Hello, New Brunswick!

From April 22-24 I'll be in Moncton, New Brunswick for the Frye Festival. A roundtable discussion; an evening of CanLit with Linden MacIntyre, Noah Richler, and Nino Ricci; Brunch and Books; the Frye Jam.... It should be a lot of fun. For more information, please click here.

Hello! Canada Women of the Year

I'm so honoured to be one of Hello! Canada's 2009 Women of the Year (alongside Olympic figure skater Joannie Rochette, astronaut Julie Payette, and Betty Fox). Check out the 26 April 2010 issue (with Shania Twain on the cover) to see the full list, plus Toronto photographer George (The Genius) Whiteside's lovely photo.

North Shore Writers Festival

On Monday, April 19 at 7:30PM, I'll be reading at the West Vancouver Memorial Library as part of the North Shore Writers Festival. The event is free but seating is limited. For more information, please click here.

Darwin's Bastards Launch

How do you follow up a novel about ancient Greece? With a short story about an alien, of course: rocket ship, robes, exoskeleton and all. I'm so pleased to have my short story "Remote Control" (first published in Geist magazine in 2000) in the brand new collection Darwin's Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow, published by Douglas and MacIntyre. The launch will be on Friday, April 16 at the Wise Hall and will feature readings / performances by Laura Trunkey, Anosh Irani, Jay Brown, Paul Carlucci, Oliver Kellhammer, Lee Henderson, Adam Lewis Schroeder, Timothy Taylor, Zsuzsi Gartner (mistress of ceremonies), and me. Costumes encouraged (not by me, particularly; I'm just repeating what I'm told). For more information about the launch, please click here. See you there!

UBC Bookstore Videos

Bobbi Macdonald and Treena Chambers discuss The Golden Mean.

I think the one on the right stole my hair.

Hello, Sechelt!

I'm so pleased to be reading at the Sechelt Arts Centre on Saturday, April 10 at 8:00PM. The reading is sponsored in part by the Sunshine Coast Arts Council. For more information, please click here.

BC Book Prizes Soiree

Come one, come all to the BC Book Prizes Soiree on Wednesday, April 7 from 7:00PM to 9:00PM at the Listel Hotel. Door prizes, book signing, a silent auction, light refreshments...free!

CBA Libris Awards Shortlist

The Golden Mean has been shortlisted for the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year. The other nominees are Linden MacIntyre for The Bishop's Man and Michael Crummey for Galore. Good company! Also, I'm tremendously honoured to be nominated for Author of the Year, alongside Linden MacIntyre and Alice Munro. And, best of all, my marvellous editor at Random House, Anne Collins, has been nominated for Editor of the Year. Winners will be announced May 29, 2010.

For more information, please click here.

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.

New Westminster Public Library Reading

I'm so pleased to be reading from The Golden Mean at the New Westminster Public Library on Tuesday, March 2 from 7:00-9:00PM. Please pre-register by phoning 604-527-4667. There will be books for sale on-site courtesy of Black Bond Books. For more information, please click here.

Commonwealth Writers' Prize

Hurray! The Golden Mean has been short listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book in the Caribbean and Canada region. The other short listed titles are:

The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels (Canada)
February by Lisa Moore (Canada)
Euphoria by Connie Gault (Canada)
Goya's Dog by Damian Tarnopolsky (Canada)
Galore by Michael Crummey (Canada)

The Golden Mean will now go through to the next phase of the competition, where the Caribbean and Canada region regional judging panel will meet to decide the two regional Commonwealth winners for Best Book and Best First Book. The regional winners will be announced at an event on 11 March in Granada, West Indies. The overall winners will be announced in Delhi, India, on April 12.

For more information, please click here.

bookbuffet.com

Find a link to a podcast of my recent book club visit in Whistler at bookbuffet.com.




•PART I: I give a synopsis of Aristotle's life and read from The Golden Mean
•PART II: I discuss my hypotheses that Aristotle was bipolar and Alexander suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome
•PART III: I talk about my upcoming book-the sequel to The Golden Mean

Word of the Day

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a satrap is a governor of a province in ancient Persia. The etymology is Middle English, from Latin satrapes, from Greek satrapēs, from Old Persian khshathrapāvan; literally, protector of the dominion.

In Aristotle's time, a number of Greek colonies existed along the coast of Asia Minor (contemporary Turkey). Aristotle himself was for a time a guest of a satrap named Hermias of Atarneus, and established a school in the city of Assos. Aristotle married Hermias's niece (or daughter or ward or concubine, it's not known for sure), a woman named Pythias. After Aristotle had left Assos, Hermias was captured by the Persian forces, tortured, and crucified. His last words were supposedly to assure his friends that he had "done nothing unworthy of philosophy". After his death, Aristotle wrote a hymn to virtue in his honour.

Here's a photograph of the remains of the Temple of Athena, in Assos:

Ancient Bling

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Greek and Roman collection:

"The pieces in this group are said to have been found together in Macedonia, near Thessaloniki, before 1913. The assemblage forms an impressive parure (matched set) - earrings, necklace, fibulae (pins), bracelets, and a ring - but it is not certain that they belong together, for the pieces do not show a clear uniformity of style....

The rock-crystal hoops of the bracelets (ca. 330-300 B.C.) have been carefully cut, carved, and polished to produce a twisted appearance, highlighted by wire bindings fitted into the valleys. The rams' heads emerge from long elaborate collars decorated with three friezes enclosed within bands of darts and bordered by plain beaded wire. The upper frieze, an ivy chain on a vine, is tied at the center with a Herakles knot and bears four bunches of grapes; the middle frieze has palmettes with pointed leaves; the third frieze, a palmette complex."

For more images and information, please click ganymede jewelry.

Mary Renault on "Lost Booker" Longlist!

Great news! Mary Renault's fabulous 1970 novel Fire From Heaven , about Alexander the Great's early years, has been longlisted for the so-called "Lost Booker". According to the Man Booker Prize website:

"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 in the year of publication. At the same time, the date on which the award was given moved from April to November. As a result of these changes, there was whole year's gap when a wealth of fiction, published in 1970, fell through the net. These books were simply never considered for the prize.

Now, 40 years on, a panel of three judges - all of whom were born in or around 1970 - has been appointed to select a shortlist of six novels from those books. They are journalist and critic, Rachel Cooke, ITN newsreader, Katie Derham and poet and novelist, Tobias Hill."

For more information, please click here.