Award-winning author of Spoken Here: Travels among Threatened Languages, Mark Abley’s WATCH YOUR TONGUE: WHAT OUR EVERYDAY PHRASES LITERALLY FIGURATIVELY MEAN, exploring the phrases, idioms, and clichés of our everyday language with remarkable wit and wisdom, to Brendan May at Simon & Schuster Canada, for publication in August 2018, by Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative Artists (North America).
Westwood Creative Artists, one of Canada’s largest literary agencies representing more than 400 writers, is looking for a candidate to fill a full-time 12 week internship position, beginning Monday February 12th and ending Friday May 4th, with possible flexibility for the right candidate.
A considerable amount of time during this internship will be spent working with WCA’s international rights director and rights associate in preparation for the London Book Fair in April. There will also be the opportunity to work with other WCA agents and at the reception desk. In the rights department, the intern will be involved in catalogue proofreading, general preparation and follow-up for the London Book Fair. There will also be some data entry and other administrative tasks. While working with individual agents, the intern will understand how the agent manages his or her authors, learn about Canadian and US submissions, and provide needed support in a varied number of capacities. At the reception desk, the intern will really be at the “nerve centre” of the agency. Tasks will include daily administration work, reading submissions, and receiving authors and publishers as they arrive at the agency.
We offer a competitive honorarium of $1500, a lively and congenial work environment in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood, and an excellent opportunity to gain an overview of the publishing industry in Canada and abroad through the lens of the literary agent and the writers we represent.
The ideal candidate will be eager to learn, highly organized, energetic, and have a positive outlook. Strong proofreading and computer skills required; previous office experience and knowledge of the publishing industry an asset; passionate attention to detail and accuracy a must. Please send your cover letter, resume, and references to the attention of Carolyn Forde at Carolyn@wcaltd.com at your earliest convenience or by January 2nd. We appreciate all applications but will only reply to candidates selected for an interview.
We couldn’t be more thrilled to congratulate James Maskalyk and David Chariandy on winning the Nonfiction and Fiction Writers’ Trust Awards last night!
James was awarded the $60,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction for his book, Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine, and David received the $50,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for Brother.
The jury praised Maskalyk’s work for revealing the “compelling universal truths about the power, and limits, of medicine, the strength of human will, and the fragile, infinitesimal gap between dying and living.”
Brother, also shortlisted for the Giller Prize, was noted by the jury for its “stunning lyrical writing, pitch perfect pacing, and unexpected humour.”
Not to mention Kyo Maclear was one of five finalists for the Hilary Weston Nonfiction prize for her beautiful memoir, Birds, Art, Life! The jury called it “a poetic and philosophical ode to life and art, with birds as the motivating force.”
Congrats again to our wonderful authors for being recognized by one of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards!
We’re thrilled for Charolotte Gray, whose book The Promise of Canada: 150 Years – People and Ideas That Have Shaped Our Country won the 2017 Ottawa Book Award for English non-fiction.
Of the non-fiction winner, Charlotte Gray, the jury wrote: “Charlotte Gray’s approach to a definition of Canada is both surprising and surprisingly familiar. By choosing nine Canadians to profile, some, like Tommy Douglas, obvious choices, others, like Harold Innis, more obvious in hindsight – she arrives at a sweeping, multi-faceted mosaic that seems exactly right. Brilliantly illustrated, beautifully written, this is more than a celebration of Canada’s 150th: it’s a book to be read and savoured for a long time to come.”
Congratulations to Joel Thomas Hynes, winner of the 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award in the category of Fiction. Hynes, an accomplished multidisciplinary, award-winning artist, tells the story of tragicomic Newfoundlander Johnny Keough in We’ll All be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night.
We are proud to announce that three WCA authors have been longlisted for the 2018 BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, one of Canada’s largest book prizes.
- Ken Dryden, Game Change: The Life and Death of Steve Montador and the Future of Hockey
- James Maskalyk, Life on the Ground Floor: Letters from the Edge of Emergency Medicine
- Doug Saunders, Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough
From the 150 books by 45 publishers that were nominated for the $40,000 prize, the prize jury selected a longlist of 10 books. To read more about the prize and the 2018 finalists, click here.
Simon & Schuster Canada VP, Editorial Director Nita Pronovost has acquired Canadian rights to the next two books by BC author Roz Nay whose first book OUR LITTLE SECRET was praised by Ruth Ware, Mary Kubica, Chevy Stevens and Andrew Pyper. OUR LITTLE SECRET was a bestseller in Canada, an award winner in France, also sold Dutch, Polish and audio rights and will publish with St. Martin’s Press in the US in April 2018. The next two books, as yet untitled, are planned for publication in 2018 and 2019. The deal was arranged by Carolyn Forde of Westwood Creative Artists.
Penguin Teen Canada publishing director, Lynne Missen, has acquired North American English rights to two forthcoming young adult novels from the Governor General’s Award-winning When Everything Feels Like the Movies author, Raziel Reid. The first of the two untitled books, KENS, is scheduled for September 2018, and is a modernized re-telling of the cult classic movie, Heathers, in which an unpopular gay kid, desperate to fit in, gets more than he bargained for when he reinvents himself – inside and out – and becomes an unknowing and submissive puppet in a sadistic plan. The deal was arranged by Michael Levine and Liz Culotti at Westwood Creative Artists.
Simon & Schuster Canada’s Vice President and Editorial Director Nita Pronovost has acquired North American English rights to Ruth Marshall’s debut book, a memoir entitled WALK IT OFF: The True and Hilarious Story of How I Learned to Stand, Walk, Pee, Run, and Have Sex Again After a Nightmarish Diagnosis Turned My Awesome Life Upside Down that follows the actress’ journey after she is diagnosed with a rare spinal tumor. Told with humor and searing honesty, this memoir not only entertains but inspires readers to put their best foot forward and walk off anything life throws their way. Publication is planned for January 2018. Bruce Westwood and Meg Wheeler of Westwood Creative Artists arranged the deal.
Deborah Willis at Freehand Books has acquired Canadian English rights to Michelle Kaeser’s literary novel TOWER OF BABYLON. Publication is planned for Fall 2019 and the deal was arranged by Carolyn Forde of Westwood Creative Artists Ltd.
Alana Wilcox of Coach House has acquired World rights to Lezlie Lowe’s NO PLACE TO GO: Answering the Call of Nature in the Urban Jungle, an investigation into the politics of public restrooms. Publication is planned for Fall 2018 and the deal was arranged by Carolyn Forde of Westwood Creative Artists Ltd.
Senior Editor at Grove Atlantic Corinna Barson has acquired World rights to Toronto-based writer and photographer John Zada’s IN THE VALLEYS OF THE NOBLE BEYOND: Travels in the Great Bear Rainforest in Search of the Sasquatch – a work of narrative non-fiction that braids threads of travel/adventure with Sasquatch lore. Publication is planned for Spring 2018, and the deal was arranged by Carolyn Forde of Westwood Creative Artists Ltd.
Michael Holmes of ECW Press has acquired world English rights to THE VERY MARROW OF OUR BONES, by Christine Higdon. The debut novel tells the story of a fiddler named Lulu Parsons, whose life and attachments are irrevocably altered by the secret she has kept about her mother’s disappearance in the 1960s. Hilary McMahon of Westwood Creative Artists negotiated the deal, with publication slated for spring 2018.