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Tag: Joan Sullivan
Breakwater grabs two Atlantic Book Awards nominations
The Atlantic Book Awards shortlists were released yesterday — and we’re very pleased to report that we’ve got two Breakwater nominees!
Braco, the debut novel by former Canadian Forces peacekeeper Lesleyanne Ryan, has been nominated for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award. Told from a kaleidoscope of perspectives, Braco follows fourteen-year old Bosnian refugee Atif Stavic as he crosses forty kilometres of enemy territory to rejoin his family after the fall of Srebrenica in 1995.
**and**
In the Field by Joan Sullivan has been shortlisted for the Rogers Communications Award for Non-Fiction. A compelling history, In the Field examines the legacy of the death of Lieutenant Steven Norris of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment: both the immediate effect on his community and, almost ninety years later, the lasting impact of his story.
Ryan and Sullivan just did a tag-team Book Club reading here at Breakwater Headquarters, and we couldn’t be happier to see them on the Atlantic Book Awards list together, as well! For information on the awards or to set up an interview or Book Club visit, please contact Elisabeth de Mariaffi:
(709) 722-6680 x 226, or by email, elisabeth@breakwaterbooks.com
The 2013 Atlantic Book Awards and Festival runs May 9-16 with free literary events taking place in all four Atlantic Provinces. Festival details will be available at www.atlanticbookawards.ca in the coming weeks. Winners of the 2013 Atlantic Book Awards will be announced at a special awards show on the last night of the week-long festival, Thursday, May 16, at 7:00 p.m. at the Alderney Landing Theatre in Dartmouth, NS. It’s a special year this year for the Dartmouth Book Awards – 2013 is the 25th anniversary of these awards, some of the oldest in Canada.
Blue Lagoon Book List: What Books Can Our Authors Not Live Without?
Seen all those Ideal Bookshelf and Desert Island Bookshelf lists floating about these days? Us, too. So we got to thinking, which must-have books would Breakwater authors most want to be stranded with?
Claire Wilkshire, author of the forthcoming debut novel, Maxine:
Virginia Woolf Mrs. Dalloway
T.S. Eliot Collected Poems 1909-1962
Leon Rooke Who Do You Love
John Metcalf Adult Entertainment
Richard Ford Independence Day
John Le Carré Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Terry Pratchett Reaper Man
+ A really good, fat dictionary like my Webster’s New Encyclopedic Dictionary. I think it cost $15 at Coles: best bargain ever. I keep it by the bed so I can use it for the cryptic crosswords in the Globe.
…. (I can’t start putting Newfoundland novels on this list because I wouldn’t be able to stop.)
Joan Sullivan, author of In the Field:
I don’t have much of a library at home, as I tend to pass along books (I just don’t like “stuff”). But those I have include:
1. The Mandarins, by Simone de Beauvoir. What befalls a group of French intellectuals immediately following WWII. Characters based on de Beauvoir, Sartre, Camus. It is political and sensual and dramatic. When I first read it, I was younger than the main character’s daughter. Every five years or so I re-read it, and now I am older than the main character.
2. A book of Shakespeare’s Tragedies that belonged to my grandmother, Rose Hoskins. She died when I was six months old.
3. All of Lisa Moore’s stories and novels. She is my friend and I love her writing.
4. Something new from the library. Might be the latest Rankin or a writer I’ve found like Ann Packer or Steve Yarbrough.
5. Jane Austen, no explanation needed.
6. A young adult book/autobiography called We Shook the Family Tree by Hildegarde Dolson, a book I read in Grade 6 or 7 and loved and never forgot. My daughter found it for me on Amazon. Speaking of young adult novels, my daughter has a flourishing library and I constantly borrow from it, The Perks of Being a Wildflower, Rob Lowe’s Stories I Only Tell My Friends (excellent read, by the way), The Book Thief …
Calvin Evans, author of Silk Sails: Women of Newfoundland and Their Ships and coming Spring 2013, Master Shipbuilders of Newfoundland and Labrador:
I guess my favorite books fall into two categories, as might be expected with my dual professions:, so here goes:
Simone Weil The Need for Roots
John R. W. Stott Basic Christianity
John Oman Grace and Personality
C. S. Lewis Mere Christianity
Oscar Williams, ed. Immortal Poems of the English Language
Alister McGrath Passion for Truth
**and**
D. W. Prowse History of Newfoundland
Dictionary of Newfoundland English
Gordon Handcock The Story of Trinity
Capt. Allan Villiers Men, Ships and the Sea
E. R. Seary Family Names of the Island of Newfoundland
William Christian and Sheila Grant The George Grant Reader
… and from Jennifer Morgan, artist, children’s author and illustrator of Almost Home: The Sinking of the SS Caribou:
Okay, I couldn’t resist this excuse to not work!
Oxford’s Dictionary of English
National Geographic World Atlas
The Bible
Shakespeare’s Collected Works
Harold Bloom’s The Invention of the Human
One empty book
Edible Plants for the region where I’m marooned
A book of matches
And…since I will not have any excuse not to read it:
James Joyce’s Ulysses
and (why not?) Homer’s Ulysses also.
Author Tina Chaulk Receives Stellar Review from The Telegram
Telegram reviewer Joan Sullivan had some great things to say about Tina Chaulk’s sophomore novel, A Few Kinds of Wrong, including:
“A Few Kinds of Wrong is Tina Chaulk’s second novel, and it is a great followup to This Much is True. The two books have some elements in common, including an accessible story with a believable and likeable heroine, but this narrative also shifts into broader perspectives and deeper dilemmas.”
“It is good solid stuff with unexpected yet authentic twists, and people you are interested in. A book like this is why people read.”
Click here to buy or read more about A Few Kinds of Wrong