Rattling Books brings you another in a series of Canadian audiobook snacks to supplement your diet of literature at Christmas.
Today's EarLit morsel is Asking Jesus to Danceby Susan Rendell, read by Joel Thomas Hynes. A short story single from the collection of short stories by Susan Rendell entitled In the Chambers of the Sea.
Nineteen minutes of audiobook fiction for the price of a bag of chips.
Kathleen Winter's debut novel, Annabel, has been nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Read all about it in the Montreal Gazette.
***************
Listen to excerpts from Rattling Books' audio versions of Kathleen Winter's short stories: "The Destination," narrated by Merrill Francis; "His Brown Face Through the Flowers," narrated by Nicola Hawkins; and "Sleep, Little Baby," narrated by Mark Callanan. These stories are available as individual MP3 downloads, and are also featured on EarLit Shorts 1, a collection of short fiction by Winter, Joel Thomas Hynes and Carmelita McGrath.
Rattling Books is a Canadian audiobook publisher in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Author and actor Joel Thomas Hynes is about to become a director. Hynes is currently looking for production money for ClipperGold, a short film about moose sausages, relationships and tea. If you'd like to contribute to this project, click here. (You could end up on a Hynes motorcycle tour of Newfoundland's Southern Shore, or written into his next manuscript - check it out.)
***************
Follow this link to listen to excerpts from Rattling Books' audio versions of Joel Thomas Hynes' fiction - short, long and non, available as individual MP3 downloads or MP3 CDs. (Click on the images under the bio.)
Kathleen Winter's debut novel, Annabel, has placed first in the literary fiction category of the inaugural Independent Literary Awards. For more information about the Independent Literary Awards, click here.
***************
Listen to excerpts from Rattling Books' audio editions of Kathleen Winter's short stories "The Destination," (narrated by Merrill Francis), "His Brown Face Through the Flowers" (narrated by Nicola Hawkins) and Sleep, Little Baby" (narrated by Mark Callanan). These stories are available as individual MP3 downloads, and are also featured on EarLit Shorts 1, a collection of short fiction by Winter, Joel Thomas Hynes and Carmelita McGrath.
Click here for Kathleen Winter's on-line journal, We Drank Cachaca and Smoked the Green Cheroot.
Listen to excerpts from Rattling Books' audio editions of Winter's short stories
"The Destination," "His Brown Face Through the Flowers," and "Sleep, Little Baby." These stories are available as individual MP3 downloads. They're also featured on EarLit Shorts1, a collection of short fiction by Winter, Joel Thomas Hynes and Carmelita McGrath. EarLit Shorts 1 is available as an MP3 audio book CD or an MP3 download.
Rattling Books produces Canadian audiobooks in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Canadian writer Kathleen Winter's debut novel Annabel has made a fine splash in the literary pool, and the ripples are still spreading.
Click here to read the latest review, in The Rumpus, of Annabel, which was short-listed for three major Canadian literary prizes, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Giller Prize and the Writer's Trust Prize.
***************
Listen to excerpts from short stories by Kathleen Winter: The Destination, His Brown Face Through the Flowers and Sleep, Little Baby. These stories are available from Rattling Books as individual MP3 downloads, and they are also featured on EarLitShorts 1, an anthology of short fiction by Joel Thomas Hynes, Carmelita McGrath and Kathleen Winter.
Newfoundland and Labrador has some of the best writers in Canada; more than its fair share, in fact. For a province that has the population of a medium-sized town in Ontario, its writers cut a large swath on the Canadian literary landscape.
Some of these swath-cutters are "Come from Aways" (CFAs); that is, they were not born here. And although Newfoundland and Labrador suffers perennially from out-migration, its literary community seems to attract rather than lose members.
Leslie Vryenhoek is one of our CFA writers, and she has been busy swinging her scribbler's scythe. The former American citizen, now a resident of St. John's, is a critically acclaimed poet and short story writer. Her debut collection of short fiction, Scrabble Lessons, was published by Oolichan Books in 2009. "It all works and leaves an uneasy smile. Perfect," said The Globe and Mail.
To find out more about Leslie Vryenhoek, click on her photo.
***************
Listen to excerpts from Leslie Vryenhoek's short stories "All She Swallowed" (read by the author) and "Cycle" (read by Joel Thomas Hynes). These stories are available as individual MP3 downloads, and they are also featured on the EarLit Shorts audio book MP3 CD.
The Resource Centre for the Arts Theatre Company is holding another round of its popular Christmas Monologue writing contest. The monologue must be about Christmas in Newfoundland – past, present or future – and run no more than five minutes.
The contest closes December 10, 2010, at 5pm. For more details, click on the image of "the Hall."
***************
Rattling Books has a fine selection of Newfoundland monologues. Listen to an excerpt from a Joel Thomas Hynes rant about provincial icons. Hear "Uncle Val" (Andy Jones) bemoan his lot in the suburbs of St. John's. Click here to listen to Frank Holden's Judge Daniel Woodley Prowse rail at both felons and plaintiffs in a nineteenth-century Newfoundland courtroom.
For these and other voices of Newfoundland and Labrador, visit the Rattling Books website. Our audio books are available as audio CDs or MP3 CDs, and as MP3 downloads.
Canadian audiobooks from Rattling Books in Newfoundland and Labrador
Novelist, playwright and short-story writer Joel Thomas Hynes seems to be having a pretty good November. Earlier this month, the British and Irish press waxed enthusiastic about Down to the Dirt, his 2004 debut novel, which has just been released in the UK and Ireland. Last week, Hynes won the Cuffer Prize, a short story competition sponsored by St. John's newspaper TheTelegram and Creative Book Publishing.
His winning entry, "Conflict of Interest," is an excerpt from a work in progress, which will be published by Beth Follett's Pedlar Press. To read Hynes' sharp glittery shard of Cuffer-awarded fiction, follow this link.
The Cuffer's second place award went to Michael Collins, also no mean hand at putting nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives exactly where they should go. Collins garnered second place for his short story "Mrs. Wakeham." Another of his stories, "The Last Islander," was shortlisted for the award.
Scene from the movie version of Down to the Dirt, with Hynes in the title role.
***************
Cuffer judges Ramona Dearing, Joan Sullivan and Russell Wangersky thought they might have been dealing with a Hynes wannabe when they read his story. Hynes' said (tongue glued to cheek), "That was because I watched my language and peeled back some of the darkness." If you'd like to hear Hynes when he's not being shy, listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' MP3 download of God Help Thee: A Manifesto, first published in Riddle Fence and read live by Hynes.
Rattling Books is pleased to have Michael Collins on offer as well. Listen to an excerpt from his short story "Slip," narrated by Joel Thomas Hynes. "Slip" is available as a single MP3 download, and is also featured on the MP3 audio book CD EarLit Shorts 4.
***************
Click here to listen to Helen Porter's interview with Angela Antle on last week's Weekend Arts Magazine about Rattling Books' new audio version of her 1970s memoir Below the Bridge. Below the Bridge is the story of Porter's childhood in the 1930s and '40s on the South Side of St. John's. It is also a rich memorial to a community that disappeared: the homes and places of work of the South Side were demolished in the late '50s and early '60s to permit harbour development. In the process, the grave of Shawnadithit, the last known survivor of Newfoundland's indigenous Beothuk, was lost.
Below the Bridge, narrated by Mary Barry, is available from Rattling Books as an unabridged audio book MP3 CD or MP3 download.
With about-to-be-hot-off-the-presses issue number seven, Newfoundland and Labrador's Riddle Fencecelebrates its second birthday. As one of its editors notes, "We, the editors of this labour-of-love journal, have endured sleepless nights and teeth-cutting, and with jubilation witnessed a distinctive personality emerging, one that is multi-faceted and perhaps shifts issue to issue as we try to pinpoint it."
Young Riddle Fence is definitely a prodigy: although it doesn't sing and dance, its talent for literature and the visual arts are doubtlessly the envy of many older journals. (And even singing and dancing may be found in its pages, in the form of articles about musicians and votaries of Terpsichore.)
The journal's latest deadline for submissions of previously unpublished poetry, prose, creative non-fiction and artwork is December 10, 2010. For submission guidelines, click on the RiddleFence image.
Riddle Fence interview with authors Bernice Morgan and Joan Clark.
***************
Mark Callanan, a Riddle Fence editor, is also a talented poet, critic, novelist and narrator. Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' audio version of Kathleen Winter's short story "Sleep, Little Baby," narrated by Callanan. "Sleep, Little Baby" is available as an MP3 download, and it's also featured on the audio book MP3 CD, EarLit Shorts 1, which also contains short fiction by Carmelita McGrath and Joel Hynes.
The fact that schools no longer teach geography is beginning to tell. The Irish Times published an interview with Newfoundland writer Joel Thomas Hynes in its November 6 edition under the heading "Labrador Unleashed." No, that's not the title of a new Hynes' novel or play, or even a nod to his prose's Churchill Fallsian kilowatt power. For some reason, the Times reporter thought Calvert, Hynes' home town, was in Labrador.
It's a good read all the same, vintage Hynesight. Click here to go to the Times' interview.
***************
According to TheIrish Times, Joel Thomas Hynes' favourite piece of his own work isthe playSay Nothing, Saw Wood. "It's about a murder that happened in my home town in 1971, and it's told through the eyes of the murderer. Now that was a really controversial thing that I did. Down tothe Dirt was one thing. But dragging up that old wound was another thing altogether."
Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' unabridged version of Say Nothing, Saw Wood, narrated by the author. Say Nothing, Saw Wood can be purchased from the Rattling Books' web site as a single MP3 download. Follow this link to buy the MP3 CD version, featured on EarLit Shorts 1 (along with fiction from Newfoundland writers Carmelita McGrath and Kathleen Winter).
Canadian writer Joel Thomas Hynes' 2004 debut novel, Down to the Dirt, came out the clear winner in this week's review by the Guardian of three debut novels, beating out the recently released and heavily publicized Mr. Chartwell by Rebbecca Hunt.
Being published in the U.K. and coming out on top in the Guardian is the latest in a long line of successes for Down to the Dirt, which apparently has more lives than your average cat. It won the Percy Janes First Novel Award, was shortlisted for the Winterset Award and nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Award, became a play and then an award-winning film. To read what the Guardian has to say about the grunge rocker of Can Lit's initial offering, click here.
***************
Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' unabridged audio version of Down to the Dirt.
Halifax-based arts blogger Stephen Pederson takes a look at The Man of a Thousand Songs, a new documentary on legendary Newfoundland singer-songwriter Ron Hynes.
The documentary also features Hynes' nephew, writer Joel Thomas Hynes.
* * *
Ron Hynes is one of three narrator's of Michael Crummey's poetry collection Hard Light: 32 Little Stories, available as an audiobook from Rattling Books. He also narrates the Rattling Books audio edition of Cassie Brown's Death on the Ice (forthcoming in 2011).
Along with collaborators from the St. John's theatre and dance scenes, novelist, playwright and actor Joel Thomas Hynes has adapted a book of short stories, Philip Arima's Broken Accidents, for the stage. Read more about it here.
* * *
Joel Thomas Hynes' first novel, Down to the Dirt, is available as an unabridged MP3 CD and as a digital download from Rattling Books. He is also a frequent narrator for Rattling Books.
On Monday, I taped an episode of CBC Radio's Talking Books with Ian Brown. I was part of panel discussing Joel Hynes’s first book, Down to the Dirt, which, if you haven’t read, I recommend you go do so.
Now. (I can wait.)
The discussion (which should air either this Saturday or the next – I’ll let y’all know when I know) was breezy and entertaining, etc., but I never got around to making the point I wanted to about Hynes’ book, which is that it is about authenticity, and the fervent search therefor, or rather the desperate attempt to maintain a personal, sexual, cultural, and political sense of authenticity when all the world’s forces seem deadset on destroying all such notions.
Joel Thomas Hynes was awarded the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Artist of the Year Award at a ceremony this past Saturday evening.
from The Telegram
This year's Newfoundland and Labrador Art Council awards gala opened with the heart-pounding throat-singing and guttural rhythms of the Nipik Inuit Singers, who were joined by the Dzolali African Drum and Dance Ensemble before Hey Rosetta (the evening's house band) rose from the ashes at the rear of the Reid Theatre stage to inject their trademark pop-rock-haunting-string combo...
Local film is in the Cannes 'Down to the Dirt' headed to world's biggest international film festival
ALISHA MORRISSEY The Telegram
A trip to the Cannes Film Festival is enough to excite even the unflappable Joel Hynes.
The local award-winning author, playwright and actor, is headed to France early next week with local filmmaker Justin Simms to show their independent film "Down to the Dirt," based on Hynes' debut novel.
"It's pretty overwhelming ... it's all good news all around and, hopefully, it will draw some attention to a little small independent flick that has exceeded all our ambitions, even," Hynes says. "I'm very happy with it. All the performances are really strong, the writing is really strong and it was a great directorial job by Justin and it was a nice end product to a little team we had there."
Hynes' book and the film tell the story of Keith Kavanagh - a hard-drinking hooligan with heart from the Southern Shore...
At 2 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, the multi-purpose room at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary becomes both a classroom and documentary film set. On this particular week, eight men — inmates from various wings of the jail, many of whom would never otherwise mix — sit around a semi-circle of tables, paper and pens at the ready. At the centre is author Joel Hynes, leader of the weekly creative writing sessions. Some of the men on either side of him have been coming weekly since the classes began in January; there are also a handful of new participants this week.
Today's EarLit morsel is Asking Jesus to Dance by Susan Rendell, read by Joel Thomas Hynes. A short story single from the collection of short stories by Susan Rendell entitled In the Chambers of the Sea.
Kathleen Winter's debut novel, Annabel, has been nominated for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Read all about it in the Montreal Gazette.
Kathleen Winter's debut novel, Annabel, has placed first in the literary fiction category of the inaugural Independent Literary Awards. For more information about the Independent Literary Awards, click here.
Click here for Kathleen Winter's on-line journal, We Drank Cachaca and Smoked the Green Cheroot.
Canadian writer Kathleen Winter's debut novel Annabel has made a fine splash in the literary pool, and the ripples are still spreading.
Newfoundland and Labrador has some of the best writers in Canada; more than its fair share, in fact. For a province that has the population of a medium-sized town in Ontario, its writers cut a large swath on the Canadian literary landscape.
With about-to-be-hot-off-the-presses issue number seven, Newfoundland and Labrador's Riddle Fence celebrates its second birthday. As one of its editors notes, "We, the editors of this labour-of-love journal, have endured sleepless nights and teeth-cutting, and with jubilation witnessed a distinctive personality emerging, one that is multi-faceted and perhaps shifts issue to issue as we try to pinpoint it."
The fact that schools no longer teach geography is beginning to tell. The Irish Times published an interview with Newfoundland writer Joel Thomas Hynes in its November 6 edition under the heading "Labrador Unleashed." No, that's not the title of a new Hynes' novel or play, or even a nod to his prose's Churchill Fallsian kilowatt power. For some reason, the Times reporter thought Calvert, Hynes' home town, was in Labrador.
Canadian writer Joel Thomas Hynes' 2004 debut novel, Down to the Dirt, came out the clear winner in this week's review by the Guardian of three debut novels, beating out the recently released and heavily publicized Mr. Chartwell by Rebbecca Hunt.
Novelist and critic Nathan Whitlock writes on Joel Thomas Hynes' Down to the Dirt on his blog:
Quill & Quire recently mentioned the screening of Down to the Dirt at the Cannes festival. The film is an adaptation of Joel Thomas Hynes' first novel. You can watch a clip here.
Joel Thomas Hynes was awarded the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Artist of the Year Award at a ceremony this past Saturday evening.
Local film is in the Cannes
