Bridgman giving away 100 copies her books

Copies will be left on park benches, in coffee shops, anywhere people might pick up a book.

The Middlegate Book fantasy series for young adults consists of The Serpent's Spell, Amber Ambrosia and Fish and Sphinx. All are published by Winnipeg's Great Plains Publications.

Bridgman is the associate dean in the department of city planning at the University of Manitoba. She is passionately dedicated to encouraging reading among children and, by giving away copies of her book, she hopes to do exactly that.

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The Large Sieve and its Applications and Baboon Metaphysics are among the 18 titles nominated for the U.K.'s Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year.

The award is sponsored by Bookseller magazine. The public can vote online once the short list is announced on Feb. 20, and the winner will be announced in March.

Last year's winner was the self-help title If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs by American Big Boom.

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Winnipeg's Aqua Bookstore has declared this week as Mondo!Poetry, a new annual festival celebrating Canadian poetry.

Events include workshops, discussions and readings. Some of Manitoba's best poets, including David Arnason, Dennis Cooley and Catherine Hunter, will be participating.

On Feb. 21, it's holding the Mondo!Purdy Video Dance Party to raise money to preserve the late poet Al Purdy's cottage in Ameliasburg, Ont., where he wrote much of his best work.

For more information, email ariel@aquabooks.ca or call 943-7555.

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Governor-General's Award-winning author Rudy Wiebe will give a lecture on Feb. 24 at 7 p.m. at the Canadian Mennonite University.

Alberta's Wiebe will present the lecture Where the Truth Lies about the nature of fiction and truth. He will be introduced by Giller Prize-winning Winnipeg novelist David Bergen.

This is a fundraising evening for the CMU's school of writing, admission is $15 for adults and $7 for students. There will be door prizes, and a reception will follow.

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Former Winnipeg fantasy novelist Guy Gavriel Kay's 1992 title, Tiganna, is being re-released in classic Penguin style.

Kay, based in Toronto, is one of 15 writers Penguin Canada is publishing in a new series called Penguin Celebrations. The series boasts modern versions of the traditional Penguin covers from the 1930s and '40s.

Appealing to nostalgia the books will be published in three colours, orange for fiction, light blue for science and non-fiction and green for mystery and crime.

Other titles in the series include Three Day Road by Ontario's Joseph Boyden and Lives of Girls and Women by Ontario's Alice Munro.

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The power of a celebrity author's endorsement was illustrated by American Stephenie Meyer, author of the insanely popular Twilight series.

Last week the U.S. trade magazine Publishers Weekly reported that Meyer had recommended The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester on her website.

Immediately after the endorsement, sales went through the roof. New York publisher Feiwel and Friends, part of the Macmillan group, are now printing an extra 10,000 copies.

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A controversy has emerged in New York over the non-publication of Barry Ritholtz's Bailout Nation: How Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy.

According to Publishers Weekly, publisher McGraw-Hill cancelled the book last week. In the book Ritholtz accuses the Standard & Poor's financial rating agency of accepting bribes in the years before the current recession.

Standard & Poor's is a division of the McGraw-Hill Companies.

According to Ritholtz, McGraw cancelled the book because he wouldn't remove the accusations. According to Mary Skafida, vice-president of marketing at McGraw, there were several elements in the book that needed "extensive corroboration."

Ritholtz is already in talks to have the book published elsewhere.

vanrooy1@hotmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 15, 2009 D5