Ken Haigh, author of Under the Holy Lake, was crowned supreme champion awarded first place at the inaugural Georgian Bay Reads event in October. Each participant defended the honour of their chosen book (Ken’s book was Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies) in a no-holds-barred, all-or-nothing, knock-’em-dead debate that was probably much less clichéd than this post. Congratulations to Ken! We are proud to represent such fierce competitors here at UAP.

You can read the full article about the event here, courtesy of MyCollingwood.ca.

Here’s our author Tony Whyte at the launch for his book Meteorites of Alberta in October. Tony works at Indigo South Edmonton Common and his manager, Lana Saretsky, did a fabulous job of hosting the launch. (Note the thematically-appropriate balloons she discovered!) Many thanks to everyone that made it out to lend their support. If you missed the launch, there are five signings coming up in the Edmonton area:

Indigo, South Edmonton Common, Saturday, November 7 from 1 – 4 pm

Chapters, 170th Street on Sunday, November 8 from 2 – 4 pm

Chapters, Old Strathcona on Sunday, November 15

Chapters, Sherwood Park on Sunday, November 22

Chapters, St. Albert on Sunday, November 29

Tony will also be giving a talk at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (Edmonton Chapter), on Monday, November 9. The meeting starts at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton at 7:30 pm, with Tony’s talk starting at approximately 8 pm in the Margaret Zeidler Star Theatre. A reception will follow.

Donald Officer wrote an advance review of Daniel Coleman’s book and then met him at Daniel’s reading at the Ottawa International Writers Festival in October. Here are some comments Donald made after their discussion at the session, and which he has been kind enough to share with us.

One of the wonderful benefits of participating in the Writers Festival is the opportunity to meet courageous, thoughtful people who not only have the persistence to write, but also the breadth of imagination to sustain an encompassing vision.

Perhaps the most interesting theme raised by the Festival was whether or how threats to literacy are also threats to civilization. There were surely high moments and wonderful books to both savor and consume on this as well as several other subjects.

We couldn’t agree more.

You can also read Don’s full review of Coleman’s book In Bed With the Word: Reading, Spirituality, and Cultural Politics on the Ottawa International Writers Festival Discussion Board.

U of A professor Ted Bishop sent us this story about UAP author Tony Cashman at the recent Litfest cabaret.

I wanted to tell you about a stellar moment by a UAP author, last Thursday at the Litfest Cabaret. I was mc-ing the event and when I arrived the staff was still wearing jackets because it was freezing inside the ARTery. Tony Cashman, stylish in a black leather jacket and ivory-handled cane, was already there and came up to me.

“Ted, I wonder, well, did you know this place used to be an auction house?”

“Here?”

“Yes, of course that,” he gestured toward the windows of the office, “that was open, but yes. It was started by ****  [Reed?]. He was an Englishman and he came out to homestead, but he was afraid of the coyotes. His neighbours told him they were just coyotes and were harmless but he was sure they were wolves so he moved into town and set up an auction business. There wasn’t much to do at first but then the oil boom hit.  He brought in Victorian furniture from England and on a Sunday you’d see the LaSalles and the DeSotos lined up in front of here. He catered to Edmonton’s finest, but whenever one of them bounced a cheque he had it framed and mounted on the wall here. He always gave them the chance to buy the cheque back.

“Across the way was another sort of entrepreneur who catered to the lower end. This was the bootlegger. He felt that the government liquor stores did not do an adequate job of supplying the populace and he was happy to take up the slack. He claimed to be blind but he was about as blind as Maurice The Rocket Richard. His house was just across from the police station but the only way they could arrest him was if they caught him in the act. They would creep up outside his house to listen at the window but he soon fixed that. He got a flock of ducks and anytime a stranger came up they would all quack.”

He also told me something about a horse trough but the music was loud and I couldn’t hear. He said, “Do you think people would be interested in these little anecdotes? Then I could go into my story, which is exactly 5 minutes long.”

“Yes!” I said, “That would be terrific.”

I helped him up the steps onto the stage and he told the anecdotes; he had the crowd charmed and fascinated from the first sentence, making them, us, part of the history of the building we were in.

Then he began, “There are two great things about having been born in 1923. One, you don’t have to worry about telemarketers. They phone and say, ‘Are you in the 20 to 34 group? or the 35 to 49 group? or the 50 to 65 group?’ and when you tell them you’re in the 85 to 100 group they say, ‘Thank you for your time,’ and they leave you alone.

“The second great thing is that to do history you don’t have to consult a lot of books or go search in an archive, you just let your life pass before you and select from it.”

He read “The First Boy Scout” from the book and was done in under 8 minutes total. A total pro.

Ted Bishop

Tony Fabijancic (author of UAP titles Croatia: Travels in Undiscovered Country and Bosnia: In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip) and his lovely wife Tea stopped by Ring House 2 recently to visit with UAP staff. They got the grand tour of our campus abode and Tony shared some stories of his travels.

Cathie managed to snag this photo of Tony, Tea, and Alan (our designer/production manager) while they weren’t looking.

Derek Truscott, co-author of UAP’s Ethics for the Practice of Psychology in Canada, not to mention our newest Press Committee member, recently celebrated the launch of his shiny new book, Becoming an Effective Psychotherapist, in Toronto.

Derek at Toronto book launch

And, for a completey different perspective, here’s some stealthy paparazzo action by yours truly at our recent Jane Austen Sings the Blues book launch. There’s Derek, oblivious to my sneaky photo taking, second from the right.

Derek at the Jane Austen Sings the Blues launch

The blurb says, “In The Meteorites of Alberta, Anthony J. Whyte offers a fresh perspective on the scientific research as well as the local human history behind sixteen major falls and finds in Alberta.” Some of you might be wondering which sixteen. Well, The Meteorites of Alberta delves into the science and the history of the province’s most significant falls and finds; and except for two specimens from British Columbia and Saskatchewan, as Tony Whyte states in the Preface, “the suite of 16 Alberta meteorites represent the crown jewels of Canadian meteoritic science.”

So which meteorites made the cut?

1. The Edmonton (Canada) Meteorite
2. The Iron Creek Meteorite
3. The Kinsella Meteorite
4. The Mayerthorpe Meteorite
5. The Millarville Meteorite
6. The Belly River Meteorite
7. The Belly River Buttes Meteorite
8. The Bruderheim Meteorite
9. The Ferintosh Meteorite
10. The Innisfree Meteorite
11. The Peace River Meteorite
12. The Skiff Meteorite
13. The Vilna Meteorite
14. The Vulcan Meteorite
15. The Abee Meteorite
16. Lake Eliza Meteorite

See the attached Table of Contents for a complete glimpse of what’s inside this fascinating book.

Objects from space continue to pepper the earth at an astonishing rate. Tony has already remarked—hot on the heels of the publication of The Meteorites of Alberta—that given recent developments, we ought to begin work on a second, expanded edition!!

Get ready for outbursts of creative energy from the cultural sector during Alberta Arts Days, September 18 to 20.

The University of Alberta Press is kicking things off tonight with a book launch for Diane Wishart’s new book, The rose that grew from concrete, at Rutherford House. Tomorrow, we hope to drop by the Open House at the Canadian Literature Centre. There is also a wonderful event showcasing Ted Bishop and Ted Blodgett’s work with the University of Alberta Hospital. Later, some of us will be attending a book launch hosted by our friends at Spotted Cow Press, for S. Minsos’s new historical novel, Squire Davis and the Crazy River. The launch will be a two-province extravaganza, showcasing books being printed on the spot by the the Espresso Book Machine at the University of Alberta Bookstore and the McMaster University Bookstore. Later, we can listen to Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott at Lecture Theatre 3 in the Humanities Building. And that’s just the first day, focussing on book-related events! What a surfeit of talent we have in the province.

So, please find an event in your part of the province, and support our amazing creators and artists in their endeavours.

The cultural industries are helping to promote Alberta Arts Days with buttons and bookmarks, as well as banners.

The banner looks great, hanging from our front porch.

Photo by Wendy Coleman

On October 22, 2009 at 12:00 noon, UAP author of In Bed with the Word: Reading, Spirituality and Cultural Politics Daniel Coleman will discuss THE BIG IDEA: THE IMPORTANCE OF READING IN A CULTURE OF DISTRACTION at Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities, 314 Saint Patrick Street (at the corner of Cumberland), Ottawa, Ontario as part of the fall Ottawa Writers Festival.

For those familiar with Daniel’s heartening new book on the importance of reading, this presentation will afford a closer look into In Bed with the Word. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, In Bed with the Word will be for sale at the Festival; or, you can request it at your favourite bookseller.

For more than a decade now, the Ottawa Writers Festival has been celebrating the world’s best writing from home and abroad with an eclectic program that presents interactions with leaders in the worlds of science, history, poetry, politics, spoken word, economics, drama, fiction, biography, music, religion, spirituality and more. Since 2004, the Festival has consisted of two annual Editions, Spring and Fall, with special events throughout the year.

In Bed with the Word is a timely project that calls attention to the increased importance of reading in our culture’s current transition from print-based culture to “screen culture”—in which North American children spend more time in front of a TV or computer screen than playing, sleeping, or attending school. Through story and anecdote, the book shows how the peculiar paradox of reading, which isolates the reader at the same time that it emphasizes the reader’s longing for and intimate connection with an absent other, makes it a unique and powerful spiritual exercise that is increasingly crucial in a culture of distraction and hurry. Neither a work of theology nor one of literary theory, the book is informed by these fields but is aimed at a wide audience of people who wonder about the future of reading and who care about the disciplines that sustain spiritual life, as well as about the relevance of these disciplines to daily social and political life.

Daniel Coleman was born and raised in Ethiopia and came to Canada to go to college. After BEd and MA degrees from the University of Regina, and a PhD from the University of Alberta, he went on to teach Canadian and Diasporic literatures in the Department of English at McMaster University. He has written a memoir about his youth in The Scent of Eucalyptus, and in 2007 he won the Raymond Klibansky Prize for the best English-language book in the Humanities for White Civility: The Literary Project of English Canada. His first book with the University of Alberta Press was ReCalling Early Canada.