Almodóvar pens ‘fragmentary’ story collection

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This article was published 17/02/2024 (970 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar is publishing his debut short-fiction collection this fall, according to a report in Publishers Weekly.

The Last Dream will be published by HarperVia in late September, and will include 12 stories “spanning memoir, comedy, autofiction, parody, pastiche, and gothic fiction,” according to the HarperCollins website. The stories, written in Spanish, will be translated by Frank Wynne.

The stories were selected from writing spanning five decades, according the Publishers Weekly story, which notes Almodóvar says in the book’s introduction “this book represents something of a paradox. It might be best described as a fragmentary autobiography, incomplete and a little cryptic.”

Almodóvar’s films include Bad Education, Talk to Her, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and, most recently, 2021’s Parallel Mothers.

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Winnipeg speaker and community organizer Michael Redhead Champagne is adding the role of children’s author to his many accomplishments.

Champagne launches his picture book for children, We Need Everyone, today at 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. in the Manitoba Museum’s auditorium (190 Rupert Ave.).

Illustrated by Winnipeg artist Tiff Bartel, We Need Everyone was published earlier this year by HighWater Press, an imprint of Portage & Main Press. The book invites young readers to think about what their special gifts are and how they can share them with the world — and help others in the process.

Champagne will read from the book and sign copies of We Need Everyone, which will be sold on-site by McNally Robinson Booksellers. Admission to the event is free but space is limited; to register and guarantee yourself a spot, see wfp.to/jsm.

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I Love to Read Month continues to offer readers the chance to connect with writers, including this afternoon at Whodunit? Mystery Bookstore (163 Lilac St.).

Former nurse Carol Youngson will be at the store at 1 p.m. to sign copies of her book Take Your Baby And Run: How nurses blew the whistle on Canada’s biggest cardiac disaster.

The book was published in October 2023 by Great Plains Press. It is Youngson’s first-hand account of the events that led to the deaths of 12 children under the care of Dr. Jonah Odim in the mid-1990s at Winnipeg’s Children’s Hospital at the Health Sciences Centre (where Youngson was, at the time, a charge nurse in the pediatric cardiac surgery unit).

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Inspired by Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel Women Talking and the 2022 film adaptation of the same name, directed by Sarah Polley, a group of writers, thinkers, librarians and more, will gather tomorrow (Feb. 18) to explore the changing and sometimes-volatile dynamic between writers and the public in the face of our internet-saturated lives.

The colloquium, called Talking About Women Talking: New Possibilities, will take place at 424-100 Arthur St, starting at 1 p.m. and will feature, among others, Di Brandt, Duncan Mercredi, Manitoba Writers’ Guild president Sharon Hamilton and Rabbi Allan Finkel.

Tickets are $50 for Manitoba Writers’ Guild members, $60 for non-members and $25 for student/low-income attendees, and can be purchased online at wfp.to/jsr.

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Aspiring short fiction writers have until midnight Thursday to get their original, unpublished work submitted for the second annual Dave Williamson National Short Story Competition, co-presented by the Manitoba Writers’ Guild and the Manitoba Arts Council.

A five-person panel of judges will choose the winner, who will receive $1,000; the second-place winner will receive $600, while third place will take home $400.

First prize in the inaugural 2023 competition, named after the local novelist, short-story writer and memoirist (and Free Press book reviewer), went to Bruce Cinnamon for Return to Chrysalis, second place to Rowan McCandless for TEOTWAWKI and third place to Gaylene Dutchyshen for Sketches.

For details on how to submit your 2,500- to 5,000-word short story, see wfp.to/600.

books@freepress.mb.ca