Joel Thomas Hynes Interviewed By "The Irish Times"

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.

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According to The Irish Times, Joel Thomas Hynes' favourite piece of his own work is the play Say 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 to the 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).

Rebecca Rosenblum In Fall Edition Of "The New Quarterly"

Canada, which has produced two of the world's best writers of short fiction, Alice Munro and Mavis Gallant, is still serving them up hot. Toronto's Rebecca Rosenblum, whose short fiction is featured in the current issue of The New Quarterly, won the 2008 Metcalf-Rooke Award for her short story collection Once. Named one of Quill & Quire’s 2008 15 Books That Mattered, Once also got Rosenblum dubbed "Canlit Rookie of the Year" by Maclean's. Rosenblum's fiction has been short-listed for the Journey Prize, the National Magazine Awards and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and long-listed for the Relit Award.

For more Rebecca Rosenblum, follow this link.

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Listen to excerpts from two of Rebecca Rosenblum's short stories: Christmas with My Mother, narrated by Janet Russell and The Weatherboy, narrated by Gerard Whalen. These stories can be purchased individually as downloads, and are also included on Rattling Books' EarLit Shorts 4 CD, which features a selection of stories by talented Canadian writers.

Joel Thomas Hynes' "Down to the Dirt" Given Thumbs Up By The "Guardian"

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.

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Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' unabridged audio version of Down to the Dirt.

Agnes Walsh Reading in Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland, November 6

Agnes Walsh, award-winning Canadian actor, poet, playwright and storyteller, will be reading in Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland, on November 6, courtesy of the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Walsh's poems have been translated into the French and Portuguese, and she has toured Canada, the eastern U.S., Portugal and Ireland, reading from her work. She is the founder of the Tramore Theatre Troupe of the Cape Shore of Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, which is dedicated to preserving and presenting the oral history of that area. In 2006, Agnes Walsh became the inaugural poet laureate of St. John's, capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Walsh's latest collection of poetry is Going Around with Bachelors, which was short-listed for the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage and History Award and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and long-listed for the ReLit Award.

"Going Around with Bachelors is soft-spoken, affecting, empathetic storytelling from Newfoundland, Canada's Ireland." (The Globe and Mail)

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Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' unabridged audio version of Going Around with Bachelors, read by Agnes Walsh.

"The tone and timbre of . . . Walsh's voice seem to emanate from the heart of North America— from the most ancient parts of the continent." (AudioFile magazine)

Canadian audiobooks produced by Rattling Books in Newfoundland and Labrador

Helen Fogwill Porter's "Below the Bridge"

In the war years of the last century, a young girl growing up on the South Side of St. John's, Newfoundland, said to her mother, "Wouldn't it be nice if someone wrote about the South Side?" The girl was Helen Fogwill Porter, voracious reader and aspiring author. She would become the person who "wrote about the South Side," in the Newfoundland classic Below the Bridge.

The South Side of St. John's, or "below the bridge," was a tightly knit community of families which had its own identity apart from that of the the capital city across the harbour. In the 1950s, that community was razed so the harbour could be extended. In the process, the grave of Shawnadithit, the last known survivor of Newfoundland's indigenous Beothuks, was lost. The South Side became a grave itself, of the homes and culture of the people who had lived there. But unlike Shawnadithit, the longshoremen, midwives, fortune tellers, shopkeepers, "fallen women," sailors, and housewives of the 1930s and '40s who lived on the South Side have a memorial. In Porter's Below the Bridge, you can smell the "tarry ropes," the sweat of the black horses who drew funeral processions, the Jeyes Fluid and the inevitable Sunday roast. Porter has rebuilt the demolished houses of the South Side, and she takes the reader into them, and into the rich and sometimes fantastical lives of their inhabitants.

"When Helen Porter writes of resettlement and the harbor, of war and the Dardanelles, of dream figures and death, of the Salvation Army and yeast cakes, of rowing to Fort Amherst and glowing at Fort Pepperell, her characters do not resemble those in Chatelaine or in People magazine; they are not over-painted models, pigments of the imagination; they are us. And even if their experiences are not the stuff of epics, by dissecting them free from a worldly background she portrays the fabric of a congregation, a community, a culture; the which, to define operatively, is near-genius." (Dr. William Pryse-Phillips)

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Listen to an excerpt from Rattling Books' new unabridged audio version of Helen Fogwill Porter's memoir of growing up on the South Side of St. John's in the 1940s and '50s.

Steven Heighton, Canadian Conrad

This year has been an active one for Steven Heighton, one of Canada's best novelists, and a well-awarded writer of short fiction and poetry. He's published a poetry collection, Patient Frame, and won the 2010 National Magazine Award gold for short fiction. His new novel, Every Lost Country, is a Canadian best-seller, an Amazon.ca Best Book of the Month and also Best of the Year So Far choice, and has recently been optioned for film.

According to The Globe and Mail, Heighton "increasingly resembles [Joseph Conrad] in important aspects. Those aspects include "taking the bare bones of an event occurring on the borderlines of most of our geographical, political and moral experiences" and making them into a powerful and relevant story. To read an interview with Steven Heighton, in which he discusses why and how he writes and what he's currently working on, click here.

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Listen to an excerpt from Steven Heighton's 2008 National Magazine Award gold for short fiction winner, "The Dead Are More Visible," from Rattling Books' EarLit Shorts 3.

Canada Reads Chris Benjamin

Drive-by Saviours, Chris Benjamin's 2010 debut novel set in Canada and Indonesia, has just been chosen by CBC's Canada Reads as one of the Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade. If you're a fan of Benjamin's novel, click here to vote Drive-by Saviours into Canada Reads' Top 10 Essential Novels of the Decade.

Watch the trailer for Drive-by Saviours on YouTube. Read an interview with Benjamin about his novel.

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Rattling Books' EarLit Shorts 4 features a story by Chris Benjamin, about an unusual romance. Listen to an excerpt.

A Canadian Gallant in Paris

Mavis Gallant is one of the foremost short story writers of our time. Only S. J. Perelman and John Updike have had more pieces published in The New Yorker than Gallant, who left her native Canada in the 1950s for the more sophisticated charms of Paris. She's still there physically, but not entirely psychologically. "I am a writer and, of course, a Canadian. Once, in Switzerland, emerging from a long anaesthetic, I had no idea where I was, or why. . . . I could hear someone speaking French and I thought I had been in a driving accident somewhere in Quebec." (From an interview in The Paris Review, Winter 1999.)

To watch a two-part 1965 CBC documentary on Gallant's life in Paris and her writing, click here.

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Rattling Books' unabridged audio version of Mavis Gallant's Montreal Stories received an AudioFile Earphones Award, and was named a Best Audio Book of the year by the magazine. To listen to an excerpt from her story "Florida," follow this link.

Emily White's "Lonely"

Canadian author Emily White's 2010 national best-seller Lonely: A Memoir is described by Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones, as "a masterwork on the topic [loneliness], a memoir of deep insight and revelation." Sebold isn't alone in her praise; White's book has been widely and generously reviewed nationally and internationally. To see what The New Yorker has to say about Lonely, click here. To visit White's web site, click here.


Rattling Books' EarLit Shorts 3 features a short story by Emily White. To hear an excerpt from her story, "Granite," follow this link.

Ron Hynes Release Concert for "Stealing Genius," November 3, St. John's, Newfoundland

On Wednesday, November 3, Ron Hynes will release his latest CD at the LSPU Hall in St. John's. The songs on Stealing Genius, composed while Hynes was on a writing retreat at Woody Point in western Newfoundland, were inspired by the works of some of his favorite Newfoundland authors, including Michael Crummey, Stan Dragland, Randall Maggs, Donna Morrisey, Al Pittman and Des Walsh.

For reservations, call 753-4531, or book online at www.rca.nf.ca. To listen to the songs on Stealing Genius, click here.

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To listen to Ron Hynes reading from Rattling Books' audio version of Michael Crummey's Hard Light, click here. Ron Hynes has also narrated Cassie Brown's Death on the Ice, an upcoming Rattling Books title. For more information about Brown's Newfoundland classic, follow this link.

Andy Jones remounts "To the Wall" Oct. 21-24, 2010, St. John's, Newfoundland

October, 2010 - Andy Jones will perform To The Wall in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Thursday, October 21, 2010, LSPU Hall
Friday, October 22, 2010, LSPU Hall
Saturday, October 23, 2010, LSPU Hall
Sunday, October 24, 2010, LSPU Hall
Thursday, October 28, 2010, Reid Theatre (MUN)
www.rca.nf.cahttp://www.rca.nf.ca/

Tickets for this show can be purchased by calling the LSPU Hall at 753-4531 or online at www.rca.nf.ca select box office.

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Letters from Uncle Val by Andy Jones is available from rattlingbooks.com as either an audio CD or digital download. CDs will also be available directly from the artist at performances of To The Wall.

Stephen Pederson on New Ron Hynes Documentary

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.

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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).

Ron Hynes Documentary Reviewed

The Man of a Thousand Songs, a documentary about the legendary Newfoundland singer-songwriter Ron Hynes, is reviewed here in Variety.

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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).

Kathleen Winter Makes Giller Long-list

Kathleen Winter's novel Annabel has been selected for the Giller Prize long-list. To see the complete list of nominees, click here.

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A selection of Kathleen Winter's short stories is available on audio as part Rattling Books' EarLit Shorts 1 anthology of short fiction.

Michael Winter Edits His Manuscript

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Michael Winter's novel The Big Why is available as an unabridged audiobook from Rattling Books, in MP3 CD or digitally downloadable formats.

Michael Crummey Appears at Cabot Trail Writers Festival

Newfoundland poet and novelist Michael Crummey will be one of three participants in this year's Cabot Trail Writers Festival. Participating writers will deliver readings, workshops and presentations. Click here to read an article on the events.

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Michael Crummey's collection of poetry Hard Light: 32 Little Stories is available as an audiobook from Rattling Books.

Anita Best Performs at the Ottawa 2010 Storytellers' Festival

Traditional Newfoundland singer and storyteller Anita Best will be performing at the Ottawa 2010 Storytellers' Festival in a featured concert, Stories and Songs of Newfoundland. The concert will take place on Sunday, November 21st at 7 p.m. For a complete schedule of events, follow this link.

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Anita Best is the narrator of Mary Dalton's acclaimed poetry collection Merrybegot, available as an unabridged audio CD or digital download from Rattling Books.

Michael Crummey Interviewed on Booklounge.ca

Michael Crummey, author of the acclaimed novel Galore, is interviewed for Booklounge.ca (see episode 63).

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A collection of Michael Crummey's poems, Hard Light: 32 Little Stories, is available as a CD or digital download audiobook from Rattling Books.

Lisa Moore Talks About Her Writing Process

Novelist and short story writer Lisa Moore talks about her writing process on Tickle Scratch Productions' series Writers' Confessions.



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Lisa Moore's short story collection Open is available in audiobook format as an unabridged MP3 CD or as a digital download from Rattling Books.

Don McKay Presents at Cape Breton University Conference

Griffin Prize-winning Canadian poet Don McKay will deliver a presentation on Thursday, August 19 as part of the three-day Association of Literature, Environment and Culture in Canada conference at Cape Breton University. Click here to more.

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Songs for the Songs of Birds, a selection of Don McKay's poems on birds, birding and flight, is available as an audiobook, read by the author, from Rattling Books.

Joel Thomas Hynes Adapts Short Stories for the Stage

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.

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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.

Reminder: Call for Submissions Deadline

The deadline for submissions to EarLit Shorts, Rattling Books' signature audio short fiction anthology series, is on August 15, 2010. See this link for submission details.

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EarLit Shorts numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 are currently available for purchase from Rattling Books.

Michael Winter Talks About the Writing Process

Novelist and short story writer Michael Winter talks about his writing process on Tickle Scratch Productions' series Writers' Confessions.




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The Big Why, Michael Winter's novel about American artist Rockwell Kent, is available as an MP3 audio CD or digital download from Rattling Books.

Michael Crummey's "Afterimage" Published as Stage Play

Afterimage, Robert Chafe's theatrical adaptation of a story of the same name by poet and novelist Michael Crummey, has been published by Playwrights Canada Press.

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Hard Light: 32 Little Stories, a collection of Michael Crummey's poetry, is available as an audiobook from Rattling Books.

Kathleen Winter in The Gazette

More on Kathleen Winter's debut novel, Annabel, this time in The Gazette.

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Three of Kathleen Winter's short stories appear in EarLit Shorts 1, an audio anthology of short fiction from Rattling Books.

Russell Wangersky to Read at Whistler Festival

St. John's writer Russell Wangersky will be one of several notable authors appearing at the Whistler Readers & Writers Festival this year. A complete list of participants will be released in August. Read an article on the Festival here.

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Two of Russell Wangersky's short stories, McNally's Fair and Echo, are available as digital audio downloads from Rattling Books, or as part of the EarLit Shorts 2 audio anthology of short fiction.

Lisa Moore Nominated for Man Booker Prize

Newfoundland writer Lisa Moore has been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize for her second novel, February, a fictional account of the emotional aftermath of the Ocean Ranger disaster. A short-list of nominees will be announced in September of this year.

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Lisa Moore's short story collection Open is available as an audiobook from Rattling Books.

Danielle Devereaux and James Langer Reading at The Ship

Poets Danielle Devereaux and James Langer will give a free public reading tonight at The Ship Pub, off Duckworth Street in St. John's, Newfoundland, tonight (July 27th) at 8 p.m.

Devereaux's unpublished poetry manuscript was shortlisted for the 2009 Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers. Langer's Gun Dogs was the winner of the 2010 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for the best first book of poetry published by a Canadian in the preceding year.

The reading is being hosted by Riddle Fence, a journal of arts and culture based in St. John's.

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Danielle Devereaux has a story forthcoming from Rattling Books as part of the EarLit Shorts audio series of short fiction.

Don McKay Sends Stephen Harper John Steffler's The Grey Islands

Griffin Prize-winning poet Don McKay has sent Prime Minister Stephen Harper a copy of John Steffler's poetry collection The Grey Islands as part of Yann Martel's What is Stephen Harper Reading blog. Read McKay's accompanying letter here.

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John Steffler's The Grey Islands and Don McKay's Songs for the Songs of Birds (a selection of McKay's poems on birds, birding and flight) are available as audio CDs or digital download from Rattling Books.

Michael Crummey's Galore Now Available in Paperback

Novelist and poet Michael Crummey's latest novel, Galore, is now available in paperback. See H.J. Kirchhoff's Globe & Mail precis here, or read The Globe's original review by Steven Galloway here.

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Michael Crummey's poetry collection Hard Light: 32 Little Stories is available as an audiobook from Rattling Books.