Black Ink

African-Americans are returning to Paris for their history, culture and a sense of American identity:

Until recently, it was impossible for visitors to the French capital to gain more than a fleeting impression of the city's role in the development of the African-American identity.
But over the last few years a new form of tourism has appeared thanks to growing demand from the educated black middle class in the US.
Several operators are now offering culturally-specific guided tours to open up the rich heritage of Josephine Baker, Sidney Bechet, James Baldwin, Richard Wright and the countless others who came to France to escape the suffocating restrictions of their homeland.

(via BBC)

Who needs Oprah's Book Club to boost book sales when you can shop in the frozen hardcover fiction aisle at your local Loblaws?  At least that seems to be the mentality of Sterling, a suburb in the state of Virginia.  Pocket-size paperbacks are being displayed alongside hardcover books at grocery stores across America in an attempt to lure readers and shoppers alike, the majority of whom are women.  (If this act doesn't smell of desperation, I don't know what does.)
I can now hear the faint sounds of more independent bookstores becoming defunct. 

(via New York Times)

Toronto-based writer Wayson Choy for his novel, All That Matters.

(via CBC Arts)

Bookninja, Bookslut and Maud Newton are all cited in “Word Associations,” and are blogs that I frequently peruse:

So I’m sitting at my desk in my home office/children’s playroom writing and thinking and things are going pretty well and I feel like I’ve finally got the main character of the novel I’m working on sorted out, and I’ve actually managed to write quite a lot and I figure: Dammit, I deserve a break. But instead of taking a stroll to the water cooler, like I imagine people who work in real offices do when they need to literally and figuratively stretch their legs, I open up my Favourites to one of the lit blogs I frequent.

(via CBC Arts)

I'm fully aware that I have not reached the upper echelons of the weblog community, but can you blame a girl for wanting to add a little soul to the literary blogging world?  At first I wondered how I could pull this off.  Where will I find the time to update a blog that would feature more black writers?  Between my shitty part-time job, and freelance writing and publicity projects, I use any chance I get.

It seems that the Calabash  International Literary Festival is growing more rapidly as the months progress, and I'm sure there is much elation on the part of its organizers.  I don't think the literati of the world should ever object to staying at a resort in hot, and sunny Jamaica to discuss literature and music.  (Now if only Saint Vincent and the Grenadines could organize a literary festival of their own.)
My previous post on Calabash mentioned that Austin Clarke and Tessa McWatt, would be among the few Canadian writers at the festival.  Well, Toronto poet Dionne Brand has been added to the list of presenters who will be attending the festival:

Jamaica's Calabash fest draws writers and tourists


Calling all writers, or those who just want to be among the literati.

Come to Jamaica for the fifth Calabash International Literary Festival, a free, three-day gathering on the island's undeveloped south coast. Writers and musicians from around the world come here to share their work, perform and lead seminars for new and experienced writers.

Calabash started five years ago when Jamaican writers Colin Channer ("I'm Still Waiting," "Passing Through") and Kwame Dawes ("Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius") decided that the Caribbean region needed to celebrate its literary talents. They have said they envisioned Calabash becoming a "festival of choice for some of the world's most gifted artists."

It only would seem fitting that the UK's Orange-Prize winning author Andrea Levy would also make an appearance at the festival.

(via Philadelphia Daily News)
(read more here)

A 1975 English translation of Farewell, Babylon: Coming of Age in Jewish Baghdad by Iraq-born Montreal author Naim Kattan has been reissued and is reviewed by writer Andrew Kett in the Quill and Quire:

Farewell, Babylon: Coming of Age in Jewish Baghdad

Naim Kattan, Sheila Fischman, trans.; $22.95 paper 1-55192-799-3, 222 pp., 5 1/2 x 8 1/2, Raincoast Books, May 2005

 

Over a lengthy career, Iraq-born Montrealer Naim Kattan has written more than 30 books of fiction, poetry, and criticism, for which he has received a cache of awards, including France's Légion d'Honneur and the Order of Canada. Still, he has been only sparingly translated into English. Farewell, Babylon was first published in 1975, and it well deserves this reissue in it's original English translation.

The book is about growing up as a Jew in Iraq during the 1940s and '50s. Kattan's Baghdad is a hot, quarrelsome city beset in equal parts by fear and desire. Its politics are frantic, its street life a mystery. Jews, Muslims, and Christians are suspended in a faltering balance. For Kattan, this clash of neighbourhoods and cultures is childhood: the terror of Farhoud, listening to the roaring mob of Nazi-sympathizers drawing near, waiting for their home and neighborhood to be destroyed; peeking from behind a closed shutter at the strange violence of Sbaya; the obscene difficulty of understanding a young woman, and finding love, despite hostile manners and oppressive custom.

(read more here)

Bad News:
Remiscent of the 1995 Quebec Referendum, it appears as though our province is throwing another temper tantrum and there is a 54 per cent chance that Canada could literally fall apart.

Good News:
The organizers of the gritLit Festival based in Hamilton are accepting submissions for their short story contest.  Read the guidelines carefully.