Thursday, May 31, 2012

Out of Print Author Series: Sampurna Chattarji


Sampurna Chattarji’s Just Looking in the current issue of Out of Print received much interest and attention.  We are delighted to share with you the blurb of her latest novel, Land of The Well, soon to be released by Harper Collins India.


It is Goa in the monsoons. A shy and lonely teenager finds himself drawn towards a group of holidaymakers. In their midst is Momo, the woman he would do anything to be close to. As if sensing his willingness, the group spends the day ‘testing’ him before pronouncing him worthy of their friendship and their disclosures about themselves.    

Challenged by his new-found friends to provide an answer to the riddle of their condition, the boy tells them the story of the Land of the Well. Expecting praise and further acceptance, he is horrified when the outcome is an alienation more extreme than he has ever faced before.

A novel that examines this age of anxiety, wherein the bodies of the young and successful break down in ways that mirror their innermost traumas, Land of the Well walks the line between reality and delusion, between treachery and trust.




Monday, May 28, 2012

Canada's litpop awards

Hello, readers. Announcement of the litpop awards:


The POP Montreal International Music Festival and Matrix Magazine have joined forces to bring you Canada's most innovative and exciting literary competition. We are looking for writing that makes ears ring and throats hoarse. If you have what it takes, you will get your work published in Matrix, and get free travel to POP Montreal for a night in your honour.

The winners, one from each category, will receive a round-trip ticket to POP Montreal from September 19-23, 2012, a VIP pass to the Pop Montreal Festival, free accommodation at a bed and breakfast, fall publication in Matrix Magazine with full honorarium, and presentation at a special Matrix Litpop event during the festival.

Submit by July 1, 2012. Winners will be notified in August. Poets are asked to send no more than 5 poems; fiction and non-fiction writers should send stories of no more than 3000 words. Full contest rules and regulations can be found at popmontreal.com and matrixmagazine.org/litpop.

The POETRY judge is Ken Babstock, the author of Methodist Hatchet (Anansi 2011) and Airstream Land Yacht (Anansi, 2006) winner of The Trillium Prize for Poetry, finalist for the Governor General's Award, The Griffin Prize for Poetry, and The Winterset Award. Earlier collections include Mean, winner of The Atlantic Poetry Prize and The Milton Acorn Award, and Days into Flatspin, winner of a K.M. Hunter Award and finalist for the Winterset Prize. All three books were listed in The Globe and Mail's Books of the Year. His poems have won Gold at the National Magazine Awards, appeared widely in anthologies in Canada, The US, and Ireland, and have been translated into French, German, Dutch, Serbo-Croatian and Czech. 

The FICTION judge is Melanie Little. Her debut book, the story collection Confidence, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award and named one of the Globe and Mail's Top 100 books of 2003. Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Scribner's Best of the Fiction WorkshopsOutskirts: Women Writing from Small PlacesCertain Things About My Mother, and Nerves Out Loud, as well as in magazines including The Malahat Reviewsub-TERRAINPrairie FireEventThe Fiddlehead, and Books in Canada. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the Globe and MailOttawa CitizenGeorgia StraightVancouver Sun, and National Post. She is a past winner of the Writers' Union of Canada Short Prose Competition and the Periodical Writers' Association of Canada Journalism Award. Little holds a Masters of Arts in English Literature from the University of Toronto and is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, where she served as an editor of PRISM International. She is now the Senior Editor with Anansi Press.