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This year The Village Bookshop was
pleased to welcome to the Writers’ Festival six visiting authors published
by McClelland & Stewart, who is celebrating its 100th year in publishing.
First established in 1906 as McClelland & Goodchild, Toronto-based
publishing house McClelland & Stewart has played a pivotal role in shaping
Canadian identity and culture and was proudly termed “The Canadian
Publisher” under the leadership of Jack McClelland (1922-2004).
Jane Urquhart, whose fiction is published around the world,
be read from A Map of Glass, a stunning new novel weaving two
parallel stories, one set in contemporary Toronto and Prince Edward County,
Ontario, the other in the nineteenth century on the northern shores of Lake
Ontario.
Robert Thacker spoke about his biography, Alice Munro:
Writing Her Lives. Robert Thacker wrote his M.A. thesis on Alice Munro
at the University of Waterloo way back in 1976. Since then he has acquired a
Pd.D. at the University of Manitoba and has risen to become the Professor of
Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University.
He was for many years the editor of The
American Review of Canadian Studies and, as a result of this thirty-year
interest, is recognized as the academic authority on Alice Munro. |
Jose
LaTour, one of the Spanish-speaking world’s top crime-fiction writers,
was on hand to tempt you with Havana Best Friends. From 1998 to
2002 LaTour was vice president for the Latin American branch of the
International Association of Crime Writers. LaTour and his family fled Cuba
in 2002, and now live in Toronto.
In Havana Best Friends, LaTour builds a shocking story of betrayal and
cunning, where the hunters themselves are hunted, the best-laid plans are
derailed by greed and by virtue, and where getting hold of the fortune is
far less important than getting out of Cuba alive.
Robert McGill recently won the honours of the book chosen for
“Western Reads” for his novel The Mysteries. In this well crafted
story, Alice Pederson has been missing for almost two years from the town of
Sunshine, Ontario – and her family has carried on despite their grief and
frustration with a police investigation that has hit a dead end. Weaving
back and forth in time and told from the distinct perspectives of its cast
of memorable characters, Robert McGill’s internationally acclaimed debut
novel vividly captures the tangled web of relationships within a small town
where it seems everyone has something to hide. |
Originally from Wiarton, Ontario, Robert McGill
is completing his doctorate in English after a master’s at Oxford as a
Rhodes scholar. He is a graduate of the University of East Anglia creative
writing course, where he was taught by W.G. Sebald and Andrew Morton.
Katrina Onstad, one of Canada’s most popular young cultural journalists,
makes her fiction debut with all the style, incisiveness, and intelligent
wit for which she is known. Onstad’s first novel, How Happy to Be, is
an engaging, shrewdly observed story about a woman searching for something
real in the celebrity-driven, auto-referential world we live in, and
figuring out for herself that elusive ideal of happiness.
Katrina Onstad is a writer for CBC Arts Online and her work has appeared
in Canada in Saturday Night and Toronto Life, among other publications, and
internationally in the Guardian, the Telegraph Magazine, Salon, and the New
York Times. She is a multiple National Magazine Award nominee, and was
formerly the National Post film critic |
June 26, 2004
