There were surprises aplenty at yesterday's announcement in Toronto of the short list for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize for excellence in Canadian English-language literature.

For the first time in the Giller's 13-year history, the five candidates for the country's top literary prize—the winner gets $40,000, the runners-up $2,500 each—are largely unknowns (rookies in two cases) published mainly by small or medium-sized presses. Gasps were heard as the nominees were announced...

...In an interview after the announcement ceremony, [Adrienne] Clarkson said the jurors "had no agenda" except that of "excellence and literary value -- what was the author trying to do and did he or she succeed." She said she "wasn't conscious at all" of the fact that, in four of five cases, the books were from small publishers that traditionally print no more than 2,000 copies of a work of fiction at any one time. "All the books were beautiful in their presentation, professional in design," she said. "There was nothing that looked like it was run off a Gestetner."

Read more at the Globe & Mail.

Source: James Adams, The Globe & Mail

BookNet Canada analysis shows the Scotiabank Giller Prize is the most powerful in Canadian history

The Scotiabank Giller Prize, created in 1994 as a tribute to the late book reviewer and journalist Doris Giller by her husband Jack Rabinovitch, is by far the most important literary prize in Canada in terms of sales BookNet Canada research shows.

"Based on analysis of previous winners, a Giller Prize win can increase sales more than any other prize in Canada—twice as much as winning the Governor General's Award for fiction," said Michael Tamblyn, BookNet Canada's chief executive officer.

Happy October! Since we're nearing Thanksgiving, we'd like to send a big thank-you to all the people who dropped by the Coach House tables at The Word On The Street and the Queen West Art Crawl in Toronto this past month. It was great to see you, and if you liked what you saw at Coach House then, we hope you'll join us for one or more of our many author events this October.

Coast-to-coast, Coach House authors will be rocking across North America this month – we have events scheduled in New York City, L.A., Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and many points in-between. It's like a Coach House North American tour! October also marks the release of three of our new fall books – Touch To Affliction by Nathalie Stephens, King by Tanya Chapman and The River of Dead Trees by Andrée A. Michaud. Look for them soon at your local bookstore or pre-order them online at the Coach House Books website.

Kicking off the fall installment of Just Buffalo’s Small Press Series are Amy King and Geoffrey Gatza at Rust Belt Books. This reading promises to offer a sampling of Gatza’s Buffalo-based BlazeVOX press. Amy King’s first full-length book, Antidotes for an Alibi, was published by BlazeVOX in 2005 and continued to build King’s impressive publishing credentials (she won Pavement Saw’s chapbook contest in 2002) as she was a finalist against Adrienne Rich for the Lambda Award, the country’s most prestigious award for literature written by or for the LGBT community. The poems in her first collection take the power relations of and within language, and domesticated language, poetic form and the family unit head-on. Her poems vibrate, or twitch, like atoms approaching Absolute Zero. Simply put, King has achieved a reliable poetic voice in her first collection. A voice with which she is certain without being overbearing—willing to question itself, but not ashamed of its observations. But beyond her history with BlazeVOX, she shares with Gatza a commitment to poetry as a community.

Read more about it here.

Source: Artvoice

Canada’s largest, annual outdoor book and magazine festival —The Word On The Street Toronto—is your ticket to family fun this fall.

On Sunday, September 24, 2006, from 11:00a.m. to 6:00p.m., Queen’s Park will transform into a literary theme park for the 17th annual The Word On The Street. Whether you’re an avid reader or just a beginner, there is something for everyone to enjoy at The Word On The Street!

Visitors can browse the more than 250 book, magazine and literacy exhibitor booths in the festival marketplace or check-out any of 150 authors, poets, storytellers, performers and industry experts featured at 13 performance venues.

There will be plenty to see and do at this year's festival, and best of all, The Word On The Street and all of its events are FREE!

Check out the Festival Program—now available on-line. Click here.