R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis definitely looks like a must-have book. A five-year effort, Crumb’s book manages to bring a completely new perspective to the first book of the bible by doing nothing more than producing illustrations which are as faithful to the text as possible. Paul Morris at Bomblog has a great overview.
Hooray! There’s a new small press in Toronto: The Workhorsery and they promise Canadian fiction, minus all the suffering.
You’ve been looking for a long time, haven’t you, searching for Canadian fiction without oppression, without the suffering. All those sensitive coming-of-age tragedies and poetic odes to the blowing wheat of the prairies have left you defeated. You have wandered the landscape of the Canadian novel and you have knelt and wept, traumatized by the weight of these stories. We understand. The Workhorsery is holding its arms out to you, waiting to offer comfort with stories that don’t hurt. Non-traumatizing Canadian fiction does exist. No, really, it does. And we want to prove it to you.
Their first release is You and the Pirates by Toronto author Jocelyne Allen. It appears to be about pirates, cats and Japan: three of our favourite things. Welcome Workhorsery!
The Quebec Writers Foundation, which celebrates and promotes English-language works by Quebec authors, has released the shortlists for its annual literary awards. The fiction shortlist is:
- Stripmalling by Jon Paul Fiorentino (ECW Press)
- The Mountain Clinic by Harold Hoefle (Oberon Press)
- Fall by Colin McAdam (Hamish Hamilton)
And INDEX // mb (who encourage us to blow their mind: Hey, we’ll try, let us find our sea legs first. Or did linking back to you just blow your mind?) points us towards tinygrants.ca, a microfunding site for contemporary art projects, and suggests that a similar system should be set up for funding writers. Great idea! So, who’s going to take up the banner?
Thanks to Maud Newton and Open Book: Toronto for the other links.
