Pulitzer winner Richard Ford headlining city's Thin Air festival

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Ford: September visit (CP)

Months after publishing a critically acclaimed novel entitled Canada, American literary heavyweight Richard Ford is travelling north of the border this fall to headline the Thin Air Winnipeg International Writers Festival.

Ford, whose 1995 novel Independence Day was the first to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award, will read at the Winnipeg event Sept. 25. Tickets go on sale Sept. 4.

Another recently announced headliner for this year's Thin Air festival is Vancouver author Carmen Aguirre, whose memoir of her youth in an anti-Pinochet family in Chile, Something Fierce, won last year's Canada Reads competition on CBC Radio.

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A literary career dedicated to exploring the Vietnam War and its aftermath has earned American novelist and short story writer Tim O'Brien the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award.

O'Brien, whose 1979 novel Going After Cacciato and 1990 story collection The Things They Carried drew on his experience as an infantryman in Vietnam, will receive his award Nov. 11. The award, named for the diplomat who negotiated the Dayton Peace Accord to end the war in Bosnia, is issued by the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which honours literary works that promote peace.

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Fans of Canadian rock, pop and folk will have plenty of reasons to flock to bookstores this fall.

Winnipeggers will be quick to pick up the memoir Waging Heavy Peace, by Kelvin High School's most famous non-graduate, Neil Young. The much-anticipated title is expected from Penguin in October.

Existentialists, Buddhists and espresso drinkers will be watching for I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen (McClelland & Stewart), by rock journalist Sylvie Simmons, also set for October publication.

Those who like musical icons who sing in key may be interested in Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell (Greystone Books) by Vancouver film journalist Katherine Monk.

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After publishing a series of books on politics, philosophy and the Canadian soul (including A Fair Country in 2008 and Voltaire's Bastards in 1992), John Ralston Saul returns to fiction this September with Dark Diversions: A Traveller's Tale, his first novel since 1988.

Saul, husband of former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, sets his new novel in Paris, New York, Morocco and Haiti. Viking Canada, his publisher, describes the book as "a black comedy of international proportions" set in a "world of secret lovers, exiled princesses, death by veganism, and religious heresies."

The novel will be released Sept. 15.

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Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 11, 2012 J8