Open Book and the Literary Press Group of Canada have teamed up to offer you four chances to win a library of seven new books by the buzzed-about authors involved in the LPG's Fiery First Fiction Campaign.

Win this contest and spend your summer enjoying books by Arjun Basu (Squishy), Lesley Belleau (The Colour of Dried Bones), Jason Brink and illustrator Jim Westergard (Fly on the Wall), Lien Chao (The Chinese Knot), Claudia Dey (Stunt), Richard deMeulles (Ramasseur), Tricia Dower (Silent Girl), Nila Gupta (The Sherpa and Other Fictions), Shari Lapeña (Things Go Flying), Richard Lemm (Shape of Things to Come), Naomi K. Lewis (Cricket in a Fist), Julie Paul (The Jealousy Bone), Pamela Stewart (Elysium) and Nathan Whitlock (A Week of This).

The aim of the campaign is to introduce readers to an exciting roster of first-time fiction writers and their new books. Each week in May, Open Book will post four questions about FFF author interviews. Send your answers to clelia@openbooktoronto.com, and your name will be entered in a draw for this outstanding collection of books.

This week’s questions are:

1. How many times has Nathan Whitlock read War of the Worlds?




2. After reading which poet did Nila Gupta fall in love with poetry?




3. Which “mousy” man is Jason Brink’s favourite fictional character?




4. Which "multi-faceted" rock star is Richard deMeulles’s favourite "fictional" character?

The winner will also receive a snazzy FFF bag. Even if you don’t win, you can still have your own FFF bag by heading to a participating bookstore and picking up a copy of one of the FFF books. The LPG is hosting FFF events across Canada during May. The Toronto event is on May 12 at Supermarket. Go to our events page for details. Go to the FFF blog to read more about the campaign. Sign up for the FFF Facebook group for updates throughout May.

Journalist John Scully was recently interviewed on Canada AM about his latest book, Am I Dead Yet? (Fitzhenry & Whiteside). In his interview, he discusses war zones, depression, terrorists and freedom fighters. He also offers advice to young journalists: "be passionate, believe and have courage... It’s a vocation and you have to be dedicated.... The reason we do it is to give the truth to people who have the right to know what's going on." You can watch the clip here: http://watch.ctv.ca/news/Redirect/?ClipId=52602

The launch for Am I Dead Yet? is on Wednesday, May 21 at Ben McNally Books (366 Bay Street, Toronto). For more details, visit our events page.

John Scully knows more about war zones than almost anyone, dead or not dead yet. In his storied 50-year career, he’s worked at the BBC, CBC, and CTV. He’s braved violence in Iraq, Sarajevo, Uganda, and Northern Ireland. In his important new book Am I Dead Yet?, John shares some of his most harrowing experiences. Now, after leaving the war zones to others, he’s lashing out at something that’s more infuriating to him than the thought of a bullet to his head: the state of today’s news. John will be Open Book’s Writer in Residence for August 2008.

The launch for Daughter of War (Fitzhenry & Whiteside) by Marsha Skrypuch was held at Another Story Bookshop on April 23. At the launch, Skrypuch discussed her book with author Jessica Westhead (Pulpy and Midge, Coach House Books). You can look at photos from the event at Open Book's Flickr page.

Daughter of War is a Young Adult novel is set in Turkey and Syria during World War I. It is about Kevork and his betrothed, Marta, two Armenian teenagers who try to maintain their love and loyalty for each other during the war and the Armenian genocide in Turkey.

Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch is the author of many books for children and young adults, including Call Me Aram, Aram’s Choice, Silver Threads, Enough, The Hunger and Hope’s War. Her novel about the Armenian genocide, Nobody’s Child, was nominated for the Red Maple Award, the Alberta Rocky Mountain Book Award, and the B.C. Stellar Award; it was also listed by Resource Links as a “Best Book.” An English scholar and former librarian, Marsha lives in Brantford, Ontario, with her husband and son.

Catherine Graham is the author of The Watch, Pupa and The Red Element. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and through Descant’s NowHearThis writer-in-schools program. Her work has been anthologized internationally and published in The New Quarterly, Literary Review of Canada, Taddle Creek and The Fiddlehead. Join Catherine Graham, Jason Camlot and Stuart Ross for the Insomniac Press / Punchy Writers Launch at Dora Keogh Traditional Irish Pub in Toronto on Wednesday, May 21. Visit our events page for details.

OB:

Tell us about your latest book, The Red Element.

CG:

Unlike Pupa, my last book which was divided into sections, The Red Element flows from one poem to another. In addition to the colour red, you’ll find flying arms, doodles, pigeons, willows, stars and terrible ponds.

OB:

Did you have a specific readership in mind when you wrote your book?

CG:

Not really. I’m hoping poetry lovers from all walks of life will find something to relate to.

OB:

What poets got you interested in poetry?

CG:

When I was writing my first poems, I was completing an MA in creative writing in Northern Ireland. The program concentrated on Irish/Northern Irish/American poets and a few from the UK. Some of the poets that got me interested were: Elizabeth Bishop, Carol Ann Duffy, Seamus Heaney, Wallace Stevens, Derek Mahon, Eavan Boland.

OB:

What was your first publication?

CG:

The Watch. It was published when I lived in Northern Ireland. The poems were about my attempts to come to terms with the deaths of my parents. It was through grief that I came to writing poetry.

OB:

Describe your ideal writing environment.

CG:

A quiet place is important but for me what’s more important is a quiet mind – one free of worries and concerns so that images and word rhythms can rise to the surface.

OB:

What are you reading right now?

CG:

The Sentinel by A. F. Moritz, Little Eurekas by Robyn Sarah and Amsterdam by Ian McEwan are some of the books on my bedside table.

OB:

If you had to choose three books as a “Welcome to Canada” gift, what would those books be?

CG:

I really don’t know how to answer this question – too many amazing voices to choose from, perhaps an illustrated book like Oh Canada by Ted Harrison.

OB:

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received as a writer?

CG:

When I entered the writing life, I took a creative writing course with Barbara Gowdy. Her comment – your subject matter chooses you – touched me deeply. I often pass this advice on to my own creative writing students.

OB:

Describe the most memorable response you’ve received from a reader.

CG:

A couple of years ago when my partner and I were out in BC, he secretly arranged for us to visit one of my writing heroes – P K Page. After a lovely afternoon at her home, I gave her a copy of my book, Pupa. “Thank you,” she said and then she looked me in the eye. “You know, I might not like it.” A week later she sent me an email to let me know how much she liked my work. I was thrilled.

OB:

What is your next project?

CG:

In addition to teaching creative writing at U of T, poetry coaching and leading more creativity workshops, I’m gearing up for the launch of The Red Element. But more poems, for sure.

""In her stunning new volume of poems, The Red Element, Catherine Graham distills the whirling ambiguities of memories into gorgeous, mysterious single images, making the short poem triumph again on the Canadian literary landscape. With the dense, new energy of The Red Element, where all the poems form a bravura lyrical sequence, Graham proves herself as one of Canada's premier younger poets." — Molly Peacock Visit the Insomniac Press website to read more about the The Red Element by Catherine Graham.

In April, the Literary Review of Canada asked contributors to the journal to "name and describe the most memorable Canadian poem they knew." The list was so extensive that the LRC had to publish it in two parts. Part One, “Atwood to Lowry, plus Anonymous,” was published in April, and Part Two, “MacEwen to Webb,” was published this month. You can read the contributors descriptions of the poems they nominated at the LRC online. The purpose of the list is to “send you running to your poetry anthologies, bookstores, the internet or the library to reread — or perhaps read for the first time — some of Canada’s most memorable poems.”

Should the list also inspire you to discover fresh new Canadian poetry, there are some readings in Toronto that you'll want to check out. The Insomniac Press/ Punchy Writers Spring Poetry Launch for The Debaucher by Jason Camlot, The Red Element by Catherine Graham and Dead Cars in Managua by Stuart Ross is at Dora Keogh Traditional Irish Pub on Wednesday, May 21 at 7:00 p.m. Jacob McArthur Mooney (The New Layman’s Almanac), Kurt Zubatiuk (Ekstasis) and Domenico Capilongo (I Thought Elvis was Italian) are reading at the IV Lounge Reading Series on Friday, May 23 at 8:00 p.m.

A Dose of No-Nonsense is a regular sampling from the No-Nonsense Guides from Between The Lines. By Paula Brill from BTL.

Each year an estimated 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders, of whom approximately 80 per cent are women and girls, and up to 50 per cent are children.

No-Nonsense Guide to International Migration • New edition

Find out more about the No-Nonsense Guides and other fine books from Between The Lines at the press's website.

Join the BTL's Facebook group for regular updates.

On Friday, May 9, writers and readers gathered at 326 Dundas Street West, Toronto to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the IV Lounge Reading Series. The audience enjoyed readings by Dani Couture, Jim Johnstone, Paul Vermeersch, Colin Carberry, Karen Press, Rick Crilly, Jacob Scheier, Adrienne Weiss, Rabea Murtaza and John McFetridge.

Photographer Lisa Myers was there to take photos for Open Book. Visit our Flickr page to look at photos from the event.

Daphne Marlatt is the author of several books of poetry, including Steveston, Touch to My Tongue, Salvage and This Tremor Love Is. Her most recent poetry collection, The Given, was published this spring by McClelland & Stewart. She is also the author of two acclaimed novels, Ana Historic and Taken. Marlatt lives in Vancouver where she is a teacher and editor of numerous literary publications, including The Capilano Review and Tessera, which she co-founded.

OB:

Tell us about your latest book, The Given.

DM:

This book was begun some 10 years ago with the intention of writing a “fictomem,” a fictionalized memoir about growing up in the 1950s in suburban North Vancouver. Its minimal narrative is constructed around the growing difference between a daughter assimilating into teenage culture and an unassimilated British colonial mother who sinks into depression while trying to live up to the “good mother, expert housewife” standard of the period. I saw it, still see it, as the 3rd in a trilogy that began with my novels Ana Historic and Taken. Formally, I wanted to experiment with a sort of prose collage that would allow various voices from that period to sound, and then contrast that with a pastiche from the very urban neighbourhood of the Downtown Eastside in which I live. The Given turns out to be a long poem in prose fragments, a ceremony for those who have left or died suddenly and who go on living in us.

OB:

Did you have a specific readership in mind when you wrote The Given?

DM:

Not really. I was always surprised by the extent of the readership for Ana Historic so I thought perhaps some of those fiction readers would be drawn to it, but then I hope that this book will also draw poetry lovers.

OB:

What poets got you interested in poetry?

DM:

When I was learning to write in the 1960s I was reading, and strongly influenced by, the Modernists, Ezra Pound, H.D., Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and a younger generation, the Black Mountain poets, notably Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley and Charles Olson. But then I was also interested in the fiction written by H.D., Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras. As a young poet I grew up with and learned so much from the work of George Bowering, bp Nichol, Fred Wah, Michael Ondaatje and Phyllis Webb. And then later the fiction and poetry of Nicole Brossard, Louky Bersianik and Jovette Marchessault – in fact, at a certain point, prose and poetry became no longer separate categories for me.

OB:

What was your first publication?

DM:

A novella called “The Sea-Haven,” which I wrote while taking Earle Birney’s fiction-writing workshop at UBC and which I finished by skipping other classes to sit in a solitary carrel in the library and imagine/write. That was when I learned how much sustained concentration fiction requires.

OB:

Describe your ideal writing environment.

DM:

I have an upstairs very small study in the house I share with my partner, Bridget MacKenzie. Its walls are lined with books and a few broadsides and photos (one by Roy Kiyooka and a photo collage by Phyllis Webb). The room looks out onto a small cluster of birch and pine trees, a back alley and the houses opposite, with mountains, just visible in winter, behind their rooftops. I sit at one desk facing the window for initial writing in longhand with pencil on unlined paper. Then I sit at my other desk with my back to the window and key what I’ve written into the computer where the writing starts to immediately undergo changes.

OB:

What are you reading right now?

DM:

Snow by Orhan Pamuk (Maureen Freely trans.), The Shovel by Colin Brown, Orphic Politics by Tim Lilburn and Sooner by Margaret Christakos. Also Syd Field’s Screenplay.

OB:

If you had to choose three books as a “Welcome to Canada” gift, what would those books be?

DM:

Too many factors to consider: what is the reading language of this person being welcomed? French, English, something else? How much does this person already know about Canada and its history? I would want to offer titles from our so-called classics in both English and French, as well as titles by First Nations and Metis authors and those from other major communities – Asian, South Asian, South East Asian, Africadian and other Black Canadian writers, Ukrainian, Mennonite, Jewish, and so on. How can all this be reduced to 3? Maybe start with a good map of Canada?

OB:

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received as a writer?

DM:

“Write what you have to,” or something similar. Roy Kiyooka.

OB:

Describe the most memorable response you’ve received from a reader.

DM:

I’m always moved when audience members or readers tell me that a book I’ve written spoke to their own lives.

OB:

What is your next project?

DM:

As usual, there are several on the go. Most immediately, I am working on a short series of poem/stories based on work by earlier B.C. women writers or artists. One of these, in collaboration with book designer Frances Hunter in Victoria, is scheduled for publication in December by Jack Pine Press (Saskatoon) in a limited book/art edition.

"One of our most powerful postmodern poets, able to say so much quietly, there, or just under the surface.... Marlatt is our poet of the heart, documenting movements and missives like no one else can, conveying the painstaking minutiae of process, thought and feeling." - Books in Canada Visit the McClelland & Stewart website to read more about the The Given by Daphne Marlatt.

June and July will be bountiful months for Canadian fans of crime fiction. The winners of the Arthur Ellis Awards are announced on June 5 and Bloody Words VIII runs in Toronto from June 6 to 8. On July 12, across the country in Vancouver, the Symposium on the Book is "pulling back the covers on crime writing in Canada" and ten of "Canada’s top experts on all aspects of crime writing and publishing [will] delve deep not only into the techniques and mechanics of writing crime, but into the role and place of 'genre' writing in Canada."

The symposium will feature such notable authors as ECW Press's Anne Emery (Sign of the Cross, Obit, Barrington Street Blues), McClelland & Stewart editor Dinah Forbes and crime fiction columnist Margaret Cannon. The panel discussion will be moderated by mystery writer Mary Jane Maffini (Too Hot to Handle, Rendez-Vous Crime), and the panelists will discuss such questions as, "How does an author develop a fan base? How do the creators of crime fiction make their stories work so well and instill such loyalty? What distinguishes 'good' crime fiction from the 'schlock'? How does true crime writing differ yet complement crime fiction? And what does a crime writing editor look for in a manuscript?"

On April 30, the Crime Writers of Canada announced the shortlist for the Arthur Ellis Awards. Jon Redfern is one of the nominees in the Best Novel category for his fall 2007 historical mystery, Trumpets Sound No More (Rendez-Vous Crime). Set in London in 1840, shortly after the London Detective Police Force was formed, Trumpets Sound No More features Inspector Owen Endersby, who is on the case of a murder of a theatre entrepreneur. At the Rendez-Vous Crime website, you can listen to Redfern talk about his novel and the meticulous research he did to maintain historical accuracy. Concerned with being true to mid-nineteenth century detectives' manners of speech and cultural attitudes, he looked up interviews with detectives from the period and relied on nineteenth-century anthropological studies, such as Henry Meyhew’s London Labour and the London Poor. Redfern's account of his research is fascinating, and the site also features an audio clip of publisher Sylvia McConnell discussing historical crime fiction and Trumpets Sound No More, which is also well worth listening to.

Jon Redfern has been a free-lance journalist for both the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail, a story editor for the CBC and a children’s playwright. Since 1989 his short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals including Grain, Event and Descant. His interest in nineteenth century theatre developed during his graduate studies at the University of Toronto. His thesis on operas and melodramas of London’s theatres became the basis for Trumpets Sound No More. His first novel, The Boy Must Die, won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel in 2002. Redfern is a Professor of English at Centennial College in Toronto.