26
Jun 11

Naming names…

Congratulations are in order for Steph VanderMuelen, who was able to name a whopping 35 of the 60 writers in our recent video to win tickets to our event on June 30th. In doing so she put to rest the old stereotype that Dutch people are bad at facial recognition; a victory that will no doubt warrant a new holiday. Be sure to read Steph’s book reviews and “lit-bits” at bellasbookshelves.com; she’s much better at this blogging thing than me, I’ll be sure to get some advice when I meet her.

Without further ado, the names to go with the faces:

  1. Gabrielle Roy
  2. Robertson Davies
  3. Farley Mowat
  4. Mavis Gallant
  5. Margaret Lawrence
  6. Timothy Findley
  7. Alice Monro
  8. Mordecai Richler
  9. Austin Clark
  10. Leonard Cohen
  11. Carol Shields
  12. Joy Kagawa
  13. Alistair MacLeod
  14. Margaret Atwood
  15. Wayson Choy
  16. Linden MacIntryre
  17. Michael Ondaatje
  18. Thomas King
  19. Robert Munsch
  20. Susan Swan
  21. Lee Maracle
  22. Elizabeth Hay
  23. Thomson Highway
  24. Rohinton Mistry
  25. Dionne Brand
  26. Kim Echlin
  27. Neil Bissoondath
  28. Andre Alexis
  29. Lawrence Hill
  30. Ann-Marie MacDonald
  31. Nino Ricci
  32. Kathleen Winter
  33. Stephen Henighan
  34. Douglas Coupland
  35. Drew Haden Taylor
  36. Yann Martel
  37. Lisa Moore
  38. Mariam Towes
  39. Rawi Hage
  40. Michael Winter
  41. Joseph Boyden
  42. Michael Redhill
  43. Emma Donoghue
  44. Annabel Lyon
  45. Alexander MacLeod
  46. Claudia Dey
  47. Devid Bezmozgis
  48. Ibi Kaslik
  49. Heather O’Neil
  50. Jessica Westhead
  51. Madeleine Thien
  52. Sarah Selecky
  53. Stuart McLean
  54. Vincent Lam
  55. Sheila Hetti
  56. Zoe Whittall
  57. Pasha Malla
  58. Joey Comeau
  59. Matthew J. Trafford
  60. Devon Code
The authors were put in order of their date of birth, in case you were wondering. For extra credit,  go out and purchase a book by an author from this list that you haven’t read before at your local independent bookstore.

 

Justin Kinnear is Broadsheet’s Editor-in-Chief. He’s pretty sure Dutch people are as good as anyone else when it comes to facial recognition.

10
Jun 11

Compete for Our Love!

60 Great Canadian Authors in less than 30 seconds from Broadsheet Magazine on Vimeo.

The twitter-verse and a few pasty publishing-types are all a-buzz over our fundraiser at the end of this month, and so should you… be excited for the fundraiser.

Let’s try this again. Hi, I’m Justin: Broadsheet editor, reluctant blogger, and under-qualified fundraiser-MC.  Here’s what’s happening: we’re starting the night off with readings by Jessica Westhead, Matthew J. Trafford, and Sarah Selecky; following that up with draws and silent auctions for fantastic prizes (courtesy of Coach House, Cormorant Books, Medieval Times, Crywolf Clothing and many more); and finishing things up with live music from Leif “not Ericsson” Vollebeck and Sarah Greene (whose music  is the only thing that get’s me through the self important drudgery of blogging). This is a licensed event, with beer from Steam Whistle and a new Broadsheet cocktail made right on site by the Jolly Inebriate himself. The event takes place at The Propeller Centre for the Arts, at 984 Queen St. West.

All funds raised from the event will go towards paying authors for our pilot issue (due out in the fall) and other vital start-up costs (those racks and boxes you pick up magazines from don’t come cheap). Broadsheet will, for the time being, remain an unpaid labour of love for 4 pasty publishing professionals and your gracious help goes a long way toward making it a reality. Please take the time to say hello to one of us at the event–if you don’t know who we look like, just ask sombody else at the party, as it’s likely to be one of our parents.

Tickets will run you $30. Follow this link to get your tickets now.

Or… if your pockets are empty but your head is full of odd bits of trivia you can try your hand at our contest to win two free tickets to this exciting evening of entrepreneurial-minded philanthropy (woo-h0o!). Just watch the above video (courtesy of Broadsheet co-founder Carolyn McNeillie) and email the names of all the authors you recognize to contest@broadsheetmagazine.com along with your address, date of birth and social security number (a guy’s got to earn a living). The 5 people who can name the most win! Isn’t that great?

 

Justin Kinnear is Broadsheet‘s Editor-in-Chief. He’s been hen-pecked by coworkers into blogging, but his real passion is keeping neighbourhood dogs from digging up his garden.

 

14
May 11

The Year (So Far) In Short Fiction

When we were last active in blogland, we interviewed non other than Jessica Westhead about twenty-eleven’s status as the Year Of the Short Story. As we creep up to the halfway point of this year, it’s time to step back and reflect on new developments in the field of stories that aren’t good enough to be novels. (I kid, but seriously folks, what is the deal with airport security?)

This year saw the late, lamented David Foster Wallace continue the Tupac phase of his career (too soon?), with the posthumous release of “Backbone” in the New Yorker. If short fiction is to be judged on how much it causes you to be afraid of your own body parts, then this one is a classic. It took me a second read to really come around to this literary oddity. What’s there is great, but the story is incomplete to the point of frustration. It’s not meant to be a complete story mind you; it’s an excerpt of an incomplete novel, The Pale King, which was compiled from the most up-to-date version of a manuscript that Wallace had not finished at the time of his suicide, (he admitted in 2007 it was only one-third done) and published last month. Maybe I’ll get around to reading it, right after Infinite Jest. (Yes, I haven’t read that one; I can already hear the rabble outside my house calling for me to turn in my editor’s card. There’s a reason I stick to working in short fiction).

Short fiction has continued it’s violent stranglehold on Canadian literary awards—maybe not a stranglehold yet, but definitely a foothold on a cliff dominated by novels (how I loathe them). Katrina Best won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book the Canadian/Caribbean region for her collection Bird Eat Bird (Insomniac Press), beating out other short fiction collections by Sarah Selecky, Darcie Friesen Hossack and Alexander McLeod in the process. In our minds, you’re all winners.

This YOSS has already seen the release of many short story collections you should be reading right now instead of this blog. The Meager Tarmac (Biblioasis) is the first new collection by lapsed Canadian Clark Blaise in nearly twenty years, this man does not get nearly the amount of attention he deserves and this collection represents him at the peak of his talents. Cathy Stonehouse’s debut collection Something About the Animal (also from Biblioasis, who are becoming something of a short fiction powerhouse) is most impressive; as is Mike Spry’s Distillery Songs (Insomniac Press, another small press punching way above their weight in the short fiction department), which features a story (“Northernton Pilot”) that reads like a frank coming of age tale using inter-species romance as a metaphor for racial tolerance in a setting reminicent of Richard Scarry’s Busytown (if you don’t think that’s recipe for a classic story, I don’t think we can be friends).

–Justin
28
Mar 11

Year of Plenty

If you’ve heard rumblings about 2011 being the year of the short story, you’re a nerd (and our kind of people). One of the driving forces behind the Year of the Short Story (YOSS) is Jessica Westhead, author of Pulpy and Midge (Coach House) and this years acclaimed collection of short fiction, And Also Sharks (Cormorant). Jessica was nice enough to humour our questions about what we hope will be landmark year for short fiction.

Broadsheet: What are some of the reasons you and your friends decided to dub 2011 the year of the short story? Have our attention spans finally shrunk to the point that we can’t be trusted with novels?

Jessica Westhead: Novels get enough attention already, and they won’t stop getting attention because of YOSS. But it’s the shorty’s time to shine. We want short stories and short story collections to find a broader readership, and to be appreciated for BEING short stories, with the many splendours this form has to offer.

BS: YOSS coincides with the release of your book of short stories, And Also Sharks. Coincidence or shameless act of self-promotion?

JW: A little of Column A, a little of Column B. When Sarah Selecky’s This Cake Is for the Party and Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting both made it onto the Giller Prize shortlist last year, two brilliant short fiction collections were suddenly in the spotlight. People were talking about short stories all over the place. I know that Sarah has been itching to start a short story revolution for some time now, and she and Matthew Trafford and I agreed that 2011 was ripe for YOSSing. And people seem to be running with it! I especially love that individual writers and readers are setting their own personal Year Of the Short Story challenges, such as Amanda Leduc’s plan to write and post one new story a day in the spirit of YOSS, and Chad Pelley’s YOSS-related reading pledge on Book Madam & Associates. The fact that Matthew and I are both launching collections this spring is like the cherry on top of the big, fluffy mound of delicious YOSS cream.

BS: YOSS is also the year of the rabbit. Should we lobby whoever is in charge of the Chinese Zodiac to have the short story replace the rabbit? Or is this an appropriate pairing?

JW: Rabbits’ ears, when sticking straight up (such as when bunnies are startled or showing off) closely resemble the “Y” of “YOSS”. I have included a sketch to illustrate this:

scientific justification for YOSS

BS: Now that you have this chance to reach out to the dozens who read our blog, who are some great short story writers that you would like?

JW: And I will grab that chance! Here are some of my favourite short story collections by some of my favourite writers: Pleased to Meet You by Caroline Adderson, Play the Monster Blind by Lynn Coady, Long Story Short by Elyse Friedman, All the Anxious Girls on Earth by Zsuzsi Gartner, The Broken Record Technique by Lee Henderson, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog by Stuart Ross, Black Coffee Night by Emily Schultz, Once by Rebecca Rosenblum, Ladykiller by Charlotte Gill, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Pastoralia by George Saunders, Honored Guest by Joy Williams, and anything by Raymond Carver or Lorrie Moore. Sarah and Alexander’s collections, and Matthew’s The Divinity Gene, are all highly recommended as well.

04
Feb 11

Don’t We Look Nice?

Broadsheet is proud to announce Linda Chalmers as the first of many artistic partnerships for our magazine and website. Not only do we intend to showcase the work of Canadian writers, we hope to use our magazine covers and various electronic platforms as a place to display the work of the many talented visual artists working in Canada. This allows us a chance to catch the attention of fickle readers with bright colours, while artists get everything they need to survive: attention and money.

Linda Chalmers is going to make viewing our barren homepage far more aesthetically appealing. She graduated OCAD University with a BFA in drawing and painting in ’09 and has had her work displayed at Cell Gallery, Gallery 1313 and is currently represented by the illustrious Patrick Mikhail Gallery. She is a recipient of the 2010 Award of Merit from the Ontario Society of Artists and DeSerres, and a Scion Session Art Grant from The Cheaper Show. She paints with a style that, to this unqualified art critic, combines abstract imagery with reoccurring patterns that lend structure to her work, or something like that. Her work has been described by a more knowledgeable source (Linda herself) as “colourful, abstract paintings that explore the relationships between gestural and digital aesthetics.” My answer would have earned me a gentlemen’s C in the Philosophy of Art course I took; I’ll make it up with the multiple choice questions.

The piece that currently adorns our background is called “The Ersatz Petals Drip”. It’s one of her more recent pieces, having been unveiled in 2010.

Leading the way in all our artistic decisions is our art director Carolyn McNeillie, an OCAD graduate who has worked in art restoration for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, Italy. More recently she’s worked for Muse Gallery in Toronto. An accomplished visual artist in her own right, Carolyn has already put her skills to use in publishing by designing covers for books by Jonathan Garfinkle and Governor General Award winner Michael Healey. She also handles all of Broadsheet’s technical matters, since the rest of us only know enough about computers to forward raunchy photos on our Hotmail accounts and routinely send money to the deposed kings of nonexistent African countries.

17
Jan 11

Blogsheet

“Book publishers—like executives in other media—are making the same mistake the railroad companies made more than a century ago: thinking they were in the train business rather than the transportation business.”
From “Publish or Perish” by Ken Auletta in the New Yorker.

This is what is known in the comic book world as an ‘origin story,’ except ours involves less radioactivity and revenge, and more school projects and grant applications.

We started life as a randomly assembled group of students out of Humber College’s Creative Book Publishing Program to work on a final project, wherein we were tasked with creating an idea for a publishing house.

Our idea seemed simple—but proved more difficult and labour intensive over time—create something akin to a literary journal publishing original short fiction that would be available for free, both in printed form and online. The name Broadsheet was chosen for this venture, in reference to a newspaper format (one we’ve decided not to use, oddly enough) and as a (maybe not-so-subtle) sign to the breadth of readers we’re after.

We knew it would be possible to distribute a magazine for free in Toronto on the strength of advertising sales (newspapers such as Metro and a whole slew of alternative weeklies already do so successfully) and we were aware that fiction was in a state of migrating into digital formats (Electric Literature and Canada’s own Joyland have already shown this); it was only a matter of proving that publishing fiction in ways both antiquated and cutting edge was, at the very least, financially sustainable.

The project for Humber gave us a great deal of encouragement, with contributions from the likes of Stuart McLean (of the radio and book series The Vinyl Café) and Kim Echlin (author of the Giller Prize shortlisted novel The Disappeared); and words of support from people across the publishing industry.

Our ideas would change over time, as reality would kibosh some ideas (TTC distribution) while allowing us to accomplish ones we never thought possible (smartphone app). Through it all many things remained consistent: the idea of a free magazine of short fiction printed on newsprint, the belief that writers and artists should be properly compensated for the use of their work, and perhaps most surprising of all that the original group from Humber College decided to remain unchanged when bringing Broadsheet into the real world.

After graduating and finding work (within publishing where possible, but in some cases elsewhere out of necessity) we set about refining our plan and applying for a grant set up for recent Humber grads. The application was a success, and now we have the funding to prepare Broadsheet ’s arrival to Toronto’s streets and into electronic devices across Canada. In short, we plan on getting Broadsheet into the hands of every iPad-totting geek and Ink-stained Luddite with an interest in great fiction.

Our next step is to publish a prototype issue in the fall of this year, with monthly circulation beginning early 2012. We’ll be sure to do all we can to let all who are interested read what we have to offer.

Stay tuned to this space for updates on Broadsheet’s progress. Give us your email address if you’d like further news of our goings on. And follow us on twitter, we swear to follow you back and hang off your every tweet (also, we keep excellent lists).

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Background image The Ersatz Petals Drip by Linda Chalmers, represented by Patrick Mikhail Gallery
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