A little while ago, Biblioasis submitted Debris for The Story Prize, a US prize for the best collection of stories that year. If you are surprised at how my book is eligible for an American prize, well, so was I. But, it was a sneak move by Biblioasis, likely due to their proximity to and magical knowledge of US publishing and whatnot, especially in the northeast. Turns out that this prize is for a book published in the US that year, and Debris was technically published south of the border on February 9th, 2016, and has a US distributor in Consortium. So yeah…

The director of The Story Prize, Larry Dark, welcomed blog posts on a bunch of things from the nominated authors, and I wrote one. About how “Nobody will really believe you can pull this off.” Some folks have read it already, but you can click here to check it out if you are interested in such ramblings.

The finalist will be announced in January 2017, and the winner at a fancy ceremony in March. This is likely a fairly long shot for me, but at least we are able to give it a go. Thanks to Biblioasis for knowing secrets that other people don’t.

Another thing I did was write a blog post for IFOA 2016. I was asked to be a delegate, as mentioned in an earlier post, and part of that entailed the writing of a post on one of the events that I saw at IFOA. I did one about my editor, John Metcalf, based on his In Conversation event on the last day of the fest. Metcalf spoke with Randy Boyagoda, an acclaimed writer and professor who knew his stuff about Metcalf’s first new book in 26 years, The Museum at the End of the World, and about the man’s legacy in Canadian letters.

You can read that blog post now, where I rant about how important Metcalf has been to CanLit, despite his deliberate method of avoiding the pressures of the market, and accepting your lot as a literary writer with a readership that will be diametrically opposed to your skills and talents. A few days before this, I’d been in discussion with another John (of the Irving type), who advised me on how to try and actually make a novel into a success over some beers and porkchop at a fancy place. So, both of those conversations, from two very wise Johns, counterbalanced each other hilariously. Nonetheless, you’ll see by reading my piece on Metcalf that I believe his approach to writing is justified, but that it doesn’t stop some of his authors from achieving success under his guidance. And that Metcalf’s contributions to literature should be considered as a very impressive accomplishment.

Anyways, check it out here if you like.

I just wanted to share those two blogs on this blog for posterity, and I hope that some of you read them and they are not crap. Nonetheless, I will write more when I have more news about In the Cage, or about anything else worth mentioning. Until then, thanks and please continue to believe in your dreams…

KH