My review of Nancy Drew and Her Sister Sleuths: Essays on the Fiction of Girl Detectives, an excellent collection of essays edited by Michael G. Cornelius and Melanie E. Gregg, appears in the latest issue of Children’s Literature, available now. The issue also includes two reviews of recent scholarship on L.M. Montgomery.
I recently discovered the website for a new project spearheaded by Douglas Coupland (who just happens to be an author whose novels I enjoy) called Speaking to the Past: A Penguin 75th Anniversary Project, which commemorates the visual designs of Penguin paperbacks over the last three-quarters of a century. You can even design your own!
One-day conference, University of Worcester (UK), 10 April 2010
Keynote speakers: Prof. Mavis Reimer, the Canada Research Chair in the Culture of Childhood at the University of Winnipeg; Dr. Benjamin Lefebvre, the Leverhulme Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Worcester.
Deadline for proposals for 20-minute papers: 10 March 2010.
This one-day conference, organised by the International Centre for Research in Children’s Literature, Literacy and Creativity, seeks to address the interplay between nationalism (or nationalisms) and cultural memory in texts for or about young people, including books, periodicals, films, television series, games, tourism sites, websites, and archives.
Possible topics include:
Cost: £70 including lunch, morning and afternoon coffee & tea. Contact for proposals (5o0 words maximum): Prof Jean Webb, Director of the International Centre for Research in Children’s Literature, Literacy and Creativity. Accommodation, if required, is available off campus in the locality. Further information with the booking form. Conference booking direct to: Jill Veale, 01905 542173, j.veale@worc.ac.uk
The publication of The Blythes Are Quoted has been selected as one of the “10 biggest publishing stories of 2009″ on a CBC.ca news story:
Fans of the precocious, freckle-faced redhead from P.E.I. had reason to rejoice this year when an amended version of the final Anne Shirley stories was released under a new title, The Blythes Are Quoted. But the book’s additional 100 pages revealed a darker story – complete with references to adultery and suicide. Novelist Jane Urquhart ably provided a context for these bleak scenes in her comprehensive, unflinching biography of Anne’s author, Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne’s banner year ended with a triumphant Sotheby’s auction – proof that great CanLit never goes out of fashion.
See “The Year in Books” for the full story.
I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to Kelly Norah Dukker on the publication of her long poem “The Burning House,” which appears in the Winter 2009 issue of The Malahat Review. Way to go, Kelly!
I will be interviewed on Ontario Today on Monday, 14 December 2009, sometime between 12:00 and 12:30, on CBC Radio One:
L.M. Montgomery’s last manuscript, The Blythes are Quoted, has just been published for the first time in its entirety. The manuscript was submitted to Montgomery’s publisher the day she died. It’s the ninth volume in the Anne series. The editor who re-discovered the typescript will be our guest on Ontario Today. And of course Ed Lawrence will join us as well.
UPDATED 15 DECEMBER 2009: The interview can be streamed from the Ontario Today website for the next thirty days.
I’ll be signing copies of The Blythes Are Quoted at the Lucy Maud Montgomery Museum located at Crawford’s Village Bakeshop in Norval, Ontario, on 12 December 2009 from 1:30 to 3:30 PM (more info), and also at the Kitchener Public Library in Kitchener, Ontario, on 16 December 2009 beginning at 6:30 PM (more info).
Aritha van Herk’s review of L.M. Montgomery’s The Blythes Are Quoted, titled “Blythe Spirits,” appeared in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail.
Announcing Anne’s World: A New Century of Anne of Green Gables, a collection of essays edited by Irene Gammel and Benjamin Lefebvre, to be published by University of Toronto Press in Spring-Summer 2010.
I’m pleased to announce that my edition of L.M. Montgomery’s rediscovered last book, The Blythes Are Quoted, is now available from Viking Canada.
UPDATED 24 OCTOBER: For more on this book, see the following links:
“Waterloo-based academic finds L.M. Montgomery’s last ‘darker’ work” (Kitchener-Waterloo Record, 24 October 2009)
“A different Anne and Gilbert” (The Globe and Mail, 23 October 2009)
“Green Gables tale darkens in final book” (CBC News, 23 October 2009)
UPDATED 26 OCTOBER: See also my essay “The Dark Side of L.M. Montgomery,” published in The Mark.
The short story “Some Fools and a Saint” is now available for download from Penguin Canada’s website.
UPDATED 20 NOVEMBER: “The Dark Side of L.M. Montgomery” now includes a podcast of me reading extracts from Anne of Windy Willows.
