A Bit of Self-Promotion

My new book.



What I looked like when I was reading from it in Toronto last Thursday at Ben McNally Books.



A few people who came to the launch.


(Left ro right, Charmaine Tierney, Matthew Tierney, Carmine Starnino, Lucca Starnino, George Varkonyi, Alex Boyd, Liz.)

Please help these big lugs feel welcome

Andrew Steeves (the hunk on the left) and Gary Dunfield (the he-man on the right) run Gaspereau Press, our Atlantic colleagues (and my own publisher!). They -- or rather their award-winning Kentville, Nova Scotia press -- has just joined the blogosphere. As one of the few publishers in the country that prints and binds their own books (an in-house ethic that now extends to making paper), I suspect the blog will be well-worth visiting. For some background on Gaspereau, here's a great interview with Andrew from 2007. Money quote:

If the physical book is going to survive into the next century against the onslaught of digital alternatives, publishers need to invest in their physicality. If we don't offer well made books, books where the media matters and is part of the overall experience, well, we may as well be reading off a screen. While I would be just as happy to never see another tree used to print a telephone directory or reference book, the physical book still has a role to play in our culture and is worth the investment of a tree or two.

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.

Steinmetz goes Underground

On his blog Underground Book Club Michael Bryson discusses Esplanade editor Andrew Steinmetz's genre-bending new book

"Eva's Three Penny Theatre doesn't explore redemption. It is a better book because it avoids this Christian, post-Freudiean cliche. Television talk shows may "make good TV" by providing simple solutions, but literature serves itself best when it avoids this commercial imperative. Steinmetz's exploration of his family's history, and the way he has chosen to frame those stories, reveals a depth of humanity that would have failed to come through if he'd sought the simple theme."

Steinmetzmania

There's a great interview over at The Danforth Review with Vehicule's Fiction editor, Andrew Steinmetz on his new novel, Eva's Threepenny Theatre (Gaspereau, 2008)