Despite these lazy summer months, book stuff persists – and I’m grateful for it. I was more worried about Bats or Swallows being greeted with thudding silence than bad reviews, and so every little nod to my little book always makes me happy, especially 9 months after it was first released.

1) Bats or Swallows was long-listed for the ReLit Award, along with many other lovely books. Yay! From the website, “the winner of the ReLit Award receive the ReLit Ring, which features four moveable dials, each one struck with the entire alphabet, for spelling words.” Cooool.

2) I’m excited about this reading at Drawn & Quarterly on August 17.

(Isn’t the poster great?)

From the invite:

Fiction Funnies at Drawn & Quarterly
featuring Katrina Best, Cordelia Strube and Teri Vlassopoulos
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Drawn & Quarterly Store, 211 Bernard O
Doors at 7 p.m, Free!

Three fantastic fictioneers read, discuss role of humour in writing. Montrealer Katrina Best’s first book of short stories, Bird Eat Bird, recently won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book. It’s a funny, smart, offbeat and insightful collection that explores themes that are equally parts poignant and hilarious. Cordelia Strube, author of the Giller longlisted Lemon, is a Montreal native now living in Toronto. Her novel features a teenager trying to survive high school with three (sort of) mothers, one deadbeat dad, one cancer-riddled protege, one tree-hugging stepbrother and a 60% average. And Teri Vlassopoulos is the author of the short fiction collection Bats or Swallows, shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, stories told with grace, wit and a bold and original eye for comedic detail.

Here’s the Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=165551930185370

3) This is due entirely to searchbots, but this entry at reference.com for R.E.M.’s song “Country Feedback” includes my book as a “related article”. It delights me to no end. (Humour me. As Michael Stipe might say, I need this.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Book, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.