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.

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

Chad Harbach and the Baseball Novel

I must admit that I am not a huge sports fan. I have been to baseball and basketball games and had a perfectly fine time. When I lived in Seattle back in the 90s, I followed the Mariners and rooted for them at the occasional home game. I have developed an interest in hockey after being in Montreal a number of years, but I've never been much on "the baseball novel" or the sports novel.

Yet last week in Berlin, I found myself anxiously looking forward to seeing American writer, Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding, probably one of the best-reviewed "baseball" novels in a generation or more.

The room was huge and though the attendance could have been better (probably under 150 people were there, in a space meant for four times that number), those lucky enough to attend were, I think, pleasantly surprised at how charming and affable Harbach was on-stage.

Interviewed by Priya Basil, Harbach initially rolled with the contention (Basil's) that the pairing of the book's main themes, sports and homosexuality, was an odd choice. He seemed sincere in explaining how it happened organically throughout the long process (the book took 10 years to write) of developing it.

A young Australian woman told me after the show that she had seen Harbach interviewed in Sydney by a terrible interviewer who seemed woefully unprepared (note to those who want to do interviews or host events: be prepared! We often refuse to use an interviewer again once they give off the appearance of ill-preparedness during a Festival event.). Basil is a good interviewer if she is a bit stiff at times. Her thorough lack of baseball knowledge (she spoke about it as if it were some exotic 19th century sport played by coolies in a desert) was charming though and added humour to her interaction with Harbach.

One aspect of Basil's approach is to tell Harbach what a critic has said about his book (often something off the wall) and then get his reaction. A little of this goes a long way but Basil definitely chose the right quotes to throw at the writer who happily answered in a thoughtful and very intelligent way (the references to Homer were an absolute thrill and so effortless by Harbach). What I really do appreciate about Basil is her thoughtful questions which reflected, I think, a close and thoughtful reading of Harbach's book.

A baseball novel, as I suggested earlier, is not necessarily something that would strike me as my cup of tea, but after listening to the discussion, reading some fascinating reviews (not all glowing, by any means), and hearing Harbach read from the book myself, it's definitely on my must-read list over the next few weeks.