Bookninja

• Given that my new and selected is probably not eligible for the Griffin, I feel free this year to comment without repercussion on the announcement of the jury… It’s amazing;
• CBC non-fiction prize announces long list;
• Young people NBA list;
• Sword fight over at Hillary Weston Prize focuses on identity;
• Is Rushdie’s decision to go with substack the death of the novel as we know i…zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz;
• Immerse yourself in surrealism to write more surreally;
• More craziness from TX, which is vying with FLA for most nutty;
• A supposed lock of Dickinson’s hair to fetch a cool half-mil;
• Women writers discuss women, violence, etc. in crime writing;
• Surely someone wants Ethan Hawke’s thoughts on creativity;

• Here’s a head scratcher: school board decides to burn books in name of reconciliation… where do we even start?
• The Snowy Day was on regular rotation at bedtime here… When both sons eventually noticed and asked why the boy had brown skin (we live in an extremely White place), I just said, “…because most people do” and we had a good chat about the world;
• New Yorker editor calls out diversity failings of… The New Yorker;
• Newly discovered Tennessee Williams story sees light of day;
• Don’t you hate new things?! (on e-books);
• Wait, I missed a Dante’s Inferno video game? Me? No, doesn’t sound right;
• Pandemic book clubs — online vs offline;
• Wole Soyinka is back and doing the rounds;

It’s what comes directly between wabbit stheasthon and duck stheasthon.

• Booker Prize shortlist;
• Is the Booker Prize problematic because of its colonial roots? Let me look around a sec… yep, like mostly everything else;
• Canadian kids book initiative wins world literacy award;
• CCBC awards;
• Sausage party at the Hillary Weston Prize shortlist;
• Patricia Smith wins Ruth Lilly lifetime achievement award;

My new book was officially released last week. It’s called Problematica: New and Selected Poems, and it represents 25 years of me screwing around in the poetry world. I’m telling you this because there’s probably only three or four major review spaces left in Canada and, given how many books come out each year, it’s unlikely any of them will feature it.

Order from any of the links below with preference given to indie bookstores or the publisher website.

• ECW Press
• [Insert your local indie bookstore here]
• McNally Robinson
• Chapters/Indigo
• Barnes & Noble
• Amazon.ca
• Amazon.com

Also, here’s a clip of me reading a poem from it.

• 11-year-old superstar wins UNESCO competition and publishes a book in the Kwakʼwala language;
• 70 Canadian short stories available to read online;
• Toronto burbs are way cooler than when I lived in Brampton, 1979-84;
• Amanda Gorman is first poet hosting MET gala;
• Kirkus Prize fiction finalists announced;
• #DisneyMustPay task force is gaining ground and people;
• Is it smartest to not read about yourself?;
• Dude got his creative rocks off by writing fake advice column questions and it’s sort of awesome?;
• On the tradition of literary stunt books;

• CBC provides a list for Canadian mags and journals open to submissions, for some reason…;
• US senators admonish Amazon for being evil and promoting anti-Vax books;
• PW looks into the stellar first half of publishing in the US;
• Jennifer Grey still trying for that lift;
• On Irish Women poets through the ages;
• Colson Whitehead profiled in the Star;
• Publishers are taking their post-covid reopenings slowly;
• Let chance clear up that TBR pile;0
• College class rewrites Great Gatsby over Zoom then gets film deal… That’s it. I’m out;
• Best apps for tracking your book collection?;
• Hot girl summer? Top 10 party girls in literature;

• Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians is at 13 weeks on the bestseller list, and this is only her first novel;
• Some awards news yesterday:
  • Giller Prize long list;
  • Women’s Prize winner;
  • Read On Canada nominated for international award;
  • Premier’s award in Oz’s Queensland handed out;
• The Guardian censored a Judith Butler interview to protect the feelings of TERFs…? I love the Guardian, but this is pure shite;
• Do news reporters write the best crime novels?;
• Afghanistan literary scene primer;
• Original New York prospectus seems to have held up;

• Giller longlist comes out today, tune in here to watch it;
• Insta poetry in the time of clay pots;
• Booker prize shuffles jury;
• A Joy Harjo interview is always welcome;
• WTF is a “literary liberal“?;
• Wainwright prize for nature writing goes to;
• 35 (non-fiction and fiction) books coming in the fall;
• The book that shaped Nordic identity;
• Dante’s circles of the damned, but in real life;
• Genre-bending fantasy books;
• Remember when countries elected poets as presidents?;
• Could Sally Rooney be Sally Rooney if she wasn’t Irish?;
• The American counterparts to Sherlock Holmes;
• Meet the “crab novel” guy;
• RIP: Steve Vizinczey, author, dead at 88;

It turns out that TikTok is not just all half-naked young people dancing and ASMR videos, it’s also a way to turn backlist titles into best sellers. How come I always get assigned young publicists who seem like they should know about this stuff, but they never try it? Oh, right. Poetry. That said, you prose types who stand to make actual money from your work would do well to pay attention to what’s trending because that is apparently the level society has settled at: virality as good in videos, bad in bloodstreams.

BookTok content reaches an extremely large audience—videos with the #BookTok hashtag have racked up a combined 18 billion views. Once a book like It Ends with Us is recommended by influencers, TikTok’s algorithm ensures that it pops up on users’ feeds without them even searching for it. As of this writing, videos with the hashtag #ItEndsWithUs have a combined 73 million views.

BookTok’s power to promote books relies on its grassroots nature. Through self-made content, users create the sort of literary publicity that, in its sincerity, money literally cannot buy. Media-literate young people are especially drawn to promotion done by peers with no financial stake in a product. But publishers have taken notice and are responding swiftly. Atria’s chief marketing officer, Liz Perl, said it’s important to take TikTok seriously as a promotional tool because it’s “not just for kids anymore.” Perl said the publisher has been working closely with authors to “capitalize on this moment by creating more organic content, investing in more paid campaigns and working with a broad variety of book influencers.”

Kids are gearing up to head back into their petri dishes and bring you all sorts of pathological goodies. Enjoy the two weeks of six free hours a day, because after that I assume you’ll be sick for two months or have them back at home because not enough people in your community got vaccinated and now society is fucked. (Don’t we normally get a Giller Longlist soon? Maybe that will sustain us) Enjoy!

• CBC reviews 25 years of their flagship fiction program “Canada Reads Only Fiction Because That’s What Books Are — Only Fiction”;
• Today in Just Imagine Being Sally Rooney;
• British Academy Book Prize shortlist;
• Poet Amanda Gorman becomes face of Estée Lauder;
• How 1921’s fiction predicts 2021;
• Newly discovered scraps of paper reveal new take on Merlin;
• Why do we like mysteries that take place in schools?;
• New AI program distills research papers into a single sentence;