October 31st, 2017

Readings this week

Just in case you feel like we don’t spend enough time together, here’s where you can catch me this week…

Wednesday night, 6-8pm, I’ll be an opening reader at Ben McNally Books along with the talented Emily Saso and the also talented Mark Sampson in support of Daniel Griffin‘s exciting new novel Two Roads Home. Can’t wait to hear everyone read and see Daniel’s new book!

Saturday afternoon from 1:30 to 2:50pm Wild Writers Festival in Waterloo as part of their fiction panel hosted by Claire Tacon, along with Lori McNulty, Alicia Elliot and Trevor Corkum. I’ve loved the Wild Writers Festival since it got started, and I’m thrilled to be participating–can’t wait!

October 16th, 2017

An exciting weekend ahead

I had a month off between exciting book-related travels, and I thought I was going to use that time in part to write exciting non-book-related blog posts, but instead I recovered from the previously mentioned sinus infection, re-started trying to write a new book and slept…a lot. Sleep is really great, I recommend it. And now, here we are again, with me about to get back on the road with #somuchlove2017 No complaints here, but it does seem like a bit of a whirlwind! Anyway, here’s what’s coming up!

Saturday October 21, 4-5 pm, I’ll be on the So Much Forward panel at Bookfest Windsor with Eva Crocker and Heidi Jacobs

Sunday October 22, 2-3 pm, I’ll be on the Writing with Emotion panel at Stratford Writers Festival with Jennifer Robson and Deborah Cooke, moderated by Mark Medley. Here’s a short interview I did with the Stratford Fest folks.

Both festivals sound amazing, with tonnes of great readings, panels and other events–my only sadness is that with the two events being back to back, I can’t attend everything at both fests! On the other hand, I will have lots of train time for reading all the books I acquire, so that is a definite upside! Anyway, hope to see an friends in the area at these lovely festivals–can’t wait!

September 29th, 2017

WordFeast Fredericton

Today is PechaKucha Night at Markham Village Library so I’m already on to other things, but I want to flash back to the glorious 3 days I spent in New Brunswick last weekend for WordFeast Fredericton.

It was so great! I had never been a headliner before, so it was a bit terrifying to have three events scheduled in two days, but it was also amazing and exciting to be meeting readers in such a range of ways–a lecture on unlikeable characters Friday night, a workshop on characters and dialogue on Saturday afternoon, and a reading from So Much Love on Saturday night.

There’s a nice account of the Friday night lecture in The Aquinian, which is the student newspaper at St. Thomas University in Fredericton–there were a few other nice articles but unfortunately most of the newspapers in New Brunswick are behind a paywall so I can’t share them. There’s a great photo of me and Riel Nason enjoying a Q&A with Colleen Kitts-Goguen, and another of festival organizer and Fredericton Cultural Laureate and general mastermind Ian LeTourneau.

Everyone I encountered at the fest–reader, volunteer, director, organizer, writer, or just enjoyer of things literary–was so terribly kind and friendly. And Fredericton itself is the sweetest, prettiest little city–and I had the best weather for wandering around trying to get my bearings, going to the farmer’s market, walking on the walking bridge, being toured around by my cousins-in-law, and just generally enjoying every minute.

Sunday night I took the bus down to Moncton to spend the day with my dear friend Art (he is actually one of my husband’s oldest friends, and officiated at our wedding–Art is one of the bonuses I picked up in the marriage!) and his high-school scholars. In Art’s unique classroom, teenagers are meeting their considerable life challenges with literary theory and granola bars, and it was a truly edifying day for me–and hopefully for them. I did my best to make the world of writing and stories and publishing sound possible and interesting to their ears, and sometimes I think I succeeded. Certainly everyone made me feel welcomed and heard, and I tried to return the favour. It was an amazing experience.

And then a very tired me flew home! I’ve talked with other lit folks about what it takes to feel like a “real writer” and it’s different things on different days for different people, but having others take an interest in my work, getting to talk about it and explore it with other engaged readers, is a huge one for me, and this weekend was a great gift.

September 12th, 2017

So Much Love on the road this fall

I’ve been remiss getting my full fall tour dates up, and I still suspect I’ll add or change one or two of these…but here’s the basics. I would really love to see some friends at these events, or some friends of friends if you happen to know people in these cities. I haven’t been doing many readings this summer so I’m feeling a bit nervous since it all starts soon and intensely…I have a book-club dinner next week, which is exciting but nerve-wracking too, and then onward to…

September 22-24: Word Feast Fredericton I’ll be doing a lecture on one my favourite topics, unlikeable characters in Canadian literature and why we sort of like them (official title: Sorry Not Sorry) on the Friday evening, followed by a workshop on character and dialogue on the Saturday afternoon and a reading on the Saturday evenings. Whoo. Then I have Sunday off to frolic with my cousins-in-law who live in Fredericton and head down to Moncton to do some classroom visits on Monday… An intense but hopefully amazing weekend…

September 29: Pecha Kucha Night at the Markham Village Library will find me and my husband, the lovely and talented Mark Sampson presenting on life and love with another writer. There will be a number of other interesting presentations that evening, plus snacks and a bar! I hear tickets are going fast…

October 21: I’ll be presenting/reading at Bookfest Windsor! They don’t have my event on the website yet, but I’m thrilled to be headed back to Windsor, a bookish and surprisingly beautiful city.

October 22: I’m excited to be on a panel at the Stratford Writers Festival at 2pm with Jennifer Robson and Deborah Cooke, moderated by Mark Medley, entitled “Writing with Emotion.” I think I know something about that…I think…

November 4: I’ve been to the Wild Writers Festival in Waterloo, put on by my beloved New Quarterly a number of times as reader, but this will be my first time on stage. I’ll be on the fiction panel with Alicia Elliott, Trevor Corkum, and Lori McNulty. Yay!

November 23: I’ll be back in Markham for a solo reading at the Markham Village Library

And that’s fall…hope to see you out there!

June 19th, 2017

Next we take the Maritimes

My husband, the writer and lovely human Mark Sampson and I drive to the Maritimes every other summer to visit friends and family, and since we both have books out this year, we are combining it with some readings, adding up to an adorably couply little tour. We’re actually a good pairing because my book is pretty dark while his latest novel The Slip is quite funny. So it’s a well-balanced evening of entertainment!

We kick off at Tidewater Books in Sackville, New Brunswick at 7pm, June 26. Invitation here. Followed by June 29, 6:30pm at the Confederation Centre Library in Charlottetown, invitation here. We wind up in Halifax at a booksellers’ conference, but that’s not open to the public so I won’t link it here. There may be one more Nova Scotia event, so please stay tuned…

If none of that works for you, I’ll be back in New Brunswick in the fall to take part in the delightfully named Word Feast Festival in Fredericton September 22-23; I’ll also be doing some school visits in Moncton on the 25th.

If you are an eastern type person, hope to see you at one of these events…

June 12th, 2017

Reading Survey

This is a survey that I made up, because I want to know. I will do absolutely nothing with the results except enjoy having them, which I will extremely. This is one of my favourite topics in casual conversation but I find people do not like being asked half a dozen questions in a row in normal conversation. Hence, the survey. I really hope you fill it out! I have done so myself, to get the ball rolling. You can just cut and paste the survey into a comment or an email or a “contact” form and send it to me (delete my answers and add yours). I hope you do!!
Note: all questions refer to books, as in, things with spines, not magazines, newspapers, or online text. Not that there’s anything wrong with those; just not what this survey is about.

When do you read books? I read on the subway to and from work during the week, and in the mornings at home on the weekend. I also if I am waiting for something, like a doctor or at the passport office, if I am travelling, or if I’m feeling too tired in the evening to write.

How do you decide what to read? Like most people I have a stack that I’m working diligently through, never finish, and feel bad about. However, I largely choose what goes in the stack myself–books by authors I know I like who have something new out, books by friends, books on subjects I’m interested in. I’m terrible about taking book recommendations and though this sounds awful, don’t really like receiving books as gifts unless the giver is REALLY SURE they know what they’re doing. I like to choose! The exception is book club–I accept the premise of bookclub and am 100% faithful about reading whatever is chosen, even if it is about how one or more of Jesus’s apostles may have been an alien.

Where do you get the books you read? All over! I buy books at launches and readings, books from indie bookstores, from big-box bookstores, and online. I also read a fair amount from the Toronto Public Library, though those are more a) research and other books I “need” as opposed to want and b) things I fear I might not like. If I turn out to be wrong about b), I buy it later. I accept book loans with pleasure and occasionally find good things on the sidewalk, but I’m happy to pay full price for books; it’s a principle!

Ebooks? Not at the moment. I had a Kobo for a while, which I quite liked, but it stopped working, so now I’m 100% print again. Even when I had the Kobo going, I largely preferred print except when I needed to carry a large or many book(s) but if the day comes when screens are how people get books, I will be fine with that.

How much do you read? I read about a book a week, but I end up with about 70 books in an average year because of vacations, really short books, etc. This year has been challenging so I expect I’ll end up under that.

Do you log what you read at all? How? I keep both a paper book diary–title, author, date finished, short note on what I thought–and maintain Goodreads. I find Goodreads useful for checking out which of my friends has read the same thing and starting a conversation, and the paper journal good for jogging my memory of what I actually read and what I thought. I should probably streamline this process somehow and start keeping it all on goodreads, but I probably won’t.

Book reviews? I love to read them and think they are an art form of their own. I don’t often act on them specifically, but if I’m still thinking about them later and/or a bunch of other mentions corroborate the recommendation, I’ll probably end up reading the book.

May 11th, 2017

The Slip by Mark Sampson

This is an exciting spring at my house–my book came out in March and now, on May 20, my husband Mark Sampson‘s third novel The Slip will be published by Dundurn Press. All the reviews–and there have already been some great ones in Publishers Weekly, Quill and Quire, and more–agree that it is funny and it really is, a fast and absurd but also somehow realistic take on how fast we can f up our lives in this age of the internet. I *could* be a little biased but with the above reviews on my side, I really don’t think I am. You should read it–in 9 more days!! And then you should come to the launch party on May 31, 6pm at Ben McNally Books, which promises to be a lot of fun!

Also nice, for the first time since we’ve met, Mark and I will have books out in the same season, which makes it a little easier for us to do events together. We’re starting out with Pongapalooza on May 16, where we will each captain ping-pong teams and attempt to lead them to victory in a bitter marital rivalry (this is a fundraiser for First Book Canada, actually). Then I’m taking a little breather from events but when we are out east, ostensibly on summer vacation, we’ll be doing at least one, reading at the Confederation Library in Charlottetown the evening of June 29, with a few more events possibly to come.

But my real point here is, yay Mark!

May 8th, 2017

IFOA with Kerry Clare and Amy Jones on Wednesday

I’m so very excited to be participating in IFOA Weekly this Wednesday May 10 at 7:30pm with Kerry Clare and Amy Jones, hosted by Sheniz Janmohamed. In anticipation, I did this interview for the IFOA blog. Good times! If you’re in Toronto and enjoy high-quality discussion of books, you should really join us Wednesday.

Other news about me/So Much Love in the world? Well, there’s this lovely interview with Joseph Planta on The Commentary, reviews in/on Ultra Violent Lit and a few other mentions thither and yon. I’m starting to think about a few events this summer and even into the fall and I’ve even been invited to a couple bookclubs, all of which I’m excited about.

April 24th, 2017

Globe review, Different Drummer Books and Brunch, Bibliobash

There was just a gorgeous review of So Much Love in the Globe and Mail on Saturday–I was really moved by the way the reviewer, Marsha Lederman, reacted to the book. And I feel incredibly lucky that my novel received such an attentive, thoughtful review.

Tomorrow I head off to the beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens in Aldershot for Different Drummer Books’ Books and Brunch event with Kyo Maclear and Trevor Cole. That should be fun (and delicious)!

Then on Thursday I’ll be at the Bibliobash to benefit the Toronto Public Library. How great that a fun and fancy night out can also benefit one of my favourite causes. Great when that sort of thing works out.

April 21st, 2017

The Making Room Anthology and Out in the Open on the CBC

Oh, you guys, the Pivot at the Steady reading was so nice. Every reader was great (even me, if I do say so humbly–I lived up to the evening I think!) the host was great, everyone that I spoke to in the audience was great, the vibe in the room was great, even the temperature was great. I wish I went out to readings as often as I used to–it was about once a week, more or less, in my late twenties and I just went to anything my friends suggested or that sounded cool to me. Now 10 years later it’s less than once a month unless I am myself reading and I really miss it. Stupid increasing decrepitude.

BUT I am reading a lot these days in support of So Much Love and while that in itself is a lot of fun, it’s also wonderful in that it gets me out listening to all the talented folks who are on the bill with me at readings. Like Saturday night, for example, when I’ll be reading at the Toronto launch of the Making Room anthology with so many brilliant and talented women like Amy Jones, Ayelet Tsabari, Eleanor Watchtel and tonnes more. It should be an amazing night. If you can’t make it or don’t live in Toronto, you can still order the anthology, which is huge and amazing and well worth reading. $26 is a steal for a book that covers 40 years of female and feminist writing in Canada. I’m not all the way through yet but I’m just floored by the strength and diversity of the gathering.

Sunday will be a day off from me and my book, but if you miss me, you actually hear me on the radio talking about the only other thing besides books people ever want to talk to me about–my big crazy jaw surgery! I’ll be on Out in the Open with Piya Chattopadhyay at 11am on Sunday morning, 11pm on Tuesday, or you can listen online at the link above. It’s an interesting show concept, on personal transformation, and I’m looking forward to listening to all the interviews myself!