Kirjahaku

Originally published in 1970, Eleven Canadian Novelists Interviewed by Graeme Gibson is a collection of candid and wide-ranging interviews with Canadian writers, including Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, and more.With the intuition of an insider, Gibson asks the important questions: In what way is writing important to you? Do writers know something special? Does he or she have any responsibility to society? The result is a fascinating and immensely readable series of conversations with famed writers at the beginning of their careers.The A List edition will feature a new introduction by Graeme Gibson and interviews with the following authors:Margaret AtwoodAustin ClarkeMatt CohenMarian EngelTimothy FindleyDave GodfreyMargaret LaurenceJack LudwigAlice MunroMordecai RichlerScott Symons

Featuring a new foreword by Margaret Atwood In this stunning assemblage of words and images, novelist and avid birdwatcher Graeme Gibson offers an extraordinary tribute to the venerable relationship between humans and birds. From the Aztec plumed serpent to the Christian dove to Plato's vision of the human soul growing wings, religion and philosophy use birds to represent our aspirational selves. Winged creatures appear in mythology and folk tales, and in literature by writers as diverse as Ovid, Thoreau, and T. S. Eliot. They've been omens, allegories, and guides; they've been worshipped, eaten, and feared. Birds figure tellingly in the work of such nature writers as Gilbert White and Peter Matthiessen, and are synonymous with the science of Darwin. Gibson spent years collecting this gorgeously illustrated celebration of centuries of human response to the delights of the feathered tribes. The Bedside Book of Birds is for everyone who is intrigued by the artistic forms that humanity creates to represent its soul.

Many people are interested in writing their life stories, though lack of confidence and knowing how to approach the task can hold them back. This guide might be the confidence booster to get started, to overcome a hurdle along the way, or act as a refresher. Along with a focus on major principles of memoir, such as narrative writing, ethics and structure, this guide provides tips and writing techniques aimed at creating an engaging true story out of the remembered facts of a life. Embedded throughout the guide are suggested writing exercises which provide structured but flexible support to a writer, whether novice or more advanced. Surprisingly comprehensive given its brevity, A Pocket Guide to Memoir Writing may either stand alone, or act as a companion to the memoir, In Life There is Luck: A memoir of an ordinary life with reflections on memoir writing.

November 1966, a dark winter's night in Glasgow, and someone is in trouble. Jamie Raeburn, hearing a call for help, goes to investigate and what follows changes Jamie's life forever.He discovers a man, an American Naval Officer, being viciously assaulted by four other men ... but Jamie is alone and the odds are stacked against him and the American. Jamie, never one to dwell on odds, intervenes and in the ensuing fight ends up being stabbed and left for dead. Rushed to hospital Jamie undergoes emergency surgery and spends three days in Intensive Care and it's there he meets Kate Maxwell, a beautiful English nurse, and falls in love. But Kate Maxwell is married and their affair ends some months later when Kate, threatened by loan sharks for money her husband has borrowed - and missing the baby daughter whose existence she has kept from Jamie - returns to England and her family in the village of Calverton, near Nottingham, in England's Midlands leaving both men in her life behind. This leads to a unexpected meeting between them Jamie visits Kate's home in an effort to find her. It also leads a violent confrontation with the loan sharks.Jamie finally accepts that he has lost Kate but realises his reluctance to walk away from trouble in what is a violent city played a part in her decision. Intent on changing for the better he leaves his native Glasgow and heads south to Nottingham and a new job and, he hopes, a better future. His new life in Nottingham starts well enough but trouble seems to follow him no matter where he goes. And then fate takes a hand. Returning early to his lodgings one night after a girl he has arranged to meet doesn't turn up he meets Lucie Kent and his life takes on meaning again. The couple fall in love and it isn't long before they are living together in Nottingham but Lucie, like Kate Maxwell before her, has dark secrets she finds it impossible to share with Jamie, afraid that if she does she will lose him. These secrets involve Max Kelman, gangster son of a notorious Derby gangster. Jamie, conscious that something is playing on Lucie's mind presses her to tell him and, reluctantly, she does. But Lucie's revelations are much worse than Jamie expected and he realises he can't escape his past. He and Lucie are living a nightmare and confrontation with Max Kelman is inevitable. But winning the battle against Kelman will be difficult, if not impossible, and dangerous. It isn't only Kelman Jamie will have to defeat but the members of the Kelman gang. His first attempt ends in failure and he is lucky to escape with his life back to Glasgow but he is determined to return, Lucie's safety now uppermost in his mind. And so, a few weeks after his failed first attempt, with the help of the American he saved months before (Conor Whelan) and spiritual guidance from an old Glasgow Priest, Jamie returns to free Lucie from Kelman's clutches. In a violent conclusion Jamie confronts Max Kelman in the dark Derbyshire countryside with devastating consequences ... for both men.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY MARGARET ATWOODFeatured in the vast majority of mythologies and religions, birds are generally associated with creativity and the human spirit. From the Christian dove to Quetzalcoatl (the Aztec plumed serpent), and from Raven Man to Plato's description of the soul growing wings and feathers, birds have represented the soul in contrast to the body, the spiritual as opposed to the earthly.The Bedside Book of Birds is an unexpected and fascinating treasure trove of paintings, drawings, essays and scientific observations: it marvellously conveys the hope, the longing and the enchantment that birds have evoked in humans in all cultures and all times.Beautifully produced, the book contains more than one hundred illustrations, ranging from early cave paintings through works by Audubon, Morris and Gould, to Inuit and other works created in the twentieth century. There are writings by naturalists like W.H. Hudson, Laurens van der Post, Peter Matthiessen and Barry Lopez, and by classical authors such as Shakespeare, Coleridge, Melville and Poe. There is also a rich seam of contemporary work by Jorge Luis Borges, Ted Hughes, Italo Calvino, Bruce Chatwin and Haruki Murakami, among many others.The Bedside Book of Birds is a book to explore, to savour, and to learn from - a book for the winged soul in all of us.

First published by Anansi in 1969, Five Legs was a breakthrough for Canadian experimental fiction, selling 1,000 copies in its first week. At the time Scott Symons wrote that "Five Legs has more potent writing in it, page for page, than any other young Canadian novel that I can think of." Or indeed any young American novel — including Pynchon and Farina. Five Legs is the subversive tale of two guilt-ridden young men, Lucan Crackell and Felix Oswald — one a professor, the other his student — caught in the grip of the North American Protestant ethic, with its emotional web-spinning and sexual torments. Gibson captures both their mortifications and their spirited resistance to all things WASP, themselves included, in stream-of-consciousness prose that is at once fluid, disjointed, and hilarious. Essential reading for any Canlit junkie, and quite a trip. This edition features a new introduction by Sean Kane.