UNB Annual Poetry Weekend

The annual poetry weekend is upon us! Once again UNB Fredericton welcomes many acclaimed Canadian and local poets at this weekend-long poetry festival. Come hear many of your favorite poets read their work.

Featured poets such as John Steffler, Sue Gillis, Anne Compton, Brian Bartlett, Richard Lemm, David Zieroth, Johanna Skibsrud, Karen Solie, Shane Neilson, Sharon McCartney, Katia Grubisic, matt robinson, Vanessa Moeller, Michael deBeyer, James Langer, Tammy Armstong -just to name a few- will be reading this weekend! Come and join us for a wonderful time.

Readings take place at UNB Fredericton, Memorial Hall on October 2nd and 3rd. Six separate readings will be held from 11am, 2pm, 8pm. We'd love to see you there!

In Memory of Bill Bauer

Photo by Brian Bartlett

Long-time Fiddlehead editor and contributor Bill Bauer passed away this spring.  I’ll miss him, especially for his wry sense of humour. Your leg could stretch pretty long before you realized he was pulling it.  Our fall issue will have a heartfelt remembrance from Brian Bartlett, as well as some poems of Bill’s.

The fall issue has gone to press. There is new fiction from Alexander MacLeod (see his first book Light Lifting from Biblioasis) and Wasela Hiyate. We have an exciting list of poets, including Aislinn Hunter, Tim Bowling, Jane Munro, Barry Dempster, Jan Conn, A. F. Moritz, and Patrick Warner. Also take a look at the work from two very fine young poets--Stewart Cole and Danny Jacobs.

Ross Leckie
Editor

2010 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers Call for Submissions

The Writers Trust of Canada is accepting submissions for 2010 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. To be eligible candidates must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, under the age of 35, unpublished in book form and without a book contract, but whose literary work has appeared in at least one independently edited magazine or anthology.

A prize of $5,000 will be awarded to the best collection of poetry. Two honourable mentions will each receive $1,000 prizes. The deadline for submissions is 17 December 2010.

Submissions should be sent to:

RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers

c/o The Writers' Trust of Canada

90 Richmond Street East, Suite 200

Toronto, Ontario, M5C 1P1

For further information visit www.writerstrust.com or contact: Amanda Hopkins, Program Coordinator

416-504-8222 ext 242 or ahopkins@writerstrust.com

UNB Reading Series

John Barton, the 2010/11 University of New Brunswick writer-in-residence, author of eight poetry collections and winner of a CBC Literary Award in 2003 and a National Magazine Award in 2006, will be reading from his newest collection: Hymn.

David Bergen, author of the celebrated novels, The Case of Lena S. and The Retreat, and Giller Prize winner for his novel The Time in Between, will be reading from his newest work of fiction: The Matter with Morris.

This event will be held Thursday, September 16th at 7pm in the West Gallery at Memorial Hall on the UNB Fredericton campus

Congratulations to Emma Donohue

 Congratulations to fellow Irish transplant Emma Donohue on her Man Booker nomination for her novel Room (a bidding war for the novel's rights was won by Picador in the U.K., which paid a reported £1 million).

Had the pleasure of her company here last year as part of the UNB Reading Series. The winner is to be announced on October 12 - so fingers crossed.

Gerard Beirne
Fiction Co-Editor

Doing Away with the Slush Pile

Jim Hannah’s blog, Encylopedia Hannasina, has an interesting post on the slush pile and how it should be done away with. In particular he focuses on the literary journal. His argument: that the process for the writer is extremely long with the best possible outcome being that “Your story is accepted, and maybe a year later it appears and is distributed to the journal’s meager readership who probably won’t read it…” His judgment is no better for the journal. It needs to maintain an “army of volunteer readers” to wade through it which is wasteful since “most submissions fall into the category of ‘not even close.’” So he suggests killing off the slush pile and publishing work by solicitation only. “How will writers and editors find each other then? Simple. Writers will put their work out—on blogs or in writing communities or wherever—and editors will find it.” Instead of trying out work it can be put out to find an immediate audience. Journals meanwhile will find new work through the internet in “all sorts of novel ways—nominations, tagging schemes, fostering writing communities—all of which would be less ridiculous (and probably less expensive and time-consuming) than the slush pile.”

Alright, so this particular editor thinks slogging through the slush pile of internet published writing would be way more “expensive and time-consuming” than Mr. Hannah is letting on; nevertheless, he has some interesting points. The time lag between writing and submission, submission and rejection/acceptance, acceptance and publication is an ongoing issue for writers and publishers. The eventual published work is rarely indicative of where the writer is currently situated. Anything that can speed this process up is well worth considering. In addition, I am kind of drawn to the idea of an Utne Reader of literature. Poems, stories, non-fiction gathered from on and off-line literary journals. Here the internet has a lot to offer. Online journals are cheap and multitudinous. Frequently the editorial input leaves a lot to be desired. Notwithstanding, there undoubtedly is a lot of great work out there which slips past a lot of interested readers in much the same way a blog post such as this can quickly disappear from view. For someone, or someone’s army of volunteers, to scour the slush pile of the internet seems to me to be a worthy cause not to replace the current process of submission but to compliment it.

Gerard Beirne
Fiction Co-Editor

Documentary Fiction and The Death of Donna Whalen

We’re still enjoying summer days, but we’re also drawing close to the fall season of new books. One title I’m particularly curious about is Michael Winter’s The Death of Donna Whalen, due out at the end of August. The novel centres on the murder of Donna Whalen and the trial of her accused boyfriend Sheldon Troke. Winter incorporates trial transcripts and verbatim court testimonies in the work; his publisher, Penguin, describes the novel as “documentary fiction.”

The practice of incorporating historical or “real-life” events in a fictional work is common. But the term “documentary fiction” isn’t one I’ve often heard applied to a novel. So I Googled it and came up with a New York Times article titled “ ‘Documentary’ Fiction.” The article begins: “The question of historical fiction has been tremendously threshed over these last months. Very likely there is nothing new left to say about it.” The article, dated October 12, 1901, goes on to discuss Rudyard Kipling’s work.

Clearly, authors and audiences have a long and complicated relationship with history, storytelling, and “the truth.” Right now, our pop culture is fairly obsessed with the concept of reality. But while celebrity blogs and TV shows like The Hills, Jersey Shore, and The Bachelorette may operate under an overarching premise of reality, they are often purposefully ambiguous regarding what events in their narratives are real or staged. These programs are very different in their content, message, and intended audience from historical fiction, memoirs, biography, and Winter’s documentary fiction. But perhaps the proliferation of multiple mediums that simultaneously entwine, yet differentiate between fiction and fact speaks to a persistent and increasingly fraught cultural preoccupation with one’s ability to identify truth.

On the other hand, maybe an ambiguity between fact and fiction simply contributes to quality of storytelling. We read and write stories to learn about ourselves, others, the world we inhabit. Is there value in attempting to define or identify why and how we blur the categories, or should we embrace E.L Doctorow’s sentiment that “[t]here is no fiction or nonfiction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative.”? In choosing to write documentary fiction, Winter may satisfy cultural desires for both fact and story, which in turn allows him to tell Whalen’s story in a way that resonates deeply with his audience. 

Holly Luhning

— Her first novel, Quiver, is forthcoming with HarperCollins in January 2011.