Governor General English Poetry shortlist!
Michael Boughn, Toronto, Cosmographia: A Post-Lucretian Faux Micro-Epic
(BookThug; distributed by Literary Press Group) (ISBN 978-1-897388-69-3)
Kate Eichhorn, New York City and Montreal, Fieldnotes, A Forensic
(BookThug; distributed by LPG) (ISBN 978-1-897388-66-2)
Phil Hall, Perth (Ontario), Killdeer
(BookThug; distributed by LPG) (ISBN 978-1-897388-81-5)
Garry Thomas Morse, Vancouver, Discovery Passages
(Talonbooks; distributed by Publishers Group) (ISBN 978-0-88922-660-9 )
Susan Musgrave, Sidney and Masset (British Columbia), Origami Dove
(McClelland & Stewart; distributed by Random House of Canada) (ISBN 978-0-7710-6522-4)
There are many categories of books.
Each winner will receive $25,000 and a specially-bound copy of the winning book. The publisher of each winning book will receive $3,000 to support promotional activities. Non-winning finalists each receive $1,000 in recognition of their selection as finalists, bringing the total value of the awards to approximately $450,000.
The winners will be announced Tuesday, November 15 at 10 am at the Enwave Theatre at Harbourfront Centre, 231 Queens Quay West, in Toronto.
His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, will present the 2011 GG Literary Awards on Thursday, November 24, at 6 p.m. at Rideau Hall.

I never paid much attention to Canada Reads but Claudia Coutu Radmore’s book, Arctic Twilight: Leonard Budgell and the Changing North, has been nominated as a possible selection on Canada Reads. I enjoyed this one a while back when it came out. Fascinating time capsules of a man living at an HBC outpost in the north.
Nominations can be made on for one more week. They’re “looking for the best memoirs, biographies and literary non-fiction this country has to offer!” Kenk and Locavore are up for it as well.
If you go to cbc.ca, look for the Canada Reads 2012 section. Any Canadian is eligible to vote.

Simply suggest the book you want to see on Canada Reads this year and give a brief (250 words or less) explanation as to why it would make a great Canada Reads contender. The 40 books with the most support will be named the Canada Reads: True Stories Top 40.

Want to get your voting finger in gear? There’s also the Charles Taylor Prize poll for non-fiction that closes Oct 13 and has a Wayson Choy title in the running. Vote before Oct 11 in the the poll to back the best pick by Canadian Bookstore.

Emerging Writers Reading
Frances Boyle, Jacqueline Bourque, Vanessa Hanson, Robin Macdonald, Pearl Pirie, Peter Dixon, Gwen Smid, and Bernadette Wagner, writers who met at Sage Hill Writing Experience and Banff Centre’s Writing With Style. Possibly with one other surprise reader.
Where? Ottawa, 223 Armstrong St, Carleton Tavern, Upstairs
When: Oct 27, 2011, 7:00-9:00pm
At the same time the AB Series has Henry Beissel at the Laurier House, starting at 7:30PM.
The Oneness Poetry Showcase happens at 7:00 pm at the East Africa Restaurant, 376 Rideau St.
The City of Ottawa Book Awards start at 8:00 pm athe Library and Archives of Canada, 395 Wellington. The Finalists are Gabriella Goliger, Elisabeth Harvor, Sandra Ridley, Dean Steadman, Max Turner Street.
There’s a spread of taste and venues and a large crowd-base to support many literary reaches at once.

The 5th season of the A B Series launched last week with Stuart Ross and Peter Norman.
There was an interesting format with both readers doing a solo portion then a break, then a second run. Peter read from At the Gates of the Theme Park, from Mansfield Press in part. Stuart Ross had his Cobourg Variations chapbook and read a previously publicly unread chapter from his novel, Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew.

Here Peter is reading a wonderful piece about being one with his shaving foam, being simultaneously it expanding and being the razor and himself and having the sensation of being each individual hair on his own chin and the foam down the drain. Saying that is one thing. Hearing it is an entirely even better thing.
A wealth of energy. Good vibe in the pretty full room. Awesome start to a season. And that was before the first break alone. After it got wilder, in a good sense.
There was a mix of short story, poetry, sound poetry and collaboration. They riffed some sound poetry together after break then an improv bit.


One gives a word, the other responds and they keep going back and forth, sometimes stumping each other, sometimes stalling, sometimes racing forward. A volunteer from the audience transcribed. It was lively and fun too.
The idea was spun from what Joshua Beckham and Matthew Rohrer did in the Nice Hat. Thanks. (They toured with that thru town as part of the Wave Poetry bus tour a few years ago.)
And of course books and chapbooks on the table.
Spencer Gordon was interviewed on his Inferno House Press lately and said,

As Stuart Ross wrote, many authors today skip the “sacred” chapbook stage of their careers. This notion wormed its way into my brain and lodged itself there maliciously. It is sacred. It’s good to release work on a smaller scale when you’re still honing your voice. As others have pointed out, chapbooks (and small publishers) are great for single or smaller groupings of work(s) that don’t naturally lend themselves to a full-length collection.

The season to Christmas is now listed on the series site. Next up is a double bill: Zorras and Camille Martin in about 10 days.

Going to a brick and mortar indie store is wonderful for finding new things, but less foolproof if there’s something in particular you want. I would prefer to do small bookstores, ideologically, but practically, customer service is hit and miss, inventory is hit and miss and ordering in, the same. Nonetheless I keep trying and bought from 4 indie bookstores (including Mona Lisait) this month.
But in general, I’ve observed there are two foolproof ways to buy books.
1. Find an author in the wild, in person, who has a book in hand, and exchange that book for cash or book.
2. Use Amazon.
The majority of books I’ve ordered from small press online do actually come. BookThug can do it. Fewer & Further Press has got it down.
Two books I’ve ordered (who shall remain nameless) from small press online and two more from authors online never came. Pursue as I like but it would be to throw good energy after bad.
The thing with bookstores is, often, if someone is ill and gets behind other workers can step to the plate but in small press, one person tries to do it all and is the only person who knows what has been done or needs doing.
Going to book launches gets that direct sample-and-consume thing going. Amazon is almost as fast as picking a book off a table. They may treat their workers badly as NYTimes mentioned, but they have one aspect of sale down. People who don’t have their act together should outsource it and not offer what they cannot manage.
What is sales?
That would be: customer indicates which item, gives money, is acknowledged, and then gets the product.
That’s not hard is it?
Producing a book is a different skill set than selling. Making the rounds selling a book in person is a different habit that building a website and plugging in pre-built tools, checking when a sale is made and shipping it. But it’s not as if the whole sales procedure is veiled in mysticism.
As I mentioned complained about before, after almost two months I got one book from a indie bookstore who sent the wrong book. This newest instalment is different, but is as frustrating.
August 4th I started to order a book from a publisher. My order tried to go thru 3 times over the next 5 days. The last step of order wouldn’t load. Each time I sent an email to the publisher. No email was acknowledged.
I received a handwritten letter dated a week after my last attempt, postmarked a week after that, but received 2 months after my first attempt because I was away for 6 weeks starting the day after it was postmarked.
For that reason we can discard some of the time lag but not the other aspect — they sent a random book. Not the book I had specified in my online forms to the publisher on its site. Their newest featured title.
I have omitted names to protect the ignorant.

Our website does not permit international transactions. On the other hand, yours are the second to make this attempt.
Rather than promote ill-will, I am sending you a copy of _________’s book. You may remit $17 US or not.

I presume the other person who wanted one of their titles internationally is baffled to receive the random selection of the one I wanted. It could be a wrong-envelop issue potentially.
It doesn’t have to be that hard.
Paypal will generate mailing labels, invoices, notify when something has been bought.
I received an order while travelling, was notified, had 3 of my titles with me, and sent the one which was ordered to Korea from a small village in France within a couple days.
If a merchant account with paypal makes the book cost more, one can set the price if thru paypal higher to compensate. Find out rates for domestic, nearby countries and international and build in that option.
If selling books is purely a moonlighting hobby, one can finance whatever people want to get from you out of your own pocket. Go all the way – a personal literary philanthropy project. Free books for everyone all the time. If it’s a business, go all the way that way – one should recover at least material costs and run it like a business.