Most Anticipated International Books of 2016!

As we wrap up our reading for the 2016 Festival planning and now get down into the nuts and bolts of creating events, it's time to look ahead and see what is coming out this year. It might seem geeky, but I actually plan my reading by first taking stock of what will be published and what will be buzzed about. Here are the books that are (so far) on my list for 2016:

The Happy Marriage by Tahar Ben Jelloun. The Moroccan novelist (the book was originally written in French) tells the story of a disentegrating marriage in contemporary Casablance, alternating between his and her point of view. Jelloun is a writer whose few works I've read have deeply affected me.

I Saw Her That Night by Drago Jančar. The Slovenian writer's latest translation into English tells the story of a young woman who mysteriously disappears during the war. In doing so, Jančar explores the legacy of the war on contemporary Europe and the long shadow it continues to cast, influencing the way we think about society.

The Past by Tessa Hadley. British writer Hadley is one of these writers who many people have suggested we invite to the Festival. We've tried is all I can say. Her short stories are dazzling little gems that are endlessly fascinating (a cursory search online will link to a few New Yorker pieces she's published in recent years). Her new novel explores one of Hadley's consistent themese: the role of a young girl within a family.

The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal. De Kerangal was at our Festival a few years back and all she'd had translated then was one book. But her nomination for the Goncourt (France's biggest literary prize) and her general booming reputation as one of France's most engaging writers has ensured that some of her works, at least, are on publishers' radar and lined up for translation. In typical De Kerangal style, this one tells the story of a heart, an actual heart, as it makes its way from one body via transplant to another.

Spill Simmer Falter Wilter by Sara Baume. As has been noted by several commentators and literary journalists, Ireland is going through a short story and fiction renaissance and Baume is one of the writers leading the way. Her stories are rich, deep and moving. Her new novel, too, got rave reviews when it came out last spring. It's not being released in North America and it's at the top of my list for this year as well.

Dinosaurs on Other Planets by Danielle McLaughlin. Like Baume, Danielle McLaughlin is considered one of Ireland's rising voices in short literary fiction. Her collecion of stories isn't out in North America until the summer but it's one that will be worth the wait. Her piece in The New Yorker last year, and several other pieces published online, have made her a short story writer to pay close attention to.

Also writers with books out in 2016 include Edmund White, Karl Ove Knausgaard, Don DeLillo, Louise Erdrich, Anne Tyler and Javier Marias.

Going to be doing a LOT of reading this year!

New York in the 1970s, Daniel Allen Cox's new novel, Artist Idris Khan, Denzel Washington + August Wilson = HBO series, Gentrification: Cultural Digest September 20

New York City in the 1970s: not so great

• American writer Edmund White (Blue Met 2014) asks us to stop romanticizing New York in the 1970s ("the city was edgy and dangerous," women carried mace and that people craved a city, largely believed to be at its worst and one of the most dangerous cities in the US, that was more democratic).
• Speaking of the 1970s, Montreal writer Daniel Allen Cox has a new book out, Mouthquake, set in Montreal in 1979. I wasn't able to attend the launch last week at Drawn & Quarterly, nor have I read the book yet, but it's getting some good buzz (more here and here) and if it's anything like his last two books, it'll be a really unusual and fascinating read. Plus the afterword is by Sarah Schulman one of my favourite contemporary writers (and woefully underappreciated, I think).
• Interview Magazine talks to amazing artist Idris Khan. I am so in love with his haunting, black & white work that I want to follow his exhibits around the world like a superfan, just in case I can ever afford to buy a piece.
• Denzel Washington will adapt August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle into a mini-series for HBO. Not a lot is known about the project yet, but Wilson was one of contemporary theatre's most original voices until he died suddenly in 2005 at age 60.
• Very relevant to Montrealers: PBS Newshour looks at how gentrification changes a neighborhood.

Daniel Allen Cox's new novel

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.

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

Exciting news: Edmund White at Blue Met 2013

This is great news for us. Not only will Edmund White be one of our featured authors in 2013, he will be part of a larger programming track of GLBT writing generally.

Edmund White is a writer who many people have told me they discovered while young. For me personally, it was reading A Boy's Own Story when I was about 14 or so (I think I came across it in the Eli M. Oboler Library in southern Idaho), a book which opened up an entirely new world to me: of cities, of gay life, of coming to understand oneself in a way that back in the 80s in small town America felt revolutionary.

It's hard not to overstate the way that the Internet changed our entire relationship with the rest of the world: growing up in a small town in the US, the only connection to the outside world was TV and the library. And it's something that gay men of a certain generation often talk about: discovering books while young that significantly altered our view of the world. Today with the Internet, all that's changed, it seems to me though I haven't lived in small town America for 20 years.

After reading A Boy's Own Story, it was The Beautiful Room is Empty (which chronicles Edmund White's early youth in the 50s and 60s up until the Stonewall Riots of 1969), I moved on to other books throughout my teenage and early adult life (though many of his books would have been impossible to get in small town Idaho: The Joy of Gay Sex? Forget about it!).

There have been two reactions to Edmund White's coming to the Festival in the spring. Gay men (of all ages) have raved, many have talked about the books I've noted above and how fundamental they were in influencing their own feelings and coming out. A few women I've spoken to (straight women) have also been enthusiastic. Francophones tend to know Edmund White because of his biography of Genet, perhaps his best known "mainstream" book (he also lived in Paris for many years and speaks French beautifully). A few gay women, particularly younger gay women, have shrugged and wondered why this should be of interest to them.

I can't say enough on this point: in his early works, White captures that sense of what it is to be young and questioning oneself, not just in terms of sexuality but also in terms of identity, understanding our relationship with the world, and challenging many of our assumptions about different ways of living. In that sense, he fit in with the beatniks (though he came later) and the hippies (though he has more of an intellectual's gaze on the world of non-conformity), presaging punks and hipsters and all the other things that define our modern age.

I am often surprised at this attitude on the part of some who think that a "feminist" writer has nothing to say to him or a "gay" (male) writer has nothing to say to her. One can understand what it means to be a man by reading The Second Sex or Backlash or The Feminine Mystique in addition to understanding the limitations that our society places on women and the different kinds of challenges women face as they make their way through the world.

And the same can be said of a writer like Edmund White: his tales are both specific to a time and place but with universal applications (with so many resonance to issues of today): what it means to be different, to challenge others around us, to hide our true selves, to be afraid of opening up.

Mainly, though, I just know Edmund White's events will be memorable because he hasn't come to Montreal often as an author and it's a rare chance to hear in the flesh one of the premier voices of the last two generations of American literature.