What it’s like to launch

It’s a good thing I promised to say something about the launch of my book, because I’ve slipped back into regular mode, meaning it feels somewhat distant already, so why go on about it? And we’re having wintery weather at the moment – yes, that’s snow caught in the grass – when just days ago, pre- and launch days, that is, it was gorgeous autumn. As if in the meantime a season has come and gone.

It’s good for me, though, to remember and also explain things to myself, and in addition, Shirley Hershey Showalter, in a FB post, said, “I hope you’ll describe what it’s like to launch,” so here I am, on about it. (She’s very close to completing a memoir manuscript for which she already has a contract, so her launch lies soon ahead of her.)

For me, then, and Shirley, and anyone else interested, this is about the launch of my collection of short fiction, What You Get at Home, last Tuesday. Continue reading

Miscellanea: September

BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS…

Listening, reading, launching: The Winnipeg International Writers Festival (Thin Air) is in full swing here in our city, so I’m trying to take in most of the mainstage events as well as some of the “book chats” and “big ideas” sessions. Yesterday’s “big idea” was Allan Levine’s take on the “odd, though probably not crazy” William Lyon Mackenzie King. Tonight’s mainstage will feature David Bergen (The Age of Hope) and Richard Ford, whose Canada I’m halfway through reading and enjoying very much. Continue reading

The thrill of the chase

Anne Konrad’s parents were among those Mennonite refugees who managed to leave the Soviet Union in 1929, but most of her uncles and aunts were not. Over the past twenty years, Konrad, a writer living in Toronto, has been searching for and documenting the fates of relatives who stayed behind. She combed through old letters and documents, tramped around areas where her parents had lived, visited members of the extended family in various parts of the (eventually former) Soviet Union, and most dramatically, gained access to the police files of the trials and executions of her uncles. Continue reading