Behind the scenes of Canada Reads 2016!

Okay, I think everyone I know knows this by now (along with a lot of people I don't know!), but
Bone and Bread was selected to be part of Canada Reads 2016!

You can click the image to go to the Canada Reads CBC page.

Cue massive, ongoing celebration!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My last post was about my love of book clubs, and Canada Reads is about as close as we get to a national one.

It has been a little over a week since my whirlwind trip to Toronto for the day it was announced, and although I think I have responded to everyone who sent me kind messages of congratulations, I want to say thank you again!! It makes it even more exciting to know that people are excited right along with me.

So here's the Canada Reads scoop. I found out a little bit ahead of the announcement that Bone and Bread was on the shortlist, and a little bit after that that Farah Mohamed was going to be defending it. I arrived in Toronto late on the night Jan. 19th. Just before midnight, I received an email letting me know who the other writers and defenders were going to be. I was extra curious because the smarties over at the Goodreads CBC Books group had been speculating for a few days about who the panelists might be, based on all the clues that had been dropped. (They actually got a bunch of them right!) If I had gone to bed early, the way I knew I should have, I wouldn't have read the email and stayed up for another hour Googling everyone! Really, the night before a photo shoot, one's only homework is probably getting a good night's sleep. Oh well. I guess that's what makeup and coffee is for.

The first of the other writers I saw after arriving at CBC were Michael Winter and Anita Rau Badami -- the two I already know! After hair and makeup, while we were waiting for the others to arrive, I was excited and suggested we take a photo in front of the lunch table:

With the lovely Michael Winter and Anita Rau Badami. 

(My expression here: nervous-face.)

Smiling! With two brilliant writers: Michael Winter and Anita Rau Badami.

Fun fact re: Anita Rau Badami -- we met a dinner party in Montreal!

Fun fact re: Michael Winter -- well, I kind of feel like every fact about Michael Winter is a fun one, but I have been a fan of his writing long before I started running into him at events and festivals in the context of being a writer myself. His novel The Architects Are Here is one of many books I read (and loved) while working on Bone and Bread, but he has such a powerful voice that there is a short passage present in the novel where I had put down his book and felt the spirit of Michael's inimitable style upon me. Of course, only Michael Winter sounds like himself and I'm sure this part is only detectable to me, but there are a few sentences in my novel that wouldn't be there, quite in the form they are, if it wasn't for him. So thank you, Michael!

Finally, everyone was there and it was time to take photos.

With Michael Winter, Anita Rau Badami, Lawrence Hill and Tracey Lindberg

Photo (along with most of the others here) by Laura Meyer of Anansi

I think it was Lawrence Hill (a former Canada Reads winner and therefore already a pro) who explained the right way to cradle your book for the photo -- so you don't cover up your name. Top tip! The professional photos are being rolled out by CBC in their various promotional materials for Canada Reads, which I will repost here as they become available.

At the photo shoot, I got to meet Farah Mohamed:

Thank you, Farah. You are amazing and 

I'm so happy you liked my novel!

Farah Mohamed is the founder and CEO of G(irls)20, an organization that empowers girls and young women around the world to create a new generation of female leaders. Having read about the organization as well as her many other professional accomplishments, I was more than a little intimidated to meet her, but she immediately put me at ease as she is incredibly warm and approachable and fun. She also seems like a fierce debater!

After the photos, we all had lunch. Later, we shot some individual videos (which I dread watching...quippy I am not. Also at that point, after touch-ups, I had so much makeup on that my face felt weird. I think I might end up looking scary in HD...)

I had a chance to meet the other defenders (Clara Hughes, Vinay Virmani, Bruce Poon Tip, and Adam "Edge" Copeland), who were all as lovely as you might imagine. I would say more, but it probably isn't my place at this point! But honestly, I am so impressed by the accomplishments of the five panelists, and (thanks mostly to Google) by what I know of their level of engagement with social and cultural issues, across their widely different fields. I was really interested to learn about their projects, and I'm happy that the show will shine a light on them, too. It seems as though CBC has put together a group of people with real character to participate in Canada Reads 2016. (Hopefully I won't be insecure enough to feel differently if any of them turn out to hate my novel! But probably I just won't listen...)

The defenders said a few times over the course of the day that they all got along so well that they were going to have a hard time fighting it out, and I can easily believe it. (And so I say: why fight? Just let there be a five-way tie this year!)

At one point over lunch, Tracey Lindberg and I agreed that amid all the other things to be happy about with Canada Reads, we were both extra excited about the free books:

I know other Canada Reads fans will be jealous of this sweet stack.

No library holds for me! Another awesome bonus.

All in all, an exhausting but wonderful trip to Toronto. It was so nice to meet everyone at CBC, and House of Anansi publicist extraordinaire Laura Meyer took such good care of me...even helping me make it to the Turner exhibit at the AGO before my afternoon flight home.  

So I will probably share a few more Canada Reads-related things over the next few weeks before the show happens in March. I beg your indulgence ahead of time! I will try to mix it up with a few other things, so it doesn't get too tedious.

Home again, wearing my CBC fangirl shirt.

Do I look as ecstatically happy as I feel? I think so!

End of July - Montreal Tournament of Books - Goodreads CBC Books Monthly Group Read

It's the last day of July. July is usually the month I get the most writing done, but this year it has been the month I have done the most decluttering. I've gone through boxes and boxes of photos, sorted through huge files of saved papers, tossed things I thought I'd never get rid of, emptied a giant trunk I've had since childhood, and even went through a massive stack of unlabelled CDs to find out what was on them. I finally got a roll of film from 2002 developed. (I thought it was from 2001, from Belgium, but it turned out to be Newfoundland the following year.) Wasteful as it seems, I threw out all of my socks with holes in them (when was the last time I sewed a sock hole?) and managed to get all of the photos off of my old Samsung phone. Outside of the times I've moved, I have never done such a major overhaul. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up --- the popular book I read that has given me the push to do all this -- the author, Marie Kondo, says that it is a process that takes about six months and that you get better as it as you go. I can easily believe it -- both parts! 

There's still lots to do, though. Two other old computers to deal with and a box of 3.5 floppy disks. Tons of other stuff to go through and (I hope) purge. It's hard to reverse three decades of clutter. We'll see if I have the stamina. I know it's important to do, but it would be nice to squeeze some writing in there, too.

Oh, and did I mention we did the books?!? My husband and I finally consolidated our collections, sold off most of the doubles and triples, as well as books we thought we'd never look at again. I think we managed to purge about 500! I'm proud of us. We even agreed on how to organize them. 

Some of the books to purge

*

Librairie Paragraphe Books is running a fun showdown of books about Montreal and by Montreal authors: the Montreal Tournament of Books! Bone and Bread is up this week against Gabrielle Roy if you feel like voting! (In the first round, B & B improbably took out Leonard Cohen.)

*

The CBC Books group on Goodreads (I am mostly a lurker there, but I highly recommend it to CanLit fans) is doing Bone and Bread as its Monthly Group Read in August. 

Here is the link: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/16966091-august-15---bone-bread-by-saleema-nawaz 

There is a reading schedule posted and a discussion group to follow along and comment. I have to say through experience that this is a great way to keep up with a book you've been meaning to read! I think I'll make myself scarce so people feel free to comment as they see fit, but if you do the group readalong and have any questions about the book, feel free to post them there and through coordination with the moderator I will be sure to answer them within the month. There will also be a couple of days at the end when, free of spoiler risks, I'll be available for a dedicated Q & A thread. I'm excited!

Books I read in 2014

The first thing you need to know is that I feel like a failure. I was ultra geared up and ready for year two of the 50 Book Pledge, and I didn't make it, mostly because my belated charge to the finish line --- armed with poetry collections and graphic novels --- was interrupted by the arrival of the baby in mid-November. Ah, well. I came close! 43 books in 2014. And it would be more if I counted all the Dickens and Austen rereads, or the reread of a bunch of Lois Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik series, after I found a bunch of them at the McGill Book Sale. Or if I hadn't abandoned quite so many books partway through...or gone travelling for three weeks in UK (awesome), instead of sitting around at home reading (typical). 

You can see what I read here. Or find me on Goodreads.

Here is the breakdown according to the same categories I assessed last year:

By genre*

22 novels

7 children's/YA

4 poetry collections

3 graphic novels

3 memoirs

3 non-fiction 

1 short story collection

Compared to last year, I read the exact same number of poetry collections and children's/YA (huh), and just one shy in memoir and graphic novels. I read three more short story collections last year, but then again I read a LOT of short stories in 2014 for the Room fiction contest and the Journey Prize jurying. Five fewer novels.

* Some of the books fall into more than one genre, e.g. a graphic novel that is also a YA book or a graphic novel that is also a memoir, but I've kept each book to one basic genre.

By nation

15 American 

9 Canadian 

3 English 

1 Scottish 

1 dual American-Canadian 

1 Australian

1 New Zealander

1 Nigerian

1 Dutch 

I think this must be the first year in my life where I did not read mainly CanLit! Interestingly, the same number of Americans as last year.

By gender

30 books by 25 women

13 books by 8 men

Highlights

The first two books I read in January, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and The Dinner by Herman Koch, remain among the most memorable reads of the year. I also really liked Americanah. 

The last two fiction titles I read in 2014,  The Opening Sky by Joan Thomas and The Freedom in American Songs by Kathleen Winter, were also outstanding. I have so much love and admiration for these women, so while I might technically be biased, I truly adored these books and you should still run out and buy them immediately. And as many of you might know, sometimes it is harder to be completely transported by the writing of someone you know...and I was. 

Also, the Susin Nielsen books are wonderful. Strongly recommended for the young people in your life, or just, you know, you. 

Lowlights

The Happiest Baby on the Block by Dr. Harvey Karp was thoughtfully gifted to me by a friend and it was full of useful information that I have already put to use...and I can definitely endorse the basic premise and techniques outlined in this book. However, I feel like it was written for morons, or at least people with some kind of hyper-amnesia, like the guy in Memento. It really sticks with that principle of "Tell them what you're going to say, say it, then tell them what you've said," but it adds in "say it seven more times." It would be a lot better if it were condensed into about twenty pages written for neurotypical readers, or maybe just a large infographic. I cannot express the annoyance of having a newborn baby and precious little reading time that I then spent trying to power through this repetitive book that kept trying to prove a premise I was already willing to accept merely by picking it up. (Fourth trimester, yo.) That being said, thanks, Dr. Karp, for your valuable techniques!

And I didn't really love any of the Divergent trilogy, but the last one, Allegiant, was especially annoying to me in the way it ended. 

Best Discovery?

Well, I had a very relaxed stretch of reading after I finally picked up a book by Alexander McCall Smith at the library. I ran through a bunch of his Edinburgh-set mystery series (the Isabel Dalhousie books), which made for excellent light pregnancy fare.   

air, and walking on it (or, Bone and Bread wins the QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction!)

It was right around this time a week ago that Bone and Bread won the QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, and it would really not be much of an exaggeration to say that I have been walking on air since then... although slowly, inevitably, I have been coming down to earth. Buoyant, however, I remain!

I've been conscious of the fact that these moments do not come along very often in the writing life. There is always something to feel bad about on any given day...some prize your book doesn't win or some middling review that appears on Goodreads... or your book doesn't sell very well or another publishing house bites the dust... or whatever it is you're working on is stalling out or you don't have enough time to work on it...on and on forever. I'm not much given to these sorts of thoughts or even comparing myself to other writers because I don't think that much good can come from it, but there's no doubt that these are some of the deadly wolves circling the cabin if you stop to take your fingers off the keyboard and let your thoughts drift away from the positive. Even without all of those things (which truly, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about), the fact is that writing is hard. Hard and often lonely and it requires a lot of sacrifice....and the payoffs can be few and far between.

I think I was trying to say that I've been enjoying myself.  And I really have! So many friends and acquaintances have sent me kind notes of congratulations, and even students and staff at my work have been tracking down the book thanks to this story in the McGill paper. My publisher sent me flowers that I've been enjoying at my desk all week. Thank you, everyone, for sharing this excitement with me!

I spent some of my prize money on purely wonderful, fun things: extravagant leather purses (this weekend was the m0851 sample sale), Arcade Fire concert tickets, a couple of pretty Modcloth dresses, and a big, hardcover novel (The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, even though I have tons of books already queued up). But I still have one of two skirts I bought with the first money I earned from a story (published in Grain), and it makes me happy to think about that fact every time I wear it. There's something to be said for not just paying bills.

The gala was lovely, even if I was a little bit too tense to enjoy it as much as I would have otherwise. The fiction prize is announced last, so I had somewhat of a hard time concentrating through the other categories, though I was really happy to see Juliet Waters pick up a giant trophy and I liked what she said about writers needing to go dust off their old abandoned drafts (her winning story was something she had decided to pick up again). I also loved what Monique Polak said about writing as a committed relationship. I was also really excited to see Ann-Marie Macdonald hosting, and she was effortlessly funny and lovely. (Sadly, I did not get to meet her!) The funniest speech of the night was by Andrew Symanski who won a prize for his book The Barista and I. He was truly shocked and kept saying how weird it was to be up there and how he'd had to borrow shoes and how he spends most of his time writing alone in a squalid bedroom. (I think there were a lot of us there who felt like he was speaking our truth. Or, at any rate, a truth we could relate to.) I was really happy for him!

Citations for all the shortlisted books are read out before the winner is announced, and it's always a good way to find out about books that might not already be on your radar (in my case, some of the non-fiction titles and the books in translation). My to-read list has increased exponentially as a result. The jurors' comments that were read out for Bone and Bread were so kind and humbling and inspiring and frankly overwhelming that I literally thought I was going to fall off of my chair. I really would have been happy to fall off, lie on the floor and weep for a few minutes. At that point, I almost didn't care if the book was going to win the prize or not.

Bone and Bread has engrossing humanity, relevance, readability and the adumbration of a sage reflection on our Montreal universe. This novel really gripped me through its characters, not through plot devices.  On the whole, it is brave, it inhabits fresh territory, it is ambitious, and successful... The author is very gifted, and…I believe she will produce significant works and become a major Canadian writer.  

(!!!)

I feel like it's the most wonderful fortune cookie fortune...the kind you tuck in your wallet and carry around forever and ever and pull out and read whenever you need to hear something good. I'm so grateful to the jury not only for the prize but for saying something so kind and encouraging.

So I went up there on the stage and said something, probably forgetting to say lots of things I should have (ahem, thank you PARAGRAPHE for sponsoring the prize and for everything you do for writers and readers in Montreal). The beautiful trophy (I have always wanted a trophy, though I have never done anything even remotely likely to get me one) has my name and the title of the book on it, which is a nice touch I didn't expect. I took it out for poutine afterwards.

still life with celebratory poutine

My only regret of the evening is not getting some pictures of my friends in their finery or of the beautiful interior of the Corona Theatre...and not getting to talk to everyone I would have liked to chat with. Given that it takes place on a Tuesday evening, the QWF gala is not a very late-night affair, so my husband and I just came home after our quick food stop with some photos to commemorate the evening.

me and my precious 

feed a cold

Is it feed a cold and starve a fever?  That's the principle I've been operating under today...the feeding bit, that is.  I think I have a cold that's starting to take hold.  Apparently, it makes me want to rhyme when I haven't got time, too.

I'll stop that.

It has been an interesting week.  Some late nights, some good chats, a power dinner, an old friend visiting from Hawaii.  Not nearly enough sleep.  Lots of plans being made for the next few months.  Ironing out the hiccups of some of the book launch plans (keep your fingers crossed for me, please).   

I haven't read any Truman Capote, though just this morning on my Goodreads feed I saw that somebody I'm friends with there gave five stars to In Cold Blood, which I've been meaning to read.  But I love this photo of him below at his home that I stumbled upon today.  I love the warm colours with the pops of turquoise and the mix of patterns and flowers and curios.  It's my favourite from this series on Buzzfeed of writers at home.  

I admit it: I love brocade wallpaper. 

I had ambitions of finishing my hat tonight in front of the television, but I was too zoned out to pay attention and I kept making mistakes as I began to do decreases towards the crown.  Oh well.  

Right now I'm going to go boil water for Neocitron and get into bed and read Juliet, Naked.  This morning on the metro I was wishing that there were enough Nick Hornby books to read every morning on my way to work.