From Mark Tredinnick, Montreal Prize winner: Feeling Great
To win it feels, still, completely improbable. It's a huge delight and a big break and an honour I'll try to keep living up to in my writing.
Australian Poet Wins $50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize
Annie Ernaux: from L’Autre Fille (The Other Daughter)
When French author Annie Ernaux was ten years old, she overheard her mother conversing with a customer outside the family-run small grocery. The mother confided that there was a daughter before Annie, a six-year old girl who contracted diphtheria and who “died like a little saint.” L’Autre fille (The Other Daughter) is Annie Ernaux’s letter to the departed.
Annie Ernaux [Photo: Catherine Hélie, Gallimard]
$50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize update
The winner of this extravagant prize will be announced on December 15th, 7 p.m. EST.
From Guy Tiphane: Letter from San Francisco
Can machines select the next book for you to read? In this view of the future, a book's DNA can be compared to your “reader DNA,” and the bookseller – no longer a human but a machine automatically channeling books to you – is guaranteed growing sales forever.
And now a message for all the writers who did not win awards this fall
"If only I had won the Giller I would be irresistible.”
No. That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve got it backwards. You have to be irresistible in order to win the Giller.
2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Esi Egugyan www.http://www.esiedugyan.com/
To Isaac Babel from his daughter
"Well, here you are at last. We've been puzzled about you for so long;
although you left behind much love and devotion, you bequeathed us very
few facts." -- Nathalie Babel, 1964
From Yan Liang: Q & A with JJ Lee
JJ Lee is the author of GG-award nominated non-fiction book The Measure of a Man: A Father, A Son, and a Suit.
From Sophie Legrand : Q & A with Katherine Govier
I think landscape forms character. The people I write about are formed by a particular landscape. Maybe it’s harsh, maybe it’s dangerous, it affects what they are and who they are. I like to go and place myself in those landscapes.
Katherine Govier in Matsumoto, Japan
From Judith Fitzgerald: Winning ReLits & Righteous Fitz Bitz
ReLit winners show off their rings: (L-R) Craig Francis Power, Tony Burgess, Dani Couture, and ReLit founder Kenneth J. Harvey. (Photograph of ReLit Award recipients © 2011 John W. MacDonald. Used by written permission. All rights reserved. Duplication, reproduction, storage, or transmission of this work in whole or in part in any medium without the express written permission of its copyright holder is strictly forbidden. Just so you know, y'know?)