Xofa Xmas

Chris has a short piece of holiday fiction in today's Coast. Thought I'd share it and wish all happy holidays. Click the image below to read the story.

May we have peace, love, joy, justice, sustainability, creativity and healthy communities in 2011.

Suokojamin/Benautio Family

Book Tour Video

This is a highlight reel from my recent book tour. I had fun making it and revisiting all the joy of celebrating a new book in the world! Hope you enjoy it too:





Chris

Drive-by Saviours is Apparently Essential

Exciting news all - Drive-by Saviours made the Canada Reads longlist of "Top 40 Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade."

And we the people will decide which books make the top 10 list. You only get one vote.

If you want to vote Drive-by Saviours, just go to Canada Reads and click the circle next to Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin, scroll down and click the vote button. You have until Nov 7 - but really why wait until Nov 7 what you could do right now?

Btw, here is the Top 40 list, and there are some damn fine books there. What say you, dear reader? What books should have made the list but didn't. Any on the list that you don't think are so hot?

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

Bottle Rocket Hearts by Zoe Whittall

Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright

Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant

Conceit by Mary Novik

Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

Drive-by Saviours by Chris Benjamin

Elle by Douglas Glover

Essex County by Jeff Lemire

Far to Go by Alison Pick

February by Lisa Moore

Galore by Michael Crummey

Heave by Christy Ann Conlin

Inside by Kenneth J. Harvey

Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill

Moody Food by Ray Robertson

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

Room by Emma Donoghue

Shelf Monkey by Corey Redekop

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki

Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb

The Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

The Birth House by Ami McKay

The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre

The Bone Cage by Angie Abdou

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Fallen by Stephen Finucan

The Girls Who Saw Everything by Sean Dixon

The Last Crossing by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Stone Carvers by Jane Urquhart

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie MacDonald

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden

Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden

Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr.

Unless by Carol Shields

Thanks,
Chris Benjamin

Doing the Bookstore Hustle

I met Ivan Prokopchuk the other night, in person. He's long been one of the most colourful personalities I've met as a blogger, and a character who consistently captures my imagination.

But there he was in the Lula Lounge, in full colour, three dimensions, in the flesh, across the table from me with his book, The Fire in Bradford, in hand. "I'll show you mine if you you show me yours," he grinned.

[That's me in the pink shirt, reading to an enthusiastic crowd at the Lula Lounge.]

But with Another Story Bookshop on hand selling Drive-by Saviours I didn't have any swap copies. The swap had been my suggestion, but with all the insanity of travel, visiting family and friends, organizing book launches and an Eastern Canadian book tour, I'd forgotten. I promised to send Ivan a copy in the mail and he gave me his book, shook my hand and heartily congratulated me. And he was gone, making way for the next in line.

It was one of a series of surreal encounters I've had lately with old friends. The support has been overwhelming - people I haven't seen in years, people I've only met online, have come out to my two book launches in Halifax and Toronto to celebrate my accomplishment.

And now, writing from a friend's home in East Toronto, planning to head up to Kent Bookstore in Lindsay Ontario in a few hours for another reading and more old friends (and to meet a boisterous one-year-old), I'm feeling a deep easy happiness in that willingness to celebrate what others among us do.

At the same time, I ache for my wife and son, who flew back to Halifax yesterday morning at about crack o'clock, and I long for my own bed where I could properly nurse this worsening cold. Suddenly I'm a lone drifter again, something I missed and didn't expect to experience again so soon. Last time I was a young man, full of abstractions and equipped with an eager pen and ink-hungry notebooks. It all seems a little more businesslike this time - I'm a drifter with a mission, a product to move. I feel like a huckster with a money-bulge in my pocket.

That's not a complaint. I'm loving meeting people, sharing my art with them, and experiencing their kind and enthusiastic responses - their questions, comments and cash. Living the dream for me has moved beyond sloganism and into reality.

Upcoming Readings, Book Launches, and Media Clips

Hi folks,

First, a huge thank you to everyone who came out to the Halifax book launch on Wednesday. We crammed more than a hundred people into the Company House (with a stalled line out the door at one point) and Bookmark sold out the 60 copies of Drive-by Saviours it brought. (Sorry to those who didn't get one, but stores are well stocked and you can buy online here). It was so heartwarming to have all those great people out to celebrate my book and hear great local music and reading.

On Saturday, Sept 25, 7:00 pm, I'm presenting the Percy Prize for best unpublished Atlantic Canadian novel (the award I won in 2008) at the Jane Buss gala. It's at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth. Should be fun.

Then on Sunday I'll be reading at the Main Stage at Word on the Street Halifax, Victoria Park, at 11:30am. I'll be sharing the stage with Russell Smith, so it should be interesting. And I'll be signing books all day at the Roseway/Fernwood booth.

On Monday I leave for my book tour. Some of the dates have changed so please take a look at http://www.chrisbenjaminwriting.com/chris-benjamin-writing-blog/updated-book-tour-schedule-for-drive-by-saviours to see when I hit your town. And a few more Nova Scotia readings will be added later so I'll keep you posted on that.

In the meantime I've already had some fun media coverage. You can hear my interview on CKDU's Book Club at http://129.173.68.249/20100921.13.30-14.30.mp3. I come in at 22:00 minutes (about 1/3 of the way through), and it gets cut off at the end, but it gives you a good chunk of it.

Also, I got to go on haligonia.ca this week with Silver Donald Cameron. We interviewed each other about our new books. The clip is up at http://live.haligonia.ca/halifax-ns/soundbites/16248-sound-bites-a-meeting-of-literary-minds.html.

Aside from the novel, I have a couple other publications coming out this fall. First is my short story, The Law Won, which will be in the literary journal Descant's prison issue. If you're in Toronto you can attend the launch at Revival (783 College Street) on Wednesday, Oct 06, 2010, 7:30 p.m. But I won't be there - I'll be up in Lindsay reading. However, Hurricane Rubin Carter will be there, and it's a shame I'll miss the chance to meet such a passionate advocate for justice. You can learn more about the issue at http://www.descant.ca/issues/d150.html.

My short story, Gifts from the North, also appears in a new anthology out this month, called Airbourne, published by Third Person Press in Cape Breton. The launch is on, wait for it...October 6, 6:30-8:30pm, at the McConnell Memorial Library, 50 Falmouth Street in Sydney, Nova Scotia. More on the Airbourne Anthology at http://www.thirdpersonpress.com/.

Happy reading,
Chris

My Big Day Downtown

I was given $100 by the Downtown Halifax Business Commission to spend on anything I wanted, as long as I documented the experience publicly. I, naturally, chose books. Here's a video (shot by Miia, edited by me, with music by my brother) of the experience:

Book Launches & New Video

The Halifax launch of my novel, Drive-by Saviours, will be September 22 at The Company House on Gottingen St. We'll likely kick things off around 7 pm, but I'll confirm that later. There will be live music and likely some spoken word. Here's hoping we get half of Nova Scotia in there!

Second, the Toronto launch is tentatively booked for October 4 at the Lula Lounge on Dundas West, so if you're in Toronto please mark that on your calendar. I'm still working on the music (if anyone has any ins with hot Toronto bands please let me know) but I'll keep you posted.

Also, thanks to a grant from the Province of Nova Scotia I'll be doing a book tour starting right after the Toronto launch. I'll be hitting Peterborough, Port Hope, Kingston, Ottawa, Montreal, Fredericton, and Charlottetown. If you know any good bookstores or other reading venues (libraries etc.) between Toronto and Halifax, please let me know about them.

Lastly, here's a new video on the themes of the book (ecology, international development, helping professions, indigenous cultures, Western culture, individualism, collectivism, community, Canadiana, Indonesia, and immigration).



Hope to see you all at a launch or reading soon.

Drive-by Saviours Trailer

Hi folks, here's trailer I made (with help from my brother) for my forthcoming novel:

Novel News

I've been quite busy with the novel lately, first doing final edits then thinking marketing. To that effect, I've created a myspace page and put up a clip of me reading from the novel there, as well as some fusion-y music my brother created for a trailer we're working on. Click my face below to listen to those:
I've also created a website for the book. Below is what the cover will look like. Click on that for the website (not a lot of content there yet but stay tuned for some video I'm working on regarding the book):


The publisher, Roseway (an imprint of Fernwood), also has a website for the book. Click the Fernwood logo to see that site:



Lastly, I've been remiss with posting my columns. Here are the last three, respectively called Coastal Disaster, Population Bomb, and Lorincz on Environment:

Drivin and Fishin and Farmin

Hi folks, below you can click the pictures to read my last four stories in The Coast - they each have to do with transportation or fish.

I also have a piece in this month's Rural Delivery Magazine about the struggle to legalize chickens in Halifax. It's not online but if you live in Canada you can probably find one at any store with a good magazine rack.

Happy reading!

-CB

If Earth Day Mattered

Hi folks,

Bit more news on the writing front. My short story, Your Mental Superhero, will be published this fall in the Airborne Anthology by Third Person Press. Amazingly, this makes 6 short (literary) stories of mine slated for publication this year, in addition to my novel. When it rains...

Also, my annual earth day rant is up at The Coast - click the picture below for that:


Also, click this next picture for a recent column on an inspiring movement toward real change, one town/neighbourhood at a time:


-CB

Writing Stuff

Hey folks, great news:

Yesterday I signed a contract with Nimbus Publishing to write my first nonfiction book, which is currently titled Green Soul: a tour through the lives of Atlantic Canada's sustainable trailblazers. It will come out in September 2011.

Also, I've been doing some writing on Silver Donald Cameron's new project, The Green Interview. It's a subscription website but if you're keen to be a smarter mammal I highly recommend it. The site features one-hour interviews with the most brilliant, radical thinkers of our time (including the man who sounded the climate change alarm, the woman who fights bio-pirates in India, and the man who fights illegal whaling operations worldwide). Click the picture below to take a gander:


Speaking of Green Interviews, I interviewed Jim Merkel, author of Radical Simplicity, when he was in Nova Scotia last week. You can see my column on him by clicking this picture:


And, uh, here are three other columns I didn't get a chance to post until now:

1) War on Earth: Against the people's wishes, governments and the war industry choose destruction over protection:

2) Gas tax dodge: Sin taxes on driving, meant to be spent on green initiatives, are instead going to build more roads:


3) More Jobs Per Green Buck: If the Nova Scotian government seeks to bring balance to the budget, it must let the funds flow to green infrastructure:

Delia and Phil

Hi folks,

I'm excited to announce that my short story, Delia and Phil is now available from Rattling Books as an audio download read by a great Newfoundland actor, Charlie Tomlinson, who did a great dramatic job with the reading.

You can download it (for $2.95). Just click on the picture below and download directly once there.
(The story is about half an hour long).

Happy reading!
Chris

Five Things

Hi folks, five things:

1) My short story, "It's Muhammad", placed third in the Atlantic New Cultures writing competition. They'll be putting the story up on the website at some point.

2) A short arts piece about a new social justice literary award, which I wrote for The Coast - it was late hitting the website but here it is:3) My column, Wasting Away, about the astounding amount of time, energy, money and natural resources we throw away in the form of perfectly good food - all part of a very sick food system - is at

4) My column on high cancer rates and environmental exposures is up at:

5) Is Sable Island National Park a natural disaster waiting to happen? Find out more at:

Cancer Rates & Environmental Pollutants in Communities

Why to Ban Pesticides

A Bunch of Recent Publications

I've been remiss about posting my publications here lately, so here's five of them in one go, in case you missed them and were having trouble sleeping at night. Click the picture to get the story:

1) Control Your Technology: Excessive dependence on technology impacts stress, productivity and the environment [published in Your Workplace Magazine]:


2) Round and About: Halifax's most notorious intersections aren't so bad on a beautiful winter's day at noon, but should we be investing in safer alternatives? [published in The Coast]

3) Biomass Mess: Professors make recommendations that could turn NS into a renewable energy maven, including one that could moonscape the province in the process [published in The Coast]

4) Branding the Environment: If environmentalists don't change mainstream hearts and minds, they won't make a lick of difference [published in The Coast]

5) Tragedy of the Common: If the Common is so Common, why can't common people decide how to use it? [published in The Coast]

Top 11 Albums 2009

Here are my 11 favourite albums from 2009. Mind you, these didn't necessarily come out last year, that's just when I got a hold of them. The bolded ones are the best of the best:

1) Tracy Chapman, Our Bright Future - The first half of this album features some really new sounds from her, almost like folk-lounge music. The second half is a bit of a let down but the first half carries it.

2) K’naan, Troubador - On the flipside, the second half of this album is really innovative hip hop with brilliant storytelling. The first half is a lot slicker than his first offering, and a bit plain. But the second half is worth the wait.

3) Luke Doucet, Blood’s Too Rich - Took a few listens to get into, but Luke's a phenomenal guitar player and his music is a tonne of fun.

4) Joel Plaskett, Three - Oh man this guy has a gift for catchy riffs and hooks, and this is his magnum opus - a trilogy detailing his departure from, exodus away, and return to Nova Scotia. Amazing backup vocals from some of the province's finast female vocalists, sweet harmonic blend.

5) Bop Ensemble, Between Trains - Saw this "Canadian folk music super group" at Stanfest. I'd never heard of any of the members, but they are indeed super. I guess they literally recorded this between trains, so it's got a good jam feel, yet the songwriting and talent of the performers gives it polish.

6) Brett Dennen, Hope for the Hopeless - My favourite musical discovery of the year is California's Brett Dennen, lovechild of Bob Dylan, Bob Marley and Ron Sexsmith. Highly political lyrics with a folkish reggae backbeat.

7) Rolling Stones, Let it Bleed - One of those classic albums you think maybe you should own, and then you hear it and you wonder how you lived without it.

8) Martha Wainwright, I Know You’re Married but I’ve Got Feelings Too - Raunchy folk-signer who is way better than her more famous brother.

9) Mary Margaret O’Hara, Miss America - Another classic you should really, really own.

10) Metric, Fantasies - I was surprised by this album, how good it is, kind of transports me to a funkier universe while I type my missives.

11) Cat Power, Jukebox - Powerful sultry vocals covering some great but mostly lesser known American country/folk/blues numbers from the last half century.

16 Best Movies I Saw in 2009

Here is a list of the 15 best movies I saw last year, in no particular order. The best of the best are in bold. These movies didn't necessarily come out last year; that's just when I saw them:

1) Milk - In many ways a typical biopic, but I knew little of Harvey Milk before seeing it and it was a very well acted, entertaining way to learn about an important political figure in the movement for gay rights.

2) Hamlet 2 - I thought I'd had enough high school comedies, but Andrew Fleming was perfectly bizarre enough to flip the whole genre on its head without even mucking much with the formula.

3) Frozen River - My favourite kind of movie: simple, well-told story (about two desperate women who get involved in human smuggling across an Indian reservation straddling the USA and Canada), with plenty of suspense.

4) God Grew Tired of Us - Emotionally powerful, sometimes funny documentary about some of the "lost boys of Sudan," who in this case make it to the USA and experience tremendous culture and economic shock in the land of excess.

5) Che Part 1 - Documentary-style story of Cuban guerillas fighting their way to take the capital, led by Che Guevara as portrayed by Cannes best actor Benicio Del Toro. It has a similar feel to Battle of Algiers - raw realism without a lot of Hollywood drama, so despite its being a war movie the violence is sudden and shocking. A clear example of show-don't-tell. (Part II will likely be on next year's list.)

6) The Wrestler - Micky Rourke's comeback vehicle got me good - he may be nothing but a busted up piece of meat making bad decisions and big mistakes, but his character rings true and sympathetic, and the tension of his story escalates right to the cliffhanger ending.

7) Pan's Labrynth - This movie creates a convincing world for the young protagonist to rejoice and suffer in, and to grow in ways she can't in the real world of the Franquist repression. Although it is a fantasy with a happy ending, it does honest justice to the hardships and cruelties of the real world, without any cheap preaching.

8) The Tiger Next Door - A heart-breaking movie about a crazy man who raises tigers in Indiana, and sees himself as some kind of animal saviour while keeping them in cages where they get sick. Sadly, he is one of many. The doc lets the viewers judge for themselves.

9) Moolaade - Story of a Burkino Faso village in which young girls and women resist genital mutiliation, heroically fighting cultural tradition and patriarchy. It is a story of heroism that resists the oversimplicity of a good v. evil motif.

10) Darjeeling Ltd - Deadpan funny story of three brothers traveling through India in search of their mother, trying to patch the wounds of their relationships with one another and deal with the death of their father. The deepest of Wes Anderson's movies, except maybe that animated one, called:

11) The Fantastic Mr. Fox - An animated adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's novel. The movie seems geared more to adults, but then Dahl tended to write pretty darkly, and with sophistication, for a children's author. The movie, to me, is a great allegory about the downside of civilization, how it has tamed us at the cost of our sense of place in the world, and our freedom.

12) Goodbye Solo - Straight story of an old guy in Winston-Salem who wants to die, and a Senegalese-American cab driver who wants to be his friend, and maybe stop him from killing himself. The movie is very character-based and shows so much about culture clash, and the joys and regrets of life and living.

13) Jesus Camp - Scary documentary about pentecostal fundamentalists in North Dakota, and their use of a children's camp to indoctrinate. There's very little editorial - the filmmakers just show you the craziness as anti-abortionists and other devout republicans visit the camp and tie politics to religion. It's a fascinating look at the lives of people in the American far-right Christian movement, and how they pass their message on to the next generation.

14) We Feed the World - A documentary about farmers and fishermen, and how the globalized industrialized food system is eating up their livelihoods and their knowledge and their ways of life, and torturing and destroying our food in the process.

15) Bruno - Once again Sacha Baren Cohen made me very uncomfortable, and made me laugh very hard. Making people uncomfortable is his gift, and the viewer gets to see how people react in comic and often twisted ways. We criticize because we know he's showing us how shallow and intolerant we really are, when we'd rather pretend we're not.

16) Addicted to Plastic - Great documentary follows plastic around the world from cradle to grave, including the massive "plastic islands" accumulating in our oceans. It stays with you and makes you re-consider every purchase.

Pesticide Ban

Nova Scotians and Nova Scotia lovers: please click the image below. It will take you to information about Nova Scotia's proposed ban on lawn pesticides, and instructions on giving feedback to the Province. Please do so, and tell them the proposed ban is the best idea since the Bluenose; okay, even better than the Bluenose. Tell them lawn pesticides are a big health and environmental risk with little or no benefit to society. Many thanks,
CB

Quit & Start Over

Click the picture to see my column about the New Year's resolutions that saved my soul and may have helped the planet. David Suzuki won't go there:

Best Books I Read Last Year

Below is a list of the 11 best books I read in 2009. These books weren't necessarily published in 2009; that's just when I read them. These are in no particular order, but my top four are in bold text:

1) Nisa, the Life and Words of a !Kung Woman - by Marjorie Shastak; An engrossing antrhropological account of a group of !Kung San hunter-gatherers in the Kalahari desert, full of lessons that civilization continues to ignore.

2) Resistance - by Derrick Jensen; This is volume II of the two-volume Endgame, and it argues for the forceful dismantling of civilization. Needless to say it is provocative, if not an argument I've been able to get behind. Jensen is also a great writer of personal narrative.

3) The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith - by Peter Carey; Carey creates a convincing and telling slightly alternate universe and a great twist on the nerd done good genre, in which the plucky kid with immense physical challenge is also a hard-to-love know-nothing brat.

4) Lost Highway - by David Adams Richards; He has an unusual, rambling kind of writing style that goes to great lengths to rationalize the morally ambiguous, leaving you sympathetic to the most dastardly and confused as to what is right. This is my favourite by him so far, a work of art.

5) Dust From Our Eyes - by Joan Baxter; The straight truth on what rich countries have done to Africa, and the resilience and beauty of that continent, by a journalist who has spent much of her adult life reporting from there.

6) Through Black Spruce - by Joseph Boyden; Some of the best, tautest prose I've ever read, such beauty in a bleak tale. The best book I read last year.

7) Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - by Barbara Kingsolver; Fantastic personal narrative of a locavore family growing their own food, and the challenges and joys therein.

8) Nova Scotia: Visions of the Future - edited by Lesley Choyce; For full disclosure I had a chapter in this book, which I loved reading mainly because it revealed the depths of talent in this province, and the brilliant array of ideas. I hope all the newly elected officials read it, and the old bureaucrats too.

9) The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss - by Claire Nouvian; The gorgeous images of deep deep aquatic life in this book look alien because we are so unfamiliar with what lies beneath. Many of them can't be studied out of water because they explode when removed from the extreme pressure of the deeps. And there are countless more species down there yet to be seen, let alone understood. I felt like a kid again reading this book, full of the excitement of new discovery.

10) Amphibian - by Carla Gunn; Nine-year-old Phin Walsh is the narrator, and he's all wound up in knots over the destruction of the earth. Despite the adults' best efforts to reassure him, his logic is indisputable. How I wished I could stamp his earnest, honest lack of cynacism on every adult.

11) Imani's Music - by Sheron Williams; This is the first kid's book I've ever put on a best of list, but then I probably read more kids books last year than anything else. The writing is superb and the tale is complex, weaving in the transatlantic slave trade in a way kids can understand (as well as anyone can) without being trite, and exploring the immense power of music, culture and tradition.