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Irish writer Colm Toibin has been chosen the recipient of this year?s International Literary Grand Prix.
Photograph by: Courtesy: Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival , Courtesy: Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival
MONTREAL - One of the biggest current names in world literature highlights the lineup for the 15th Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival, announced Tuesday at Espace La Fontaine
Colm Toibin has been chosen the recipient of this year?s International Literary Grand Prix, a prize whose past winners include Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster and Norman Mailer. The Irish writer has lived in Spain and currently resides in New York; his three most recent works of fiction are the Henry James-inspired The Master, the story collection The Empty Family, and last year?s The Testament of Mary, a novella that views the life and death of Jesus through the eyes of his mother. One of the abiding mysteries of the international literary community is just how Toibin has thus far failed to win the Man Booker Prize; he has won almost everything else.
Claire Holden Rothman, a member of the five-person jury that chose Toibin, says ?He is digging deeply and painfully into his own life and into the lives of the fictional characters that emerge from this effort, and he has the generosity to reach out and offer us the truths he?s found.? Jury president Terry Rigelhof points out something else about this year?s choice, not planned but a happy coincidence: the sheer timeliness of Toibin and his work. The Testament of Mary, published last fall, has been one of the most argued-over books of recent years, and its theatrical adaptation has just opened on Broadway.
The other stellar international name for English readers in this year?s lineup is American novelist, memoirist and essayist Edmund White, a member of the Stonewall generation of writers who brought gay fiction into the mainstream. The former resident of France is fluently bilingual and will be separately interviewed at the festival in both English and French.
A deep lineup of younger fiction writers is led by a pair of Scotiabank Giller Prize winners: Concordia graduate Johanna Skibsrud, a Cinderella winner in 2010 for her small-press debut novel The Sentimentalists, and Vincent Lam, who won in 2006 for his debut collection Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures and whose 2012 novel The Headmaster?s Wager was also highly acclaimed. Other prominent names are Montrealer Saleema Nawaz, whose just-published first novel Bone & Bread is one of this spring?s buzz books; Torontonian Pasha Malla, whose People Park is currently shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award (we?ll know by the festival whether he has won); and American novelist Chad Harbach, author of the bestselling The Art of Fielding. Harbach will participate by Skype in the David McGimpsey-hosted panel event Baseball and Beer, sure to be a partial salve to to the many local literati who still associate April with the Expos.
Blue Metropolis?s remit has always been an international, multicultural and multilingual one, a philosophy shown this year by an array of writers including the popular Israeli short-story writer and graphic novelist Etgar Keret, Booker-shortlisted Anglo-Libyan novelist Hisham Matar, and Nicaraguan Sergio Ramirez. The local Portuguese community is sure to turn out in strength to see the most read author in the lusophone world, Mozambican Mia Couto. Comics culture is represented by the Hungarian-born Israeli cartoonist Miriam Katin, who will be interviewed by Drawn & Quarterly publisher Chris Oliveros; local urbanologist Mary Soderstrom will give a guided tour around the Duluth St. neighbourhood called How The Portuguese Saved the Plateau; David Homel will be part of a panel discussion with two psychologists on writing about mental illness.
Tribute will be paid to three women who have served as pillars of Canadian culture: architect, author and CCA founder Phyllis Lambert, multiple Governor general?s award-winning translator Sheila Fischman, and Judith Mappin, founder of the much-missed Westmount bookstore The Double Hook, a flagship venue for the CanLit renaissance.
Blue Metropolis is now in its third full year under the stewardship of William St-Hilaire, president, general manager and artistic director, and programming director Gregory McCormick. After a peripatetic spell in a variety of bigger, slightly out-of-the way hotels, the festival looks to be settling happily into its current home at the boutique Hotel 10 on the corner of Sherbrooke St. and St. Laurent Blvd. The venue got good reviews from attendees last year for its setting in the heart of the Lower Main and for the user-friendly proximity of its various salons.
The Blue Metropolis Festival takes place April 22 through 28. The full program can be seen at bluemetropolis.org
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