Archive for category: Latest News

New office who dis big pile of boxes

A major perk of our new digs: we now have room to receive shipments of books right here in the place where we make, mail, and shout about them. This is a major upgrade to our previous system, which I fondly call “driving furiously to a storage locker to meet the guy with the big truck because there’s nowhere for him to park at the bookshop and he just called to tell us he’d be there ten minutes ago.”

The first arrival:

A two-for-one of Terry Griggs’ The Iconoclast’s Journal (June 12, 2018), which we’re bringing back into print via ReSet, a series that republishes overlooked Canadian classics. If you click the first link, our web store will display the Canadian edition, designed with its place in the series in mind. US stores will carry a second version, which features a cheeky, purple, partially headless angel that captures the spirit of this madcap picaresque, which wheels effortlessly between ribald slapstick and sharp critique of the Victorian era in which it’s set. It’s an addictive read, the perfect summer getaway from a world that’s sadly lacking in companionable pigs. Or maybe that’s just me?

The Iconoclast’s Journal was first published as Rogues’ Wedding in 2002 and hence it is no stranger to multiple covers: check out this photo, featuring the original hardcover and paperback covers in the top row, and down below from left to right: our 2018 ARC, Canadian, and US editions. You can read more about the unusual experience of republishing a novel over at All Lit Up, where Terry herself takes us behind the scenes and between the covers.

The second arrival:

An ARC run of Harriet Paige’s Man with a Seagull on His Head, and I cannot shut up about it.  This book has captivated our entire office with its quiet wisdom and original plot. To wit: on a hot summer day, Ray Eccles, a city clerk “past the age when anything interesting was likely to happen to him,” is struck on the head by a dying seagull, and though he’s never touched a paintbrush in his life, when he wakes he finds himself compelled to obsessively repeat the last thing he saw before he was knocked out: an unknown woman on the beach. As Ray’s paintings take the art world by storm, Paige shifts the novel’s lens to Jennifer, his anonymous muse, who ponders the surprising turns and odd connections that characterize a life. Seagull doesn’t drop until OCTOBER 9 HOW WILL I STAND IT.

Hey, what’s back here…

 

 

 

We’ve moved!

Our new office is located at 1686 Ottawa St, Suite 100, Windsor ON, N8Y 1R1. Our new phone number is 519–915–3930. We’re *kind of* unpacked. Pardon the stray boxes and assorted hand tools. Those of you who have been to the back of the old Bibliomanse will understand why I insist on typing WE HAVE WINDOWS in all caps.

We have doors!

With doors inside of them!

Here is where the publicity, marketing, and operations management happens. Pay no attention to the stray couch or the stretch limousine.

Dan is doing Dan magic behind the door on the left & production is back there producing things.

Regional history lives in here with Sharon.

For no reason, please enjoy this picture of our printer.

This hallway has more square footage than the entirety of our old office.

I am almost embarrassed by how excited I am re: the new mailroom.

SHELVES!

Coffee comes from here. I guess food, too?

This is where I come to cry.

Biblioasis Bookstore (hi guys!) is still located at 1520 Wyandotte, and I imagine it’s more peaceful than ever, now that the riffraff’s been removed from the back.

Our spring 401 Tour wrapped up Friday night at the Bibliomanse, where Paige Cooper, Rachel Lebowitz, Amanda Jernigan, and Richard Sanger knocked the collective socks off of everyone in attendance. I’ve been standing in the back of the bookstore, holding up my lighter for an encore ever since, as it was one of the finest readings I’ve ever attended. I assure you I am in no way biased.

If you missed out, the band will be reunited this weekend at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. On the East Coast? Dynamic duo Rachel and Amanda embark on an East Coast tour, featuring events in Halifax, NS, Sackville, NB, Fredericton, NB, and New Glasgow, PEI, next week, May 4-7. See our site for full details.

Many thanks to snapd Windsor for the author photograph!

 

It’s (Re)Lit

According to the Farmer’s Almanac, longer days means long shortlists from CBC’s ReLit Awards. And even though it’s snowing in Windsor right now, we’re basking in the glow of our six nominees. They are—drumroll please—

The Adjustment League by Mike Barnes, a novel that Maclean’s calls “Masterful …  suspenseful, exquisitely written and—at times—corrosively funny.”

Alice Peterson’s Worldly Goods, a collection of short stories that earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Quill & Quire.

Museum at the End of the World, John Metcalf’s most recent short story collection, which Publishers Weekly calls “Sharp and funny.”

Bad Things Happen, Kris Bertin’s debut short story collection lauded by Library Journal as “smart and nuanced, pulsing with humanity.”

Swinging Through Dixie, a collection of short fiction by Leon Rooke, a writer The Globe & Mail says “is simply not like any other writer out there. He’s a national treasure.”

Sharon McCartney’s Metanoia, a book of poems both Publishers Weekly and Quill & Quire selected for starred reviews.

Congratulations, Bibliobeloveds, and good luck! We’re typing with our fingers crossed! It’s very difficult but you are worth it!

WE FOUND HIM!

 Where’s Bob? is in the house! Can’t wait for you to get lost in this new novel from Ann Ireland. Available May 1!

Look, Ma, we’re in the legislative assembly!

At last Thursday’s meeting of the Ontario Legislative Assembly, MPP Percy Hatfield (Windsor—Tecumseh) secured a 90-second Member’s  Statement to honour three authors with Windsor connections who were shortlisted for the 2017 Speaker’s Book Award. Among them, our very own Patrick Brode, whose Border Cities Powerhouse: The Rise of Windsor: 1900-1945 made the list of nine titles. Other Windsor-affiliated nominees were Dr. Cheryl Collier, professor of political science at the University of Windsor, for The Politics of Ontario, and Shawn Micallef, who was born and raised in Windsor, for Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness.

The award is given annually to a book by an Ontario author that reflects the province’s diverse culture and history.

“I was overjoyed this year when three writers from Windsor were honoured,” Hatfield said in his address to the assembly. “[Brode] has written extensively about our history in his latest book . . . published by Biblioasis, a local firm I mentioned several times in this house, especially around the Giller Prize.”

Border Cities Powerhouse is Brode’s second book of local history, following The River and the Land: A History of Windsor to 1900. His work has been called “Fascinating” by the Windsor Star, and Biz X Magazine calls his books “thoroughly researched and superbly written.”

Brode’s next book is Why Babe Trumble Died: Enforcing Temperance on the Detroit River Border, 1920. In it, Brode tells the story of Trumble’s death at the hands of Reverend J.O.L. Spracklin, “The Fighting Parson.” Why Babe Trumble Died will be published by Biblioasis in November 2018, and I move we each put it on our To-Read list right now. Seconded? Don’t make me get out my gavel . . .

Peninsula Sinking … under the weight of all these nominations

 We’re over the moon for David Huebert, whose Peninsula Sinking has been shortlisted for not one, but two Atlantic Book Awards: the Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction and the Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award. Congrats, David, and good luck! We knew you when!

Another day, another glowing review of Paige Cooper’s Zolitude

In a beautifully written review of Zolitude, Helen Chau Bradley says all the things we’ve been trying to say about this stunning debut collection, but she uses people words whereas we tend to wave our arms around and make oddly-pitched squeaks of adoration. To wit: “Zolitude is Cooper’s first short story collection, but it reads like the work of a far more seasoned writer. . . With each opening paragraph, she pitches us into a new atmosphere, full of gorgeous detail and emotional rawness, a world that feels too real to be a fantasy, or perhaps just fantastic enough to be real.” To which your humble Biblioblogger would like to add: [verbal equivalent of multiple cat-eyes-emoji].