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Readers' Roundup

 

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A Word from Hal

Relive the memories of your favourite Festival events with our audio archives. We will be posting audio from a 2011 Festival event each week leading up to the 2012 Festival and you can also look forward to a blog post from Hal sharing his thoughts, memories and stories from each event...

"In the lead up to the Festival last year, all I had to do was mention the name "Kate Beaton" to anyone under the age of 30 and they would say 'Kate Beaton is coming the Festival OMG!' And when she came she took the town by storm. Helen Oyeyemi first came to the Festival when she was 19 years old. She is just 25 with three novels under her belt and last year was her third visit to the Festival. We put both of them in the skilled hands of Bill Richardson and lead them to revealing insight after revealing insight, with some humour thrown in for good measure."

 

To listen to Conversations with Bill, click here. 

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Readers' Roundup

 

 

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A Word from Hal

Relive the memories of your favourite Festival events with our audio archives. We will be posting audio from a 2011 Festival event each week leading up to the 2012 Festival and you can also look forward to a blog post from Hal sharing his thoughts, memories and stories from each event...

"It was truly a gift that we were able to present some of the best writers in Canada, who have written fiction about the Canadian west, at the Festival last year. Guy Vanderhaeghe and Rudy Wiebe have helped shape our understanding of Canadian western history through their work. Marina Endicott and Pauline Holdstock have turned their attention to the west more recently, but their insight and vivid depictions of very different eras are evident in this excellent discussion. Our Wild West is very different from the place mythologized by our neighbours to the south".

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Q&A with Linden MacIntyre

Interview with Steven Brown

Why Men LieI need to be up front about this. I did not until recently understand that Mr. Linden MacIntyre, of CBC’s the fifth estate fame, is also an accomplished, indeed a Giller Prize winning, novelist. The cave I live in, I have to say, is dark. Its walls are thick. News, including literary news, can have a hard time getting in. I should move or at least get out more. Leaving that aside it was a great pleasure bringing myself up to date on the works of Linden MacIntyre, novelist.
    
The provocatively titled Why Men Lie, just published, is the third installment of The Cape Breton Trilogy.  Preceded by The Long Stretch (1999) and The Bishop’s Man (2009 Giller) it focuses on a character we have already met in the previous two books, Effie MacAskill Gillis, ex-wife of both John Gillis and his brother Sextus Gillis, and sister to Duncan MacAskill, the priest central to The Bishop’s Man.  Now in middle age, a successful academic and scholar based in Toronto, Effie reconnects with another Cape Bretoner the reader has met fleetingly in the previous novels, J.C. Campbell, and begins an affair with him.  Complications, as they’re likely to, ensue.

Aside from the Giller Prize for fiction Linden MacIntyre has won the Gemini Award for excellence inLinden MacIntyre broadcast journalism several times over.  He has also received a host of other awards for his fiction and non-fiction.  He is appearing at Incite with Vincent Lam at the Vancouver Public Library May 9.

Tell us about your book, Why Men Lie.

From a woman’s point of view, how men at middle age cope with declining self esteem and insecurities about masculinity. Inevitably they turn to women and, following a lifetime formula for winning the approval and reassurance of women in their lives --- manipulate by small and large deceptions.

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Readers' Roundup

 

 

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A Word from Hal

Relive the memories of your favourite Festival events with our audio archives. We will be posting audio from a 2011 Festival event each week leading up to the 2012 Festival and you can also look forward to a blog post from Hal sharing his thoughts, memories and stories from each event...

Mea culpa, mea culpa, I had intended to do short blog entries each time we posted a new audio event, but to be honest I have been distracted by the current flurry of activity around our next Festival. So I have to play catch-up here.

Ah yes, our first audio post is Bloody Scotland. Chosen because our three guests were so lively and funny. The moderator Lonnie Propas and I were nervous about asking them why the Scots are so good at writing about crime because we thought they might find the question obvious, tiresome or irritating. Instead they took it quite seriously and their answers were illuminating. Later that week when Denise Mina was getting ready to leave for the airport, suitcases packed and at the ready, she said she had enjoyed the Festival and even better, she had finished her next novel in her room at the Granville Island Hotel! We will be checking the acknowledgements when the book is published.

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Readers' Roundup

 

 

 

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Readers' Roundup

  • Finally, all our childhood dreams have come true!
  • We want to spend some time reading in this book dome
  • Confessions of a book lover, bibliophile, book addict, reader, lover of literature...
  • Ink inspired by the written word
  • Can you guess these novels based solely on sound effects?
  • From Palestine to Persepolis, the best examples of the graphic medium as a vehicle for autobiography
  • For the first time in 35 years, the Pulitzer Prize board has not awarded a prize for fiction. Has the Pulitzer board shirked its duty?
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    The Proust Questionnaire: Owen Laukkanen

    The Proust Questionnaire is believed to reveal an individual’s true nature. We have asked Incite authors 17 questions inspired by the questionnaire in an attempt to uncover who they are...

    What is your idea of perfect happiness?
    Perpetual motion. I’m happiest when I’m on a train, or a ferry, or driving somewhere far away. I think if I could live in that limbo between departure and destination forever, I would.

    What does your ideal day look like?
    My ideal day is one that is memorable. I want to have as many adventures as possible so that I can look back on my life and not feel that I’ve wasted my time.

    What is your greatest extravagance?
    Books, as far as my bank account is concerned. Taken less literally, I would say time. I do what I want to be doing, most of the time, and I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve found ways to make my living that way.

    What possession would you be heartbroken if you lost?
    I don’t have any particular totems that I keep with me for sentimental reasons, and though I’ve accumulated a lot of possessions, they’re just things. I’d be heartbroken if I lost the pictures I’ve taken, though, or the stories I’ve written so far.

    If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
    I suppose I would like to be more comfortable in my own skin.

    What childhood fear has followed you into adulthood?
    I’ve always been afraid that bad things would happen to my family.

    Do you take comfort in darkness or light?
    Yes. I mean, both.

    Do you remember your dreams?
    Some of them. Generally they’re the recurring ones, or the ones that have something to do with what I’m stressing about in real life. Some of them just disappear.

    How do you collect snippets of observations and ideas that come to you unexpectedly?
    I have a little notebook that my dad gave me for Christmas several years ago that I try to use, though more and more I use my iPhone or my computer for that stuff.

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