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Betsy Trumpener nominated for Relit Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Prince George Author Shortlisted for National Literary Award

Caitlin Press congratulates Prince George author and CBC Radio News reporter Betsy Trumpener, whose short story collection The Butcher of Penetang ($17.95, Caitlin Press), has just been shortlisted for The Relit Award for short fiction.

This is Trumpener's second nomination for a national literary award; she garnered a nomination for the prestigious Danuta Gleed Literary Award earlier this year.

Situating her stories from northern BC to rural Ontario to countries at war, Trumpener carves up rare, savoury slices of stories that are both tough and enticing: a child goes missing in a dangerous part of town; a draft dodger finds himself with bloody hands; and a robber is armed with only a hairbrush. The people in these edgy stories cut cocaine into comfort food, push sex into the snow, and chase speeding ambulances in the dead of winter. Writer Susan Musgrave calls the debut "exquisitely crafted glimpses into the beauty of our fragile human lives."

Betsy Trumpener is an award-winning CBC News reporter and radio documentary producer. Her non-fiction and fiction have been published in numerous publications, including the Guardian, the Globe and Mail and This Magazine. She was the first annual Writer in Residence for the CBC arts show, North by Northwest, and she has been awarded a Western Magazine Award for her magazine column, "North of Unreal," a Jack Webster Award for Best Radio Feature, and a Jack Webster Africa Journalism Fellowship.

The ReLit Awards, short for Regarding Literature, Reinventing Literature, Relighting Literature, were founded in 2000 and emphasize the importance of ideas over big-money prizes. Winners in the poetry, novel and short fiction categories will be celebrated at a special event during the Ottawa Writer's festival in October. Winners receive the ReLit Ring, which features four moveable dials, each one struck with the entire alphabet.

The other six nominated authors in the short fiction category are Ian Colford for Evidence (Porcupine's Quill), Arjun Basu for Squishy (DC Books), Don McLellan for In the Quiet After Slaughter ((Libros Libertad)), Pamela Stewart for Elysium (Anvil Press), Mark Anthony Jarman for My White Planet (Thomas Allen Publishers) and Lisa Foad for The Night is a Mouth (Exile Editions).


CAITLIN PRESS IS AN INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER
distributed and marketed by Harbour Publishing

To arrange an interview with Betsy Trumpener or to request a copy of The Butcher of Penetang, please contact Marisa Alps or Rachel Page:
marisa@harbourpublishing.com or rachel@harbourpublishing.com
phone: 604-883-2730, fax: 604-883-9451
Caitlin Press email: info@caitlin-press.com, website: www.caitlin-press.com

Mara: Daughter of the Nile

I met this classic from 1953 thanks to family friend Holly Altmeyer who fell in love with it in Elementary School. Now a high school student, Holly lent me the 1953 edition which she obtained as a library discard. Her praises encouraged me to read the book which I was delighted to find well plotted, engaging and heart warming. Checking it out for this blog entry I discovered it is still in print in a new edition and sports 166 customer reviews on Amazon.com. It is good to know some classics never die but are loved over and over again each generation. Also found a scan of the 1953 title page and a sample of fan art on PhotoBucket.

The Wikipedia entry for Mara: Daughter of the Nile includes a section describing historical eras to do with dynastic details of the Egyption kings. I was more interested in the tone of the work which portrayed slavery without anything more than an hint of the potential for sexual abuse that would doubtless have featured in a modern re-telling of the same story. I found it refreshing.

Definitely a Cinderella story, in which Mara earns the love of the marvelous Lord Sheftu, secret leader of the opposition to a despotic queen, it is told with charm and even some insightful cultural awareness. Shetfu's terror at tomb robbing intelligently avoids being trivialized by the superimposition of modern attitudes while retaining the sympathy of the modern reader for what could easily be dismissed as superstition.

Hal Friesen about book by Mark Shegelski

The professor under whom I did my undergraduate research just published his first science fiction book, and I thought I'd let you know about it. As one of the readers who helped him edit I can tell you they're worth checking out! You'll find the info below.

-Hal

Title: "Remembering the Future"
Author: Mark Shegelski
Publisher: Scroll Press
Retail Price (Canadian): $19.95

You can see the cover of the book and the description that is on the back of the book
by going to amazon.ca or amazon.com. Note on the back cover the strong endorsement by Robert J. Sawyer (Canada's leading scifi author)

"Fascinating, inventive stories from a stunning new talent. You'll remember these futures."

--Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo award-winning author of Hominids

Here is the link to amazon.ca:

Remembering the Future.

Michael Armstrong May 8, 2009

Tegan and I went to see Michael Armstrong perform poetry to jazz at Books & Company, May 8, 2009. He's still got the stuff. I treasure the poems on his CD, backed up by the same band, which I've played many times in the car. Tegan remembers King Snake and the one about the monkey the best. The images of the frozen words sticks with me, too. And the father/son remembrance bound up in a game of catch where so few and so ordinary words ultimately mean so much, and yet are never quite enough. I wish the poems on his CD a long life and wish it was available somewhere commercially. I don't think it is. Gathered around Michael in the image above are some of the thirty or forty folks who turned out to cram Cafe Voltaire on a Friday night. After Michael's set there was a radio play I missed out on due to other committments.

The Annual Magazine Caravan April 19 2009

Text adapted from The Pulse

April 19, 2009. A literary cabaret featuring Rob Budde, Dee Horne, Sarah de Leeuw, Betsy Trumpener and Gillian Wigmore who read from their recent works published by BC book and magazine publishers.
Venue: Books & Company

See more pictures on facebook.

The Ambassador's Staff by Sherry D. Ramsey

"Met" Sherry D. Ramsey this morning by reading her story, The Ambassador's Staff on the e-journal Thoughtcrime Experiments. It's a future-noir. Well put together, goes down smooth, and captures my feelings about too little sleep and too much coffee, to boot. Allegorically speaking." Below is the bio on Sherry D. Ramsey from the site. Sherry is also an SF Canada member, which is how I came across her story.

Sherry D. Ramsey (sherrydramsey.com) never expected to become an Internet geek. However, after publishing a web magazine for ten years, creating websites, copyediting for the Internet Review of Science Fiction, networking with writer’s groups online, and becoming part of a writing community in Second Life, she fears it’s an inevitable conclusion. Her stories have appeared in On Spec, Oceans of the Mind, Neo-opsis, Speculative Realms, Undercurrents, and elsewhere. Sherry is a member of the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia and SF Canada, and a founding editor of Third Person Press.

Random Ethical Resonances

Twice in the last week I have happened across a statement that resonates with me as strongly as if I had written it myself - proof there is comfort and stimulus in exploring the world of other people's thinking more, which is the goal of this blog. Here are the two examples.

In Charles de Lint's 2003 "Addendum to Afterword" to his 1985 novel Mulengro, addressing the question of political correctness in writing from the point of view of races, genders and situations not our own (after respectfully noting some caveats):

Let the criteria be good writing--books that inform and enlighten us while they tell a story--not the source of the writing. And if that makes me sound naive, so be it. But I'll continue to read as widely as I can, and I'll be enriched by it. And I'll continue to use as large a character palette in my writing as the story requires, because I can't do otherwise and still maintain my integrity to my work.

Author Allan Weiss, on his website, in the section on philosophy. I expressed a kindred sentiment, I think, in my online story "Going Back Out", which is an allegory tale in which Ann berates a young Reetion pilot for giving up her sense of mission because Sevolites can fly harder than she can (a quantitative measure), without considering the cause for which they fly (a qualitative, ethical consideration). The point being that sometimes "what" you are doing has to matter more than the "how much" aspect of your success at it.

I see much moral complacency around me, and it distresses me. Writers are more interested in their careers--in making sales--than taking a potentially costly moral stand. (Weiss)

References

de Lint, C. Mulengro, (2003), New York: Tom Doherty Associates.

Weiss, A. "Philosophy and Ethics" retrieved 25 April 2009 from http://www.allanweiss.com/

Small differences call for loud distinctions

In chapter 5 of Jared Diamond's book The Third Chimpanzee (p. 99-109), the author describes the way we humans tend to pick mates who are similar to ourselves, based on a search image established during our formative years. Diamond is, as always, convincing. What, then, about the maxim "opposites attract"? After a little thought, it struck me that this is another example of a syndrome I think of as "the finer the hairs to be split, the sharper the knife". In other words, where a transgression is slight or a difference is minor, the more aggressive people are in asserting it. A good example are the psychological differences between men and women. Compared to man and tom cat, or man and nematode, the psychological and emotional differences between man and woman are pretty trivial. But it is very important to humans to delineate and defend this difference, so it is played up and exaggerated. I suspect the same could be found to be true of efforts to make black and whites seem radically different in apartheid South Africa, or patricians and plebs in classical Greek society.

References

Diamond, J. (1992). The Third Chimpanzee. (1st ed.) New York: HarperCollins.
Labels: depression, evolution, Jared Diamond, psychology