Scholastic Canada Brunch with Author Cecil Castellucci and Montreal Book Bloggers!

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times already, last Sunday, five other Montreal book bloggers and I had the honour of having brunch with Cecil Castellucci and two publicists from Scholastic Canada, Nikole and Catherine, who were in town for the Salon du Livre de Montréal (an annual book trade show). Cecil is in Canada to promote her latest book, First Day on Earth. Here we all are (click on photo to enlarge):

Front row (L-R): Lisa from starmetal oak book blog and Nikole from Scholastic Canada

Back row (L-R): Cat from Beyond Books, me, Lucy from Moonlight Gleam’s Bookshelf, Cecil Castellucci, Tina from Bookshipper, Melissa from YA Book Shelf and Catherine from Scholastic Canada

It was so much fun to share a meal with such a bookish crowd! Cecil talked about writing her first boy book and how much she puts of herself into each of her books. She answered our questions and signed our books. (I own seven of her nine books and every single one is now signed.) She even drew in my copy of The Plain Janes (read my review)!

She also mentioned that her next book will be a hybrid fiction and graphic novel called The Year of the Beasts (illustrated by Nate Powell—check out the cover!). I can’t wait to read it!

Nikole and Catherine prepared personalized bags of Scholastic goodness for each of us. These are the books I got:

• Glory Be by Augusta Scattergood (Jan 2012)
• Irises by Francisco X. Stork (Jan 2012)
• If Only by Carole Geithner (Mar 2012)
• The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Noes to their Younger Selves edited by Sarah Moon with James Lecesne (May 2012)

Many thanks again to Nikole and Catherine from Scholastic Canada for hosting this event and to Cecil for hanging out with us and answering our questions!

If you live in Montreal (or nearby) and want to meet Cecil, she will be at Babar en Ville this Saturday doing a Writing Workshop for Teens. You can also watch her being interviewed on The Morning Show.

Meeting Sarah Leavitt, Author of Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me

I recently happened across our local paper’s literary listings for the week and saw that Sarah Leavitt, who wrote the graphic memoir, Tangles: A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me was going to be in town for a reading. I first heard about her book on Susan Olding’s blog, Proved on the Pulses: On the Essay and Its Literary Cousins (Susan wrote Pathologies: A Life in Essays, one of my favourite books, which I reviewed a couple of years ago); my sister Brogan had also highly recommended Tangles to me.

So on an excruciatingly hot day the week before last I headed over to the Yellow Door coffeehouse, which is a basement venue that has welcomed the likes of Margaret Atwood and Joni Mitchell (back in the day). Sarah greeted me and another audience member (who turned out to be Ian McGillis, who blogs for The Gazette) at the door and ushered us downstairs. Once a small group had assembled, she first told us a bit about her mother (who was diagnosed at age 54 and had the disease for six years) and her writing process (Sarah took notes while her mother was sick and this is her first book). She then read us five chapters of her book onscreen, projecting the first page of the chapter and then each panel in turn. I didn’t think to take any pictures (I was too engrossed in each chapter), but I did get someone to take a picture of the two of us:

Me and Sarah Leavitt (click to enlarge)

The weird thing about Sarah’s art is that it reminds me so much of my sister Brogan’s art, to the point that Tangles’ main character (Sarah herself) looks like she could be a self-portrait of my sister. And I’m not the only one who thought so: when I brought the book home, Mr. B said the same thing!

Sarah was super friendly (and a fan of book bloggers!)—I’m very much looking forward to reading her book. At the moment, it’s been published in Canada by Freehand Books, but it will come out with Jonathan Cape in the UK in November and with Skyhorse in the U.S. in March 2012.

Read an excerpt of the book at Geist: Waiting for Sleep

Read a one-page comic Sarah did for Geist: You Don’t Say

Read Ian McGillis’s interview: Sarah Leavitt talks about her Alzheimer’s memoir Tangles

Author Event: Susan Conley and Lily King at Northshire Books (+ Giveaway)

As I mentioned in my Mailbox Monday post yesterday, my friend Rowena and I were in Manchester, Vermont, last week where we visited the Northshire Bookstore, one of America’s leading independent bookstores.

We were lucky enough to be there for what turned out to be a fabulous author event: a joint reading by memoirist Susan Conley, who was touring her first book, The Foremost Good Fortune, and novelist Lily King, who was touring her third novel, Father of the Rain. As it turns out, the writers have been friends for 15 years and corresponded by email while they were writing these books (while Susan lived in China and Lily lived in Italy). They read us excerpts from their emails to each other, which had me alternately in stitches and in tears (mostly the former!)—I really hope they someday publish a book of their correspondence. They then read to us from their books: The Foremost Good Fortune is Susan’s memoir about living in China and surviving breast cancer, while Father of the Rain is a novel about a daughter’s relationship with her alcoholic father.

Susan Conley, me and Lily King

Getting a glimpse into their writing processes and then listening to excerpts from the final products was so inspiring! (I’m also fascinated by relationships between women writers.) I bought four books in the end, three for me and one for one of you (and had them all autographed, of course). These are the three for me (including Lily’s first novel, The Pleasing Hour):

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Would you like to win an autographed copy of The Pleasing Hour, Lily King’s first novel? The giveaway is open internationally. I will accept entries until 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Monday,
June 6.

Here’s the blurb from the back cover of the book:

The first novel from a new literary voice brimming with sensitivity and lyricism, The Pleasing Hour is the story of an American in Europe whose coming-of-age defies all our usual conceptions of naiveté and experience. Fleeing a devastating loss, Rosie takes a job as an au pair with a Parisian family and soon find the comfort and intimacy she longs for with their children and the father, Marc. Only Nicole, the children’s distant, impeccably polished mother, is unwilling to embrace the young American. But when Rosie realizes that her attachments have become transgressions, she leaves for the south of France. There she learns about Nicole’s own haunted past and the losses that link the two women more closely than either could have imagined.

If you are a follower or subscriber, let me know and I will give you an extra entry.

Make sure you provide me with a way of getting in touch with you. Entries without a blog link or email address will be disqualified.

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED.
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This giveaway is part of the Armchair BEA event. Visit the Giveaways Galore post to enter other Armchair BEA giveaways.

Meeting Cecil Castellucci + Mailbox Monday (September 6)

When Cindy (Cindy’s Love of Books) told me that Cecil Castellucci was going to be in town to launch her two latest books, Grandma’s Gloves (a picture book) and Rose Sees Red (a YA novel), I knew I had to be there. I’m a big fan of her graphic novels, The Plain Janes (read my review) and Janes in Love (read my review), plus Scholastic Canada was kind enough to send me a copy of Rose Sees Red (which I’m currently reading to Mr. B).

Cecil started off by reading us Grandma’s Gloves in its entirety. (She prefaced her reading by telling us to “put on our sad pants,” an expression I’d never heard before.) The story is sweet and sad—it brought tears to my eyes. Cecil is obviously an experienced reader of picture books—she took the time to show all of us each picture in turn. She then read us what turned out to be one of my favourite passages from Rose Sees Red (which I’ve almost finished).

Following that, she took questions from the audience. A local YA author (whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch) asked her a series of questions, interview-style, about voice (how she found her 14-year-old voice, how she made sure she used the right teenage lingo), which was super interesting. Cecil said she made it up, or rather that she listened to her characters—she figured all schools have their own rules and vocabularies... She also told us that Rose lives in the apartment she grew up in and there really was a Russian family next door, although their daughter was four years younger than she was. Basically, she used the setting of her adolescence, but made up the people.

I later got a chance to ask her about the third Jane book, which she confirmed that she has written, but when the Minx imprint folded, it went into limbo. (She also suggested that I write to DC to encourage them to publish it, which I intend to do!)

Someone in the audience very kindly took a picture of me (left) and Cecil (right)...

Click to enlarge

I also bought two more of her books: Boy Proof and Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd, which she co-edited with Holly Black. (I was very disappointed that the store didn’t have any copies of The Plain Janes!)

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Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books they received during the previous week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists! Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia at The Printed Page, is on blog tour—this month, it’s hosted by Kathy at Bermudaonion’s Weblog.

In addition to the two books I bought at Cecil’s reading, I also received one book in the mail: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are—Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life by Brené Brown, for a TLC book tour in October. (I almost passed this book up because I dislike the cover intensely, but it so sounds like what I need to read right now!) I also bought The End of East by Jen Sookfong Lee (for a dollar—how could I resist?).

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? For other Mailbox Monday posts, head over to Bermudaonion’s Weblog.

Meeting Elizabeth Kostova + Some Thoughts on BEA

Despite the fact that Montreal is the second largest city in Canada and hosts the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival every year, not that many English-speaking authors visit Montreal. So when Linda let Donna and me know that Elizabeth Kostova was doing a reading and book signing at Paragraphe Bookstore last Tuesday evening, I knew I had to go, even though I haven’t read either The Historian, Kostova’s bestselling debut (the first debut novel to land at number one on The New York Times bestseller list), or her latest, The Swan Thieves. And I undoubtedly committed a further faux pas by not buying The Swan Thieves at the event (I really dislike hardcovers and they’re so expensive!). I did, however, bring my copy of The Historian to get signed!

Kostova read two passages from The Swan Thieves and then took questions from audience members. Paragraphe isn’t very big, so there were probably no more than 20 people there, but the questions were very interesting, as were her answers. Afterwards, I thought I should have taken notes! Kostova did mention that she did extensive interviews with a psychiatrist and several artists (and also observed artists at work) in order to write this book.

Following the questions, we lined up to get our books signed. When it was my turn to actually talk to a real live author, I felt completely tongue-tied and had no idea what to say! (In the end, I told her I’d enjoyed her readings and was looking forward to reading her books, and she thanked me for coming, but I felt completely silly for being so nervous!)

Here’s a photo Donna took of Elizabeth Kostova and me (don’t I look nervous? I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands!):

Elizabeth Kostova (right) and me

As Donna, Linda and I left the store, I remarked that if I was this nervous meeting one author, imagine what I’ll be like at BEA when I’m surrounded by authors, publicists and big-name bloggers? (Yup, after reading the BEA tour posts organized by the Book Blogger Convention folks, especially Amy’s, I’m determined to go to BEA with Linda and Cindy—and maybe Donna and Tina—even though I haven’t quite figured out how to pay for this trip yet.) I’m afraid I’m going to be a nervous wreck! Does anyone else feel this way? (Please reassure me!) Also, if you’re going too and would like to meet up, let me know!

You can also read Linda’s and Donna’s posts about this event:
Better with Books • BookBound