Some writers just seem to have led more interesting lives. I can’t help but be a little envious of the CV belonging to Raymond Beauchemin: a journalist first in New England, then at the Gazette in Montreal, one of my favourite cities; then for several years the deputy foreign editor of a newspaper in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Of all his experiences, it’s Beauchemin’s 18-or-so years in Montreal that seem to have most informed his first novel, Everything I Own. The Quebecois music scene forms a big part of the novel; its structure, Beauchemin has said, is a modified form of thirty-two-bar blues, the story divided into verses and choruses. (Even that facility with musical structure is something I find myself envying.) Beauchemin, who by the way is a distant cousin of fellow-AuthorsAloud-contributor Yves Beauchemin, gives us more great insights into the writing of his novel, and a terrific reading, here. Enjoy.

Despite my adding a couple of new readings to the AuthorsAloud collection recently, it’s been a while since I posted in this space. My reason, or excuse, is that I was looking for a theme, something that linked our new authors together. I think I’ve found it.
The commonality shared by the three newest contributors to AuthorsAloud — Farzana Doctor, Jessica Hiemstra and Shari Lapeña — is the breadth of life experience that they bring to their work. Not to say these are women who’ve lived a long time; they’re all quite young. But they’ve lived working lives beyond the keyboard or the pen, which isn’t something every writer can say.
Farzana Doctor, who gives us a reading from her newest novel, Six Metres of Pavement, has another existence as a psychotherapist, working with clients across a broad range of issues, from trauma to drug addiction to gender identity. She sees the stuff of authorial exploration every day, up close.
Jessica Hiemstra is a poet (reading here) who brings to her writing an eye developed by her own successful career as a visual artist, not to mention the years she has spent in lands most of us would consider exotic, including Sierra Leone and Melbourne, Australia.
And Shari Lapeña, the author of the novel Happiness Economics (reading here) has brought the experiences gained as a teacher and a lawyer to the fictional lives she creates.
Each of these writers has given us something true and real in their written work, and in the readings they’ve contributed here. I’m not going to say that it’s their life experience that makes the difference — there are no absolutes in art — but it’s at least as good as an MFA.

I met Sandra Ridley about a year ago during a book tour. The hospitality suites of literary festivals hold all sorts of surprises and Sandra was one. She was charming, smart and wry, but the surprise came later when I learned she was a poet. Sandra Ridley doesn’t like to brag. In fact she’s described herself elsewhere as “introverted.” But her light is now truly shining out from under the covers. She won a Saskatchewan Book Award for her 2010 collection, Fallout, and now her newest collection is destined to bring her more attention. As she explains here in her insight recording, Post-Apothecary was inspired by a visit to a tuberculosis sanitarium, and it exemplifies Sandra’s love of word sounds and precise imagery. Many of the poems have the fragile intricacy of watch works. It’s a pleasure to hear her read and I’m delighted that Sandra has contributed her voice to AuthorsAloud.
TC

Julie Wilson, known as @BookMadam on Twitter, contacted me recently because she saw us as aural kindred spirits. Recently on her blog, Juilie began posting recordings of authors reading recipes, which is pure fun (I’ve contributed a reading for “Cranberry-Orange Relish” by John Engels). And she had the great idea of getting together, textually, for a chat about AuthorsAloud, and about author readings in general. She posted the result, which includes a nostalgic riff on PopRocks (remember those?), on the terrific website Canadian Bookshelf, here.

At a recent poetry reading in Hamilton I got a chance to reconnect with an old friend of AuthorsAloud, Catherine Graham. Catherine was one of the early contributors to our collection of readings here, and her work is wonderful. But that early recording — a selection of poems from her book, Pupa — had been made through a phone line, and I’d always been disappointed that I couldn’t offer AuthorsAloud visitors a better representation of Catherine’s work and voice. So when she arrived to read from her new work, Winterkill (the third work in a trilogy that began with Pupa), I took advantage of the chance to talk Catherine into giving us a brand new recording. And I couldn’t be more thrilled with the result. The poems of Winterkill are inspired by found moments, exquisite discoveries that Catherine is able to expand and crystalize into something quite beautiful. She also provides a helpful Insight, which comes from her work as a creative writing teacher. Listen to Catherine’s recordings here.

It was at the same event that I was introduced to a friend of Catherine’s, the poet Ian Burgham, and I was floored by his work. His poems are rich with imagery, and yet they strike me as deeply personal and honest expressions about subjects that spring from his life and experience. Selected from his collection The Grammar of Distance, the poems are both refreshingly masculine, and yet unafraid of emotion. To my ears it’s a marvelous combination. Ian also gives us an insight into the nature of free verse that I found fascinating. I’m thrilled to be able to share Ian’s work and thoughts with the Authorsaloud audience here.
TC

Ava Homa has been through a lot. A Kurdish-Canadian living in exile, she has seen her father’s suffering in the aftermath of torture by Iranian officials, and she been forced to make a new life 12,000 kilometres from her homeland. In response, she has called on her artistic resources to produce a collection of stories about life in Iran, Echoes from the Other Land, which she says is the story of “relationships, of human desires, resistance and passion.” We’re happy to be able to give Ava a place here, at AuthorsAloud. Listen to her reading, and her Insight, here.

I first came to know Dawn Promislow through another facet of both our lives with words — that being magazine journalism. Dawn was a researcher often assigned to confirm the facts of my stories, and I came to both dread and rely upon her demanding precision. It was only recently that I became aware of Dawn as a writer of fiction, and what a delightful discovery that was. The same exactitude she brought to her magazine work now gives her prose a rare kind of clarity. Her debut collection, Jewels and Other Stories, has been getting rave reviews. But there’s another reason why I was excited to be able to bring Dawn’s work to AuthorsAloud. She has the most entrancing voice, ornamented with a soft, South African accent. Though as a writer I used to grumble about being held to account by Dawn on the less-concrete facts in my stories, I loved listening to the voice on the other end of the phone line. The reading Dawn gives us will let you have a taste of that voice, which is so perfectly suited to the clear, rich prose it renders. Enjoy.
TC

This week AuthorsAloud adds a trio of talented women to its lineup. Alison Pick, who’s novel Far to Go has become an international bestseller, visited Hamilton recently for the Gritlit festival and, on behalf of AuthorsAloud fans I took advantage of that opportunity to get Alison to do a private reading. The reading turned out just fine; the preamble to it didn’t go nearly as smoothly (Alison described the experience as something “out of a sitcom”). She’d just done a public reading at The Worker’s Arts and Heritage Centre, a great old building in the northwest corner of Hamilton, and we looked for a quiet room in which to record. But on that Sunday the Centre was more than its usual bustling self and after several interruptions we had to decamp and find a new location. We ended up in my tiny blue Toyota, parked against the curb. Again, not an ideal recording studio: It was one of this spring’s few sunny and warm April days and the interior of the car was baking. Listen closely and you’ll also hear the occasional passing car. But AuthorsAloud is all about capturing the private voices of our best authors and this reading certainly fits. On the same page Alison also gives us a short insight into the foundations of Far to Go.

In addition to Alison, we have readings from two other fine writers. Lea Harper is a multi-disciplinary writer whose work spans fiction, poetry and songwriting. Harper is very connected to the music industry, having written editorials for The Music Scene and Billboard Magazine and winning awards for her songwriting. She has recorded her poetry professionally using soundscapes in the background, and AuthorsAloud has an example of that here. And Anne Sorbie is a Calgary writer who has published fiction and poetry, and whose moving first novel, Memoir of a Good Death, came out last fall. She reads an excerpt from Memoir here.

I should have had this reading from Winnipeg poet Ariel Gordon up a while ago, so my apologies to her and to you. Because it really is a lovely reading — from Gordon’s 2010 collection Hump, which is largely about motherhood and pregnancy. Gordon also provides a terrific Insight recording that will resonate if you’ve ever been a new parent hoping to have time enough left in your days to do something other than parent 24/7. All in all a fine addition to AuthorsAloud, and well worth waiting for. I hope you’ll check out Ariel Gordon’s reading and Insight here.
TC

Every once in a while you meet someone unusually warm and generous, someone who feels immediately like a friend. And when good fortune lights upon that person you can’t help but applaud. That’s how I feel about all the good things that have happened for Kathleen Winter since the publication of her debut novel, Annabel. Kathleen is an immensely talented writer, deserving of all the accolades she’s received. But somehow it’s her qualities as a person that strike me as even more rare. It was a delight to get to know Kathleen a little last fall, during the various author festivals that one gets invited to when one has a new book. My only regret is that she lives with her family in Montreal and can’t just pop over for coffee whenever the mood hits (which I’m quite certain her husband wouldn’t mind).
But enough about my Kathleen Winter crush. We’re here to celebrate Kathleen’s contribution to AuthorsAloud. She’s provided us with a wonderful reading of an early pivotal scene in Annabel, and in addition to that, a lovely and intimate Insight into the process of writing the book, which will give you a sense, I think, of her unique charm. You can listen to both of Kathleen’s contributions here.
TC

With her novel The Golden Mean, Annabel Lyon has achieved the kind of success most Canadian authors can only dream about in the deepest REM stage of sleep. These days her time is rarely her own. I was witness to this about a year ago when she and I were two thirds of a Canada Council jury in Ottawa. She’s a mother and a celebrity, and consequently someone is always asking for more of her. So I was thrilled — and it says a lot about Annabel — that when I asked her to contribute to AuthorsAloud, she accepted quickly and followed through. This is the kind of gift that makes AuthorsAloud special, in my view: a successful, busy author takes time in a quiet room to record something just for the visitors to this site. As an extra bonus, Annabel has also given us an Insight recording. I saw her speak to a university audience in Ottawa, and the short Insight is a nice distillation of that speech and well worth listening to. Annabel’s reading and Insight can be found here.
TC

Every new poetry reading here at AuthorsAloud is cause for celebration, and it’s an added joy to bring aboard a poet who’s riding a wave of achievement. George Sipos is currently one of five finalists for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, for his memoir The Geography of Arrival, which reflects upon his boyhood as an emigrant from Budapest growing up in London, Ontario. And Sipos’s poetry is no less celebrated, having garnered a nomination for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. The poems of The Glassblowers have a quiet, contemplative quality, connected to precise moments, often in the midst of nature. In the Insight recording that George has provided, he admits that, once, he envied urban poets for their influences. But no longer. “One of the nice things about getting old,” he says, “is you don’t have to apologize for anything.”
No apologies necessary, George. Listen to his lovely reading and insight here.
TC

With twelve titles to her credit, Peterborough, Ontario’s Betsy Struthers is an accomplished veteran of the Canadian literary scene. Three of her books are novels, but I think it’s fair to say that after eight collections of poetry and the 2004 Pat Lowther Memorial Award for the best book of poetry by a Canadian woman, she’s most identifiable as a poet. Her latest, then — Relay: Short Fictions — counts as something of a departure. An exploration by the poet of moments of joy and melancholy and presented in the form of what Struthers calls “micro stories.” For AuthorsAloud she reads several of these, and as someone who once said she became a poet because she liked the “sound of words working together,” she’s found a natural home here.
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Congratulations are in order to two AuthorsAloud novelists and it’s about time I got around to it. When the Canada Reads top ten list came out it was no surprise to see Lawrence Hill featured in it. He’s a huge Canada Reads success story for his novel The Book of Negroes (although I think the CBC takes a bit too much credit for Hill’s success with that book). But what a delightful surprise to see Angie Abdou on the list for her first novel, The Bone Cage. Both of these authors have had a place here at AuthorsAloud for a couple of years, and it’s lovely to have an opportunity to feature them prominently again. You can find Abdou’s reading here, and listen to Hill reading from The Book of Negroes here.
And by the by, I’ll take this opportunity to let you know that I’ve posted a reading from my own new novel, Practical Jean, which was recently shortlisted for the Writer’s Trust Award for Fiction. Cheers.

It’s been a while since I updated you on the goings on at AuthorsAloud, so let me assure you that we’re alive and well. When you’re on a book tour, appearing at festivals, you meet lots of other authors. It’s a wonderful chance to hear them read and see how they interact with an audience. Everyone has his or her own style, but I have to say our audiences are well-served. There are a lot of great readers out there. And I’m happy to say a few of them will be showing up here, at AuthorsAloud. In the coming weeks you’re going to be treated to the work of some significant names. So stay tuned.

AuthorsAloud is also a place for emerging authors to show off their stuff, and in that vein we’re proud to share the work of Lee Kvern. An Albertan, Lee is an established short-story writer whose work has appeared in a number of major Canadian journals. She’s also a winner of the CBC Literary Awards. For AuthorsAloud, she reads a memorable scene, with a rather explosive ending, from her new novel The Matter of Sylvie. Check it out here.

TC

It was my privilege earlier this year to act as a judge in the Bronwen Wallace Awards. The idea of poet Carolyn Smart of Queens University, the prize was established sixteen years ago to honor Bronwen Wallace, a Kingston-born writer who died too young. Every year the prize, under the umbrella of The Writer’s Trust, goes to either a poet or fiction writer under the age of 35 who has not yet published a book. The 132 submissions I read as one of three judges set a remarkably high standard, which made for hard judging toil, and the stories from the three finalists — Kilby Smith-McGregor, Shashi S. Bhat and Claire Tacon — were all memorable works of art.

As most visitors to AuthorsAloud know, one of the requirements for inclusion here is to have published a book of poetry or literary fiction. That’s a firm rule and I stand by it. But what good is a rule if you can’t hold its head under water once in a while? So for the first time, AuthorsAloud now features a reading from a writer whose first book is still to come: the winner of the 2009 Bronwen Wallace Award, Kilby Smith-McGregor. She reads an excerpt from her astonishingly assured winning story, “The Bird in Hand,” here. And I’m proud to welcome Kilby as the 100th author on AuthorsAloud.
TC

British Columbia’s Susan McCaslin has been an important voice on the Canadian poetry landscape for decades now, having produced fourteen volumes of poetry and influenced the work of students at Douglas College in New Westminster for more than twenty years. She works with the heady subject matter of spirituality and mysticism, but still she often manages to pin those ephemeral clouds down and connect them to the lives we lead. As poet and author John Terpstra put it, McCaslin, “sings from the still centre of being human and conscious on a glorious, defiled, everyday earth of love and pollution, dogs, moths and God.” Listen to Susan’s reading here.
TC

The latest addition to AuthorsAloud comes from poet Fiona Tinwei Lam, who reads from two collections including her latest, Enter the Chrysanthemum. Lam’s work here is quiet and sensual, and immediately engaging. She also provides a thoughtful insight into her work. I encourage you to sequester yourself in a hushed room and give it a listen. You’ll find Lam’s poetry and insight here.
TC

Seth Godin is a noted thinker and blogger on marketing issues. He had something pertinent to say today about the future of the publishing industry and I thought I’d share it.

By the way, there are two new poetry readings in the pipe for you the AuthorsAloud faithful. So stay tuned.

TC

The news couldn’t be sadder for the people who loved Paul the man, Paul the writer and Paul the performer. He was a personal idol of mine, someone I regarded as both a friend and an exemplar. His GG-winning book Whale Music, its voice, its great empathy and its gentle humour, inspired me more than any book ever has.

For visitors to AuthorsAloud, it’s worth remembering that Paul did a reading for us a couple of years ago, from his Giller-shortlisted book Galveston. If you’d like to spend a few minutes listening to Paul’s voice and remembering what he contributed to our lives, visit here.

TC

I love that we’re fleshing out the poetry library here at AuthorsAloud. And we’re touching an increasingly broad range of talents. While our last couple of poetry additions have come from exciting new emerging artists, the latest comes from a well established name. Sandy Shreve has been producing fine poetry, and getting award recognition for it, for many years. She’s also been an innovator, finding new ways to bring poetry to readers, such as the Poetry in Transit project, which has been displaying poems in public transit vehicles throughout British Columbia since the mid-1990s. For AuthorsAloud she presents work from her collection Suddenly, So Much, not only reading her poems but providing insights into the creation of each along the way. Go listen.
TC

Try not to be too depressed about the McNally Robinson bankruptcy. Yes, it’s a blow to lose a couple of great book stores that did their best to promote Canadian authors and give them a place to read in public. But suburban Toronto and even Polo Park in Winnipeg (I lived there, I know) never felt like the right fit for what McNally Robinson does so well. Here’s hoping they’ll regroup with their two remaining stores and live to fight the good (bloody) fight for authors for many more days.

To pick up your spirits, take a few minutes to listen to the work of poet Melanie Janisse, just added to AuthorsAloud. Written over a five year period, the poems of Janisse’s collection Orioles in the Oranges have been lauded for their honesty, their compassion and their power. Stores die. The word lives.

TC

The latest contribution to AuthorsAloud is one of the best. Cordelia Strube has been writing acerbic satire for years — fifteen, as she explains in her reading — and her newest novel, the appropriately titled Lemon, is hitting some nerves. It features a smart, sardonic sixteen-year-old with a particularly bleak view of the world (a view that by now we should be calling "Strubian"). Strube has been touring with it across the country, getting some nice reviews, and in its December issue, Chatelaine magazine called it the "sleeper Can-lit hit."

But what's great for AuthorsAloud visitors is that Strube sat down with her voice recorder in a quiet room and really nailed the reading. She's a trained actress and it shows. Then she equaled that with an intimate and off-the-cuff Insight (I always encourage authors doing Insights to wing it, not script it, and Strube shows how well this can work) in which she talks eloquently about writing with humor and writing in general. It's terrific stuff and well worth a listen. Go there now.

TC

I wanted to alert you to a terrific interview with Cormac McCarthy today in the Wall Street Journal. The quote above comes from this, and it’s well worth a read. I also love his quote about writing novels, but maybe that’s because I write novels.

Find it here.

And by the way, if you haven’t read The Road, please, please do. Just ignore the movie entirely.

—TC

I sat down with poet Darrell Epp a little while ago to record his reading and insight for AuthorsAloud. Darrell’s young, but he’s been working on his art for some time, and getting published widely, and recently Signature Editions collected his work in a volume called Imaginary Maps. As a setting for the reading, Darrell chose the coffee area in the local Fortino’s grocery store. It wasn’t the quietest venue, but it was handy to him, and seemed to suit his utterly guileless and unaffected manner. When you listen to the recordings here, you’ll see what I mean. After the readings, we chatted for a while and Darrell told me something of his recent experiences in South Africa. They’re not for me to share here, but they clearly have stayed with him. I do hope one day we get to hear some of them, filtered through his poems.

Let me take this opportunity as well to alert you to a new reading from Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, here. Kathryn was one of the early believers in AuthorsAloud, and we’re thrilled to be able to feature a reading from her latest novel, Perfecting.
— TC

The newest reading at the revamped AuthorsAloud comes from Julie Paul, who seems to have had an on and off affair with Ontario that now appears on again. Ontario’s happy to have her. For AuthorsAloud she reads from her collection The Jealousy Bone, and the story she chooses — “Boring Baby” — hits me the right way. It involves a somewhat unlikeable character, and I have a fondness for writers who show the courage to take on an unlikeable voice and not flinch. Click on Julie’s face in the featured authors gallery, or, what the heck, here.
TC

Some of you will recall that last year my computer did the unforgivable and died unexpectedly, taking AuthorsAloud with it. Yes, the site still existed on-line, and visitors were still able to come and listen and enjoy. But the site was static; all the page files that made up the structure of AuthorsAloud were gone and so I wasn’t able to add new readings. What was required was a complete reconstruction from the ground up. And that took much longer than I had anticipated.

But now we’re back, and I believe we’re better than ever.

First of all, we’re relaunching with the benefit of six new readings, bringing our running total to 90 authors! Five of those new authors can be seen in the featured readings section near the top of the page, and the sixth, Christopher Willard, will get his face up there soon. The new readings are a nice mix of prose and poetry. Tricia Dower, Anik See, Jessica Westhead and Christopher Willard offer a readings from their latest and very different works of fiction. While poets Catherine Black and Desi Di Nardo share readings from their latest collections. I’m excited to be able to bring the work of all six of these exciting authors to you. Black, Di Nardo, Dower and Willard have also taken the trouble to record Insights into their work, and they’re fascinating listening.

While we’re here, let me tell you about a couple of new features of AuthorsAloud. Both in their very early stages.

The first is the events section, which means to provide visitors with listings of live author readings all across the country. AuthorsAloud is all about supporting Canadian authors by providing an audience for performances of their work, and I believe that should include live performances as well as recorded ones. There’s nothing more encouraging to an author on tour than seeing people come out to their readings (and nothing more dispiriting than the opposite) and AuthorsAloud would like to contribute to the success of those performances by making visitors aware of where and when authors will be reading at a city nearby.

The success of the listings will depend largely on the participation of authors and publishers. AuthorsAloud doesn’t have the resources to go out and gather these listings; it’s going to be up to authors and their publicists to provide the information in the necessary format so that it can be published easily and quickly. A portal has been provided for that purpose.

The other new feature is the AuthorsAloud Poll. Go and vote!

There are more plans for more improvements to AuthorsAloud. Now that the site is back up and running, it will continue to improve and evolve. I hope you’ll come back often and see what the future brings!

— Trevor Cole