Fri, 6 November 2009 Posted in AUDIO Publisher Interviews on October 27th, 2009
Roderick ‘Rocky’ Stinehour is a very pleasant, accomplished gentleman from Vermont. He’s
also recognized internationally as a printer of high repute and a
designer of beautiful, scholarly books. His career spans over much
change in printing technology and the way in which books are produced
and distributed. In 1950, after graduating from Dartmouth College, he,
along with his wife and brother, established The Stinehour Press in the
village of Lunenburg, Vermont.
From modest beginnings the Press flourished thanks to persistence, vision, and the ability to attract skilled passionate co-workers; due to the quality of its books, the company will long be remembered as one of America’s finest scholarly publishers. I visited Rocky in the ‘Northeast Kingdom’ recently. Listen here to our conversation Comments[0] |
Mon, 2 November 2009
Claire Van Vliet is the owner of the Janus Press founded in 1955 located, since 1966, in Newark, Vermont. Janus Press has to date produced approximately 100 publications — books, pamphlets, and broadsides- , many of them designed, illustrated, type-set, printed (sometimes on paper made by the artist), and bound by Van Vliet herself in a well-equipped studio, printshop, bindery of her own design. Born in Ottawa, Canada, she has lived in the United States since 1947. After graduating with an MFA degree from Claremont Graduate School (1954), Van Vliet traveled in Europe, apprenticing herself for a time as a hand typesetter. During these travels she taught herself etching while working as a craft instructor at the United States European Headquarters in Germany. For the remainder of the ’50s and early 1960s she taught printmaking, typography and drawing at the Philadelphia Museum School (now The University of the Arts) and worked as a type compositor for John Anderson, first at The Lanston Monotype Company in Philadelphia, and then at his own Pickering Press in New Jersey. In 1965 to ‘66 she was hired by the Art Department of the University of Wisconsin, Madison as a Visiting Lecturer in Printmaking. Primarily a publisher of first edition poetry (including the work of Seamus Heaney), Van Vliet pioneered the use of colored paper pulps for book illustration, and more recently has developed a variety of distinctive non-adhesive book structures. Museums that collect Van Vliet’s work include The National Gallery in Washington, DC; the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institute. In addition to her many honors, in 1993 the University of the Arts in Philadelphia named Van Vliet an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts. We met in her studio recently to talk about artist books and a long, outstanding career. Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Wed, 14 October 2009 Galway Kinnell was
born February 1, 1927 in Providence, Rhode Island. He has been hailed
as one of the most influential American poets of the latter half of the
20th century. Educated at Princeton and Rochester Universities, he
served in the United States Navy, after which he spent several years
traveling, in Europe and the Middle East. His first book of poems, What a Kingdom It Was, was published in 1960, followed by Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1964). Upon
his return to the United States, Kinnell joined CORE (Congress of
Racial Equality) as a field worker and spent much of the 1960s involved
in the Civil Rights Movement. Social activism during this time found
its way into his work – Body Rags (1968), and especially The Book of Nightmares (1971), a book-length poem concerned with the Vietnam War. Other books of poetry include Selected Poems (1980), for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Imperfect Thirst (1996); When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990) and A New Selected Poems
(2000), a finalist for the National Book Award; He has also published
translations of works by Yves Bonnefroy, Yvanne Goll, François Villon,
and Rainer Maria Rilke. Honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a
Rockefeller Grant, the 1974 Shelley Prize of the Poetry Society of
America, and the 1975 Medal of Merit from National Institute of Arts
and Letters. He has served as poet-in-residence at numerous colleges
and universities, and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets
from 2001 to 2007. We met recently at his home in Vermont to talk about his work. Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Wed, 7 October 2009 ![]() Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002)
was born in Armenia in 1908. His photographer uncle, George Nakash,
brought him to Canada in 1924. After apprenticing in Boston with John
H. Garo, Karsh settled in Ottawa in 1932, where he began his
professional career. By 1936 he was photographing visiting statesmen
and dignitaries, among them President Franklin Roosevelt.
His December, 1941 portrait of a bulldoggish Winston Churchill, symbolizing Britain’s wartime resolve, brought Karsh international attention. Among the most widely reproduced portraits in the history of photography, ‘Churchill’ was also one of the first to carry the famous "Karsh of Ottawa" copyright. I
met recently with Jerry Fielder, Curator and Director of the Estate of
Yousuf Karsh to talk about Karsh and the books that contain his works.
Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Mon, 5 October 2009 ![]() Writer, journalist, comic reader, intermittent blogger, and over-tired family man Brad Mackay is the author most recently of a biographical essay which appears in The Collected Doug Wright Volume One (Drawn and Quarterly, 2009).
First of a two-volume set, the book – designed by well known Canadian cartoonist Seth
- presents a comprehensive look at the life and career of one of the
most-read, best-loved cartoonists of the 1960s. The work draws from
thousands of pieces of art, pictures, and letters, plus the artist’s
own journals, and provides a picture of the British-born Wright as both
cartoonist and human being. It follows his artistic development from
earliest unpublished works through to the introduction of his most
enduring comic strip, Nipper. First published in 1949, a full year before the debut of Peanuts, it memorably captured both the humorous and frustrating side of parenting.
I
spoke with Brad recently in Ottawa. We use Wright as a wedge to delve
into the history of illustration, comics and graphic novels. Toward the
end of our discussion Brad provides some tips for those interested in
collecting comics and graphic novels on how best they might start their
journey.
Please listen here Comments[0] |
Sat, 3 October 2009 ![]() This from the incomparable British Council’s contemporary writers website:
Born
in Southport in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Malvern,
Worcestershire, studying for a degree in English and American
Literature followed by an MA in
Comparative Literature, at the University of Kent. He lived for
a year in Sicily before moving to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught
English to technical students for eight years, before returning to
England.
In his first novel, Ghostwritten (1999), nine narrators in nine locations across the globe tell interlocking stories. This novel won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, number9dream (2001), was shortlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fiction. It is set in modern day Tokyo and tells the story of Eiji Miyake’s search for his father. In 2003 David Mitchell was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’. In his third novel, Cloud Atlas
(2004), a young Pacific islander witnesses the nightfall of science
and civilisation, while questions of history are explored in a
series of seemingly disconnected narratives. Cloud Atlas was shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.
David Mitchell lives in Ireland. His latest novel is Black Swan Green (2006)
We
met recently in Toronto to talk about experimentation and realism,
plot, character and all that good stuff, but also about the
greatness of John Cheever, high brow and pulp fiction, good pot
boilers, the cosmos, cosmi, connections, melding verbs,
platitudinous profundities, critics as platypus taxidermists,
poetry in prose, the originalities of happy blunders and cultural
juxtapositions, Perec’s W, monkeying with structure, planning
your funeral, evaluative criticism and the delightful
experience of reading Chekhov’s short stories.
Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Tue, 29 September 2009 ![]() What’s
the difference between a First Edition, a Fine Press Edition and an
Artists’ Book? Joshua and Phyllis Heller work with me to help define
the boundaries.
The two of them established Joshua Heller Rare Books, Inc. in Washington DC,
in 1985. The company specializes in “contemporary fine printing
and beautifully illustrated books, the Private Press Movement,
modern fine bindings, and books about books. [Their] much admired
catalogues, illustrated in full color, are distributed to a
national and international list of clients.”
Joshua
has lectured widely in the United States and Canada on the art of the
book. He helped organize the Art of the Contemporary Book
Conference at Ohio State University in 1991, and has: contributed
articles on the Private Press Movement to journals such as Fine Print and Imprint;
and curated exhibitions of South African botanical artist Elise
Bodley, both for the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the
Audubon Society; he also proposed the first Washington Artists’
Book Fair – now a biennial event; and organized the first ever
exhibition of fine modern bindings at the Corcoran Museum of Art in
Washington DC in 2003. I met the Hellers at their home in Washington, D.C. recently. Please listen here to our conversation (* The Fisher Library referred to by Josh is located at the University of Toronto. Here’s the link) Comments[0] |
Tue, 22 September 2009
John Bidwell is Astor Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at thePierpont Morgan Library, before which he was Curator of Graphic Arts in the Princeton University Library. He has written extensively on the history of papermaking in England and America. The Printed Books and Bindings collection at the Morgan contains works spanning Western book production from the earliest printed ephemera to important first editions from the twentieth century. Holdings encompass a large number of high points in the history of printing, often exemplified by a lone surviving copy or a copy that is perfect in every way. Areas of strength include incunables, early children’s books, fine bindings, and illustrated books.
Yolande de Soissons in Prayer The collection is founded upon acquisitions of Pierpont Morgan, who sought to establish in the United States a library worthy of the great European collections. Among the highlights are three Gutenberg Bibles, works by Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, John Ruskin, Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and William Morris, and classic early children’s books. The Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, a major 1998 gift, strengthens the Morgan’s twentieth-century holdings with authors such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Vladimir Nabokov, Gertrude Stein, and Tennessee Williams. I talk here with John Bidwell about the collection, what it contains, how it was acquired. Copyright © 2009 by Nigel Beale. Comments[0] |
Tue, 15 September 2009
Shakespeare wrote Hamlet
before James l came to the throne. Events in the play reflect many of
the real world concerns that Englishmen had about being ruled by a
foreigner. At the play’s end, Denmark’s line of rulers is
extinguished, and a foreigner (Fortinbras) takes the throne. James was
married to Anna of Denmark, some feared that if he were to attempt a
military takeover, he might call on the forces of his brother in law
Christian IV of Denmark. King Lear was written after James’s succession. At the start of the play Lear is firmly established as king of a united Britain. This reflected James’s wish to be ruler of a fully united kingdom. In fact he approached Parliament, without success, in 1607 in hopes of securing a closer political union. The names of the Dukes in King Lear
are taken from real life. James had recently made his sons Henry and
Charles the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany respectively. In the play
Albany is an honest man who realises too late the evil doings of his
relatives. Once aware, he works to restore natural order. At the end,
hope for the monarchy rests with him, Albany from Scotland, who is
free to reunite the fractured kingdom. In this he represents what James
wanted to achieve with his succession. Listen here as Prof. Joseph Khoury, from St. Francis Xavier University, and I discuss the themes of succession and the divine right of kings in Hamlet and King Lear. Comments[0] |
Thu, 3 September 2009 ![]() Crime novelist Denise Mina is the author of a trilogy of novels set in Glasgow: Garnethill (1998), which won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger; Exile (2000); and Resolution (2001).
Sanctum (2002), is the story of a forensic psychiatrist, convicted of killing a serial killer. The Field of Blood (2005) is the first in a new series, the second in the series, The Dead Hour, was published in 2006, and the third, Slip of the Knife, in 2007.
Mina also writes short stories, one of which, ‘Helena and the Babies’ from Fresh Blood 3 (1999), won the Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Short Story Dagger. Two short stories and a play, Hurtle (2003), have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her latest play is Ida Tamson. Her lastest novel is Still Midnight (2009).
We met recently in Ottawa where Mina was the international guest of honour at Bloody Words, Canada’s national mystery conference. Our conversation cuts a wide swath across the socio-political (alcoholism, the accurate depiction of mental illness, the courage of the mentally ill) the psychoanalytic (detective stories as re-enactments of the primal act) and the technical (cozy endings, realistic puzzles); please listen here: Comments[0] |
Sat, 22 August 2009 ![]() Terry Griggs is the author of a collection of short stories, Quickening, which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award, and two novels, The Lusty Man, and Rogues’ Wedding, shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award. She has also written two books for children, Cat’s Eye Corner, shortlisted for a Mr. Christie’s Book Award and a Red Cedar Award, and most recently a sequel, The Silver Door. In 2003 she received the Marian Engel Award. Born on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, she currently lives in Stratford, Ontario.
We met recently in Ottawa to talk about her latest ‘farce noir’ comic mystery novel, Thought you were Dead,
and, as a result about: cartoons, dead flies, Nabokov, Pnin’s zany,
self-mocking speech and ways, fending off intimacy, how comedy sharpens
your judgment, wordplay, names and book titles, the male-female divide,
ambiguity, contained chapters, Philip Larkin, naked women on book
covers, and The Monkeys’ Michael Nesmith’s mother who invented liquid
paper.
Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Mon, 17 August 2009 ![]() He has published three collections of poetry, including Between Silences and Facing Shadows, and three collections of short fiction,
We met recently in Ottawa to talk about his first book of non-fiction The Writer as Migrant (University of Chicago Press). Adapted from The Rice University Campbell Lecture
he delivered in 2006, the book consists of three interconnected essays
exploring the experience of migrant, ‘exiled’ writers in relation to
their ‘home’ countries and languages. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Lin
Yutang, Homer, Joseph Conrad , Vladimir Nabokov and others all
contribute to the conversation. Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Thu, 13 August 2009
This past Spring at the Blue Met Writers Festival, Donald Antrim conducted a workshop entitled: Fiction and Memoir: "Writing Ourselves" It was designed to explore the ‘challenging and often frustrating process of reading into one’s own work;’ and to identify aspects of that work which may have been underdeveloped, unnoticed, or even, avoided. As the syllabus put it: "Fiction and memoir are not, as a rule, brought together in workshops. And yet many of the concerns that are most important to all of us—the technical production of form; the experience of psychological drive within the narrative; and the tangible-seeming, built-from-scratch, moral or immoral world our characters inhabit—are experienced by writers of fiction and memoir. Whatever we write, we may all have cause to wonder about the overt and the embedded evidence of our own experiences, even in works in which autobiographical material is scrupulously occluded. Perhaps, in opening the class to writers of non-fiction and fiction, there will be a fruitful exchange." Donald Antrim is the author of three novels, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A Novel, The Hundred Brothers and The Verificationist: A Novel. His latest publication is The Afterlife (2006). He lives in Brooklyn, New York. We talked about workshops in general, and what happened in Montreal specifically. Please listen (may have to crank it a bit) here: Comments[0] |
Tue, 28 July 2009 Born in Los Angeles in 1946, Robert Bringhurst is an award winning Canadian poet, typographer and author. Perhaps best known for The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type, he is also a respected translator of poetic works from Haida into English. He lives on Quadra Island, near Campbell River, B.C. Reveal the tenor and meaning of the text
Clarify the structure and the order of the text
Link the text with other existing elements
Induce a state of energetic repose, which is the ideal condition for reading
Comments[0] |
Tue, 21 July 2009
A.B. Yehoshua was born in 1936 to a fifth-generation Jerusalem family of Sephardi origin. His first book of stories, "Mot Hazaken" (The Death of the Old Man) was published in 1962. He was an important member of the "new wave" generation of Israeli writers who differed from earlier writers by focusing on the individual rather than the group. Franz Kafka, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, and William Faulkner were all formative influences. Author
of nine novels, three books of short stories, four plays, and four
collections of essays, Yehoshua has won the Brenner Prize, the Alterman
Prize, the Bialik Prize, the Israel Prize for Literature, the National Jewish Book Award and many, many other international prizes. His most recent novel, Friendly Fire, explores the nature of Israeli familial relationships, personal grief and bitterness. We met recently at the Blue Met Writers Festival in Montreal to talk about the book. Our conversation touches on the Jewish diaspora, hatred and minorities, a two state solution, gestures recognizing good, the metaphor of fire, domestic violence, Apartheid, South Africa, solutions, marriage, and marriages between Arabs and Jews. Comments[0] |
Sun, 19 July 2009 ![]() M
G Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. Before coming to
Canada in 1978, he attended MIT and the University of Pennsylvania,
where he specialized in theoretical nuclear physics. From 1978-1980 he
was a postdoctoral fellow at the Atomic Energy of Canada, and from 1980
to 1989 he was a research associate at the University of Toronto.
During this period he developed a keen interest in medieval Indian
literature and history, co-founded and edited a literary magazine (The Toronto South Asian Review, later renamed The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad), and began writing stories and a novel. In 1989, with the publication of his first novel, The Gunny Sack, he
was invited to spend a season at the International Writing Program of
the University of Iowa. That year ended his active career in nuclear
physics. Vassanji is the author of six novels and two collections of short stories. He
has won the Giller Prize, twice; the Harbourfront Festival Prize; the
Commonwealth First Book Prize (Africa); the Bressani Prize and the
Order of Canada.
We met recently at the Blue Met Writers Festival in Montreal to talk about his most recent work: a brief biography of Mordecai Richler for Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series.The
discussion touches on Richler’s outsider status, his struggle with and
acceptance of Jewishness, making one person’s story everyone’s story,
cities, streets and communities, mothers and fathers, growing out of
groups, humble origins, irony, great novels versus journalism, and
honesty.
Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Sun, 19 July 2009
This from Contemporary Writers: " Zoe Heller was born in London in 1965 and educated at Oxford University and Columbia University, New York. She is a journalist who, after writing book reviews for various newspapers, became a feature writer for The Independent. She wrote a weekly confessional column for the Sunday Times for four years, but now writes for the Daily Telegraph and earned the title ‘Columnist of the Year’ in 2002. She is the author of two novels: Everything You Know (2000), a dark comedy about misanthropic writer Willy Miller, and Notes on a Scandal (2003) which tells the story of an affair between a high school teacher and her student through the eyes of the teacher’s supposed friend, Barbara Covett. It was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for fiction, and was recently released as a feature film, starring Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench." We met recently in Ottawa to talk, ‘companionably’ about her latest novel The Believers. Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Wed, 15 July 2009
Nino Ricci’s first novel, the best-selling Lives of the Saints, won international acclaim and a host of awards, including, in Canada, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and in England, the Betty Trask Award and the Winifred Holtby Prize. It was followed by In A Glass House and Where She Has Gone, which completed the trilogy that Lives of the Saints began, Testament, co-winner of the Trillium Award, and, The Origin of Species which won Ricci his second Governor General’s Award. Born in Leamington, Ontario, to parents from the Molise region of Italy, he completed studies at York University in Toronto, at Concordia University in Montreal, and at the University of Florence, and has taught both in Canada and abroad. We met recently at the Blue Met Writers Festival in Montreal to talk about his most recent work: a brief biography of Pierre Trudeau for Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians series. Topics covered include the Italian Canadian attachment to Trudeau and the Liberals, immigration, gun slingers, alluring leadership qualities, fear of failure, media strategies, bilingualism’s mixed legacy, the Charter, budget deficits, the pride of being Canadian, and philosopher-kings. Please listen here: Comments[0] |
Fri, 10 July 2009
Margaret MacMillan
was educated at the University of Toronto and at Oxford, where she
obtained a B. Phil. in politics and a D. Phil. for a thesis on the
British in India between 1880 and 1920. Her books include Women of the Raj, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World,
which won the 2003 Governor General’s Award, the Samuel Johnson Prize,
the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and was a New York
Times Editors’ Choice for 2002, Nixon in China, The Uses and Abuses of History, and most recently Penguin’s Extraordinary Canadians: Stephen Leacock. Currently, MacMillan is the Warden of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford University.
Copyright © 2009 by Nigel Beale Comments[1] |
Wed, 24 June 2009
Meir Shalev, (pictured above with his sister) one of Israel’s most celebrated novelists,was born in 1948 in Nahalal, Israel’s first moshav. He is a bestselling author in Israel, Holland, and Germany; and he has been translated into more than twenty languages. His novels include A Pigeon and a Boy, Fontanelle, Alone In the Desert, But A Few Days, and Esau. Russian Romance (The Blue Mountain) is one of the top five bestsellers in Israeli publishing history. Shalev is often compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Prizes he has won include the Juliet Club Prize (Italy); The Chiavari (Italy); and The Brenner Prize of 2006—the highest Israeli literary recognition awarded for his novel, A Pigeon and a Boy, published in the US by Random House in 2007. I met Meir at The Blue Met Writers Festival in Montreal recently. We talk here about, among other things, television, satire, The Daily Show, great sentences, labels, Gogol, gardening and farming. Please listen here: Comments[0] |











Charles H. Cameron as King Lear (1872) / print by A.L. Coburn, ca. 1915, Photo by








