The Inverness County Centre for the Arts is delighted to be hosting its inaugural Book Fair on September 17th from 11:00 am – 4:00 pm. Everyone is welcome to take part in this informal, community event that celebrates books . Tables may be reserved free of charge to display and sell books or journals of all kinds: used books, hand-made books, altered books, children’s books, scrapbooks, leaflets, photo albums, manuscripts, published books, digital books, magazine, journals, self-published zines and comics. We also invite participants to sign up for our pop-up event list: give a reading, tell a story, make a presentation, or lead a workshop. Come to participate or just come to browse, listen, read, and shop. A children’s corner with books and readings will entice younger visitors to enjoy the pleasures of books.
All are invited to enjoy refreshments, readings, and music at a post-fair cocktail party.
Highlight of the party: Mark Jarman reading from his books and playing harmonica.
Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, My White Planet, 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. His novel, Salvage King Ya!, is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey fiction.
He won a Gold National Magazine Award in nonfiction, has twice won the Maclean-Hunter Endowment Award, won the Jack Hodgins Fiction Prize, was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Alistair MacLeod Prize, the Thomas Raddall Prize, was included in The Journey Prize Anthology and Best Canadian Stories, and short-listed for Best American Essays and the O. Henry Prize.
He has published in Walrus, Canadian Geographic, Hobart, The Barcelona Review, Vrij Nederland, and reviews for The Globe & Mail. He is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and now teaches at the University of New Brunswick, where he is fiction editor of The Fiddlehead literary journal.
A.S. BYATT on Mark Jarman
At last. It is very irritating to discover a wonderful book published too long ago to be an official “book of the year”. I was talking to a German friend, a few years ago, and we were trying to think of the greatest short story ever. We agreed enthusiastically that it was Henry James’s “The Beast in the Jungle”. Martin then said reflectively, “Unless it is ‘Burn Man on a Texas Porch’.” I had never heard of that, nor of its author, Mark Anthony Jarman, a Canadian. (Canadians specialise in great short stories – Munro, Atwood.) Jarman’s collection is called 19 Knives, and it is brilliant. The writing is extraordinary, the stories are gripping, it is something new. And now I can say so.
The Guardian, November 24, 2007
For more information and/or to reserve a table at the fair, contact the Inverness County Centre for the Arts at [email protected] or by phone at (902) 258 – 2533.