The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Galway Kinnell was born February 1, 1927 in Providence, Rhode Island. He has been hailed as one of the most influential American poets of the latter half of the 20th century. Educated at Princeton and Rochester Universities, he served in the United States Navy, after which he spent several years traveling, in Europe and the Middle East. His first book of poems, What a Kingdom It Was, was published in 1960, followed by Flower Herding on Mount Monadnock (1964). Upon his return to the United States, Kinnell joined CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) as a field worker and spent much of the 1960s involved in the Civil Rights Movement. Social activism during this time found its way into his work – Body Rags (1968), and especially The Book of Nightmares (1971), a book-length poem concerned with the Vietnam War. Other books of poetry include Selected Poems (1980), for which he received both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Imperfect Thirst (1996); When One Has Lived a Long Time Alone (1990) and A New Selected Poems (2000), a finalist for the National Book Award; He has also published translations of works by Yves Bonnefroy, Yvanne Goll, François Villon, and Rainer Maria Rilke. Honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Rockefeller Grant, the 1974 Shelley Prize of the Poetry Society of America, and the 1975 Medal of Merit from National Institute of Arts and Letters. He has served as poet-in-residence at numerous colleges and universities, and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. We met recently at his home in Vermont to talk about his work. 

Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002) was born in Armenia in 1908. His photographer uncle, George Nakash, brought him to Canada in 1924. After apprenticing in Boston with John H. Garo, Karsh settled in Ottawa in 1932, where he began his professional career. By 1936 he was photographing visiting statesmen and dignitaries, among them President Franklin Roosevelt. His December, 1941 portrait of a bull-doggish Winston Churchill, symbolizing Britain’s wartime resolve brought Karsh international attention.  Among the most widely reproduced portraits in the history of photography, ‘Churchill’ was also one of the first to carry the famous "Karsh of Ottawa" copyright. I met recently with Jerry Fielder, Curator and Director of the Estate of Yousuf Karsh to talk about Karsh and the books that contain his works.    

Writer, journalist, comic reader, Cartoon Historian, intermittent blogger, and over-tired family man Brad Mackay is the author of a biographical essay which appears in The Collected Doug Wright Volume One (Drawn and Quarterly, 2009).   First of a two-volume set, the book – designed by well known Canadian cartoonist Seth -  presents a comprehensive look at the life and career of one of the most-read, best-loved cartoonists of the 1960s. The work draws from thousands of pieces of art, pictures, and letters, plus the artist’s own journals, and provides a picture of the British-born Wright as both cartoonist and human being. It follows his artistic development from earliest unpublished works through to the introduction of his most enduring comic strip, Nipper. First published in 1949, a full year before the debut of Peanuts, it memorably captured both the humorous and frustrating side of parenting.   I spoke with Brad in Ottawa. We use Wright as a wedge to lever our way into the history of illustration, comics and graphic novels. Toward the end of our discussion Brad provides some tips for those interested in collecting comics and graphic novels.

This from the incom­par­able Brit­ish Council’s con­tem­por­ary writers web­site:   Born in South­port in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Mal­vern, Worcester­shire, study­ing for a degree in Eng­lish and Amer­ican Lit­er­at­ure fol­lowed by an MAin Com­par­at­ive Lit­er­at­ure, at the Uni­ver­sity of Kent. He lived for a year in Sicily before mov­ing to Hiroshima, Japan, where he taught Eng­lish to tech­nical stu­dents for eight years, before return­ing to England. In his first novel, Ghostwrit­ten (1999), nine nar­rat­ors in nine loc­a­tions across the globe tell inter­lock­ing stor­ies. This novel won the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and was short­l­is­ted for the Guard­ian First Book Award. His second novel, number9dream (2001), was short­l­is­ted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize for fic­tion. It is set in mod­ern day Tokyo and tells the story of Eiji Miyake’s search for his father. In 2003 David Mitchell was named by Granta magazine as one of twenty ‘Best of Young Brit­ish Nov­el­ists’. In his third novel, Cloud Atlas (2004), a young Pacific islander wit­nesses the night­fall of sci­ence and civil­isa­tion, while ques­tions of his­tory are explored in a series of seem­ingly dis­con­nec­ted nar­rat­ives. Cloud Atlas was short­l­is­ted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. David Mitchell lives in Ire­land. His latest novel is Black Swan Green (2006)   We met in Toronto to talk about exper­i­ment­a­tion and real­ism, plot, char­ac­ter and all that good stuff, but also about the great­ness of John Cheever, high brow and pulp fic­tion, good pot boil­ers, the cos­mos, cosmi, con­nec­tions, meld­ing verbs, plat­it­ud­in­ous pro­fundit­ies, crit­ics as platy­pus taxi­derm­ists, poetry in prose, the ori­gin­al­it­ies of happy blun­ders and cul­tural jux­ta­pos­i­tions, Perec’s W, mon­key­ing with struc­ture, plan­ning your funeral, eval­u­at­ive cri­ti­cism, and the delight­ful exper­i­ence of read­ing Chekhov’s short stor­ies.  

What’s the dif­fer­ence between a First Edi­tion, a Fine Press Edi­tion and an Artists’ Book? Joshua and Phyl­lis Heller work with me to help define the bound­ar­ies.    The two of them estab­lished Joshua Heller Rare Books, Inc. in Wash­ing­ton DC, in 1985. The com­pany spe­cial­izes in “con­tem­por­ary fine print­ing and beau­ti­fully illus­trated books, the Private Press Move­ment, mod­ern fine bind­ings, and books about books. [Their] much admired cata­logues, illus­trated in full color, are dis­trib­uted to a national and inter­na­tional list of cli­ents.” Joshua has lec­tured widely in the United States and Canada on the art of the book. He helped organ­ize the Art of the Con­tem­por­ary Book Con­fer­ence at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity in 1991, and has: con­trib­uted art­icles on the Private Press Move­ment to journ­als such as Fine Print and Imprint; and cur­ated exhib­i­tions of South African botan­ical artist Elise Bod­ley, both for the Smith­so­nian Museum of Nat­ural His­tory and the Audu­bon Soci­ety; he also pro­posed the first Wash­ing­ton Artists’ Book Fair – now a bien­nial event; and organ­ized the first ever exhib­i­tion of fine mod­ern bind­ings at the Corcoran Museum of Art in Wash­ing­ton DC in 2003. I met the Hellers at their home in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. recently.

John Bid­well is Astor Cur­ator of Prin­ted Books and Bind­ings at thePier­pont Mor­gan Lib­rary, before which he was Cur­ator of Graphic Arts in the Prin­ceton Uni­ver­sity Lib­rary. He has writ­ten extens­ively on the his­tory of paper­mak­ing in Eng­land and America.  The Prin­ted Books and Bind­ings col­lec­tion at the Mor­gan con­tains works span­ning West­ern book pro­duc­tion from the earli­est prin­ted eph­em­era to import­ant first edi­tions from the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. Hold­ings encom­pass a large num­ber of high points in the his­tory of print­ing, often exem­pli­fied by a lone sur­viv­ing copy or a copy that is per­fect in every way. Areas of strength include incun­ables, early children’s books, fine bind­ings, and illus­trated books.  The col­lec­tion is foun­ded upon acquis­i­tions of Pier­pont Mor­gan, who sought to estab­lish in the United States a lib­rary worthy of the great European col­lec­tions. Among the high­lights are three Guten­berg Bibles, works by Lord Byron, Charles Dick­ens, Edgar Allan Poe, John Ruskin, Mark Twain, Her­man Melville, and Wil­liam Mor­ris, and clas­sic early children’s books. The Carter Bur­den Col­lec­tion of Amer­ican Lit­er­at­ure, a major 1998 gift, strengthens the Morgan’s twentieth-century hold­ings with authors such as Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Vladi­mir Nabokov, Ger­trude Stein, and Ten­nessee Williams.  I talk with John Bid­well about the col­lec­tion, what it con­tains, how it was acquired.

Shakespeare wrote Hamlet before James l came to the throne. Events in the play reflect many of the real world concerns that  Englishmen had about being ruled by a foreigner. At the play’s end, Denmark’s line of  rulers is extinguished, and a foreigner (Fortinbras) takes the throne. James was married to Anna of Denmark, some feared that if he were to attempt a military takeover, he might call on the forces of his brother in law Christian IV of Denmark. King Lear was written after James’s succession. At the start of the play Lear is firmly established as king of a united Britain. This reflected James’s wish to be ruler of a fully united kingdom. In fact he approached Parliament, without success, in 1607 in hopes of securing a closer political union. The names of the Dukes in King Lear are taken from real life. James had recently made his sons Henry and Charles the Dukes of Cornwall and Albany respectively. In the play Albany is an honest man who realises too late the evil doings of his relatives. Once aware, he works to restore natural order. At the end,  hope for the monarchy rests with him,  Albany from Scotland, who is free to reunite the fractured kingdom. In this he represents what James wanted to achieve with his succession. Listen here as Prof. Joseph Khoury, of St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, and I discuss the themes of succession and the divine right of kings in Hamlet and King Lear.

Crime novelist Denise Mina is the author of a trilogy of novels set in Glasgow: Garnethill (1998), which won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Memorial Dagger; Exile (2000); and Resolution (2001).     Sanctum (2002), is the story of a forensic psychiatrist, convicted of killing a serial killer. The Field of Blood (2005) is the first in a new series, the second in the series, The Dead Hour, was published in 2006, and the third, Slip of the Knife, in 2007.   Denise also writes short stories, one of which, ‘Helena and the Babies’ from Fresh Blood 3 (1999), won the Crime Writers’ Association Macallan Short Story Dagger. Two short stories and a play, Hurtle (2003), have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her latest play is Ida Tamson. Her lastest novel is Still Midnight (2009). We met in Ottawa where Denise was the international guest of honour at Bloody Words, Canada’s national mystery conference. Our conversation cuts a wide swath across the socio-political  (alcoholism, the accurate depiction of mental illness, the courage of the mentally ill) the psychoanalytic (detective stories as re-enactments of the primal act) and the technical (cozy endings, realistic puzzles)

Terry Griggs is the author of a collection of short stories, Quickening, which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award, and two novels, The Lusty Man, and Rogues’ Wedding, shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Award. She has also written two books for children, Cat’s Eye Corner, shortlisted for a Mr. Christie’s Book Award and a Red Cedar Award, and most recently a sequel, The Silver Door. In 2003 she received the Marian Engel Award. Born on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron, she currently lives in Stratford, Ontario.    We met in Ottawa to talk about her latest ‘farce noir’ comic mystery novel, Thought you were Dead,  and, as a result about: cartoons, dead flies, Nabokov, Pnin’s zany, self-mocking speech and ways, fending off intimacy, how comedy sharpens your judgment, wordplay, names and book titles, the male-female divide, ambiguity, contained chapters, Philip Larkin, naked women on book covers, and The Monkeys’ Michael Nesmith’s mother who invented liquid paper.  

Karl Siegler is a founding member of the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia and the Literary Press Group of Canada; he has served as president of the Association of Canadian Publishers twice, and was one of the founding members of the Simon Fraser Centre for Studies in Publishing and its Masters in Publishing Program. He’s also the publisher at Talonbooks. Talonbooks has published Canadian poetry and drama since the publishing house was established in 1963. According to some dated, but I’m sure currently applicable stats from the Canada Council the average Canadian drama title sells 594 copies during its first two years in print, the average poetry title sells 405 copies. Karl and I talk here first about the role of a literary publisher, then about how Talon has managed to stay in business for over forty years, and finally about constituencies and the title he is most proud of having published.