Bergen awaits IMPAC award news

Winnipeg novelist David Bergen will find out next week if he's $129,000 richer, when the winner of the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award is announced.

Bergen is one of 10 international authors and the lone Canadian on the short list for the prize, valued at £100,000. He's nominated for his novel 2010 The Matter with Morris, the story of a newspaper columnist plunged into a philosophical crisis by his son's death in Afghanistan. Two Canadians have won the award in the past: Rawi Hage for De Niro's Game, and Alistair MacLeod for No Great Mischief.

Regardless what happens at the awards announcement Wednesday, it's shaping up to be another big year for Bergen. His seventh novel, The Age of Hope, is being published in September to considerable fanfare from Phyllis Bruce Books (an imprint of HarperCollins Canada).

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A new initiative of Thomas Allen Publishers and Cormorant Books is connecting readers of short fiction with electronic copies of short stories at a price of $1.99 per story.

The program, called cStories, launched last week and includes writing by Sarah Selecky, Mark Anthony Jarman, Jessica Westhead, Russell Wangersky and others.

To help launch the new online service, a number of stories are available for free download through the online publications of partners The Walrus magazine, the National Post newspaper and Quill & Quire book trade journal.

The cStories site also gives users the chance to attribute the sale to their favourite independent bookstore, which allows bookstores to share in some of the revenue.

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The Walrus Magazine is launching a new $5,000 poetry prize, funded by the Hal Jackman Foundation, with entries closing July 31 and the winner to be published in the December 2012 issue.

The contest is open to all Canadian residents. In addition to the $5,000 main prize, there will also be a reader's choice award of $1,000, based on votes that follow the posting in September of the five finalists on the Walrus's website.

Judges are poet Karen Solie and the magazine's poetry editor Michael Lista.

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Four Manitoba poets will join visiting author Brian Henderson at McNally Robinson June 12 when he launches his latest book of poetry, Sharawadji.

Henderson, by day the director of Wilfrid Laurier University Press, is the author of 10 poetry collections. Joining him will be Manitobans Méira Cook, Ariel Gordon, Jan Horner and Maurice Mierau. The readings begin at 7 p.m.

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A popular Canadian literary website is urging readers to feed their heads with the information equivalent of the 100-mile diet this summer.

The 49th Shelf, an online book showcase produced by the Association of Canadian Publishers, with funding from the Ontario and federal governments and sponsorship from Amazon, has created an interactive map to promote what it calls "the 100-Mile Book Diet." The map shows books set in particular locales across Canada. As of last Wednesday, 25 books were linked to Manitoba on the map.

Users who register with the site can also add their own favourite Canadian books and link them to their settings.

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Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 9, 2012 J8