CBC’s Lang writes about innovation

Opinion

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This article was published 19/05/2012 (4862 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CBC TV stars in Toronto who hail from Winnipeg seem to be a literate bunch. Last month there was reporter Nahlah Ayed’s memoir, and now comes Amanda Lang.

Lang (The Lang and O’Leary Exchange) appears to be aiming for a piece of the lucrative Malcolm Gladwell audience with a book on innovation and business to be published by HarperCollins in October.

The Power of Why will draw on “candid interviews with innovators ranging from shrimp farmers to tool manufacturers to elevator engineers to Harvard undergraduate inventors” to describe how curiosity fuels innovation.

Lang, a University of Manitoba architecture graduate, is a former Financial Post New York correspondent and reporter for CNN.

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Former Winnipegger Guy Gavriel Kay, whose 11 historical fantasy novels have been published in 25 countries, is teaming up with one of the movie stars of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Memoirs of a Geisha for a film version of his novel Under Heaven.

Kay, a Torontonian now, has signed a development agreement with the actress Zhang Ziyi and her management company and production partners Mosaic Productions. Under Heaven, inspired by the Tang Dynasty in eighth-century China, won the American Library Association best fantasy novel award for 2010. The novel was released this spring in China by a Shanghai publishing company.

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The Icelandic National League of North America, a cultural organization representing people of Icelandic heritage in Canada and the U.S., has selected a book of tales from Manitoba’s New Iceland for honours.

What the Bear Said, a collection of stories by W.D. Valgardson, a former Manitoban now living on the West Coast, won the league’s INL Reads! 2012 award at the organization’s conference in Brandon this month. The story collection combines legend and folklore in exploring the lives and thoughts of the Icelandic settlers who made their homes along Lake Winnipeg.

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Manitoba mystery publisher Ravenstone, an imprint of Turnstone Press, is branching out into the popular genres of speculative and fantasy fiction.

Ravenstone will publish two speculative/fantasy titles by Winnipeggers this year: Thunder Road, by Chadwick Ginther, and Food of the Gods, by Karen Dudley. Both titles reimagine mythological themes, Ginther’s by bringing Norse gods to modern Winnipeg, Dudley’s by recreating ancient Athens.

Ravenstone and the authors have followups planned for both of the novels.

Ginther is a bookseller and book reviewer who has published in the speculative fiction journal On Spec. Dudley has previously published several mystery novels with Ravenstone featuring a biologist-turned-sleuth named Robyn Devara (The Red Heron, The Macaws of Death).

 

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