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Stories About Storytellers: Publishing Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Alistair MacLeod, Pierre Trudeau and Others$32.95 add to cart

It was reported in the Winnipeg Free Press that Douglas Gibson would be in McNally Robinson's Grant Park location tonight, however please be advised that his presentation will in fact be tomorrow: Wednesday October 12th.

Event information below:

This is a special theatrical presentation from esteemed editor, publisher and raconteur Douglas Gibson based around his book Stories About Storytellers: Publishing Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Alistair MacLeod, Pierre Trudeau, and Others (ECW Press).

Stories About Storytellers follows the legendary Doug Gibson through 40 years of editing and publishing some of Canada?s sharpest minds and greatest storytellers. Gibson is a terrific storyteller himself, and through his recollections we get an inside view of Canadian politics and publishing that rarely gets told. From Jack Hodgins? Vancouver Island to Harold Horwood?s Labrador, from Alice Munro?s Ontario to James Houston?s Arctic, Doug Gibson takes us on an unforgettable literary tour of Canada, going behind the scenes and between the covers, and opening up his own story vault for all to read and enjoy.

Douglas Gibson worked as an editor and publisher from 1968 until he retired from McClelland & Stewart in 2009. His Douglas Gibson Books was Canada?s first editorial imprint and lives on. He travels widely from his Toronto, ON, base.

Congratulations to Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, who was awarded the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature "because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality".

• For the Living and the Dead: New Poems and a Memoir
• Great Enigma
• The Half-Finished Heaven
• Selected Poems Tranströmer 1954-1986

A crime writer I am also a crime reader and probably about 80% of my reading is crime novels. I also like to read books set in Canada whenever possible, and sometimes that makes for a difficult search. Canadian crime writers still have the impression that they have to set their books in the U.S. and pretend to be Americans. There are noticeable exceptions, but despite the success of many Canadian - set mystery books on the world stage, setting a crime book in Canada, with Canadian characters and Canadian issues, is seen as taking a risk.

Fortunately there are a number of excellent Canadian writers prepared to take that risk. One of my favourites of the last couple of years is The Weight of Stones (Dundurn Press) by Ottawa's C.B. Forrest. Weight of Stones is a crime novel in that that protagonist is a Toronto police officer and he is on the trail of some 'bad guys' but (like the very best crime novels) it is so much more. The main character, Charlie McKelvey, is consumed by grief and guilt. Grief over the death of his son, and guilt in what he sees as his part in the death because he threw the troubled young man out of the house. Forrest's portrait of McKelvey's anguish, which has destroyed his marriage and is well on the way to destroying his career, is so heart-rending I was surprised when I met Forrest to find, not a drunk ex-cop with a grudge against the world, but a happy young man in a happy marriage. Excellent writing does that.

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Giving a book is like giving an obligation. - Gabriel Zaid in So Many Books.

My life is one long night of unfinished books. - A character in one my unfinished short stories.

I had a bit of a laugh when I received the request for Night Table recommendations from McNally Robinson's because I have a bad habit of starting a lot of books (usually at night) and never finishing them. So of course I'd never deign to actually recommend any book to put on one's night table for one to actually finish, keeping also Zaid's comment in mind! In other words, the little list I'm putting forth here is simply what I'm reading now and if you should happen to be interested in the books, all the better!

Since I'm a writer of different genres, a translator, and a teacher, I've usually got books on hand to meet those various needs of my writing life as they arise.

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