Malarky on tour Fall 2012 — part 1

Pretty soon I will be gearing up to attend a number of Writers Festivals which I am very fortunate to have been invited to this Autumn/Fall season. At these festivals I will be reading from Malarky and also participating in various panel events.

I begin at the Brooklyn Book Festival on September 23, 2012 in New York. Here’s a link to the incredible programming called the Book End events. These are all free events taking place the week leading up to the festival and include 50 events.

These Book End events are in addition to the actual festival which takes place on Sunday 23, 2012 and will feature 280 authors and 104 panels. I am thrilled to be included in such an ambitious event and wish every city could enjoy the same. What I love about this particular festival is the events are for the most part all free.

The festival events will be uploaded on Sept. 4, 2012, so I shall  post again and offer the link to them.

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After Brooklyn I move to Ontario where I’ll be reading for certain at the University of Trent reading series and possibly in Ottawa. (I will also return to Toronto for the IFOA (Harbourfront) Festival in late October.) My next stop after Ontario is Winnipeg’s Writers Festival THIN AIR  I couldn’t be more excited as Winnipeg has a long labour history (including general strike re-enactments) so must put my research clogs on and be sure to take in some of the museums or such before I depart. I heard word of a train museum so must look it up. THIN AIR have already uploaded the list of my events with details. Click here to read. I will be reading with Daniel Allen Cox, (a Montreal writer I believe) and Missy Marston.

I return to Vancouver to appear at the Word On The Street, which is something of a homecoming for me as the first year I lived in Vancouver I performed an extract from my play at that very festival. I’ll be reading in the Canada Writes Tent on the Sunday around 12.20pm. (Link to follow)

In advance I thank all the volunteers and committees and staff who make these festivals possible for their labour and for generously inviting me to participate. Merci, merci. And my publisher Biblioasis for their support and The University of Trent for hosting me in their reading series.

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Malarky on Cortes

Thanks a million to everyone who came out last Sunday for the reading event at Mansons. It was so much fun reading outdoors, beside the tree swing to such a warm response.

I especially enjoyed the questions and discussion including Liz Magor’s (Visual Artist) incredible take on my book. I wish I could have transcribed what she said about subjectivity. I was also so happy to see many familiar Cortes and Refuge Cove faces, people whose company I’ve delighted in over the years of making annual summer journeys up to Cortes.

A million and a half thanks to Suzu for organizing the event, Marnie’s Books for selling and stocking Malarky.

Also nice to meet writers Ruth Ozeki and Dennison Smith both of whom have new novels coming out in Spring 2013 which I look forward to reading.

Pics to follow.

Georges Perec’s Work-table

Last night I was reading (slowly) Georges Perec’s Notes Concerning the Objects that are on my Work-table. Even though the objects that Perec reports on are static, I was most struck by the movement in his piece.

When I arrived at this paragraph it was like putting my thumb beneath a granite paperweight.  It sat like a big stone, the paragraph, and I could not argue with it.

“Thus a certain history of my tastes (their permanence, their evolution, their phases) will come to be inscribed in this project. More precisely, it will be, once again, a way of marking out my space, a somewhat oblique approach to my daily practice, a way of talking about my work, about my history and my preoccupations, an attempt to grasp something pertaining to my experience, not at the level of its remote reflections, but at the very point where it emerges.”

(Species of Spaces and Other Pieces Georges Perec translated by John Sturrock Penguin Books.)

Quill & Quire front cover interview is live

This week the cover story interview I did for June’s Quill and Quire became available online.  Thank you to Q&Q for showing such faith in me and to Cheri Hanson for such a thoughtful article. Click on the photo below to read it.

Golden Thursday

Thursday was a fantastic day. Katie Taylor took the Olympic gold medal in Women’s Boxing for Ireland and Seán Bán Breathnach expressed it like no other. Invoking the poets and presidents. Go hiontach ar fad!

The same day I learned I was on P22 of the Irish Echo talking about Malarky — a great day. Very special. I grew up on diaspora newspapers and the Readers Digest. (The Readers Digest in the US also wrote a lovely review of Malarky) Some years ago I traveled to the NYPL to look up the Irish Echo from 1963 specifically to read some community listings in the back of it. Why did I go that far? Because the paper was not available on microfiche or obtainable so if I wanted to see it, I had to go to NY. So it’s lovely to think that things have come the full circle. There’s something very Gertrude Stein about circles. More of them please!

I leave it to SBB.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgMicT1GFaY&w=560&h=315]

Last Night of the Proms weather updates

I am shockingly behind with weather events, of which there have been several.

The Last Night of The Proms style Thunderstorm immediately comes to mind. Very dramatic thunder and lightning, which myself and the small male (who’s taller than me now) delighted in. We love storms because we speculate the power will go out (it rarely does) and if we’re truly speculative we make flasks of water and boil the kettle. Once we even purchased storm friendly sushi! The Last Night of The Proms thunder event was followed by the Last Night of Proms monsoon rain event. Fantastic — have not seen monsoon rain like that since nearly 20 years ago in a monsoon rain event in Jakarta. It was so thrilling I may have to bring forward my plan to have the Japanese weather symbols tattooed upon me. I need my own personal forecast and thunder and rain seem apt.

Overall we are in a wonderful batch of long hot days that make for working outside and eating truckloads of blueberries and cherries.

I am hoping to build a balcony garden, gardening at the community garden (nothing hectic to report, except peas — this year I am merely gardening to make the bees happy),

Summer is wonderful. Amen.

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New collaboration goes live: “Rooms” in Boulderpavement

I am very pleased to share this. In June I was commissioned to write an original flash fiction piece for Boulderpavement I was given the theme dream.  In addtion I opted to collaborate with visual artist Jeremy Isao Speier on the piece.

I wanted the text to be completed or extended or responded to through images. It was a fascinating process.

Yesterday the piece went live and I am thrilled with the result. I was surprised at how lifted I was when I first saw the piece but I think in part it came from the sensation of creating work again and seeing it realize itself and the wider scope that’s possible with collaboration.

To read “Rooms” please visit http://boulderpavement.ca/issue007/rooms/

I thank Boulderpavement and the Banff Centre Press for this opportunity.

Toronto Star calls Malarky fascinating, absolutely beautiful

Insightful review and perspective on Malarky from Georgie Binks in today’s Toronto Star. Great to have this reflection on the book as it speaks to the inner monologues of everyday folk. This piece about Malarky also deals with the book that was written, rather than speculating on or demanding the one that wasn’t, which is ditto cheering.

Some clips from the review:

“Malarky is a fascinating voyage into the mind of a woman embattled but surviving during and after the deaths of her husband and son, the latter being the true tragedy from which she must recover. The central character of the book, Philomena a.k.a. “Our Woman,” is kind enough to share the running commentary of her life in an Irish patter that could easily mirror the thoughts of many women at mid-life, if in fact, mid-life these days is when the kids have left and the husband has died or departed.

Schofield admits, “I wrote that book unapologetically for and about women. I find the ordinary working class woman fascinating. I like to write about ordinary people who usually don’t get written about.”

“…”What I love about Malarky is the absolutely beautiful, almost lyrical, but very simple turns of phrase Schofield employs. Little truths like her observations that youth is not wasted on the young but that age is wasted on the old or that widows — first considered a novelty — soon become the remnants of the person who is gone.”

Click here to read the entire Toronto Star review of Anakana Schofield’s novel Malarky

Malarky invited to Wordstock Portland Book Festival

I was delighted to hear the news I have been invited to Wordstock the Portland Book Festival in the Fall. I am excited to visit Portland as I’ve never been.

Thank you indeed to Wordstock for the invitation.

In the Bog 2012

A great day’s work today in the bog helping my mother bring in the turf or at least some steps in the process to bring up the turf.

We stacked turf and made reckles the four of us and joked and had a bit of craic.

The rain stayed off til we’d done what we could manage. It’s backbreaking but peaceful work. I love the small purple flowers in the heather with their tiny bells hanging off them and the details in the sods.

Nephin mountain borders that bog, like I said it’s ever so peaceful out there. No nicer place to work, no matter how hard it can be physically it’s somehow twice as rewarding. We may return again in the morning and carry on if the weather holds, but I suspect it won’t.