Alix Hawley's Blog, page 9

All True took home the BC Book Prizes Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize last night at the big Government House party! I'm still feeling exlamatory! Given the competition, I was not prepared for this eventuality and managed to bumble my way through some thank-yous onstage, subsequently descending the wrong stairs. So I'd like to properly thank the BC Book Prizes committee and volunteers, the jury and presenters, the Honourable Judith Guichon for hosting us, all those who came out to see us on the prize tour, my publishers and editors, my family, and especially my mum for introducing me to Ethel Wilson's stories years ago. 

Big congratulations to all the other finalists and winners. So glad to have met you, and to have seen some old friends too.

Here we are on the red carpet! Back row is Lieutenant-Governor's Medal winner Alan Twigg, Illustrated Children's Book winner Annette LeBox, and me. Front row: Nonfiction winner Briony Penn, Her Honour Judith Guichon, Children's Book winner (and partner in crime) Susan Juby, Poetry winner Raoul Fernandes. Check out all their books. Amazing stuff.

Swell time helping today at Munro's Books in Victoria (one of the world's best, as recently decreed by National Geographic). Authors for Indies Day is always a great time--really glad to volunteer at the bookshops that help authors and readers so much. Hosted games, served cake, bumbled around behind the register with a fun group of BC writers. It was sunny, too. Here are a few photos.

Here's a picture of the fresh American galley of All True. I'm thrilled to have Tracy Chevalier's and Richard Holmes's blurbs on the cover.  US publication day is coming up August 9. Interested in reviewing early? Contact [email protected].

The BC Book Prizes tour around northern British Columbia finished yesterday, 2000 km later. Driver Paul, children's writer Jordan Stratford, and I are all glad to be home and a little less grubby. But I got to meet hundreds of high-schoolers in places I've never been before, see plenty of beautiful country (alas, no wildlife, though we tried hard), and spend a week talking about books. Highlights: a terrific senior writing class in Williams Lake; the fire alarm going off halfway through my talk in the Kitimat high school auditorium; "Mike-sized" drinks at Mike's bar in Terrace; standing on tables to finish talk in Burns Lake after mic failure; very many enthusiastic and inspiring teachers; being lovingly (I hope) called a "citiot" by a writers' group; nearly coming to blows over plotting versus seat-of-your-pants writing on a panel with Jordan; the happiest kid I've ever seen eating a big bowl of soup and grinning through all the readings at the Kitimat Library on our last night.  I wish I had a picture of that, but here are a few others.

 We're still on the BC Book Prizes Tour around northern BC this week (in damp, beautiful Kitimat this evening),  but I wanted to share this piece I wrote for The Millions on Anita Brookner. She's a curious writer, one of my favourites, and when she died recently I pulled out all her books again. Maybe this will make you want to do the same, or try her for the first time. An acquired taste, maybe, but hard to shake. And I love the image the editors picked to illustrate . . . 
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I'm on the northern leg of the BC Book Prizes tour, visiting schools and libraries. Smithers yesterday, Burns Lake today, and more coming. Here are a few photos so far. Please do note my standing-on-table lecture technique for when the mic fails . . .

From tonight's reading at the terrific Pulp Fiction Books on Main Street in Vancouver.  We launched Andrew F. Sullivan's new novel, Waste (great reviews already--he's the tall one). Michael Christie and I were the opening acts, and Can't Lit's own Dina Del Bucchia hosted.  

From tonight's reading at the terrific Pulpfiction Books on Main Street in Vancouver.  We launched Andrew F. Sullivan's new novel, Waste (great reviews already--he's the tall one). Michael Christie and I were the opening acts, and Can't Lit's own Dina Del Bucchia hosted.  

Like Charlotte Bronte? Like underwear? Then see my piece in honour of Miss Bronte's upcoming 200th birthday in this weekend's Globe and Mail. I look at three new books: a biography by Claire Harman, a biography of things by Deborah Lutz, and a Jane Eyre-inspired story collection edited by Tracy Chevalier. They're all proof that the past spits out new things all the time.

I had  a good time with this article and the associated reading. Like so many others, I've always wanted to understand Bronte's life and work better. I've made the pilgrimage to the parsonage in Haworth; it was a rainy autumn day, and I had the place almost to myself. It made me think about the way we conjure up the dead and try to feel their presence, as I had to do with Dan in All True, without the benefit of seeing anywhere he once lived.

Lucasta Miller, another great Bronte scholar, once noted that nobody has yet written the great Charlotte novel. She's got me thinking, probably hubristically. I remain on the eighteenth-century American frontier for now, though.
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We have been hit with the lucky stick to have this pic, taken by the one and only photographer and author Gary Fong from his car while driving through Venice, CA. Dan did say this, or something like it.