The Fiddlehead contest issue – no. 251 – is out!

Rejoice! Spring has arrived and so have the winning stories and poems from The Fiddlehead’s 21st annual contest! Celebrate with all the contest winners and other authors by picking up and reading this fresh and lively issue.

In addition to wonderful poems and stories from the contest, you will also find stories from Yasuko Thanh and Grant Buday and poems from John Wall Barger, Karen Enns, Zachariah Wells, Heather Cadsby, Yvonne Blomer, and John Donlan among others. There are also reviews of books authored by M. Travis Lane, Madeline Bassnett, Sheila McClarty, Priscilla Uppal, Sue Goyette, Edward Riche, Steve Noyes, and Heather Jessup. The cover artwork is from David McKay’s "Fiddlehead Season," a beautiful watercolour painting.

New Brunswick Arts Board Videos

Over the next few months New Brunswick Arts Board (artsnb) is producing a series of short videos profiling New Brunswick artists across a wide variety of artistic disciplines. Below is the video celebrating New Brunswick writers:

To see other videos in this series, check out artnb's YouTube channel.

Nominations Congratulations!

Congratulations to Shane Neilson, who has been nominated for the 35th annual National Magazine Award in poetry for his poems, "St. Anthony's Fire" and "The Perfect Fatherhood." Both poems were published in The Fiddlehead 249 (Autumn 2011). The 2012 National Magazine Awards will be presented on June 7th in Toronto.

Also congratulations to Ken Babstock, Phil Hall, and Jan Zwicky, who are the three Canadian finalists for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize. All three have published poems in past issues of The Fiddlehead and Zwicky is a past Fiddlehead poetry editor (and current associate editor). Babstock's most recent Fiddlehead publication in no. 244 (Summer 2010) included the title poem from his Griffin-nominated book, Methodist Hatchet.

A Special Evening Celebrating the Launch of The Essential Robert Gibbs

The UNB Reading Series Presents: A Special Evening Celebrating the Launch of The Essential Robert Gibbs, Monday, April 30th at 8 pm in the Alumni Memorial Lounge.

To celebrate the release of The Essential Robert Gibbs, selected by Brian Bartlett (The Porcupine’s Quill 2012) writers, including Buck Richards, Shari Andrews, David Adams Richards, Nancy Bauer, Travis Lane, Ted Colson, Brian Bartlett, Michael Pacey, Ian LaTourneau, Robert Hawkes, Lynn Davies, Ross Leckie, Gerard Beirne, Sue Sinclair, and Robert Gibbs, will gather in the Alumni Memorial Lounge on the UNB Fredericton campus to read selections from Robert Gibbs’ poetry.

Born in Saint John, Robert Gibbs studied at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton and at Cambridge University, where he was an IODE Scholar from 1952-54. Gibbs returned to New Brunswick to teach and submitted poems to The Fiddlehead journal where he became one of the most frequent contributors. In 1963 Gibbs began teaching at the University of New Brunswick while working on a Doctorate. However, it was not until 1968 that Gibbs published his first chapbook, The Road from Here. Gibbs’ Scottish heritage, Anglican and Baptist family traditions, and upbringing in New Brunswick are all in evidence in the imaginative landscape of his poetry. Gibbs published regularly over the following decades with Fiddlehead Poetry Books, Goose Lane Editions, and Oberon Press, among others. The Essential Robert Gibbs draws poems from throughout his career and is a testament to the poetic contribution that Gibbs has made.

    The reading is presented by the UNB English Department, the Canada Council for the Arts, the UNB Fredericton Bookstore, and The Fiddlehead.

Admission is free and all are welcome to attend.

WFNB WordsSpring May 4-6 2012

The Writers' Federation of New Brunswick's annual spring gathering, formerly call our AGM and Literary Awards Banquest, WordsSpring brings together WFNB members, well-known authors, and people from the community to create an informative, educational, and all-out fun time.

And we also take care of some business: our AGM takes place on the Saturday morning of the festival and we hand out our Literary Competition’s awards. The location of WordsSpring 2012 will be in Sackville. Download WordsSpring 2012  Program & Registration

The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick will present $1,700  in cash prizes to the winners of its 2012 Literary Competition at WordsSpring in Sackville, NB, May 4-6.. A total 181 entries were received, double the number of submissions from just two years ago.

Two of the award namesakes – Sheree Fitch and David Adams Richards – are among the authors who will attend WFNB’s semi-annual literary celebration.  Fitch and Adams Richards were early members of the federation and credit the mentorship they received from WFNB’s founders to launching their writing careers.
 

Fiddlehead Story goes to the Big Screen!

In 2004 Craig Davidson won The Fiddlehead's Short Fiction Prize for his story "28 Bones." Now eight years later his story is being turned into a French-language film staring Academy Award-winning actor Marion Cotillard and directed by Oscar-nominated Director, Jacques Audiard.

DE ROUILLE ET D'OS (Rust and Bone) premieres on 17 May 2012.

It starts in the north. Ali (Schoenaerts) ends up with his 5-year-old son Sam, whom he barely knows. Homeless, penniless and friendless, Ali finds refuge with his sister in Antibes. There, it's immediately better, he lives in her garage, she takes care of the little things and it's nice..... Click for trailer

The UNB Reading Series Presents: Linden MacIntyre

Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Linden MacIntyre, author of The Bishop’s Man, will be reading from his latest novel Why Men Lie at Memorial Hall, Thursday, April 12th at 8 pm.

Award-winning author, journalist, and broadcaster Linden MacIntyre returns with the third volume in his Cape Breton trilogy, Why Men Lie (Random House, 2012). The novel begins two years after the events of The Bishop’s Man (Random House 2009) and centres on Effie MacAskill, a tenured professor of Celtic Studies and sister of the troubled priest Duncan, a character from MacIntyre’s previous novel. A fortuitous meeting with J. C. Campbell, a childhood friend that Effie hasn’t seen in more than twenty years, leads her into the possibility of a new romantic relationship. The infidelities of Effie’s first husband, Sextus, prompted her to seek a fresh start in life and her romance with J. C. begins hopefully. However, cracks emerge and J. C.’s behavior proves unpredictable. When Effie spots him in a seedy area of the city late at night and confronts him, he denies having left house. His increasingly erratic behavior and obsession with a death row convict leads to a rupture in their relationship. Effie’s family obligations require her attention in Cape Breton, but her past and present soon merge in unexpected and potentially dangerous ways.

Linden MacIntyre’s The Bishop’s Man was awarded the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2010 Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award. He is the author of the novel The Long Stretch (HarperCollins 1999) and two works of Non-fiction: Causeway: A Passage from Innocence (HarperCollins 2006) and Who Killed Ty Conn (Viking 2000), written with Theresa Burke. MacIntrye is also a broadcaster and journalist with the CBC, known for his investigative reports produced for The Fifth Estate, and has received numerous awards for excellence in broadcasting.

The reading is presented by the UNB English Department, the Canada Council for the Arts, the UNB Fredericton Bookstore, and The Fiddlehead.

Admission is free and all are welcome to attend