Literary Cocktails 2015

Seven days, 34 events, 60 authors! The Edmonton Poetry Festival has had another successful year, and we are both happy and lucky to march with them under their flag. UAP authors are active participants and faithful audience members, and many showed up to what we – and hopefully many others – call the highlight of the Festival: Literary Cocktails.

As usual, it took place in the Faculty Club, but this year we upgraded to the Winspear Room. With glass walls on three sides, we enjoyed a great view of the river valley. This venue comfortably accommodated the 100+ who joined us to celebrate our newest fiction titles in the Robert Kroetsch Series.

We had an international line-up this year with an underlying multilingual theme. We had Ella Zeltserman [small things left behind] from the former Soviet Union, Jalal Barzanji [Trying Again to Stop Time] from Kurdistan, and Myrl Coulter [A Year of Days] representing Canada. Our MC, Helen Moffett, travelled all the way from South Africa to join us. (Well, she also fulfilled a life-long plan to see the Canadian Rockies, and is in Victoria right now at the Creative Non-Fiction Collective Society’s annual conference.) Our Acquisitions Editor, Peter Midgley [Counting Teeth], originally from Namibia, also joined the line-up.

We were delighted to have Gerald Beasley, Chief Librarian, in attendance to announce that Linda Cameron will receive the ACP’s President’s Award. It will be awarded in Toronto this June during the annual meeting of the Association of Canadian Publishers.

And as always, our musicians enhanced the event tremendously. Thank you, Jerome Martin and Ted Bishop, for your continued support.

 

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See you all next year!

ACP to honour Linda Cameron with President’s Award

TORONTO, ONTARIO—(April 22, 2015)—The Association of Canadian Publishers (ACP) is pleased to announce that Linda Cameron, Director of University of Alberta Press, will be presented with the ACP President’s Award this June. A past president of ACP, Linda is recognized for her exemplary advocacy work on behalf of Alberta and Canadian publishers, and her service on numerous boards and committees across the industry. She is currently vice-chair of eBOUND Canada.

“Linda is an outstanding advocate for Canadian writers and publishers,” said ACP President Erin Creasey. “In addition to running one of Canada’s top publishing programs at the University of Alberta Press, she is one of the industry’s most dedicated volunteers. Her thoughtfulness, business acumen, and tireless efforts for Canadian books are an inspiration to many of us in the industry. The board’s decision to honour Linda was a unanimous one, and we look forward to celebrating her achievements in June.”

Awarded annually, the President’s Award recognizes a publisher who has made a significant contribution to the Canadian publishing industry and to the ACP. The award will be presented on June 11, 2015, at the ACP’s annual banquet in Toronto.

The ACP is the national voice of Canada’s independent English-language book publishers. The ACP supports its 120 members in creating an economically sustainable Canadian-owned and -controlled publishing industry. Visit http://www.publishers.ca for more information about the association’s programs and mandate.

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For further information contact:

Erin Creasey, President, erin@ecwpress.com | 416-694-3348
Carolyn Wood, Executive Director, carolyn_wood@canbook.org | 416-487-6116 x222

Melissa, the Marketing Maven

We work with wonderful authors here at UAP! They have great ideas about promotion and marketing, and depending on their schedules and their available time – as most of them have other jobs, and no, you cannot live off your royalties – they do whatever they can to make sure that the news about their book is out there.

I asked Melissa Morelli Lacroix to write about her activities, of which there were many. Read and heed, if you have the energy!

On the one-year anniversary of the launch of my first book, A Most Beautiful Deception, I am finally responding to Monika’s request to write about my promotional activities that led to a second printing of my book after only nine months.

As publication was a life-long dream, promotion was as simple as opening my mouth, but sharing the news with family, friends and colleagues only goes so far. As publication grew closer, the University of Alberta Press sent me a marketing questionnaire. This helped me identify markets and promotional opportunities both locally and much more widely. I drew up a list of ideas based on the subject matter, genre, and content of my book and met with Monika and Cathie to brainstorm promotional ideas.

As it so happened, the Writers’ Guild of Alberta offered an information session on hosting a book launch around the same time. At it, Karen Spaford-Fitz provided a four-step plan:

1. Prepare for the launch
2. Organize the details of the event
3. Personalize the event
4. Follow-up with post-launch promotion.

For each step, Spaford-Fitz provided concise recommendations for how and when to proceed. This provided me with a concrete framework to plan both my launches and further promotional activities.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into the specifics and details, but I will say that I spent a lot of time preparing and promoting my launches and A Most Beautiful Deception in a variety of ways. Facebook was the easiest way, but I also prepared and sent personal invitations to a wide array of people. The internet helped keep this undertaking relatively inexpensive and environmentally friendly, but I also sent paper invitations to people whose email address I didn’t know or who do not use the internet. I also contacted local media through press releases, which resulted in articles about me and A Most Beautiful Deception in four different newspapers.

I had two launches within the same week. The first was in Edmonton, where I live and write, and the other was in Saskatoon, close to where I was raised. Both were huge successes: over 120 people attended them and almost 100 books were sold. Both were exciting events that allowed me to celebrate the publication of my first book with family and friends, colleagues, strangers, and former students. A thrill was having four former teachers, one representing each level of study from elementary school to university, in attendance at the launch in Saskatoon. Videos from my Edmonton launch can be viewed on my website (www.morellilacroix.ca), which was created to help promote my book.

In addition to my launches last spring I also read from A Most Beautiful Deception in two events at the Edmonton Poetry Festival, including UAP’s Literary Cocktails, and at the annual “Poetry at Stephan’s event” at Stephansson House in Markerville. I was also invited to speak at the U of A’s MLCS Annual Nobel Prize event last spring and the Festival of Ideas Pre-Festival event last November. Neither were promotional in nature, but they did allow for me and my book to become more widely known, for I was introduced as ‘‘the author of A Most Beautiful Deception.’’ My talk about Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro can be viewed on my website, as well as here.

While in Saskatoon last March, I was invited into four first year English classes at the University of Saskatchewan to talk about poetry in general and A Most Beautiful Deception in particular. I have returned three times, and lectured on the creative process and the dramatics of poetry.

Since one section of A Most Beautiful Deception was expanded and staged as a play in 2011, a professor colleague at the University of Saskatchewan has included the book on her Engl 112: Literature and Composition – Reading Drama reading list. Continuing the crossover to drama even further, I have created a short poetic play that explores the inspiration behind the creation of A Most Beautiful Deception by weaving music and poetry together. Singer Mireille Rijavec and pianist Dessislava Gavrailova will join me on stage at the Edmonton Poetry Festival April 19 and at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival in August.

Shortly after the début of the stage version of A Most Beautiful Deception, I will be participating in a tête-à-tête discussion with U of A doctoral candidate Amanda Lim at the CLC Research Seminar “New Voices: Emerging Paths”. Our session, entitled ‘‘Something That Surprises Even Ourselves,’’ explores the blurring of boundaries of poetic form and tradition.

I am also pairing up with pianist Magdalena Adamek this spring to provide a lecture-recital in collaboration with the Alberta Registered Music Teachers’ Association at Edmonton Piano Centre on May 1. Magdalena will perform some of the music that is featured in my book, and I will share the stories (and poems) behind the music.

In between the promotion of and participation in these many events I have also worked on a novel and written a bit of poetry, and I look forward to writing more now that A Most Beautiful Deception is launched and running free.

With Joyce Carol Oates

With three former teachers, Lillian Hinz (gr. 3-4), Kim Hodson (gr. 9-10), David Carpenter (Eng 110 at U of S)

Melissa and family

At Literary Cocktails 2014

Our Scholar is in residence, and blogging about…

…Journal Publishing and the 2015 Tri-Agency Open Access Policy. Read more…