Category: publishing

When Greg Gatenby abruptly resigned from the directorship of Toronto’s International Festival of Authors earlier this week, speculation raged about what bizarre set of behind-the-scenes circumstances could have led to the departure of such a popular figure from one of Canada’s most high-profile literary organizations. The full story still isn’t known, and may never be, but the often-frosty relationship between Gatenby and Harbourfront Centre chief William Boyle seems to be at the center of the story.

“The dramatic parting of Harbourfront Centre and Greg Gatenby, announced Monday, was preceded by months of wrangling, intrigue and attempted fixes. Gatenby and Harbourfront officials are saying nothing, but based on the testimony of other players, the breakdown of the relationship emerges as a tale full of ultimatums, threats, end runs and cameo appearances by well-known personalities.”

Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor has won the Caine Prize for African Writing. “Her story is written in the voice of an aristocratic Rwandan refugee in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. The prize, worth $15,000, is given for a short story written in English by an African author and is considered one of the most prestigious awards for African literature.”

“US Poet Laureate Billy Collins leads the nominees for the UK’s richest annual poetry award, the Forward Prize. Collins joins Ciaran Carson, Ian Duhig, Lavinia Greenlaw and Paul Muldoon on the shortlist for the £10,000 prize for the best published poetry collection.”

Book piracy hasn’t been a huge issue up til now. But the new Harry Potter book is being scanned, electronically published and downloaded all over the internet. “Last week, enthusiastic readers put unofficially translated portions of ‘Order of the Phoenix’ on the Web in German and Czech, only to remove them after the publishers that own the rights in their respective countries threatened legal action.”

What books really make the British best sller lists? One reporter reads the top ten to see if he had discern a common thread. “The idea, if I remember it rightly – it seems so very long ago – was really two ideas. First, why these particular books, these particular, very big books, out of the thousand or so new novels available, have risen to the top of the pile. And, second, what it might say about the great British reading public that these are the fictions we most want to escape into in the middle of July 2003. One of the things about reading many different books sequentially, many long and different books, is that they all come to seem a little like chapters in the same story.”

“For thousands of would-be novelists the dream of living the New York writer’s life will never die, even if it nearly kills them to pursue it. But that doesn’t mean the nature of that pursuit is in any way constant. And as always, the goal of carving out a life of letters in the city—shared by thousands of Sarah Lawrence graduates, Starbucks baristas, and drop-out tax attorneys alike—is inextricably linked to the chilly realities of the publishing business. But rarely have the realities of the marketplace changed so jarringly as they have over the past five years. While the major publishing conglomerates continue to cut back on “midlist” authors, they’re increasingly willing to lavish astronomical sums on unknowns. So many, in fact, that since the late nineties, half a million dollars is de rigueur for a first novelist who’s perceived to have hot prospects.”

The Atlantic Magazine is moving its literary operations out of Boston to LA. “Since taking over as the Atlantic Monthly’s literary editor three years ago, 39-year-old Yale- and Oxford-trained historian Benjamin Schwarz has reshaped the venerable magazine’s book section into the shrewdest, best-written and most surprising cultural report currently on offer between slick covers. Now, Schwarz plans to break with 146 years of tradition and move the Atlantic’s literary editorship from Boston, where the magazine was founded and will continue to publish, to set up shop in Los Angeles.”

“A survey of literacy in 64 cities confirmed what Seattle bookworms have long suspected. It named Seattle as one of the country’s two most-literate cities, edged out for No. 1 only by Minneapolis. Jack Miller, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater chancellor and education professor, used statistics in five categories and 13 different measures of literacy to provide a ‘literacy profile’ of all American cities with populations of 250,000 or more.”

Dallas ranks in the middle of “literate” US cities at No. 36. “The surprise is that Dallas ranks above New York City (No. 47), Los Angeles (No. 54) and Chicago (No. 45). In fact, Dallas is the highest-ranked big city. All of the cities that placed above it have populations well below 1 million, while Dallas has 1,006,877 people. The study’s author says it “does tend to penalize the biggest cities. New York and L.A. have very high numbers of publications, colleges and newspaper readers, but their populations are so big and varied that they offset any literary concentrations those cities might enjoy.”