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17 October 2009
This evening Mark will be flying to Spain, and for the next week he’ll be based in the Catalan city of Girona. The LiberPress cultural organization has chosen him as winner of the 2009 LiberPress Prize for international writers. Previous recipients include Ryszard Kapuczskinski and Jon Lee Anderson. The award honours authors from anywhere in the world whose work reflects humanitarian values.
29 August 2009
Mark is delighted to say he will soon be joining McGill-Queen’s University Press as an acquisitions editor. The job is on a three-day-a-week basis, which will still allow him to write books. (There will be a drastic reduction in the amount of journalism he produces.) McGill-Queen’s publishes high-quality trade books in the humanities, arts and social sciences as well as academic titles.
27 August 2009
The official launch of Camp Fossil Eyes will be held on Saturday, Sept. 19, at 3 pm. Come and meet Mark at Babar en Ville, a terrific bookstore for children located on Greene Ave. in Westmount.
Other events relating to Camp Fossil Eyes — a talk in the Books and Breakfast series, a reading at the Montreal Children’s Library, another at the Redpath Museum — will take place through the fall and winter.
17 August 2009
Surprisingly enough, Camp Fossil Eyes — a book which is resolutely about the etymology of English — has just been sold to a publisher in Seoul for a Korean-language edition. Thanks to Annick Press for their enterprise.
12 August 2009
Mark’s article about Jack Kerouac appears in the latest issue of The Walrus.
21 July 2009
Camp Fossil Eyes: Digging for the Origins of Words is now available. It’s a book aimed at 9-to-13-year-olds (and their parents, of course) who have an interest in language. Mark chose not to write it in a conventional way, but to use the techniques of ‘creative non-fiction’ so as to create a lively reading experience. In other words, it doesn’t just deliver information; it tells a story.
The book is illustrated by Kathryn Adams, and available in both hardcover and paperback editions.
27 June 2009
“Efenechtyd,” a poem Mark wrote last Christmas, has just been published in one of Canada’s leading literary magazines, The Malahat Review. Check out the current issue at http://web.uvic.ca/malahat/issues/167.html
2 April 2009
The April issue of Canadian Geographic contains “Mixed Blessings,” Mark’s feature article about Métis identity. The research for it took him to Saskatchewan, Winnipeg and Ottawa. For the moment, only a short excerpt is available online.
But you can read a full online version of “Sandland,” his travel piece about the astonishing and fragile dunes of northwestern Saskatchewan. The article appeared last month in Canadian Geographic Travel. Go to: http://canadiangeographic.ca/travel/travel_magazine/mar09/athabasca_sand_dunes.asp
30 January 2009
Mark is about to fly to England, where he will be giving a talk at Magdalene College, Cambridge, on the subject of “Landscape and Language.” The talk is part of the college’s year-long Festival of Landscape. Magdalene is a riverside college with a remarkable history. Among the many writers associated with it are Seamus Heaney, C.S Lewis and Samuel Pepys.
While in England, Mark will also give a poetry reading at Lauderdale House in north London, and take part in a conference on contemporary language use at St. Francis Xavier College in south London.
3 November 2008
After giving writing workshops at John Abbott College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue earlier this week, Mark is getting ready for more speaking engagements in November: in Hudson, in Kahnawake and in Sutton.
29 September 2008
Mark will be writing occasional essays and reviews for “The Rover,” a new website of arts and culture published by Marianne Ackerman and based in Montreal. Visit http://roverarts.com
26 June 2008
Mark gave a keynote talk at the opening banquet of the Association of American University Presses (AAUP). “American,” in this sense, includes “Canadian.”
20 June 2008
Mark’s new book The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches From the Future of English has just been published in Canada, Britain and the United States. The book is a wide-ranging look at language change and its impact on how we read, write, think and live. It has already won praise in both the New York Times and The Times (London).
15 May 2008
The Americas Society in New York hosted the launch of a special Canadian issue of its journal Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas. Mark guest-edited the creative work in that issue, which includes contributions by such distinguished writers as Michel Tremblay, Don McKay, Camilla Gibb, Robert Bringhurst, Lawrence Hill and Ying Chen. Mark was in New York for the launch. If you’d like to know more about Review, you can visit http://as.americas-society.org/publication.php?id=52
1 May 2008
Mark took part in the launch of a special issue of The New Quarterly, edited by Katia Grubisic and focussing on Montreal writing. One of his recent poems, “Poppy Men,” is included in the issue. The launch occurred during the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal. To learn more about the festival, please go to http://bluemetropolis.org/Festival
5-8 February 2008
Mark was in Winnipeg, where he gave a reading at the McNally-Robinson bookstore, a talk at the University of Manitoba, and a reading at the University of Winnipeg. He was the guest of one of Canada’s finest little magazines, Prairie Fire. You can visit them at www.prairiefire.ca
28 January 2008
The Guardian published Mark’s most recent essay on endangered languages, “It’s like bombing the Louvre”. The article was reprinted for a worldwide audience in the Guardian Weekly. You can read it online at www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/28/usa.features11
