have him in our line-up for various reasons. At that time, he was interviewed by Eleanor Wachtel as part of her Writers and Company and the interview was one of her best interviews: moving & shocking, it literally moved me to tears.

Hisham Matar will do two events at the Festival, an interview with Paul Kennedy (host of Ideas) as well as the awarding of the prize in the evening of Friday, April 26 at Hotel 10, 10 Sherbrooke Street West.

He will also be part of an event on Saturday, April 27: Literature as Refuge, a discussion at the Goethe Institute about the importance that literature has in a time of social, political or personal crisis. This event is with German writer Thomas Pletzinger, Italian Gianrico Carofiglio and Spaniard Ignacio del Valle, hosted by Katia Grubisic.

Blue Met's 2013 Grand Prize Winner is Irish Writer Colm Tóibín

Our Grand Prize winner for 2013 is Irish writer Colm Tóibín, author of Brooklyn and The Master. Tóibín is one of those writers I've been reading since I was quite young (I was so happy when the jury came back with their decision) and a few of his books are some of my favorites: The Master, which explores the inner life of Henry James and was a revelation, not only in terms of James' own work and life, but in the way one thinks about the public personal vs. the private man.

Blue Metropolis 2013 Grand Prize Winner

I also am a huge fan of The Blackwater Lightship which tells the story of a young woman who must come to terms with her alienated family life as her brother returns home after many years away, dying from AIDS. It's one of the few books I've read which I can recall tearing up while reading, so affected by its emotional core.

I also really liked Story of the Night which is set in Argentina of the 1980s, so much happening under the surface politically, socially, sexually.

Tóibín has written a few books the last few years and our Festival will give him a great chance to talk about these works with our audience.

Tóibín will take part in a few events at the Festival, most notably the Grand Prize Award Ceremony and interview by Eleanor Wachtel. This will be on stage at the Grand Bibliotheque on Thursday, April 25 at 6:30 pm (get tickets early because last year's show with Joyce Carol Oates was amazing - funny, moving and intelligent - and it sold out quickly!).

Writers and Company host, Eleanor Wachtel

Tóibín will also be part of a round-table discussion called Mothers Who Leave, a discussion about several recent books with missing mothers, missing wives. This will be with Montreal writer Nancy Richler (The Imposter Bride) and Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg (The Jewish Messiah). This event, hosted by Shelley Pomerance, takes place on Saturday, April 27 at 2pm.

This year's Blue Met Festival is centered at Hotel 10, 10 Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal and runs from April 22 - 28 with over 200 writers from 15 countries! Ticket information available at bluemetropolis.org/home/Festival

Blue Met Grand Prize: our short list

So every year our Grand Prize announcement is one of our biggest "ooh and aaah" moments. I remember clearly the murmur that went through the packed room last year at our Press Conference when we announced Joyce Carol Oates as our 2012 winner. And what a winner she was: her event at the Grande Bibliotheque was amazing (and sold out!).

In anticipation of our announcement next week, we release our short-list. It wasn't easy but this year our jury came back with three short-listed winners (we had a longer list that the short list was pulled from). They are:

Orhan Pamuk: Nobel Prize-winner (the first time we've short-listed a former Nobel Prize-winner though we have awarded the prize to someone who later won the Nobel Prize!), author of The Black Book, Snow and many other works, Pamuk, who hails from Turkey but lives in Istanbul and New York, is one of the best-known writers working today.


Colm Tóibín: Irish writer whose best-known works include The Master, Brooklyn and The Testament of Mary, his books are moving, haunting and full of a fierce intelligence and understanding of human nature. Personally he's been one of my favorite writers my entire adult life.



Rohinton Mistry: one of Canada's best-loved sons, Mistry has been nominated and/or won just about every major prize there is. His works shine with his finely crafted prose that he seems to work so diligently at since he doesn't publish every year like many writers do. The publication of a new Mistry work is celebrated and anticipated throughout the world. A Fine Balance is one of those works I can return to every few years and revel again in the world he creates.

One of these writers, it will be announced next week, has one our 2013 Grand Prize. The prize, awarded every year since the year 2000, has featured some of the world's best-loved writers: from Mavis Gallant (2002) to Carlos Fuentes (2005) to Norman Mailer (2001) to Joyce Carol Oates (2012), Margaret Atwood (2007) and Paul Auster (2004), the prize quite literally is one of the highlights of the spring season in Montreal...

Tune in to find out who wins for 2013: we announce our winner next week at our official launch and press  conference: Tuesday, March 26 at 10:00 a.m. at l'Espace Fontaine in Park Lafontaine.

Odds and Ends as we gear up to release our 2013 schedule!

Our official press conference is on March 26 at 10am at Espace Lafontaine in Park Lafontaine. We will release our entire 2013 line up and tickets go on sale. Buy early this year because last year most of our key events sold out before the Festival began!

My reading habits change at this time of year: I now stop reading for the upcoming Festival and start focusing on the next year! Already I have a big stack of books to get through as we do pre-planning for 2014, particularly since we want to have at least six big name authors confirmed before the beginning of May.

Been slowing making my way through Joseph Roth's Collected Stories which I am loving. The more I read Roth, the more I develop an appreciation for what a poet he was, what a master of language. I can't recommend his books enough. He has such a sensitivity to the lives of the downtrodden, the underdogs, the voiceless. He's just as concerned with the lives of the poor as he is the lives of the rich and powerful but in a way that brings their experiences to life. He's not a social reformer like Dickens (or Hugo, see below) but shows a real interest in these experiences and the individuals who live them.

I found the story "The Blind Mirror" absolutely captivating. In the story, Roth shows us the life of a young woman as she tries to make her way in the world. Here Roth reflects on the night:

Night is full of feeling and surprise: out of the blue, longings come to us, when the distant whistle of a locomotive catches in the window, when a cat slinks along the pavement opposite hungry for love, and disappears into a basement window where the tom waits. There is a big starry sky above us, too remote to be kind, too beautiful not to harbor a God. There are the little things close at hand and there is a remote eternity, and some relation between them that escapes our understanding. Maybe we would understand it, if love were to visit us; love relates the stars and the slinking cat, the lonesome whistle and the vastness of the heavens.

The lyrical qualities mixed with the emotional resonance (captured by Roth's main translator, Michael Hoffman) really strike me as both straddling the 19th and the 20th centuries.  Anyway, Joseph Roth A++

Also in my stack of potential 2014 authors are books by Guy Deslisle and Jimmy Beaulieau, and Edmund White novel, a couple of books of poetry and Victor Hugo.

Speaking of which, I finally got around to seeing Les Miserables on screen. Meh. I enjoyed it but mainly because of the novelty of the actors singing during the shoot and not having it be dubbed to death. The issue I have with the play (and, hence, the movie) is the fact that so much of Hugo's ideas are completely stepped over: I guess because it's a musical and there is a highly emotional (and visual) component to it, the focus is placed on the love story and the love between characters generally whereas in the book that's really just one small part of the story. There's also the aftermath of the French Revolution, social disorder, law and justice, what it means to forget your past but yet be tied to it. The movie and musical give us a sense of some of these issues but Hugo was a thinker and revolutionary, not something that is easily translated into musical numbers and dancing.

But it did make me feel that I should read the book again since it has been many years since I read it last. As spring springs, I look forward to hours on my sofa reading Victor Hugo and waiting for summer...

Deadlines Looming for our Blue Metropolis 2013

Things are moving along: our Grand Prize Winner has been chosen and has accepted. Our Arab Prize Winner ditto. We have writers from more than 10 countries confirmed plus many Canadian and Quebecois writers as well.

Now comes the final push: several more authors to invite, start putting the schedule together, start writing event descriptions, coordinate details with the hotel and other local partners.

For me, the big looming deadline is the Christmas break because we basically need to have most of the important details settled before then so that as soon as we are back, we can start creating the printed (and online) programme which, believe it or not, takes several weeks to put together.

Nothing is public yet and we will announce our lineup at our press conference which will be in late March. Lots to do in the meantime...

Lazy Bastardism, Fed up with Hans Fallada, 2013 Programming, Poetry & Graphic Novels

Since I constantly have to change my routines or I start to get a bit batty, I've been "off" getting up early and writing here in the mornings. Instead, I get up early and take a long walk with the dog. Which means I have no time during the day to write here.

Almost finished with Hans Fallada's book (Every Man Dies Alone) and last night for the first time, it started to get to me: so much death, so much violence and mayhem and terror. It is a very large book and I have been reading it for three weeks at least. Only 50 pages to go but I may just drop it and try to find something more uplifting or funny to read. It's all clear how it's going to turn out anyway. And violent WWII novel combined with the usual pre-winter blahs is not a good combination.

Been slowly reading Carmine Starnino's Lazy Bastardism which I am really enjoying. My relationship to poetry is odd (or maybe not) in that although there are certain poets I read often and I return to their work again and again (Czeslaw Milosz, Adam Zagajewski, Wiszlawa Symborska, Marie Howe, Mark Doty and many others), I don't feel like a poetry expert in any way shape or form (my poetry reading is very sporadic and highly personal) so as I read Starnino's book, I am struck with how well-articulated his thoughts are on the work of so many Canadian poets. It's a great introduction to poets whose work I don't know at all and, of course, his very fluid and intelligent writing makes it even more appealing.

Working on a project with a local cultural institute which is kind of exciting. It's about graphic novels and I've been discussing with several publishing houses the feasibility of getting some "stills" in order to project images onto some public screens to promote this art form. This part of my job is really fun. So many graphic novels to explore, too!

Programming update: just about finished with our international programming for 2013. Been working for a week or two on Canadian and Quebec programming (and watching my budget drain away waah) which is a lot of fun and can see the overall programming plan really starting to take shape and have a personality. Still a lot more work to do but it is definitely coming along...for anyone who has submitted a proposal, I am moving high gear into these this week and next.