With her father born in Greece, Whistler author Stella Harvey has traveled to the Mediterranean country at least a dozen times. However with both an ongoing economic and refugee crisis plaguing the popular tourist destination, Stella's last few visits have been to uncover the truth of its people which can now be read in her book 'The Brink of Freedom.' Shaw TV spoke to the passionate writer about some of the shocking conditions she witnessed while overseas as well the special memories and people she met people she met that will stay with her for a lifetime. Watch the clip here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmX5qm3Iwgs

Still before the official launch and for the second week, Catherine Hunter's new novel After Light has been featured on the McNally Robinson Bestseller list for the week ending October 4th.

Stella Leventoyannis Harvey was interviewed by Mountain FM about her new novel, The Brink of Freedom
(MP3 file, 6:05)

Shelley A. Leedhal was interviewed by Mountain FM at the Whistler Writers Festival about her events and her latest book, I Wasn't Always Like This
(MP3 file, 5:07)

Shelley Leedahl popped by Mountain FM to talk about the Whistler Writer’s Festival and her new collection of essays “I Wasn’t Always Like This” Listen to the interview here: https://soundcloud.com/adventurestation/whistler-writers-festival-shelley-leedahl

Even before its official launch, After Light is #2 on the McNally Robinson Bestseller list for the week of September 27, 2015.

Steven Artelle author of Metropantheon has just been shortlisted for the 2014 Archibald Lampman Award for an outstanding book of poetry by a National Capital author. Judges remarked on the book’s exuberance and imaginative scope, noted its political stance and striking imagery, and sprinted to keep up with its headlong streetwise pace. Able to present completely different but utterly compelling scenes as points of departure for larger mediations on art, politics, history, and contemporary culture, this is a powerful book by a gifted poet.

For the week of August 9, 2015 - Leonard Neufeldt's seventh book of poetry, Painting Over Sketches of Anatolia was McNally Robinson Winnipeg's best seller in paperback fiction.

Endre Farkas and Carolyn Marie Souaid are discovering that poets receive much more attention in Europe than in Canada. Here's a clip promo'ing their upcoming TV interviews: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j36fqflo5FA

Judith Alguire's Many Unpleasant Returns has been shortlisted for the Bony Blithe Light Mystery Award, an annual Canadian award that celebrates traditional, feel-good mysteries. The award is for a “mystery book that makes us smile” and includes everything from laugh-out-loud to gentle humour to good old-fashioned stories with little violence or gore.

Terry Gallagher of Doowah Design has just been shortlisted for the Manuela Dias Book Design Award for Text Me!

Alison Preston's Blue Vengeance has just been shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction!

Andrea MacPherson is the featured guest blogger on Gail Anderson-Dargatz's Website where she talks about the creation of her most recent collection of poetry, Ellipses.

"In the darkroom"

I’ve been thinking about theme a lot lately.  Partly because theme can be one of the most elusive literary devices, and I’m always trying to find a way to articulate what theme does, making it less scary and more accessible for my students.  But the larger reason is that I have become paralyzed by theme. My newest poetry book, Ellipses, came out in spring 2014, and was a collection of poems that spanned a five year period.  I try to take some time away from writing after a new project comes out, but I found myself very quickly engaged with poems I’d recently read, and thinking about what I loved about them, how the collections were built.  Many of my current favourites were themed in interesting ways. Typically, themes announce themselves during the writing process for me—both with fiction and poetry.  It’s only once I’ve been circling the central ideas, immersing myself in the characters’ voices, that themes make themselves known.  They’re the image developing in a darkroom—slowly, surely, they become more clear.  But as I began to consider the topics that were important to me—areas of interest and research that had been speaking to me quietly, consistently, for the last couple years—I realized that what I really wanted to write about in verse centred on a clear, specific theme (reproduction, but that’s all I’ll say about it, as a very superstitious writer who rarely talks about work in progress).  It felt like an aha! moment at the time, and I looked forward to a new project with this kind of guiding force.  It was a plan, a pattern, and outline.  It would be easy!  Just insert poems.


Read the rest of Andrea's guest blog post at
http://www.gailanderson-dargatz.ca/cms/index.php/guest-blogs/206-andrea-macpherson

Jennifer L. Stone's Prerequisites for Sleep is featured on the LPG's All Lit Up First Fiction Fridays. https://alllitup.ca/Blog/2014/First-Fiction-Fridays-Prerequisites-for-Sleep-by-Jennifer-L.-Stone

Jennifer L. Stone, a graduate of the Humber’s Correspondence Program in Creative Writing is featured in the Humber School of Writing's Writer's Blog. In her article "Nine and a Half Years Later...A Book is Published," she talks about lessons learned in working toward her first published book, Prerequisites of Sleep.

Check it out at:

http://www.humber.ca/scapa/programs/school-writers/blog/writing-tips/nine-and-half-years-later-book-published

Susan Andrews Grace's Philosopher at the Skin Edge of Being is shortlisted for the inaugural Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry.

Congratulations to Michael Mirolla, who's just won the F.G. Bressani Prize for Poetry for The House on 14th Avenue. Bravo, Michael!

Novelist, translator and poet Genni Gunn, nominated for the Giller Prize in 2011 for her novel Solitaria, has been named as Whistler's 2014 writer-in-residence. Each writer-in-residence works and stays in Whistler over the fall, working with the students from early September to early November. Gunn will help 12 writers with their own projects during her stay. Gunn will also take part in the annual Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, October 17-19, 2014.

John Brooke's latest Aliette Nouvelle mystery, Walls of a Mind, has just been long-listed for the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel.

Vanessa Farnsworth interviewed by Andrew Rudenhauser on Kootenay Co-op Radio.
(MP3 file, 14 minutes)