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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

PAPER CHASE: Ukrainian writer to lecture here

By: Michael Van Rooy

7/11/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Oksana Zabushko

Well-known Ukrainian writer Oksana Zabuzhko will be speaking in Winnipeg , Nov. 19, 7 p.m., in the Elizabeth Dafoe Library at the University of Manitoba.

Her topic is The Death of Don Juan: Modernism, Feminism, Nationalism -- Rethinking Ukrainian Literature.

Known for her bestselling novel Field Work in Ukrainian Sex, which has been translated into eight languages, Zabuzhko is also a poet, critic, academic and public figure in Ukraine.

Admission to the lecture is free.

***

Winnipeg-based author Rosie Chard has been long listed for a new $10,000 award in Alberta.

She's got the nod for her debut novel, Seal Intestine Raincoat, newly out from Edmonton's NeWest Press.

The Alberta Readers' Choice Award is a new award designed to support the works of Alberta publishers. It will be presented at the 2010 New Year's Gala in Edmonton.

***

The winner of the 2006 Writers Collective and Winnipeg Free Press Non-Fiction Contest has just self-published her first novel.

Jin Ling's Two Left Feet, by Winnipegger Helen Chen, is aimed at young adults.

It is available online through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Chen says she is donating some of the profits to a food bank.

***

Tantor Media in the U.S. will soon release four unabridged audiobooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels.

The Nov. 23 release is scheduled to coincide with U.K. director Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jr.

The release also comes during the 150th anniversary year of Doyle's birth.

***

A legal battle over the rights to Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson's estate continues.

Larsson died in 2004, the year before any of his three completed novels were published.

Eva Gabrielsson was Larsson's partner for 32 years and expected to receive control of his estate.

However, Larsson died without making a will, and the estate, estimated at more than $35 million, went to his blood relatives.

Earlier this month Larsson's brother and father offered Gabrielsson $3 million to settle the issue.

Gabrielsson refused the offer. It is believed she still owns Larsson's computer, which contains a sequel to his books along with the outlines of six further novels.

***

A controversial novel aimed at teenagers recently won the World Fantasy Award.

Tender Morsels by Australian Margo Lanagan is a shocking retelling of the Snow-White and Rose-Red fairy tale.

In Lanagan's version of the Brothers Grimm classic, the 15-year old heroine is graphically assaulted and then abused by her father. She then retreats to a dream world to raise her children.

Morsels won the award jointly last Sunday with The Shadow Year by U.S. author Jeffrey Ford.

vanrooy1@hotmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 7, 2009 H8

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