17 Nov. 2011

Mark has been invited to give the keynote address at the Saskatchewan Book Awards, to be held in Regina next April. He’ll also be travelling to Winnipeg in March to take part in an Anne Szumigalski Festival there, and to launch A Woman Clothed in Words, a book of Anne’s posthumous writings in several genres. 

3 Oct. 2011

Mark writes: “Much to my own surprise, my 2003 book Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages takes up a good chunk of a column in today’s Irish Times. Here’s a link to prove it: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2011/1003/1224305144608.html

23 Sept. 2011

On Thurs. Sept. 29, Mark will be delivering the annual Priestly Lecture at the University of Lethbridge, and then travelling for a few days in southern Alberta. (The university didn’t even exist when Mark was a little boy in the Lethbridge of the mid-1960s.) His topic: “Imagination and the power of language.” 

25 August 2011 

Mark’s poem “Mother and Son” appears in the August 19/26 issue of the Times Literary Supplement (not available online).

20 August 2011

The Gazette asked Mark to write an article in its ”Transformed by Travel” summer series. You can find his article about San Francisco at http://www.montrealgazette.com/columnists/kinder+gentler+America/5281569/story.html

19 June 2011 

You can read Mark’s regular columns on language use in the Montreal Gazette by following this link: http://www.montrealgazette.com/columnists/Mark_Abley.html

22 April 2011

Today is the 12th anniversary of the death of the poet Anne Szumigalski, who was Mark’s most important mentor when he was young. Mark has edited a new volume of her work, A Peeled Wand: Selected Poems of Anne Szumigalski, which is being launched this week at McNally-Robinson booksellers in Winnipeg. The book is published by Signature Editions. Hopefully it will refurbish and restore Anne’s reputation as one of the most original, eloquent and risk-taking of all Canadian poets.

14 April 2011 

Mark is proud to be part of an international network of writers and artists whose work will be published in early 2012 by P.M. Press in Oakland, California. The work in question is an anthology entitled Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. It’s a homage to the bookselling community of Baghdad, which was destroyed in March 2007 when a suicide bomber detonated an explosive on the street, killing booksellers, writers, book buyers and bystanders alike. Mark’s contribution is an essay on a medieval Iraqi manuscript, beautifully illustrated, of a medical text that was originally composed in Moorish Spain; the manuscript went from Iraq to Iran and England before finally arriving in Montreal.

The anthology is edited by Beau Beausoleil, a poet and secondhand book-dealer in San Francisco. For more information, check out the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=85909663901

9 March 2011 

On March 16, Mark will bid farewell to the Pointe Claire Public Library — where he has served as writer-in-residence for the past six months — by hosting a reading of work by 11 local writers. Most of them are people he has worked closely with since September. The residency has been a tremendous success, allowing Mark the chance to help aspiring or already accomplished writers with their non-fiction, young-adult fiction, poetry, children’s writing — even an entire SF novel in French.

17 Feb. 2011

Mark’s poem “The Next” appears in the current issue of Prairie Fire, one of Canada’s liveliest literary magazines. It’s a tribute to his friend Madeline-Ann Aksich, who died of cancer several years ago at the age of 49.

12 Nov. 2010

Next Monday, Nov. 15, at 1 pm, Mark will be speaking to young readers at the Montreal Children’s Library about words and their surprising history.

10 Nov. 2010 

Tomorrow night, Nov. 11, Mark will be reading his poems at Montreal’s oldest and funkiest literary coffee-house, The Yellow Door. Admission is only $5. The evening begins at 7:30 pm.

15 Sept. 2010

Today Mark begins a six-month stint as writer-in-residence at the Pointe Claire Public Library. Until mid-March he will be in the library three times a week, at certain designated hours, meeting writers from Montreal’s West Island and helping them with their work.

29 Aug. 2010 

Mark’s extended review of the novel Toby: A Man, by Todd Babiak, appears in the Sept. 2010 issue of Literary Review of Canada. Here’s a link to the issue in question:  http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2010/09/#toc

31 July 2010 

A new honour for Camp Fossil Eyes — Mark’s latest book for young readers. It’s one of a small number of Canadian books chosen to appear in the next edition of the White Ravens Catalogue. In the world of children’s publishing, this is quite a coup:

“Each year the language specialists at the International Youth Library (IYL), in Munich, Germany, select newly published books from around the world that they consider to be especially noteworthy. This list of books is compiled into the annual White Ravens Catalogue, which is introduced each year at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair. The White Raven label is given to books that deserve worldwide attention because of their universal themes and/or their exceptional and often innovative artistic and literary style and design.”

4 May 2010

Mark’s review of two new books — one on language death, the other on language change – appears in the May 7 issue of the Times Literary Supplement.

29 April 2010 

The Editors’ Association of Canada have asked Mark to give a speech at the banquet of their annual conference, being held this year in Montreal. The event will take place on May 29. For more information, go to http://www.editors.ca/conference/conference2010/index.html

March 29 2010 Again this year Mark will be returning to the Banff Centre to lead a non-fiction workshop in the “Writing With Style” program. It runs from April 18 to 25.11 February 2010 Mark’s language columns in the Montreal Gazette will now appear every two weeks in the weekend edition. While it’s sad to leave the friendly confines of the Books pages, they had become more and more confining — the result of persistent budget cuts and space cuts. “Watchwords” can now be found in the Extra section of the newspaper and, of course, online at the Gazette’s website.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