Kung-fu Film Festival, Alice Munro to music, Roxane Gay in Montreal, Anthony Bourdain looks at how books are made: Cultural Digest September 18

• A Kung-fu Film Festival on Open Culture. These are all public domain films that you can watch online. A lot of them are bad bad bad but that's part of the fun.
• A young composer sets Alice Munro's Dear Life to music. It premiered last night in Ottawa. Hmmm...wonder if it'll tour.
• Got to check this out: American Bad Feminist author Roxane Gay talks to local activist and educator Rachel Zellars on stage in Montreal. This will be at Rialto Theatre in Mile End on October 22. Get your tickets early now since it's likely to sell out. One thing I love about these D&Q shows: if you buy Gay's book, you get the ticket for free. How cool is that? 
• Anthony Bourdain's show Raw Craft goes through the entire process of book-making (paper books, that is) from typeface to paper to printing. Though I've been involved in the book business for many years now, I've never seen this part of the creation. Wow.

Buy this at D&Q and get a free ticket to her show, Oct 22

Richard Ford wins Blue Met's 2014 Grand Prize

We are very happy to announce that American writer Richard Ford has been awarded the 2014 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prize. The prize, awarded since 2000, is given each year to a writer of international caliber. Past winners include Paul Auster, Marie-Clair Blais, A.S. Byatt, Margaret Atwood, Carlos Fuentes and others.

Ford is most recently known for his 2011 novel, Canada, which is set on the high plains of Saskatchewan

and tells the story of a young man whose life is overturned when his parents are arrested for bank robbery. It's a moving novel that shows how resilience is built into our characters, the will to survive and roll with the punches when life takes an unexpected turn.

Ford's earlier works include Independence Day, The Ultimate Good Luck (one of my personal favorites) and short story collections Rock Springs.

Richard Ford will be a part of three major events at the Festival:

On Friday, May 2, he will be interviewed on-stage at Chapters/Indigo at Montreal Trust by Fiona Downey. This event starts at 6pm and is free!

On Saturday, May 3, he will be on-stage with CBC's Michael Enright at the Bibliotheque Nationale on Maisonneuve downtown (at Berri-UQAM station). This event starts at 4pm and will include the awarding of the prize and an interview to be broadcast on CBC. Last year this event sold out before the Festival even started so get your tickets early to guarantee a spot. Tickets can be purchased at La Vitrine.

IMPAC/Dublin winner Kevin Barry

Finally, on Sunday, May 4 at 11:00am, Ford will appear with Irish writer Kevin Barry and Montreal writer Josip Novakovich at an event hosted by Slate Magazine's Stephen Metcalf: Structuring Landscape. With writers like Ford, Barry and Novakovich who all set their books in specific places that figure large in their work, the conversation should be interesting: from the plains of the prairies to pre-break up Yugoslavia to Ireland of the future. Tickets are available at La Vitrine.This event will be held at Hotel 10 in downtown Montreal.

Finally, Ford will be one of our featured readers at a very special event, A Tribute to Alice Munro. Ford, along with several others, will read an excerpt of a story by Munro as we celebrate this Canadian icon of the short-story. This is our official closing event on Sunday, May 4 at 4pm. This event will be held at Hotel 10 in downtown Montreal. Tickets will go fast for this one and can be purchased at La Vitrine.

Most Festival events (many are free) range from $7 to $15; or you can get an all-Festival pass for $65! These passes go very fast though (last year they sold out two weeks before the Festival!) so move quickly.

For the entire Festival program, go to the Blue Metropolis website and click on Festival!

A Tribute to Alice Munro, Sunday May 4 at 4pm

Alice Munro and the Nobel Prize

Hey this is really good news. Not terribly shocking, I must say, and a more conventional choice that Nobel committee has been making in the last few years. Except Llosa. And that's not to say that she doesn't deserve it, God knows. I also like that the committee has selected someone who writes short stories as her main medium. I can't think of another Nobel laureate who is known mainly for short stories, at least not in recent memory.

You go, girl

As per usual, Americans gripe that an American hasn't won in 20 years (Toni Morrison in 1993) which I always find incredibly irritating. Even the New York Times did it this morning. As if all or most writers come from the US. Yes, there are many famous writers in the USA but fame is not itself a criteria for the Nobel. (Sidebar: what is this obsession with fame? Americans - and Canadians for that matter - often equate fame with quality.) That said, I don't recall Canadian media outlets griping each year that a Canadian hasn't won when they award it to someone else.

I thought Murakami would be up there but maybe he's still too youngish. That said, only two other Japanese have won, Kenzaburo Oe (the year after Morrison) and Yasunari Kawabata way back in like 1968. I was also thinking perhaps Umberto Eco might be on the list though he often isn't listed there in the possible laureates.

We've been working on Alice for a few years, a number of years more like it. But she's not been in the greatest of health, so we've had no luck. I'm sure she'll manage to rest up to fly to Oslo to accept this, though. It's funny because I was just talking about Alice Munro last night to our board, an event that we are planning involving her work at the 2014 Festival.

So when it happens in late April, remember: it wasn't because she won the Nobel prize!

Anyway, it's a first for Canada! I believe? And will generate interest in her work (which has managed to do well for many years anyway).

Great news.