Hello Surrey!

On Saturday, April 3rd at 2:00PM I'll be signing at Black Bond Books, 1-15562 24th Avenue in Surrey. For more information, please click here.

Mary Renault on the Lost Man Booker Shortlist!

Hurrah! Mary Renault's Fire from Heaven has been shortlisted for the so-called Lost Man Booker prize. The 1970 novel looks at the first twenty years of the life of Alexander the Great from the boy's own point of view.

From the Man Booker website: "The Lost Man Booker is the brainchild of Peter Straus, the honorary archivist to The Booker Prize Foundation. He realised that in 1971, just two years after it began, the Booker Prize ceased to be awarded retrospectively and became - as it is today - a prize for the best novel of the year of publication. At the same time the award moved from April to November and, as a result, a wealth of fiction published for much of 1970 fell through the net and was never considered for the prize."

To see the full list of contenders and vote for your favourite, please click here.

The Paperbacks Are Coming! The Paperbacks Are Coming!

The trade paperback edition of The Golden Mean is in stores now. Available from amazon.ca, chapters.indigo.ca, Black Bond Books, and lots of other places too. (Though not BC Ferries, since the trade paperback still features a bare bum on the cover. Oh, BC Ferries. You have one too, you know you do!)

Hello, Ontario!

I'll be reading at a number of events in and around Toronto to coincide with the paperback release of The Golden Mean:

On Monday, March 22 at 7:30PM, I'll be reading at the Grimsby Authors Series with Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie). For more information, please click here.

On Tuesday, March 23, I'll be reading at the PEN Authors Series at the Toronto Badminton and Racquet Club. For more information, please click here.

On Wednesday, March 24 at 7:00PM and Thursday, March 25 at 12:30PM, I'll be reading at the Toronto Public Library's Eh List Author Series, 170 Memorial Park Avenue. For more information, please click here.

On Thursday, March 25 at 8:00PM, I'll be at the Roselawn Reading Series in Port Colborne. For more information, please click here.

CNQ Review

"How refreshing to find fiction – and Canadian fiction, at that! – unafraid to make demands on its readers’ intelligence, unafraid to tackle a deeply unfashionable subject, unafraid to eschew postmodernism’s stale devices of fracture and discontinuity. How refreshing to find a woman writer who assumes, as she should, that access to the world is her right, and who boldly proceeds to slip into the skin of a third-century BCE Greek intellectual – and not just any intellectual, but the ancient world’s most famous philosopher. Combine all that with the dense economy of the prose, the utterly contemporary voice of its protagonist, and the result is rich, fresh, strange, and deeply original."

To read Patricia Robertson's full review for Canadian Notes and Queries, please click here.

Words on the Water

On Friday, March 19 and Saturday, March 20, I'm so pleased to be taking part in Words on the Water, aka the Campbell River Writers' Festival. For more information, please click here.

BC Book Prizes

Woo-hoo! The Golden Mean has been nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. The other nominees are:

Michael Turner, 8 x 10
Ian Weir, Daniel O'Thunder
Cathleen With, Having Faith in the Polar Girls' Prison
Deborah Willis, Vanishing and Other Stories

Winners will be announced April 24, 2010 in Victoria. For more information, and for lists of nominees in all the categories, please click here.

Spindle-Shanked

Anyone interested in further reading on Aristotle could start with Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction, by Jonathan Barnes (brother of Julian, of Flaubert's Parrot fame). Here's a taste:

"Of Aristotle's character and personality little is known. He came from a rich family. He was allegedly a dandy, wearing rings on his fingers and cutting his hair fashionably short. He suffered from poor digestion, and is said to have been spindle-shanked. He was a good speaker, lucid in his lectures, persuasive in conversation; and he had a mordant wit. His enemies, who were numerous, accused him of arrogance. His will, which has survived, is a generous document. His philosophical writings are impersonal; but they suggest that he prized both friendship and self-sufficiency, and that, while conscious of his place in an honourable tradition, he was properly proud of his own attainments. As a man, he was, perhaps, admirable rather than amiable."



To learn more about Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction, please click here.

Amazon.ca First Novel Award Short-List

I'm so pleased that The Golden Mean has been short-listed for the 34th Annual Amazon.ca First Novel Award. The other nominees are:

Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, No Place Strange
Jessica Grant, Come, Thou Tortoise
Damian Tarnopolsky, Goya's Dog
Dragan Todorovic, Diary of Interrupted Days
Ian Weir, Daniel O'Thunder

For more information, please click here or read the National Post's coverage here or Quill and Quire's coverage here or cbc.ca's coverage here.

North Island College Reading

On Monday, March 8th I'll be reading from The Golden Mean at North Island College (Comox Valley campus), at 7:00PM in the Stan Hagen Theatre. For more information, please phone 250-334-5001 or click here.