Hey folks
Thu, May 7 2009 02:53 | Permalink
Trevor Cole here. I'm just checking in to let you know that I'm working hard on rebooting AuthorsAloud. It's taken me longer than I expected — writing a novel tends to interfere with life to a great degree, and with finicky html work to an even greater degree — but it's coming. There'll be a redesign, and some new authors on board for starters. And I do have plans.
When will it all happen? I hesitate to set a deadline. But I'm hopeful that the weather will still be warm when AuthorsAloud dawns anew.
Cheers!
When will it all happen? I hesitate to set a deadline. But I'm hopeful that the weather will still be warm when AuthorsAloud dawns anew.
Cheers!
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
Comments
Kind words
Wed, Oct 22 2008 02:02 | Permalink
AuthorsAloud received a nice reminder today that it serves a valuable purpose. Terri Ryan, a teacher at Caledonia High School in Terrace, BC, wrote to say this:
"Your website has become a routine part of my English 11 programme. Once a week I click on the website, send it through the projector and turn up the volume to hear not just the readings but the insights from each of you. One hundred and twenty students love your website! We order books, we share them, and we critic them. We can fit three readings in one hour and students love to hear your voices. As songwriters are to their songs, so the author is to the story.
Love your Website!"
It's great to hear, and a spur to keep working toward the relaunch of AuthorsAloud, which will bring more authors, and more features. So stay tuned.
TC
"Your website has become a routine part of my English 11 programme. Once a week I click on the website, send it through the projector and turn up the volume to hear not just the readings but the insights from each of you. One hundred and twenty students love your website! We order books, we share them, and we critic them. We can fit three readings in one hour and students love to hear your voices. As songwriters are to their songs, so the author is to the story.
Love your Website!"
It's great to hear, and a spur to keep working toward the relaunch of AuthorsAloud, which will bring more authors, and more features. So stay tuned.
TC
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
Why we've been silent
Mon, Mar 17 2008 12:35 | Permalink
If you're a frequent or even occasional visitor to AuthorsAloud, you'll have noticed that nothing much has changed for the last month or so. That's because some weeks ago the hard drive containing all of the page files for AuthorsAloud decided to flee this mortal coil and enacted a quiet but, in its implications, a rather Shakespearean death scene.
In other words the damn hard drive failed, and the AuthorsAloud files, constituting hundreds of hours of work, went poof.
Because I, your servant, had been thinking seriously about backing up all those files, but had not yet put thought into action, it means that AuthorsAloud in its entirety has to be rebuilt from scratch. Thanks to the magic of the internet, the site still exists on line, as you can plainly see. However, until the files with which it is made are reconstituted, the site can't be expanded with more readings. I can add to the blog, but that's it.
But don't worry. Work has begun. It may take a while, but AuthorsAloud will start growing again. I'll update you on the progress as it... progresses.
TC
In other words the damn hard drive failed, and the AuthorsAloud files, constituting hundreds of hours of work, went poof.
Because I, your servant, had been thinking seriously about backing up all those files, but had not yet put thought into action, it means that AuthorsAloud in its entirety has to be rebuilt from scratch. Thanks to the magic of the internet, the site still exists on line, as you can plainly see. However, until the files with which it is made are reconstituted, the site can't be expanded with more readings. I can add to the blog, but that's it.
But don't worry. Work has begun. It may take a while, but AuthorsAloud will start growing again. I'll update you on the progress as it... progresses.
TC
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
The saddest news
Mon, Feb 18 2008 01:25 | Permalink
Today in the Globe and Mail I learned of the death of Val Ross, an author and frequent writer on Canada's literary scene.
Beyond the personal shock of this news is the realization of what an enormous loss this is for Canada, and Canadian writers. I worked with Val some years ago when I was an editor at the Globe's Toronto magazine. She was inarguably the smartest and the kindest person I've ever worked with. She was generous with her time and her attention. She treated everyone she met with remarkable grace and humour — the dimples in her cheeks were always springing into action with her ready and rather devilish smile. And she knew her stuff.
She was a tremendous friend to Canadian literature. Intensely knowledgeable, she wrote about the people and the struggles of the book industry with enormous depth and awareness. We are, as a community, poorer without her. She was also a personal friend, one I didn't get to see enough, but one I feel lucky to have known at all. I'm stunned and saddened by her loss.
Trevor Cole
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
2008 begins with murder
Mon, Jan 14 2008 06:29 | fiction, literature | Permalink
I'm not one to take that sort of thing lightly, and neither is Sally Cooper. The first new reading of the new year brings us the novelist and short-story writer turning her eye to the morbid. In her insight, Cooper tells us that years ago she was fascinated with murder, and that her new novel from Dundurn Press, Tell Everything, springs (or seeps?) from that obsession. The reading Cooper gives us is lighter than you might expect, almost absurdist in tone. But it gives us a subtle sense of the darkness to come. Be sure to give her a listen.
TC
TC
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
Insight at its best
Mon, Dec 10 2007 07:06 | literature | Permalink
I'm really pleased by how authors are taking to the Insight concept here at AuthorsAloud. As you know, the "insight" is that second, more casual recording that most new contributors are doing now, in addition to their readings, which takes listeners behind the scenes and gives them a bit of inside knowledge as to the genesis of a particular piece of writing, or the process involved in creating it. The latest comes from author Mary Novik, recently long-listed for the Giller prize for her novel Conceit. Just back from her book tour in support of Conceit, Mary clearly put a good deal of thought and time into her Insight recording, which has just been added to her page. She gives a thorough account of how the idea of a book centred on Pegge Donne, daughter of the poet John Donne, came to her, and I recommend it as five minutes very well spent.
TC
TC
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
The poet as performer
We're all about reading the work to ready ears, and if there's a pro at it in Canada, it must be Harold Rhenisch. He's been doing it a long time. As the poet says in the Insight recording he has bestowed to AuthorsAloud, he's probably given over 300 public readings. You can tell that he's comfortable in front of a microphone; in his reading of three poems his voice lifts and falls with the stagecraft of someone used to getting a rise out of an audience.
I have to say that Insight is worth a listen too. Harold discusses the influences of translation and public readings on his work, and in the course of a few minutes he captures a lot of the magic that's conjured by giving voice to words. I encourage you to check it out.
And, just a reminder, don't forget to subscribe to the AuthorsAloud podcast on iTunes. Why? Because the more subscribers, the more likely that iTunes will feature the podcast, and that will bring more attention to the authors and poets featured on this site. The button is over there to your right. It's free. What are you waiting for? (Remember you'll need to have iTunes installed on your computer.)
TC
I have to say that Insight is worth a listen too. Harold discusses the influences of translation and public readings on his work, and in the course of a few minutes he captures a lot of the magic that's conjured by giving voice to words. I encourage you to check it out.
And, just a reminder, don't forget to subscribe to the AuthorsAloud podcast on iTunes. Why? Because the more subscribers, the more likely that iTunes will feature the podcast, and that will bring more attention to the authors and poets featured on this site. The button is over there to your right. It's free. What are you waiting for? (Remember you'll need to have iTunes installed on your computer.)
TC
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
We're on iTunes !
Sun, Oct 7 2007 01:53 | Permalink
I'm proud to say the AuthorsAloud Podcast is on the air, and you can find it on iTunes. The podcast is one more way we're trying to help promote Canada's literary writers, and so every week, we'll be producing a new AuthorsAloud podcast episode featuring one of the fiction or poetry readings from the AuthorsAloud collection.
We want to open this opportunity up to as many authors as we can, so every reading recorded primarily for this site (as opposed to cuts from CDs or readings originally done for radio, etc) will be eligible for inclusion in the AuthorsAloud podcast. Beyond that basic eligibility, factors such as the audio quality of the recording will help determine which readings get featured. The podcast will try to keep a balance between fiction and poetry, as well as old and new. In other words, the earliest contributors to AuthorsAloud won't be forgotten. In fact, the first reading featured on the AuthorsAloud podcast was from one of the first contributors — Merilyn Simonds.
You can help make the AuthorsAloud Podcast a success by subscribing to it on iTunes. If you have iTunes installed (yes, it's available for Windows too), just click on the podcasting image above and that will take you to the AuthorsAloud podcast page on iTunes. (You can also find the podcast by searching for it within iTunes.) Click on "subscribe" and you'll receive each new episode as it becomes available, whenever you launch iTunes. Please do subscribe: Remember, it costs nothing, and the more subscriptions the podcast gets, the more likely iTunes will be to feature the podcast and bring more attention to the authors featured on this site and to Canadian literature in general.
If you don't have and aren't likely to get iTunes, you can still subscribe to the podcast at Podcast Alley. To do that, go to the AuthorsAloud page by clicking here.
And once you've had a listen to the podcast episodes, let us know what you think.
TC
We want to open this opportunity up to as many authors as we can, so every reading recorded primarily for this site (as opposed to cuts from CDs or readings originally done for radio, etc) will be eligible for inclusion in the AuthorsAloud podcast. Beyond that basic eligibility, factors such as the audio quality of the recording will help determine which readings get featured. The podcast will try to keep a balance between fiction and poetry, as well as old and new. In other words, the earliest contributors to AuthorsAloud won't be forgotten. In fact, the first reading featured on the AuthorsAloud podcast was from one of the first contributors — Merilyn Simonds.
You can help make the AuthorsAloud Podcast a success by subscribing to it on iTunes. If you have iTunes installed (yes, it's available for Windows too), just click on the podcasting image above and that will take you to the AuthorsAloud podcast page on iTunes. (You can also find the podcast by searching for it within iTunes.) Click on "subscribe" and you'll receive each new episode as it becomes available, whenever you launch iTunes. Please do subscribe: Remember, it costs nothing, and the more subscriptions the podcast gets, the more likely iTunes will be to feature the podcast and bring more attention to the authors featured on this site and to Canadian literature in general.
If you don't have and aren't likely to get iTunes, you can still subscribe to the podcast at Podcast Alley. To do that, go to the AuthorsAloud page by clicking here.
And once you've had a listen to the podcast episodes, let us know what you think.
TC
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
Hill Climbs High
The day the world found out that Lawrence Hill was on the long-list for the Giller Prize, he was sitting in my office, recording readings for AuthorsAloud. One thing didn't naturally lead to the other — the recording session had been planned for a while — but it's a good indication that this site strives to represent the best of Canadian literature, and to remain current always.
Hill grew up in the predominantly white suburb of Don Mills, Ontario, in the sixties, and in his writing he has been greatly influenced by his parents' work in the human rights movement. He's been dedicated to his art for a long time and it's nice (not only because I consider him a friend) to see him getting his due with his latest marvelous novel. Take the time to listen to Lawrence Hill's reading from The Book of Negroes, and to the insight he gives into the challenges of taking on what for him is a dramatically new style and voice, here.
TC
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
The richness of language
The latest addition to AuthorsAloud is a reading by accomplished poet Richard Harrison, who has given us something special. At the launch for TransLit 7, the most recent edition of the annual collection published by the Literary Translator's Society in Calgary, he read his moving poem "September 11, 2001, 6pm". Then, in the TransLit tradition, the poem was presented in two other languages — in Arabic by Antoine Sassine, and in French by Gilles Mossière.
AuthorsAloud has the pleasure of offering you, its visitors, all three readings. Each is a wonderful performance, and listening to all three, one after the other, creates the effect of drawing a bridge of shared appreciation and understanding between cultures. It's a very fine way to spend about 8 minutes and I encourage you to do so.
TC
Hear the voices of Canadian literature at AuthorsAloud.com
Welcome to AuthorsAloud
This is an independent library of short, recorded audio readings by Canadian authors of literary fiction and poetry.
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"It is not the voice that commands the story; it is the ear."
—Italo Calvino (1923-1985) Italian author, critic
Literary Links:
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84 Authors
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