UAP Staff Capture Ghost!

You might have been wondering what we have been up to this last month, with Fall arriving and Winter approaching. You might have seen our Facebook page announcing readings from coast to coast, from Rose Bay, Nova Scotia to Victoria, BC. You might have received an email announcing book launches and UAP author appearances at Alberta festivals, and seen the ever growing number of covers on the left side of this blog.

But the big news I have has nothing to do with publishing. They say that the Ring Houses on the University of Alberta campus are haunted, and we’ve been told that Ring House 2, home of the Press, has a ghost. The staff of UAP can vouch for that!

You can ask any of us about the strange noises we hear: clanking, scratching, and lately even knocking. Some say that those noises might have something to do with the fact that Ring House 2 was built more than 100 years ago, but that would be the practical answer.

The Halloween-answer is that it must be a ghost. If you know us, you know that we don’t just sit back idly, and we set out to capture the ghost. Sharon got the trap from the attic, and the suspenseful wait started. Hours went by, but lo and behold we captured the ghost!

Casper is smaller than we thought. He has hairy legs, large brown eyes, and moves very fast. He has a beautiful reddish brown fur coat, and his large teeth and claws allow him to go through walls.

Still, the noises continued, and we realized that our trapped squirrel… I mean ghost, was not Casper, but a young interloper not smart enough to recognize a trap.

Fear not, squirrel lovers! After the ghost buster picked up cage-and-squirrel, Casper’s little brother went into the “witness protection program” outside of the city, freed and left with a little food to help him blend in with his new surroundings.

Meanwhile, the efforts to trap Casper continue. Stay tuned for further developments.

Lawrence Hill in Edmonton

The University of Alberta Press has been fortunate to have published last year’s CLC Lecture: Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book by Lawrence Hill. He returned to Edmonton this fall to deliver the 2013 CBC Massey Lecture, to participate in the CLC’s Brown Bag Lunch, an informal talk about his new book: Blood, and to be on the panel of Writing in Blood at LitFest.

Linda Cameron, Cathie Crooks, Peter Midgley and I went to the CLC‘s talk at lunch time and had a chance to say hello to Lawrence, who is an interesting and engaging speaker. If you have a chance, it might not be too late to get tickets to the Massey Lecture and/or to the LitFest event.

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Frankfurt Book Fair 2013

Our Director, Linda Cameron, had another busy week at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, a meeting place for the industry’s experts: publishers, distributors, booksellers, agents, film producers and authors.

Among the many meetings, she presented two papers. The first at a meeting of the International Publishers Association – Educational Publishers in which she spoke about copyright matters in Canada, and  a second paper as part of a panel at the International Convention of University Presses at Frankfurt. It was the first convention of its kind at the Frankfurt Book Fair. The other speakers included:  Jiang Yaopeng, Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, China; Carlos Gazzera, Villa María University Press, Argentina; Peter Givler, Association of American University Presses, U.S.A. & João Carlos Canossa, Fiocruz University Press, Brazil.

Linda really enjoyed the ICUP event and met many university press people from South America, Asia and Europe, and she is looking forward to building relationships with them and doing some rights business, too.

Linda also had a meeting with Cenk Öntürk, Business and Development Manager for Uğur Yayınları in Istanbul. Last year Cenk purchased the Turkish language rights for Alfalfa to Ivy. I was thrilled and so, apparently, was he. As a result of the sale of rights and translation Dr. Martin has been invited to speak at Bahçeşehir University where the book is the first to be offered in the School of Medicine.

During the days, when the Fair is open to the public, she spotted some young people dressed in costume. No swashbuckling characters this time!

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The Edmonton Public Library is “Just Getting Started”

We are looking forward to the launch of Just Getting Started: Edmonton Public Library’s First 100 Years, 1913-2013. The October 22 event at the Milner Library Theatre will start at 7 pm as part of LitFest.

Advance review copies went out as soon as we had the books, and we are delighted to share the comments we received from Lawrence Herzog, heritage writer, and Monique Sherritt, who both enjoyed the book very much.

A fabulously researched, well-told narration of the birth, growth and coming-of-age of Edmonton’s magnificent public library system. Babiak’s writing is luminescent as he captures the essence of the personalities and happenings that shaped the institution and the people it has served over 100 years.

His canvas is Edmonton, and he weaves in crucial perspective from the boom-and-bust history of the city, too. Just Getting Started reads as much as a novel as a historical account, and for anybody with an interest in Edmonton history, Just Getting Started means just wanting to finish. It’s a hard book to put down.

Babiak doesn’t gloss over the bumps along the journey, either, as he illuminates the people and challenges they faced. It wasn’t easy, this building an exceptional municipal library system, and Just Getting Started captures the adversity, the wonder, the romance and the pride with eyes of a perceptive, passionate observer.

Just Getting Started is a cherished contribution to the Edmonton story that ranks as one of the finest. Just like the library itself, Todd Babiak has made us want to read, learn and be inspired by the past and the possibilities for the next 100 years.

Lawrence Herzog

Monique’s comments are posted on her marvellous website, SoMisguided.com (“A Canadian book blog: Publishing, marketing, books and technology from a Canadian perspective”). Here’s a preview of her post:

I don’t have any connection to Edmonton personally but I do love Babiak’s writing and he’s brought the EPL’s story to life through a series of stand-alone, yet interlinked chapters. The archival photos are wonderful and the story of the Library is really the story of a city.

You can see the whole review on her blog.

Here’s to the next 100 years of the Edmonton Public Library!

Baba’s Kitchen Medicines – Accolades Continue with Kobzar Shortlist

Baba’s Kitchen Medicines is one of our best selling books. It grabs the attention of academics and the general public, the old and the young and everyone in between. You certainly don’t have to be Ukrainian or have Ukrainian heritage in order to enjoy it!

Earlier in 2013, Baba’s Kitchen Medicines won bronze for Canada West, Best Regional Non-Fiction in the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and was a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Awards.

Linda Cameron with Michael, displaying the Independent Publisher Book Award

In May 2013, Michael received the inaugural Research Award of Augustana Campus, where he’s been teaching since 1974. Read more about it on the University of Alberta’s Augustana Campus page.

Now, we are delighted to say the 2014 Kobzar Award shortlist has been released, and Baba’s Kitchen Medicines is one of the five titles recognized. Congratulations once again, Michael!

The Kobzar Literary $25,000 Biennial Award recognizes outstanding contributions to Canadian literary arts by authors who develop a Ukrainian Canadian theme with literary merit in one of several genres: literary non-fiction, fiction, poetry, young readers’ literature, plays, screenplays, and musicals.

Michael will be reading from his book at this year’s International Festival of Authors on October 27 and will also attend the gala awards banquet on March 15, 2014, where the prize winner is announced. Both events are in Toronto.

We have enjoyed partnering with Michael to promote his fascinating primary research into Ukrainian Canadian folk history.

Alice Munro Wins the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature

Alice Munro was this morning named winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. The first Canada-based writer to win the Prize, she was honored as a “master of the contemporary short story.”

A statement released with the announcement said: “Her stories are often set in small town environments, where the struggle for a socially acceptable existence often results in strained relationships and moral conflicts – problems that stem from generational differences and colliding life ambitions. Her texts often feature depictions of everyday but decisive events, epiphanies of a kind, that illuminate the surrounding story and let existential questions appear in a flash of lightning.”

Inside Higher Ed notes that “Scholarship on Munro, published by university presses, includes:  Alice Munro by Coral Ann Howells, (Manchester University Press), Controlling the Uncontrollable: The Fiction of Alice Munro, by Ildikó de Papp Carrington (Northern Illinois University Press), The Tumble of Reason: Alice Munro’s Discourse of Absence, by Ajay Heble, (University of Toronto Press) and Dance of the Sexes: Art and Gender in the Fiction of Alice Munro, by Beverly Rasporich (University of Alberta Press).”

Supporting a New Book

It is one thing to have your book published – and that is not an easy task – but getting the word out about it and having readers become interested in it provides just as big of a challenge. It is the last step in the long, long, long process of getting your work to readers.

Our Acquisitions Editor, Peter Midgley, came across a blog post which deals with just that: 11 ideas on how to support a new book. Click here to read the post by Chuck Sambuchino, courtesy of the Writers In The Storm Blog.