Early reviews are in for Camilla Gibb's, The Beauty of Humanity Movement and they are stellar!

"Camilla Gibb's previous novel, the Scotiabank Giller Prize short-listed Sweetness in the Belly, with its examination of Lilly, a white Muslim woman in Ethiopia and London, flew off bookstore shelves, and it's likely that The Beauty of Humanity Movement will as well...Gibb has created her own 'Beauty of Humanity.'"
-The Globe and Mail

"Another winner from Gibb."
-NOW Magazine

"...[Gibb] isn't satisfied with merely creating convincing characters and a bold plot. She educates and enlightens the reader whose grasp of Vietnam's history and culture may be based on little more than the vague recall of old headlines."
-Montreal Gazette

"...a dynamite read."
-Post City Magazine

"Gibb writes with a disarming simplicity well-suited to her story... Gibb's largely unadorned writing is... delicious for its austerity and complexities."
-Telegraph Journal

Congratulations Lisa Moore whose novel February (House of Anansi Press) has made the Booker Prize longlist!!!!!!!!

Fantastic review for Adam Lewis Schroeder's new novel In the Fabled East (D&M) from the Toronto Star:

"In a tremendously satisfying dénouement, our principal players are united partly by war, partly by the dissolution of empire, but mainly by a mother-and-child reunion — the dimensions of which can only be imagined within the pages of this marvelous and compelling tale." --Toronto Star

Darbyshire: "It's always been, if it bleeds, it leads ... but now it's like, if it bleeds or it's American Idol, it leads...There's an interest in the spectacle, but it's always at the expense of somebody else. And I don't think we're engaging with issues any more."

Read more in The National Post
 

Congratulations to Sandra Birdsell, who has just been made a Member of the Order of Canada.

Congratulations also to Michael Crummey, who won the Canadian Authors's Association Award for Galore.

Christopher Shulgan's upcoming book Superdad: A Memoir of Rebellion, Drugs and Fatherhood (October) was a Globe and Mail buzz book on Saturday.

Camilla Gibb graces the cover of the July/August issue of the Quill and Quire, in the lead-up to publication of her novel The Beauty of Humanity Movement (August).

Todd Babiak's Toby: A Man was chosen as a Sizzling Read by the Chronicle Herald.

Steven Heighton received yet another rave for Every Lost Country:
"Deliriously good . . . The plot is suspenseful, in itself enticing enough to make Every Lost Country a good read . . . but the quality of the language elevates the novel to beautifully complex literature. Heighton is a superb writer."
-Edmonton Journal

"Lundy employs a wry sense of humour that keeps the pages turning as the miles fly by... Borderlands is well-balanced, both in terms of interview subjects and the exposure given to the northern and southern U.S. borders.With typical Canadian self-deprecation, Lundy worries that the Canadian border will hold none of the adventure and mystique of its southern cousin. Not so. While the book is primarily a travelogue commenting on America’s growing security obsession, in the borderlands between politics and memoir a fine history lesson exists, and Lundy is an excellent teacher."
-Quill & Quire

3. Every Lost Country, Steven Heighton
(Knopf Canada, $29.95, 9780307397393)

7. Curiosity, Joan Thomas
(McClelland & Stewart, $32.99, 9780771084171)

14. The Warhol Gang, Peter Darbyshire
(HarperCollins Canada, $29.99, 9781554680764)

20. In the Fabled East, Adam Lewis Schroeder
(D&M, $29.95, 9781553654643)

Rave reviews for Peter Darbyshire's The Warhol Gang!

"...a violent, darkly comic satire of our media-saturated society... its unmistakably contemporary touches make Palahniuk's book feel dated... Darbyshire has a gift for imagining the absurd."
-The Globe and Mail

"The short snappy chapters move the story at just the right pace for the YouTube-conditioned reader, making this pop culture treasure trove a fast-paced, even addictive read."
-Winnipeg Free Press

"To the ranks of such transgressive, mind-screw masterpieces as George Bataille’s The Story of An Eye, the fiction of Kathy Acker and the early novels of Chuck Pahlaniuk, one must now add The Warhol Gang... one of the finest, and most important, Canadian novels in recent memory."
-Edmonton Journal

Peter will also be guest editing The Afterword, presenting his five “writing lessons.”

Steven Heighton's Every Lost Country and Joan Thomas' Curiosity make BookNet Canada's new Canadian fiction bestseller list!

Steven Heighton, Every Lost Country (Knopf Canada)

"Heighton creates a poetry of people in violent motion . . . Like Joseph Conrad (whom he increasingly resembles in important aspects), Steven Heighton takes the bare bones of an event occurring on the borderlines of most of our geographical, political and moral experiences, and refashions it into a novel that offers readers more than [just] big ideas and beautiful language . . . Every page, minor character and plot twist matters. Every Lost Country not only rivets readers to their seats, it challenges them to rethink the David-and-Goliath inequalities of this new millennium . . . [The novel] is more un-put-downable than many escape tales because the action and reactions of the pursued and the pursuers never break faith with reality. . . . How many other novelists in this country . . . choose words so carefully or narrative strategies with such intelligence?
-Globe & Mail (T.F. Rigelhof)

Steven Heighton's interview with the Globe and Mail

 Adam Lewis schroeder, In the Fabled East (D&M)

"Simply put, In the Fabled East is a winner, drawing on disparate elements to create a singular, stunning whole. It is beautiful, and haunting; brutal, and realistic; it is strange and alien but fundamentally familiar and human; it is thoughtful, and suspenseful, meditative and action-filled. It is the sort of book that not only becomes a bestseller but is passed from hand to hand, shared among readers."
-Vancouver Sun

Nino Ricci, The Origin of Species (Other Press)

"Canadian writer Ricci's fifth novel, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, is a masterly coming-of-age story... Highly recommended, especially for fans of fellow Canadian writer Alice Munro, with whom Ricci shares a knack for irony and a talent for characterization."
-Library Journal

Russell Smith, Girl Crazy (HarperCollins Canada)

“Daring and well executed. … Most will likely fixate on the sex in Girl Crazy, and why not? Smith writes it well; nary a cringe-worthy adjective, and raw enough to be real. But Girl Crazy is more about class than it is about sex. … Girl Crazy is a hot floor show for those of us desperate for the present to finally get its time in the Canadian literary spotlight.”
-Globe and Mail

“His best novel yet. …What Smith is saying here is that the literate, liberal culture … is all but dead, replaced by loud, brash surfaces, primitive emotional needs and an almost demonic suburban sprawl. … Girl Crazy is a frank and funny novel. The depiction of an emotionally stunted man’s undignified lust for an even more immature young woman is disturbing and almost note-perfect. A lot of people won’t like the novel’s message, but they’d better learn to deal with it. The future is here and some might find it sexy, but it sure ain’t pretty.”
-Toronto Star

“Girl Crazy rips a mile a minute. Smith has pulled off the sort of author-reader telepathy that lesser writers can only dream about. The book is ridiculously visceral. … Smith has a good ear for dialogue and a finely honed sense of just how much detail to put in. And he writes a mean love scene. … For all its graphicness, the most compelling thing about Girl Crazy is its honesty. Despite its raunch and raw emotion, the story’s reality check stays firmly engaged. … You’ll probably have a hard time putting down Girl Crazy. It powers on to a conclusion that’s both satisfying and oddly disquieting.”
-The Gazette (Montreal)

“A darkly comic study of fractured masculinity. … The nicely ambiguous conclusion can be seen as either the recognition of a kind of atavistic male impulse, or a cautionary tale about the perils of pursuing desire to its most dangerous extreme.”
-The Walrus

Hot on the heels of her Winterset win, last night Jessica Grant took home the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Congratulations, Jessica!

Jessica Grant has won the 2009 Winterset Award for her first novel Come, Thou Tortoise.

Congratulations, Jessica!

Social satire, fabulist tales and darkly humorous dystopian visions, this new anthology published by D&M features stories by Jessica Grant, Lee Henderson, Pasha Malla and Adam Lewis Schroeder.

Congratulations to Michael Crummey whose novel Galore (Doubleday Canada) won in the Canada/Caribbean region.

Michael Crummey, Jessica Grant and Lisa Moore are the three finalists for the 2010 Winterset Award, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council announced. Crummey, who won the award in 2001 for his debut novel River Thieves, is a finalist for Galore (Doubleday Canada). Grant is nominated for Come, Thou Tortoise (Knopf). And Moore, a two-time finalist for the Giller prize, is nominated for February (Anansi).

Congratulations to Damian Tarnopolsky, Goya's Dog (Penguin), and to Jessica Grant, Come, Thou Tortoise (Knopf), who both made this years' shortlist!

The shortlists for the 2010 Atlantic Book Awards have been announced. Congratulations to Michael Crummey whose novel Galore (Doubleday Canada) has been nominated for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award as well as the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award. David Adams Richards has also been nominated for the Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award for, God Is (Doubleday Canada). And another congratulations goes out to Stephen Kimber, author of IWK: A Century of Caring for Families (Nimbus Publishing), nominated for the Dartmouth Book Award for non-fiction.

Todd Babiak was promoting TOBY: A MAN in Canada this week with successful events in Montreal, Toronto and Calgary! He also had fantastic interviews on shows including Breakfast Television, CBC Radio’s “Q,” “The Next Chapter,” and “Daybreak Alberta”

Click here to listen to Todd’s interview on “Q”