On All Saints’ Eve, I flew to Toronto for my first appearance in the International Festival of Authors, buoyed up by an interview in the groovy on-line mag, Hazlitt. Once settled in the authors’ hotel, I walked over to the festival site to check it out, then back to the hospitality suite, where authors unwound every night from the day’s activities. One of the perks of staying in the same hotel was author-spotting. A highlight was eavesdropping in the bar as Joseph Boyden skyped a friend to report on the Zoomer interview with Conrad Black! On Friday, I was squired around to bookstores to sign copies of Muse, treated to a posh lunch with my editors and publicist, and appeared in a Reading with Rodge Glass, Catherine Bush, and Meg Wolitzer. A bootleg video of my reading appears here. On Saturday, I had a free day to attend IFOA events, tuck into a three course authors’ dinner at Le Select, then perch in the balcony for the Tribute to Alice Munro. My second event, on Saturday, was a round table, Ahead by a Century, with Elizabeth Ruth and Justin Cartwright, nimbly moderated by Brendan de Caires. The authors’ final dinner at a brewhouse was subdued, with regretful leavetaking and exchanging of contact details. IFOA knows how to treat its authors and it was intriguing to discover, googling some of my companions afterwards, how famous some of them are. As is so often the case, the best-known authors are the most friendly and humble.
Terri Baker’s two articles on Muse appeared in November. Her essay, “Solange’s Petrarch: Reclaiming Female History in Mary Novik’s Muse“, appeared in Historical Novels Review, #66 (November 2013) along with her review of Muse. Imagine how excited I was to receive a box of books from Italy–my author’s copies of L’amante del Papa, the Italian translation of Muse. L’amante has been receiving some interesting reviews in Italy, which I’ve listed here. The latest is the Repubblica.it review on December 2 by Felice Laudadio, Jr.
On December 8, I appeared in a lively on-line forum hosted by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, in which Canadian authors suggested books to give for Christmas 2013. On the same day, Robert Wiersema discussed his Christmas book picks on Sheryl MacKay’s CBC program North by Northwest and I was pleased that he included Muse. On December 18, on the Retreat books blog, I’ll be profiling types of readers and listing some light-hearted fiction picks for Christmas. I’ve already received the nicest gift: learning that Random House is planning a smaller paperback of Muse, to be published May 27, 2014, at a very reasonable $20.
For more details about news, reviews, etc. please see Resources and Critiques, where you’ll find additional support material as well.