Let’s resolve Canada’s non-fiction crisis
Canada’s non-fiction crisis is the focus of this week’s SHuSH by Kenneth Whyte. That crisis is the absence of support in this country for research-based non-fiction – biography, history, and science. Whyte, publisher of Sutherland House, is spurred to comment by the recently announced five-book shortlist for the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust prize for…
Read MoreLooks like CANWRITE is where it’s at!
Be there or be square: https://canadianauthors.org/national/canwrite-2021-conference/
Read MoreFarley Mowat left a marvelous legacy
Back in 2014, I published the following reminiscence in the National Post. Strangely, it is no longer accessible on that newspaper’s site. So, in reponse to clamourous demand, I reprise the post here . . . . The recent death of Farley Mowat at 92 sparked heartfelt reminiscences and stirred up old controversies. But the…
Read MoreSHOUT-OUT to a Writers’ Trust Rising Star!
It’s time for a QUIET SHOUT-OUT to Keriann McGoogan for being named a Writers’ Trust of Canada Rising Star for 2021. Yup, the announcement came last week. McGoogan was one of five emerging writers to get the nod . . . along with $5,000 cash, a Banff-Centre residency, and a mentorship with an established author.…
Read MoreDead Reckoning thriving in Alaska
By David James / Anchorage Daily News In “Dead Reckoning,” his masterful history of Europe’s search for the Northwest Passage, Canadian historian Ken McGoogan argues persuasively that those explorers who paid close attention to Native peoples of the Arctic, and who worked closely with them, generally thrived. In an often deadly climate, learning from those…
Read MoreRemembering Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, dead at 101. I remember meeting him in 1987, at Le Grand Derangement, the international Quebec City Conference on Jack Kerouac. I drew on that phantasmagoria in my novel Kerouac’s Ghost. I got to hang out with Ferlinghetti because he and I were the only anglophone visitors who could speak French. The second time…
Read MoreMacGregors hail Flight of the Highlanders
Wayne MacGregor Parker writes in The Maple Leaf MacGregor . . . . This is a good book for all Canadians of Scottish descent to read. What sets this book apart from so many well documented accounts is that it goes beyond the clearances, crosses the ocean, and follows the struggles of these wretched souls…
Read MoreWould you believe The Great Sixties Novel?
Talk about resolutely unfashionable. Imagine a writer born in 1969 setting out to produce a 571-page novel set almost exclusively in the Psychedelic Sixties, in the years immediately preceding his birth. Britain’s David Mitchell is the anti-fashionista in question. And the only thing that can be said in his defense is that Utopia Avenue is…
Read MoreNow they’re coming for Leonard Cohen
A Facebook friend who teaches at university recently received a cancel-culture email after he included Leonard Cohen in a syllabus. Yup. He spared us several “marvelous rhetorical peaks” but quoted the conclusion, which urged him to “please re-evaluate your life choices before spreading these opinions in the name of education.” When I read this, I…
Read MoreCeltic Canada goes international
Gearing up to give a presentation at the Scottish North American Community Conference in New York City. It’s all zooming . . . but it features some heavyweight speakers and on December 5, I aim to give a dazzling presentation on The Making of Celtic Canada. Word on the street is that speakers will…
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