Quill & Quire Speaks to Esplanade Editor Dimitri Nasrallah about Revamped Fiction Imprint

Turning the Page at Esplanade

When Esplanade Books relaunches this spring, Véhicule Press’s fiction imprint will be publishing more authors under a wider mandate. For the past year, new Esplanade editor Dimitri Nasrallah and co-publisher Simon Dardick have been working to curate a list that aptly represents the imprint’s revitalized vision.  This new list represents a clean start for Esplanade’s second decade, balancing fearless debuts and internationally lauded authors as it straddles Canada’s two official languages.

We’re honoured to be publishing the first collection of stories by Croatian writer Josip Novakovich since he was named finalist for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize and became a Canadian citizen. Heralded by the Kirkus Review as “the best American short-story writer of the decade”, Novakovich arrives at Esplanade with a formidable international reputation already in hand, but no Canadian publication record to match. Novakovich’s first Esplanade title, Ex-Yu, will appear this fall. A second collection is due in 2017.

Novakovich is in the good company of Québécois writer Éric Plamondon. Author of the 1984 Trilogy, which includes the novels Hungary-Hollywood Express, Mayonnaise, and Apple S, this contemporary Québécois classic offers a wildly experimental look back at the twentieth century through the lens of Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller, counter-culture author Richard Brautigan, and Apple mastermind Steve Jobs respectively. The translations are being undertaken by Esplanade editor Dimitri Nasrallah and will be published between 2016 and 2018.

Plamondon was first published by the innovative Quebec house Le Quartanier, with whom we’ve cultivated a productive working relationship that has also resulted in the acquisition of Geneviève Pettersen’s runaway bestseller, The Goddess of Fireflies, which has been all the rage in Quebec since it was first published last spring. Neil Smith, author of Boo! and Bang Crunch, is translating Fireflies for publication in 2016. Both Pettersen’s and Plamondon’s novels represent a new pursuit for Esplanade: giving Quebec’s English writers the opportunity to translate the French-language novels to which they feel a deep kinship.

We’ll be kicking off the new Esplanade list with Toronto author Andy Sinclair’s first novel, Breathing Lessons, a deeply provocative and powerful exploration of what modern life can be like for gay men.  Canada Reads finalist Angie Abdou writes, “I’m not exaggerating when I say that Andy Sinclair is doing something no other Canadian writer has done, possibly something no other Canadian writer has dared to do,” while Giller Prize finalist Marina Endicott writes, “Sinclair’s ferocious and straightforward prose bares a broken, still-open heart searching for something better.”

Sinclair’s debut will be followed by Montreal writer Anita Anand’s first collection of stories, Swing in the House. Anand paints a devastating portrait of Canadian families in their most private moments. She pulls back the curtains to reveal the unspoken complexities within the modern home, from sibling rivalries to fracturing marriages, casual racism to damaged egos.

Our 2015 list rounds out with Sheila Fischman’s translation of Jacques Poulin’s brilliant novella, English Is Not a Magic Language.  Best known to English readers as the author of the classic Volkswagen Blues, which was a finalist for the 2005 edition of Canada Reads, Poulin is enjoying something of a revival lately, having had three of his last English translations published by the esteemed American house, Archipelago Books.

Dimitri Nasrallah
Editor, Esplanade Books

Robert Wiersema reviews Stopping for Strangers

"Stopping for Strangers is a collection unified in quality, but eclectic in approach. There are echoes of other writers here (Promise for example will remind readers of the gritty minimalism of the late Raymond Carver, while The Last Great Works of Alvin Cale is reminiscent of Alice Munro), but Griffin is resolutely and clearly his own writer...Stopping for Strangers is the finest debut collection of short fiction I have read since Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting in 2010: My praise doesn’t get any higher than that.”

—Robert Wiersema in the Victoria Times-Colonist

Advanced Praise for Daniel Griffin's Debut

Stopping for Strangers, Daniel Griffin's short story collection is due this Fall, under the Esplanade imprint. Griffin's story, The Last Great works of Alvin Cale, was a finalist for the Journey Prize in 2009; and he was published in Coming Attractions 08. His debut collection has garnered some high wattage advanced praise:

"This fine fine collection evokes echoes of the plain and piercing voice of Raymond Carver. These stories upended me: they are strong, surprising and full of heart. The size of the soul looms large in Daniel Griffin’s writing." — David Bergen

"Griffin’s at his best when he explores the intricacies and heartaches of family relationship and crisis. Here, in Stopping for Strangers, I believe we’re witnessing the emergence of a future master. " —Gail Dargatz Anderson

Singh Makes Telegraph's Top New Novelists for 2010

Ahead of Bloomsbury's March release of Chef, Jaspreet Singh has made it onto the Sunday Telegraph's list of the Top New Novelists of 2010. Chef was originally published by Esplanade Books/Vehicule Press in 2008. Congratulation Sahib!

The potato head of a peasant

Monique Polak, writing in the Montreal Gazette on Saturday, raved about Vehicule Editor Andrew Steinmetz's new novel Eva's Threepenny Theatre. The book is based on the story of Steinmetz's great-aunt Eva who appeared in the first workshop production of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Threepenny Opera, in 1928 (on the right is a 1926 portrait of Brecht by his friend Rudolf Schlichter).

Eva’s Three Penny Theatre is about many things, including memory, the history of theatre, life in pre- and post-war Germany and complicated family dynamics, but the real star of this book is Eva herself. Spirited and clever, Steinmetz’s Eva is also a masterful storyteller with an eye for detail. Consider her description of the poet-playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose path crossed hers in 1928, when, at the age of 16, Eva performed in the first workshop production of Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera: He had, she recalls unabashedly, “the potato head of a peasant.”

Read the rest here.

Photo of the day

April 26, 2008. Photographer John W. Macdonald says: "Jaspreet Singh stands just outside the Manx Pub on Elgin Street in Ottawa just prior to his reading [from his QWF shortlisted novel, Chef]. He was later introduced to the pub crowd by Esplanade Books editor, Andrew Steinmetz." See more photos from the insanely talented JWM here.

Three is a charm!

The media can’t get enough of award-winning author Andrew Hood.
The weekend edition of The Globe & Mail included the Top Five of 2008 by First Fiction editor Jim Bartley. Hood’s offbeat short story collection, Pardon our Monsters, ranked 3rd.

Jim Bartley writes: “From geeky pubescence to the storms of adulthood. Andrew Hood taps emotional aquifers. As you sense the reservoirs in yourself, he unexpectedly makes them gush.  One or two of these stories rival our best: transparent conductors of Hood’s wisdom and our human plight.”

Congratulations Andrew!

Hood on Baseball and the Canadian Disposition

Andrew Hood talks to Ghostrunner on First in this exchange on baseball, the Canadian disposition, our inner monsters, violence in sport, John Olerud and Samantha Fox. About Pardon Our Monsters, Ghostrunner says, 'The collection reads like a veritable roadmap of the maturation-with-great-reluctance process. Various stages and ages are represented, but the interactions and feelings always ring true. ' Read more here.