Paper Chase: Tracz translation at the Louvre

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Orysia Tracz ( KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS ARCHIVES) Photo Store

VISITORS to the Louvre this winter will be able to take home a little bit of Winnipeg.

Last summer, retired Winnipeg librarian Orysia Tracz translated an illustrated book on Johann-Georg Pinzell, a sculptor known as the Michelangelo of Ukraine, written by scholar and museum curator Vira Stetsko.

In September, Tracz learned that the bilingual book ( Tayina Pinzelia/Pinzel’s Mystery) was to be featured at the famed Paris art gallery this winter during a three-month exhibition on the artist, who is known for Rococo statues and bas reliefs in churches throughout western Ukraine. The exhibition opened Nov. 23.

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Yann Martel isn’t the only Canadian author with a movie jockeying for attention during the end-of-the-year awards season.

Ontario writer Craig Davidson’s 2005 short-story collection Rust and Bone has been adapted loosely into a French film with the same title starring Marion Cotillard (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception).

On the film’s website, Davidson discusses the changes made by director Jacques Audiard and admits that, far from taking away from his vision, they have made the film better than the book. Rust and Bone opened in New York Nov. 23 and Los Angeles Dec. 7.

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Lac Du Bonnet writer Donna Besel won first place in one of Canada’s longest-lasting literary competitions this fall.

Besel won first prize in the 16th annual creative non-fiction category of The Great Canadian Literary Hunt, held by Torontobased This Magazine. Her winning entry, Fare Well, was published in the magazine’s November-December issue.

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A woman’s hiking memoir and the story of a harrowing climbing accident were the big winners in this year’s U.S. National Outdoor Book Awards.

Suzanne Roberts’s Almost Somewhere: Twenty Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (University of Nebraska Press), shared first prize in the outdoor literature category for its depiction of a group of women hiking and sharing life stories along the trail. The John Muir Trail is part of the high-elevation section of the Pacific Crest Trail that author Cheryl Strayed had to detour around in her bestselling hiking memoir Wild.

The other outdoor lit winner was The Ledge (Ballantine Books), by Jim Davidson and Kevin Vaughn, which tells of a disastrous climb on Washington’s Mount Rainier.

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A Canadian comic book writer has a big hit on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter, where he’s raising money to publish a new, illustrated twist on Hamlet.

Ryan North says in a video on Kickstarter that he’s already written the 80,000-word text for To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure, a "chooseable-path adventure" in which readers can follow Hamlet, Ophelia or King Hamlet through a variety of comical storylines. He’s also recruited a team of illustrators, including Kate Beaton ( Hark: A Vagrant) and Mathew Inman ( The Oatmeal).

By Dec. 1, North had attracted pledges worth more than seven times his $20,000 fundraising goal, with nearly three weeks to go before the Dec. 20 deadline.

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