canada

October 14, 2015

W. P. Kinsella hits a homer at The Word on the Street

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized book festival, canada, elizabeth story, pat covello, ray bradbury, saskatoon, the essential w. p. kinsella, the georgia straight, the illlustrated man, the life of pi, the word on the street, theodora ofosuhima, Thomas Canty, w. p. kinsella, yann martel

Photo: Theodora Ofosuhima

Featured guest W. P. Kinsella garnered a lot of attention at The Word on the Street: Saskatoon Book and Magazine Festival.

In front of a large and excited crowd, Kinsella was interviewed by LIFE OF PI author Yann Martel.

Photo: Theodora Ofosuhima

Writer and illustrator Karin Melberg Schwier included W. P. Kinsella’s reading among her favorite moments of the festival.

Photo: Pat Covello

Prior to the event, THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT asked Kinsella about the book that changed his life.

Mine would be Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man.

I stumbled on a copy while in high school, about 1952, and it suddenly validated my ambitions. I had known from about age six that I wanted to be a writer, but at Eastwood High School in Edmonton we studied one Shakespeare play, a J.M. Barrie play, and a book of dull essays. No fiction. And what I could find at the library generally failed to excite me, though I loved Hemingway’s Across the River and Into the Trees.

The Illustrated Man showed such imagination, and the figurative language stunned me. I said, “This is what I want to do with my life.”

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

July 1, 2015

Tachyon at the ALA

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized ala, american library association, baseball, canada, collection, elizabeth story, fantasy, first nations, horror, jacob weisman, jeff teague, jill roberts, julie dillon, kate elliott, kelley armstrong, led astray, led astray: the very best of kelley armstrong, legato, magic realism, paranormal romance, short stories, the essential w. p. kinsella, the very best of kate elliott, Thomas Canty, vampires, w. p. kinsella, werewolves

Jill Roberts and Kelley Armstrong (photo: Jacob Weisman)

The annual American Library Association conference was in San Francisco, June 25-30. While Tachyon didn’t have their own table (the Legato Publishers Group exhibited several of the recent publications), it didn’t stop publisher Jacob Weisman and managing editor Jill Roberts from enjoying the festivities.

Jacob Weisman, Jill Roberts, and Legato President Jeff Tegge (photo: Rina Weisman)

For more information on LED ASTRAY: THE VERY BEST OF KELLEY ARMSTRONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story.

For more information on THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.

For more information on THE VERY BEST OF KATE ELLIOTT, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Julie Dillon.

Design by Elizabeth Story.

May 26, 2015

Happy 80th birthday to the incomparable W. P. Kinsella

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized baseball, canada, elizabeth story, first nations, short stories, the essential w. p. kinsella, Thomas Canty, w. p. kinsella

(Photo by Ed Steer)

Yesterday was the legendary W. P. Kinsella’s 80th birthday. The incredible author is the author of SHOELESS JOE, which was later adapted into the feature film FIELD OF DREAMS. His other novels include
THE
IOWA BASEBALL CONFEDERACY, BOX SOCIALS, and BUTTERFLY WINTER. Kinsella eclectic short fiction has been collected in
ME
OUTSIDE, THE FENCEPOST CHRONICLES, THE THRILL OF THE GRASS, and THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA. Widely considered one of the great baseball writers, Kinsella also garnered wide praise for his award-winning and controversial First Nation stories, humorous and gritty tales of the complex lives of indigenous Canadians.

All of us wish the unique Bill, a very happy birthday!

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.

May 4, 2015

Nobody is happier about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA than Kinsella

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized baseball, calgary, calgary herald, canada, collection, elizabeth story, first nations, interview, kamloops, kamloops this week, magic realism, short stories, signing, the essential w. p. kinsella, Thomas Canty, w. p. kinsella

Before his signings for THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA at Audrey’s Books in Edmonton AB on May 1 and Chapters in Kamloops, BC on May 5, the legendary W. P. Kinsella was interviewed by a pair of local newspapers.

CALGARY HERALD:

“I’m always puzzled at writers who go back and say ‘Gee, I want to rewrite that – I don’t like that; I don’t like the way it turned out,’” says Kinsella, in an interview from his home in Yale, B. C. “I’m always my own biggest fan. I enjoy re-reading my work and I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed when i read some of these stories, which what people are supposed to do when they read them.”

<snip>

The 80-year-old writer may not have found reviewing his large collection of short stories particularly arduous, but it’s still a formidable volume of work to streamline into one best-of collection. The often blunt author acknowledges the American publisher did a “really wonderful job” in choosing the 31 stories.

Read the rest of this Kinsella interview at EDMONTON JOURNAL.

KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK:

W.P. Kinsella has a new book being published.

And nobody is happier about it than W.P. Kinsella.

“I always enjoy my work. I’m my own biggest fan,” Kinsella told KTW, speaking from his home in the historic Fraser Canyon town of Yale.

<snip>

When he reflects on all of his writing, and he was written more than he ever thought he would, Kinsella said it’s as much luck as anything else that kept him writing about America’s pastime for so long.

“You write a story and you hope that it will be successful. If it is successful, it’s like a prospector finding a vein of gold — you dig at it until it’s all gone,” Kinsella said.

“If SHOELESS JOE hadn’t been successful, I wouldn’t have written any more baseball.”

Read the rest of this Kinsella interview at KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK.

Catch W. P. Kinsella at

Monday May 4th 7PM
Owl’s Nest Books
815A 49 Ave. SW
Calgary, AB

Tuesday May 5 7PM
Chapters
Hillside Dr. Unit 4
Kamloops, BC

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.

April 27, 2015

Come meet the incomparable W. P. Kinsella

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alberta, appearance, baseball, british columbia, calgary, canada, canadian writer, edmonton, elizabeth story, first nations, kamloops, magic realism, new york times, signing, the essential w. p. kinsella, Thomas Canty, w. p. kinsella

In early May, the legendary W. P. Kinsella will make a trio of appearances in Alberta and British Columbia bookstores.

Friday May 1
7PM
Audrey’s Books
10702 Jaspar Ave
Edmonton, AB

Monday May 4th
7PM
Owl’s Nest Books
815A 49 Ave. SW
Calgary, AB

Tuesday May 5
7PM
Chapters
Hillside Dr. Unit 4
Kamloops, BC

Be sure to swing on by to meet the mythic Kinsella and to get your books signed.

“Kinsella defines a world in which magic and reality combine to make us laugh and think about the perceptions we take for granted.”—New York Times

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.

March 30, 2015

THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA exists as both anthology and time capsule

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized baseball, canada, collection, field of dreams, first nations, hobbema, interview, national post, richard warnica, shoeless joe, short stories, the essential w. p. kinsella, w. p. kinsella

For NATIONAL POST, Richard Warnica talks with W. P. Kinsella about his new collection THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA.

The 79-year-old author is just happy to have a new book out. His once prolific career — he averaged more than a book a year between 1977 and 1998 — has slowed in recent decades. He still writes, usually at a big oak table in his living room. And he has “at least four or five” books sitting with his agent. But he rarely publishes anymore; he believes the big players aren’t interested in his kind of work. “The midlist author,” he says, “is dead.”

If so, The Essential W.P. Kinsella (Tachyon, 432 pp, $22) exists as both anthology and time capsule. The 31 stories within were produced over more than 35 years and they reflect the sort of career Kinsella doesn’t think could exist today. He’s best known for his 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, which was adapted into the mega-hit movie Field of Dreams. But he spent most of his career cranking out moderately successful novels and short story collections.

<snip>

More than half the stories in the new book touch on baseball in one way or another, even though Kinsella himself doesn’t watch the game much anymore. He hasn’t in years. “I’m still mad about the baseball strike,” he says, referencing 1994’s season, when major league players walked off the field for 232 days, sinking that year’s World Series in the process. “I said I would never go to a game as long as any of the players who struck were still playing,” he says.

<snip>

The stories in the new collection, selected by editor Jacob Weisman, come from all phases of his career. Baseball and nostalgia feature heavily, as one might expect. There’s “Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa,” the short story he later expanded into Shoeless Joe and “K-Mart,” a moodier piece from 1985 that uses baseball as a device to talk about adolescence, regret and even death.

<snip>

There are also several stories in the collection from his popular — and controversial — Hobbema series. Set on a fictionalized version of the Alberta reserve, the Hobbema stories, which are mostly comedic, have been criticized for appropriating First Nations voices. They have even been called racist. Read today they are, at the very least, jarring. Kinsella, for his part, describes the attempts to brand them insensitive-or-worse “idiotic.”

“They are funny and they are true,” he says. “They portray the native people in a great light and they show their sense of humour. That is how oppressed people survive.”

Some of the better, more surprising stories in the collection are the newer ones. Works like the never-before-published “Do Not Abandon Me” and “Out of the Picture” deal frankly with aging, sex and the passage of time.

“The Last Surviving Member of the Japanese Victory Society,” originally published in 2013, is a sweet piece about late-life love and loss. It is the also the last story Kinsella read to his wife, Barbara, before she died in 2012. “I always read everything aloud [to her],” he says. “She is the best editor I ever worked with.”

Read the rest of the interview at NATIONAL POST.

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.

March 26, 2015

THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA is for anyone who wants to read a master of the short story form

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized baseball, canada, collection, first nations, Hobbema Indian Reservation, magic realism, review, short stories, the essential w. p. kinsella, w. p. kinsella, zoe brooks

For MAGIC REALISM, Zoe Brooks praises THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA.

Last January I reviewed W.P. Kinsella’s last novel BUTTERFLY WINTER. Now Kinsella’s publishers have produced this collection of his finest short stories. Kinsella will always be best known for his baseball magic-realist novel SHOELESS JOE, which became the film FIELD OF DREAMS. But this collection shows that his work is more diverse than his famous opus would suggest.

There are a number of magic-realist baseball stories including the story that started it all, Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa. Although I know nothing about baseball I really enjoyed Kinsella’s stories, which are less about a sport than about questioning the human condition or exploring concepts.

<snip>

Alongside these clearly magic-realist baseball stories you will find a number of more realistic Canadian First Nation stories set on the Hobbema Indian Reservation. I had not come across these stories before, which poke fun at the Canadian authorities’ and white population’s attitude to the First Nations. I was firmly on the side of the narrator, the young Cree Silas Ermineskin, and his mates chuckling at their exploits and wry comments.

<snip>

In addition to the baseball and Hobbema Indian stories, the collection includes a number of standalone stories. I particularly enjoyed two very different stories about mature men falling in love. Lieberman in Love is an unusual take on a man’s relationship with a prostitute and The Last Surviving Member of the Japanese Victory Society is a story about intercultural love in face of opposition from the woman’s mother. The latter story is probably my favourite in the collection and has such an emotional honesty about it that I was not surprised to read the author’s moving dedication to his deceased wife at its end.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a master of the short story form.

Read the rest of Brooks’ review at MAGIC REALISM.

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.

March 6, 2015

Here’s your chance to win THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, a collection of “small marvels”

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized baseball, book chase, booklist, canada, contest, elizabeth story, fantasy, first nations, giveaway, goodreads, magic realism, native american, new york times, Publishers Weekly, short stories, the essential w. p. kinsella, Thomas Canty, w. p. kinsella

In conjunction with the fine folks at Goodreads, we are giving away a copy of The Essential W. P. Kinsella, a career retrospective that celebrates the 80th birthday of the great scribe.

Visit Goodreads for all the details.

“Kinsella defines a world in which magic and reality combine to make us laugh and think about the perceptions we take for granted.”

—New York Times

In addition to his classic baseball tales, W. P. Kinsella is also a critically-acclaimed short fiction writer. His satiric wit has been celebrated with numerous honors, including the Order of British Columbia.

“[Starred review] The career of the incomparable Kinsella (Shoeless Joe) is beautifully represented by these 31 short stories, including, of course, “Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa,” the haunting tale of a baseball fan’s obsession with a long-dead star that was developed into a bestselling novel and then the film Field of Dreams. Other charming baseball fantasies include “The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record,” in which a fan agrees to sacrifice himself to bring back the recently dead Yankees star Thurman Munson, and “Searching for January,” which concerns an encounter with the deceased Roberto Clemente. Alongside these stories are several more realistic and mostly gentle satires, such as “The Fog,” that present the escapades of several indefatigable members of Canada’s First Nations. “The Grecian Urn” concerns a couple who can inhabit the interior worlds of great works of art. “K Mart” is the touching tale of three boys who use baseball to escape from their unhappy lives. Kinsella is a masterly writer of short fiction. Though his first-person narrators, mostly men much like himself, can become a bit repetitive when the collection is read straight through, each of these works, whether fantastic or realistic, is individually a small marvel of the storyteller’s art.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Here are his notorious First Nation narratives of indigenous Canadians, and a literary homage to J. D. Salinger. Alongside the “real” story of the 1951 Giants and the afterlife of Roberto Clemente, are the legends of a pirated radio station and a hockey game rigged by tribal magic.

“There are likely to be surprises for everyone in The Essential W.P. Kinsella. But those who know Kinsella’s work only from his baseball stories are going to get the biggest and best surprise of all.”
—Book Chase

Eclectic, dark, and comedic by turns, The Essential W. P. Kinsella is a living tribute to an extraordinary raconteur.

“This book’s publication should bring readers back to the once very popular Kinsella, now 79, and one hopes it attracts new readers as well.”
—Booklist

Introduction by Rick Wilber
Truth
How I Got My Nickname
The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record
First Names and Empty Pockets
Searching for January
Lieberman in Love
The Grecian Urn
The Fog
Beef
Distances
How Manny Embarquadero Overcame and Began His Climb to the Major Leagues
The Indian Nation Cultural Exchange Program
K Mart
The Firefighter
Dr. Don
Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour
The Alligator Report—with Questions for Discussion
King of the Street
Wavelengths
Do Not Abandon Me
Marco in Paradise
Out of the Picture
The Lightning Birds
Punchlines
The Last Surviving Member of the Japanese Victory Society
The Job
Risk Takers
The Lime Tree
Doves and Proverbs
Waiting on Lombard Street
Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa
Afterward – Where It Began: Shoeless Joe

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.

February 19, 2015

Happy birthday to the acclaimed editor of SUPER STORIES OF HEROES & VILLAINS Claude Lalumière

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized anthology, birthday, canada, Claude Lalumière, elizabeth story, Masked Mosaic, nocturnes and other nocturnes, noir, objects of worship, short stories, super heroes, super stories of heroes & villains, the door to lost pages, the exile book of new canadian noir, witpunk

All of us at Tachyon wish editor and writer Claude Lalumière a very happy birthday. As the editor of WITPUNK, MASKED MOSAIC, SUPER STORIES OF HEROES & VILLAINS, and the forthcoming THE EXILE BOOK OF NEW CANADIAN NOIR, Lalumière has gained notice as an respected and extraordinary anthologist. His own short fiction has been collected in three volumes: OBJECTS OF WORSHIP, THE DOOR TO LOST PAGES, and NOCTURNES AND OTHER NOCTURNES.

For more on SUPER STORIES OF HEROES & VILLAINS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story.

February 17, 2015

Each of the works in THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA is a small marvel

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized baseball, canada, collection, elizabeth story, first nations, magic realism, Publishers Weekly, review, short stories, sports, the essential w. p. kinsella, Thomas Canty, w. p. kinsella

In a starred review, Publishers Weekly lauds THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA.

Kinsella is a masterly writer of short fiction. Though his first-person narrators, mostly men much like himself, can become a bit repetitive when the collection is read straight through, each of these works, whether fantastic or realistic, is individually a small marvel of the storyteller’s art.

Read the rest of the review at Publishers Weekly.

For more info about THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.

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