Anna Comfort O’Keeffe at Douglas & McIntyre has acquired North American English-language rights to three novels (two adult and one YA) by Charles Demers, author of Property Values. The two adult novels are mysteries featuring a psychiatrist, Acadian-born Dr Annick Boudreau, as the detective. Each mystery in the series will spotlight a different mental-health issue. PRIMARY OBSESSIONS and SUICIDAL THOUGHTS will be published in 2020 and 2021 respectively. The YA book, entitled THE GODSON, features a young boy who is fighting back against bullying and prejudice at a US military base where his father, a former mobster who has enrolled in Witness Protection, is being held. Deals for all three books were arranged by John Pearce of Westwood Creative Artists.
Harriet Low at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has bought Calgary writer Alexandra Latos‘s debut YA novel UNDER SHIFTING STARS, about twins struggling for belonging: Audrey, who feels responsible for her brother’s tragic death and wants to leave her alternative classroom for public school, and Clare, who is hiding the turmoil she’s feeling about her sexuality and gender. Publication is scheduled for fall 2020; Hilary McMahon at Westwood Creative Artists brokered the deal for world rights.
Congratulations to the 2019/2020 finalists for the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Awards including, The Ice Chips and the Haunted Hurricane, the second book in the Ice Chips series from father-daughter writing duo Roy and Kerry MacGregor, and Susin Nielsen’s middle-grade story, No-Fixed Address.
The 2019-2020 shortlist will be promoted at this year’s ceremony on May 31st at the Halifax Central Library. The shortlisted books will then be read in the 2019-2020 school year by thousands of children in the Atlantic region. Young readers will vote for their favourite book, and four winners will be announced at the Hackmatack Awards Ceremony in May 2020.
Margaret Atwood has selected Barbara Gowdy’s novel, The White Bone, as the inaugural title for The Globe and Mail‘s book club. Subscribers are invited to discuss the book in an online forum in response to a weekly discussion question. The book club will culminate in a live event where Atwood will interview Barbara Gowdy at the Globe and Mail Centre on May 24.
First published in 1998, Quill & Quire said of the national bestseller, “With writing that manages to be both incisive and hallucinogenic, and that is born along by a moral vision and a deftly controlled sense of outrage, Gowdy has created a landscape, a cosmology, and a community that are wholly surprising and believable. The White Bone is a singular and remarkable novel.”
Operatic, from author Kyo Maclear and illustrator Byron Eggenschwiler has received starred reviews from Booklist, Quill & Quire, and School Library Journal.
“Opera is an unusual but pitch-perfect match for that swell of overwhelming feeling, and Maclear and Eggenschwiler fold it into the story perfectly. A poignant, pithy, and arrestingly illustrated story.” —Booklist
“Operatic offers a deft look at adolescence, rich but subtle, accessible but beautifully complex.” —Quill & Quire
“Brimming with raw emotion, music references, and gorgeous art, this memorable and relatable graphic novel will linger with readers.” –School Library Journal
Operatic publishers April 1, 2019 with Groundwood Books.
We’re delighted to share that Christine Higdon’s The Very Marrow of Our Bones is a 2018 Forward Indies finalist in the category of Literary Adult Fiction.
Winners in each genre will be announced June 15, 2019.
Congratulations to Alice Kuipers who has been shortlisted for two Saskatchewan Book Awards! Her chapter book Polly Diamond and the Magic Book, illustrated by Diana Toledano, is nominated for the Muslims for Peace and Justice Fiction Award. Kuipers’ novel, Me (and) Me, is one of three finalist for the G. Murray and Edna Forbes Young Adult Literature Award.
David Chariandy’s second novel Brother has won the Windham-Campbell Prize in the category of fiction. Congratulations David on this astounding achievement!
What the jury said:
“Offering a vision at once entirely humane and immensely tender, David Chariandy lays bare the ways that gestures and details articulate the revelations of grief as well as the intimacies found within fraught and fraying social spaces.”
Chariandy’s reaction to the news:
“I was floored by the news! And for some time, I didn’t dare believe my fortune. The Windham-Campbell Prize offers a life-changing opportunity to devote time and energy to writing. I am humbled and profoundly grateful to be counted among the recipients.”
Click here for more information about the prize.
Mondadori have renewed their license for Spanish rights to Rohinton Mistry’s A FINE BALANCE. The deal was arranged by Sandra Bruna & Jordi Ribolleda of Sandra Bruna Agency on behalf of Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists for Bruce Westwood.
Romanian rights to Jay Ingram’s THE SCIENCE OF WHY 3 to Editura Niculescu. The deal was arranged by Andreea Focsaneanu of Simona Kessler Agency on behalf of Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists for Jackie Kaiser.
French rights to Darrel McLeod’s MAMASKATCH to VLB Editeur/Groupe VilleMarie Litterature, at auction. The deal was arranged by Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists.
Bhavna Chauhan at Appetite (an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada) has acquired World English Rights to Tara Henley‘s LEAN OUT: A MEDITATION ON THE MADNESS OF MODERN LIFE. Part memoir, part travelogue and part journalistic investigation, Lean Out explores the stresses of the 24/7 work world – and the radical communities around the globe that are resisting it.The deal was arranged by John Pearce at Westwood Creative Artists in association with Chris Casuccio and will be published in Spring 2020.
Senior editor Laurie Grassi of Simon & Schuster Canada has acquired world English rights to film and tv producer (Story of a Girl) Liz Levine’s NOBODY EVER TALKS ABOUT ANYTHING BUT THE END: A MEMOIR OF LOSS; a haunting, heartbreaking, yet often humorous account of life and loss, family and friendship, this portrait of grief and mental illness reveals what it means to try to keep moving forward, in spite of everything. Hilary McMahon at Westwood Creative Artists represented Levine in the deal, for publication in spring 2020.