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

Blue Met 2014 Literary Prize: Canada’s Literary Prizes

As far as literary prizes go, one of Montreal's biggest international prizes is the Blue MEtropolis International Literary Prize. Every year since 2000, we've awarded the prize to some of the most beloved writers in the world. They include such luminaries as Norman Mailer (2001), Mavis Gallant (2002), Carlos Fuentes (2005), Joyce Carol Oates (2012) and Colm Toibin (2013).

So who's gonna win for 2014? This year we had a long list of nearly 100 writers from all over the world. After deliberations, discussions, arguments (some heated), we were left with this respectable short-list:

Haruki Murakami: perennial Nobel prize nominee. One of Japan's biggest names (writer or otherwise). His books have been made into movies. He writes about running. He loves Cutty Sark and Miles Davis. He has his finger on the pulse of what's happening in contemporary Japan, a point of view we often don't have access to in Canada so readily.

Richard Ford: he should win just for naming a novel Canada. The

audacity of it, especially since it's about bank robbers. But in addition to books set on the high plains of Saskatchewan, he writes about New Jersey hooligans, traveling in Mexico and mid-life crises. Plus he's a real gentleman as about 25 people who've met him have told me. A real southerner who hasn't written about the south in a long time (someone recently told me he used to teach Richard Ford short-stories at "Old Miss," trying to instill a sense of pride in young southerners about one of their own.

Barbara Kingsolver: environmentalist, historian, complex creator of stories that straddle the personal and the political. Kingsolver is an under appreciated talent. Sure, she's made money off her books. Sure, Oprah digs her. But that almost undercuts the seriousness with which she she spends months and even years researching, writing, dedicating her life to her craft. She's written to me twice (on paper, mailed with stamps), kind and heart-felt letters that thanked me for inviting her to the Festival. I have four hand-written letters in my office from authors and two are from her. And when she's not crafting amazing novels like The Lacuna (personally I adore this novel), she's mentoring younger writers and putting her money where her mouth (or pen) is by supporting important environmental causes.

Eduardo Galeano: OK I have to admit that I have had a soft spot in my
heart for Galeano since I was a young man backpacking through Latin America. Long before the late Hugo Chavez handed over a copy of The Open Veins of Latin America to Barack Obama on a state visit (turning Galeano into that kind of leftist writer though he certainly is a certain kind of leftist writer). He's the kind of writer whose book you keep in your backpack for months at a time, dipping in and out of it, alternately moved, tickled, shocked, appalled, and knocked over. 

One of these amazing writers is going to be awarded our 2014 Blue Metropolis International Literary Prize and he or she will be announced at our official press conference next week: April 2, 2014 at 11:15 a.m. at Hotel 10 in downtown Montreal.

In addition to the prestige and hearty handshakes, the winner will receive a check for $10,000 and first-class travel to the Festival, in addition to a rocking glass-engraved trophy!

Literary Prizes and Capitalist Tendencies

I've been thinking about the plethora of literary prizes lately and all the stories that have been circulating about various prizes and ways that prizes are awarded and how juries are organized, etc., and it occurs to me that the reason we completely reorganized our Grand Prize jury in the last few years was to alleviate some of the pressure that prize-awarding bodies have been under to make the process as independent and transparent as possible. To be honest, this was something that was suggested to me and so when I came on board, we completely reorganized the way we awarded the Blue Met Grand Prize without much thought or discussion.

And we've been happy with the results. Our last few winners (Colm Toibin, Joyce Carol Oates, Amitav Ghosh) have attracted the public and received a good deal of press attention. Oates and Ghosh have published some solid work since their wins, too. (Toibin only won six months ago, so we should give the guy some room!)

Joyce Carol Oates, winner in 2012

The down side if, of course, that the independence of the jury limits certain aspects of the
prize. In past years, we typically alternated between awarding the prize to a Francophone one year and an Anglophone the next year. But with an independent jury, that doesn't always work, particularly given the criteria of our prize (especially since we change our jury each year). Letting a jury decide, though, allows us to get a winner who represents more than just our own opinions in the office about who should win. We want people to think of the prize as a community of readers who award it with jury members composed of journalists, editors, cultural workers and even politicians.

Carlos Fuentes, winner in 2005

Writers who have concerns about literary prizes, about "grading" writers or works, about ranking something which is inherently subjective, miss the point, it seems to me. The honest truth is that prizes are less about "quality," really, and more about putting a temporary spotlight on a writer. A prize is something the media understands, it's something government bodies understand, it's something the public understands. In many ways, our prizes each year are a kind of stand-in for our Festival for we have often found that if our prize winner is a big name writer, our Festival gets a lot more attention from the press and we sell a lot more tickets. The name of our winner also influences who come to our Festival: when it's a Francophone, we get a lot more Francophones, when it's a man, we get more men, etc.

So while the prize is given to the writer, it's less about ranking or grading work or individuals than it is about putting a temporary spotlight on a writer or on his or her work for the world to have a chance to look along with us. It's about quality, of course, but there's a lot more to it than that: it's about writers who are contributing to the literary milieu, but it's also about availability, innovation, tradition, stage presence, and attracting the public. So "the work" is only one part of a larger picture. At any rate, most of our prizes (we have two others) are for a body of work which means something different than a prize for a single work.

Paul Auster, winner in 2004

What I appreciate about the way we award our prize is the rigorous debate that goes on behind the scenes: disagreements, arguments, it can get heated at times. But it's a real discussion and there's more to it than just throwing a big pot of money at it and lining up all our media contacts and sending them out like flying monkeys. It's also a varied prize and we've awarded it to writers from at least 8 different countries (though most with strong connections to Canada, the US or France). A look at our past winners reveals no "flash in the pan," and all of our laureates so far (two have subsequently died, Norman Mailer and Carlos Fuentes) have continued to do amazing work; this stands in contrast to other prizes which seem to be more about the dollar amount of the award (as if that makes any difference whatsoever to anyone but the writer), and the whole media campaign which surrounds it.

Another thing I've been told by a few winners that they haven't accepted our award because it pays X $ amount but because it means something in a larger context. Anyway, most of our laureates could ask a lot more to appear in public than our prize pays them, but they still come happily...

The Man Asian Literary Prize

There is no shortage of literary prizes out there (including Blue Met's two best-known prizes, the Blue Met Grand Prize and the Arab Prize) but one prize that I pay close attention to each year is the Man Asian Literary Prize.

It's an odd prize in many ways because though it represents a huge area (1/3 of the world's population or something) with a vast number of languages, it recognizes work either written in or translated into English. The countries represented vary, as well: from Afghanistan to Hong Kong to Japan to Turkey to Vietnam, 34 in total.

The prize is only 5-6 years old and has already had a bumpy ride, though they certainly have chosen some fascinating works over its short life. After this year, the sponsoring organization, The Man Group, will move on, leaving the prize to find a new sponsor. Not an easy feat, I am sure...

Some really fascinating works as part of its 2012 long list:

Hiromi Kawakami's The Briefcase (Japan)
Orhan Pamuk's Silent House (Turkey)
Tie Ning's The Bathing Women (China)
Tan Twan Eng's The Garden of Evening Mists (Malaysia)

and, of course, Kim Thuy's Ru.

And this is just a short sampling of the long list. I really like this prize and I think it's necessary since so many prizes are based in the West with a handful of works nominated for several awards. I am also a big fan of promoting non-Western literature and that there is a translation component to it as well.

I've not read all the work on the long-list but I am a big fan of Kawakami (and have written about her before) whose work is lyrical and meditative, and Tie Ning has done some interesting work, too (he's been writing for 30 years). Naturally, I love Ru as well... and the Malaysian writer's work has been on my radar since the fall (though I've not read it yet).

The short list will be announced Wednesday, January 9 at 6pm in Hong Kong. Really hoping Kim Thuy, Kawakami and Ning's work all make it through to the short-list.

Charles Taylor Prize and other Literary Awards...

A bit swamped in literary prize season this year: QWF, GGs, Giller, Cundill, and now the Charles Taylor announces their long list. The last couple of weeks it's been all about non-fiction. Though I try to read as much as I can, I have to admit that I read less non-fiction than novels or graphic novels. That said, I have read some books noted in some of the latest long or short lists. A few highlights:

Montrealer, Julija Šukys

Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaite by Julija Šukys. This one has been nominated for a few awards and I am really happy to see it on the CT list this year. The book is haunting, told with grace and skill, and is interesting formally: it's part biography, part memoir, part historical document. The core of it, though, is the life story of this fascinating woman who helped save many Jews during the Holocaust but ended up dying impoverished in a Paris apartment, nearly completely forgotten. By re-reading and reflecting on her letter, Šukys gives voice to an important individual, a lover of books, a multi-lingual and opinionated woman.

The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Celia Franca by Carol Bishop-Gwyn. This book has received a good deal of attention since its publication (also nominated for several awards) and tells the story of the founder of the National Ballet of Canada. Franca had an extraordinary life and reading about it only underscores the influence she had on the Canadian arts.

Actually there are several other books of note there: Noah Richler's, the book on P.K. Page, and Ross King's book, Leonardo and the Last Supper.

I know from talking to some of the people there that the Charles Taylor jurors get well over 130 books each year to choose from and it's certainly not easy to sort through so many in order to come up with that list.

On a semi-related non-fiction note, I was at the Cundill Prize ceremony the other night and saw Stephen Platt win for his book Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, a book which traces the history of the Taiping Rebellion in the middle of the 19th century in China, a rebellion which (even conservative estimates suggest) killed 20 million people and late had a major influence on the fall of the Qing Dynasty and the subsequent years of civil war (and, one could argue, the founding and establishment of the Chinese Communist Party). I thought for sure Stephen Pinker would win for his book on violence, The Better Angels of our Nature (he's a Montreal boy, after all), but was also happy to see a book on Chinese history being so widely recognized.

CanLit: Off to the Governor General Awards!

Banquet in a couple hours' time to announce the winners of the Governor General's awards. I have to say that I really like the GG's. The books they pick are a broader representation of what Canadian writers are doing than other prize committees; they recognize genres that don't get as much attention in Canada or internationally (drama, illustration) and it's one of the rare times when French and English titles are put down alongside one another given there is a great deal of segregation in our language communities nationally (and even locally to some extent, a Festival like Blue Metropolis is one of the only places in the world where English and French are allowed to be in dialogue with one another!).

Some of my faves are (these are not necessarily my pics to win since I haven't read all the long-listed books. Plus I feel like I should remain relatively unbiased!):

ENGLISH (but only the categories I feel qualified to assess!):
Vincent Lam: The Headmaster's Wager (fiction)
David McGimpsey: Li'l Bastard (poetry)
James Pollock: Sailing to Babylon (poetry)
Nahlah Ayed: A Thousand Farewells (non-fiction)
Sheila Fischman (Kim Thuy): Ru (translation)

FRANÇAIS 
Catherine Mavrikakis: Les derniers jours de Smokey Nelson (Romans et nouvelles)
France Daigle: Pour sûr (Romans et nouvelles)
Hélène Dorion: Coeurs, comme livres d'amour (poesie)
Pascal Riendeau: Méditation et vision de l'essai: Roland Barthes, Milan Kundera et Jacques Brault (Essais)
Lori Saint-Martin et Paul Gagné (Miriam Toews): Irma Voth (Traduction)
Lori Saint-Martin et Paul Gagné (Ann Charney): La petite cousin de Freud (Traduction)

I love David McGimpsey's book. And Nahlah Ayed's. And Catherine Mavrikakis is one of the most innovative writers working today.

Good luck to everyone! :)

Poet Laureates and Angry Reactions

So the poet Natasha Tretheway was named as the US Poet Laureate this week. Another well-known poet, whose name I won't mention, then wrote a scathing post on his Facebook page about her lack of talent and how poetry has been dumbed down (some clumsy metaphor about lowering the bar so low, we trip on it).

A lesson in the dangers of emotional reactions, I guess. I am all for strong opinions about writers and their work, but reacting in anger or frustration seems like such a dangerous road to go down. I learned the lesson long ago that writing just about anything while angry (Facebook posts, emails, blog posts) is never a good idea and always ends up being something I regret terribly.

Part of what Mr. Angry Poet reacts to, perhaps, is the simplicity of Trethaway's language. She is not, it's true, an overtly complex poet. Yet this tendency for certain male writers to dismiss certain female writers as talentless seems so 1962.  It gets at the heart of a common question I get: about which writers I would never invite. Last night over dinner, I was debating this with someone I had just met: whether a literary festival needs "good" writers in order to be considered successful. And it's something I feel strongly about: while "good" writers are fine, my goals as a Programming Director are to create interesting, complex and, yes, entertaining events. If that means including writers who are not considered "serious" or "good" writers, I really couldn't care less.

Another aspect of criticism easy to throw at Trethaway is how her "story" often seems to supersede her work, as if the details of her biography and those influences on her poems are an integral part of her poems. They shouldn't be. Naturally, though, her experience does reflect a certain kind of American experience and Tretheway's exploration of race and class in modern America does seem to capture something important. But her poetry is very "accessible" (the word my former advisor used to use to dismiss a writer as "not serious," as if an inaccessible writer is naturally smarter. Please. "Inaccessibility" often just strikes me as bad writing. Period).

Natasha Tretheway

Of course, we can't have a Festival with just NYT bestsellers and we do need to present a wide array of writers (representing different ages, genders, life experience, etc.) so that we can appeal to as many different kinds of public as we can. But though I am a bit of a snob in terms of my own personal reading habits, I don't approach festival programming in the same way. As I often say, it's not "my" festival.

No matter how one feels about her work, Natasha Tretheway would be a great "get" for us though I imagine now she's going to be quite in demand so if anyone's hoping to see her in 2013, it's a long shot.

Incidentally, I am fascinated by Tretheway's work and her story personally. That said, I respect Mr. Angry Poet's work a lot more and find his work to be full of subtlety, humour, and intelligence.