As Halloween approaches, that moaning, rustling sound you hear in the bookstores could well be copies of Best New Zombie Tales, Volume One and Volume Two—a pair of top-notch anthologies of zombie yarns—shuffling off the dark and unholy presses of Toronto’s Books of the Dead Press. The zombie anthologies are sure to cause mayhem on your bookshelf and, more importantly, in your mind.

Books of the Dead is the brrrraaaain-child of writer James Roy Daley, author of The Dead Parade (released in limited edition hardcover this week). “After achieving a modest level of success I began thinking about starting up a little publishing company,” he says. “Nothing major , just something to fool around with. I didn’t follow through with the idea because the temptation to publish myself was too strong. But then I wrote a couple more books and I signed a few more book deals and my thinking began to change. I knew that I didn’t need to publish myself, and that other companies would be willing to do it for me. But I still wanted a little company; you know, for something to fool around with.”

Daley felt a connection with horror from a young age; he describes the genre as “that thing I grew up on, that friend mom says is a bad influence.” He recalls that some of his earliest memories include enjoying Steven Spielberg’s Jaws in the living room while his parents discussed whether he was old enough to be watching it. He also remembers the movie adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot as a formative genre experience. “I remember being absolutely captivated by ‘Salem’s Lot late one evening, alone in my brother’s bedroom, the feeling of terror consuming me as Ben Mears and Mark Petrie made their into the basement of the Marsten house, weapons in hand, danger all around them. I could hear my family in the room below me—safe, secure, acting as if everything was normal in the world. For me, it wasn’t,” he says. “I had a pillow covering half my face, my knees were curled up to my chest, and my heart pounding clean out of my body as the goosebumps on my arms tried to crawl from my skin and hide in the corner; I couldn’t believe the images on television could be so intolerably wrong. And I loved it. Oh boy, did I ever.”

It seems fitting, then, that, when he came to develop his press, Daley decided to focus on horror—and the project grew as quickly as any army of the living dead. “After I came up with the idea for the Best New Zombie Tales anthology, I put together another proposal and sent it off to one of the publishers that I had been working with,” he says. “Before they had a chance to respond, I realized that I wanted to release the book myself. Within a few weeks I had hundreds of submissions rolling in. And with that, Books of the Dead Press was born.”

What does he think makes a good zombie tale—or any story, for that matter? “As an editor I look for well-written stories that have a clean narrative,” says Daley. “I don’t enjoy stories that are bogged down in pointless description, nor do I take pleasure in an overly ‘literary’ story that fails to engage me as a reader. I sure don’t mind a clever phrase or an interesting string of words, but when I read a page or two and it’s an absolute chore to read, I know the story is not for me. Literary gymnastics in place of a solid story is like having an ear-splitting guitar solo plunked on top of what would otherwise be an okay song.”

The lineup of talent showcased in Best New Zombie Tales is impressive, including a number of Bram Stoker Award winners such as Kim Paffenroth, David Niall Wilson, and Kealan Patrick Burke, along with British Fantasy Award nominee Rio Youers. How did Daley get so many diverse and solid writers on board? “This might seem strange,” he admits, “but after my submission period ended I simply sent out an invitation to some of my friends and writing peers, asking if they’d like to be involved in my company. The fact that I’d been paying my dues as a writer for the last few years helped a great deal.”

The zombie genre has shifted a fair amount over the past decade or so, with the rise in popularity of both the Zombie Walk and the zombie comedy, but Daley sees the greatest shift in terms of zombie literature. “Ten years ago there wasn’t any,” he says. “Sure, you can argue that Frankenstein is a zombie novel, Pet Semetery, too. And yes, there was the odd book that came along like Serpent and the Rainbow by Wade Davis, and John Russo’s Night of the Living Dead, but zombie literature, for the most part, just started taking off recently.”

Another big shift of the last ten years, of course, is the increasingly rapid movement of traditional print media into the digital world. Given the way things are going, why did Daley choose to start up a small press at this time? “Right now we are at a crossroads,” he concludes. “Ninety-nine percent of the tech-savvy people that have joined the digital revolution will never go back to spending money on a paperback book. However, there’s a large percentage of the book-reading community that is yet to embrace the new technology. I suspect that most of them will embrace it when they feel the time is right, but until then, they’re sticking with old faithful. For this reason I’ve been releasing my books both digitally, and in the paperback format.”

And Daley has a lot on his plate in both media: “I’m currently editing Best New Zombie Tales Volume Three, Best New Vampire Tales Volume One, and a collection of my own stories,” he says. “The working title is 13 Drops of Blood. I’ve also been talking with a few different people, trying to work out contracts. Pretty soon I’ll be opening my doors to novel submissions, but I haven’t done so yet.”

Finally, with two zombie anthologies under his belt, where does he stand on the issue of slow zombies versus running zombies? “I like them fast,” he says. “And slow. No…I guess I don’t have a preference.”

Lichtman’s, Albert Britnell Books, This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, Pages—the casualty list from the book retail wars is laden with fallen champions of the indie bookstore. So it was with that sad roll call in mind that the Canadian Booksellers Association’s Independents’ Day campaign, which aims to strengthen the link between communities and their independent book stores, touched down on Saturday at Another Story Bookshop on Roncesvalles.

There was no gloom from owner Sheila Koffman, whose store has survived in a retail environment where Costco sells books as loss-leaders. “Personally, I haven’t felt extremely threatened by the big-box stores,” she says. To survive and thrive, the indies need to embrace specialization—as Another Story has with unconventional children’s and young adult titles—rather than expect to be able to compete directly with superstores. “The big guys will always lower the prices,” as she puts it. “I feel that the best thing for an independent bookstore to do is to have their niche market; we can’t be everything to everybody. Chapters and Indigo may try to be that, but they aren’t really. I’ve been in discussions with other independent owners and the consensus is that we have to find the books that the chain stores don’t necessarily carry but are really great and that we can promote. I think there are still a lot of really passionate readers, and we see them.”

After morning appearances from Mayor David Miller, promoting his Witness to a City, and Viola Desmond Won’t Be Budged author Jody Nyasha Warner, there were readings from the latest works by veteran writers Cordelia Strube and Michael Winter. Strube’s Lemon carries the acid-humored legacy of Salingerist teenage outsider skepticism into the digital era, while Winter’s The Death of Donna Whalen traces the grim path of a real-life St. John’s homicide, dramatized from case details and the public record.

The scene inside Another Story Bookshop

With two incisive novels by two charismatic authors the event was really more of a happening than a reading. Strube channeled the caustic verve of her protagonist’s inner monologue, post-millennial kid nuances and all, before facilitating an ad-hoc seminar on youth reading and writing culture. Winter mostly eschewed his own text and instead riffed on Maritime criminal justice with a raconteur’s flair and a stand-up’s command of the room.

“If you look in a big box store you’ll see more candles and soap,” Strube said afterwards while discussing her affection for independent book stores, places where she says they put your book in the window because they like it, not because a publisher has paid for it to be there. “I’ll never forget going into a megastore and asking somebody if they had [James Fenimore Cooper’s] The Last of the Mohicans, and they said, ‘There’s a book? I only know about the movie.’ The people working there aren’t necessarily into books, they’re just trying to make a living, so there’s none of the familiarity or sharing of information that you’ll find in a small independent bookstore.”

Author Cordelia Strube talks books with the crowd.

Winter agrees with Strube’s assessment: “The thing about independent bookstores is that the people who own them and the people they hire as employees have a real connoisseur’s taste for literature. They know the books; they love books.” Still, he’s open-minded about the future of book retailing. The prospect of formless e-books doesn’t put him off. “I think there’s a kind of humility that might come from that,” he reasons. “I remember asking somebody what they were reading on one of those e-readers and they said, “Oh, I can’t remember the name of it,” and I asked who wrote it, and they said, “Um, I can’t remember the name of the author, but it’s really good.’ So they didn’t know the author, didn’t know the name of the book – they were just reading, voraciously. And that’s kind of admirable: just read this—I don’t know who wrote it or what it’s called, but it’s really good.”

Author Michael Winter signs a non-electronic book.

The MADE window display celebrating the new custom library service at Type.

Building custom libraries is not a new service for Type. They’ve been putting collections together since the flagship Queen Street store opened in 2006, but only recently decided it was time to go public with the service. After all, Type’s proven that building libraries is not just for people with money to spare and time to kill. High schools have turned to Type to amp up their art history section. Architecture firms have come to Type in order to keep their offices’ collections up to date. Engaged couples have registered for a his-and-hers dream library. Academics stop by to make sure they’re up to date in their field of research. If you’ve got the dream (and the cash) Type’s got the know-how to make your library happen.

McCormack will oversee the service and he promises that despite the official announcement, the public service will be as loose and personal as it has always been. “I’m here to steer people toward the good stuff and keep them away from the not-so-good stuff,” he explains. “It’s about finding what the client wants, but to also introduce them to stuff that is new and unexpected and fits into their tastes.” So whether you want a library that contains everything Freudian, Impressionist art, or simply the colour blue, Derek and company will find it for you.

The service does come with a price, but if you’ve got the funds to build an entire library we’re pretty sure the nominal (and negotiable) fee won’t bother you. And Type isn’t afraid to hook you up with an interior designer, architect, or any other service you may want—all you have to do is ask.

So go ahead and build the library of your dreams. Just be sure to let us borrow a book when you’re done.

The custom library service will officially launch this evening at Type Books (883 Queen Street West) from 7-8:30 p.m. with a presentation by MADE’s Shaun Moore and Julie Nicholson, who designed the excellent window display.

“It was a wise man who said that comic book movies function as $20 million advertisements for graphic novels…and in the case of the Scott Pilgrim series it is certainly true. According to Oni, the six-book series now has one million copies in print—in North America alone, making it (along with Bone and the works of Alan Moore) one of the biggest graphic novel success stories of the modern era.”

Now, perhaps, you’ll consider answering Vanity Fair‘s call to go and pay to see the movie? Aw, heck—remember the library? Go take the books out there if you don’t believe me.

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Drawn and Quarterly and Top Shelf are both having some pretty fantastic sales, too. Techland has the scoop on the companies’ 10 best books to pick up. I recommend Far Ardern from Top Shelf, and Masterpiece Comics from Drawn and Quarterly myself.

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Probably the biggest news break this week has been the announcement that Chester Brown has finished his new graphic novel, which his publisher Drawn and Quarterly is setting up for a spring 2011 release. The title will be called Paying For It, and like much of Brown’s groundbreaking (and controversial) work, it will cover some very personal and autobiographical ground dealing with sexual taboos. The novel apparently explores Brown’s very long relationship with a sexworker he’s been seeing for over 20 years. Brown has long been a propoenent of safe, consentual, sex-worker conditions, and this work will look at some of his ideas about the nature of sex and relationships, and the nature of intimacy. It all sounds very revealing (ahem). Some insights into Brown’s philosophy on these issues can be found here and some further commentary here. I’ve heard reports that the faces of many people in the work have been left blank, which should only add more mystery and resonance to Brown’s presentation of his case. As the publisher says, it’s bound to be one of the most talked about graphic novels of 2011. I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

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This year’s cover of The Best American Comics—edited by the very famous Neil Gaiman—was drawn by Toronto’s own Michael Cho. It is a beautiful and compelling cover, and the irony that the cover celebrating America’s best comics is done by a Canadian is certainly not lost on us. Mr. Dalton Sharp tells me that two of the featured artists—Cho and Dave Lapp—appeared in Taddle Creek‘s comic issue. As Mr. Sharp pointed out ot me, this demonstrates that a well-edited small anthology can punch above it’s weight class. Good on editor Conan Tobias.

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Speaking of small-press powerhouses, celebrated new publisher Anna Koyama of Koyama Press is interviewed by David Hains at Canada’s Comics News and Culture blog, Sequential.

“As a kid I read and loved Little Lulu, Nancy, Archie, Peanuts and some superhero comics,” Koyama says. “My uncle had Pogo comics so they were around too. I didn’t read them again until Calvin and Hobbes came out. I got back into comics because I found and loved Michael DeForge’s art and when I approached him to work together, we decided to publish his Lose comic. I credit him with introducing me to the work of a lot of current comic creators.”

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Speaking of Mr. David Hains and Sequential, he also recently interviewed the New Narrative and Visual Arts coordinator, and University of Toronto instructor, Andrew Lesk on the syllabus for Lesk’s second-year course offering, ”The Graphic Novel, at U of T:

“Most reactions deal with the perceived difficulty of a work. This usually doesn’t surprise me (eg, Eddie Campbell’s The Fate of the Artist), but in other instances it does (eg, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan). I suppose that I think that in university “difficulty” is something to be expected, even anticipated. Perhaps some of that difficulty arises, though, in that many students aren’t schooled (no pun intended) in how to read art. Even texts as presumably self-evident as Watchmen can be remarkably complex, especially in its artwork.”

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When local artist and teacher Dave Lapp is not protecting Toronto citizen’s civil liberties by documenting the Black Bloc during Toronto’s G20 summit, he is collecting some very good reviews with his Children of the Atom collection, winning some very strong praise from such places venues as The Comics Journal and Seen Magazine. From the Comics Journal review:

“With these influences and references so clearly on display, it’s astonishing that Lapp manages to imbue Children of the Atom with any semblance of originality. However, despite its obvious debt to other strips, it carries a highly original, singular voice. He has managed to hone the rhythm of strip cartooning in such a way that it feels more like poetry than narrative storytelling.”

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And finally, Conundrum Press  announced  June it will publish comics icon David Collier’s next book, which looks at his stint in the Canadian Armed Forces. The book is called Chimo, and Max Douglas of Sequential found a sneak peak from Doug Wright Awards co-founder Brad Mackay (see Torontoist’s interview with Mackay here). Below is a page for your reading pleasure.

The nominated titles—which are all works of fiction this year—are listed below with their respective authors and publishers. The winner receives a cash prize of $15,000, with the other nominees taking home $1,000 each. All of the nominated authors will read at the Toronto Word on the Street festival on Sunday, September 26 in the City of Toronto Tent.

The Prince of Neither Here Nor There (novel for young people), Seán Cullen, Puffin Canada
Valentine’s Fall (novel), Cary Fagan, Cormorant Books
Where We Have to Go (novel), Lauren Kirshner, McClelland & Stewart
The Carnivore (novel), Mark Sinnett, ECW Press
Diary of Interrupted Days (novel), Dragan Todorovic, Random House Canada

On Thursday, September 16, the Beguiling is throwing their friends at video art house UDON a party at the Revival Bar (783 College Street) to celebrate UDON’s 10th Anniversary. There they will officially launch Vent: Volumne One,  UDON’s coffee-table artbook. Doors open at 7 p.m. (FREE), and here’s a few words from their invite. It’s expected to be quite a party, with plenty of  UDON alumni past and present in attendance.

The next two events are back to back on Saturday September 25 at the beautiful Innis College Town Hall, and each feature very rare appearances from figures in the comics world. The first, from 4:30 to 6 p.m., features Torontoian biographer Blake Bell discussing classic comic artist Bill Everett, with a rare appearance by Everett’s surviving daughter Wendy Everett. Bell is launching his exhaustive new critical biography of Bill Everett, entitled Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner & the Birth of Marvel Comics. You can read a sample here. Everett is credited with creating the first of the Marvel anti-heroes, in opposition to the very clean superheroes that dominated the day. Everett, like most famous early cartoonists, was both an enormously talented artist and storyteller whose influence goes far and wide, but is still largely unrecognized. The book offers a great look into the early cut-throat world of pulp fiction and comics publishing, and the artist who survived and thrived within it.

Then, at 7 p.m., prolific French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim will be in Toronto for a discussion and drawing presentation, sponsored in part by the French consulate. Born in 1964, Trondheim is the author of many many French and English language books and is one of the founders of the well-respected French publisher l’Association. He’s been nominated for many awards in the US and Europe, winning (arguably) the most prestigious comics award in the world, the Grand Prix de la ville d’Angoulême in 2006. This event is being billed as a very rare English-language event, not to be missed.

Oh, and Charles Burns, Dylan Horrocks, and Lynda Barry will all be speaking at Toronto’s International Festival of Authors next month. Save your pennies: there’s lots to look forward to.

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In other news, Publisher’s Weekly has a short interview with Vanessa Davis on her new book, Make Me a Woman, released  by Drawn and Quarterly. Here’s a great quote:

I’d read a lot of Crumb too and admired it but it was more of a technical admiration than that it really spoke to my sensibilities. There’s something that annoys me about his perspective on things. I know intellectually that his work was really important and it’s not like I think he’s sexist and I’m offended or anything. His comics are complicated and that’s a really important thing to do in comics, be complicated and not have a simple perspective. I owe a lot to him for that.

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Publisher’s Weekly also has a great interview with one of my daughter’s favourite authors, Dav Pilkey, in which he discusses his new graphic novel series for kids, based on the main characters from his famous series with Scholastic, Captain Underpants. Here’s a quote:

Interestingly, I find it more challenging to draw in the simplified, childlike style of Harold than it is to draw in my own, more refined style. I constantly find myself having to erase and re-draw things because Harold can’t draw as well as I can. But even though Harold’s drawings are more primitive than mine, they still have to be very expressive and convey the proper emotions and actions. It’s far more difficult than it looks to draw in such a simple style, but I really love the challenge.

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Daniel Raeburn has posted all four issues of his legendary comics fanzine, The Imp, online for free download. You can find them here: http://danielraeburn.com/The Imp, by Daniel Raeburn.html

Daniel’s cheeky and very thorough comics references Dan Clowes’ work, Jack Chick’s evangelical Christian comics (which can still be found laying around places today), Chris Ware’s work, and the crazy sub-genre of Mexico’s outrageous “historietas.” Raeburn went on to write for many publications such as The New Yorker and The Baffler, but these works really helped ignite popular, intelligent criticism of comics in the 1990s and are worth looking at today. They are very relavent, and they contain some great writing.

Today we take a bit of a break from our regular comics-artist interview format to catch up on some Canadian comics news. Over at Sequential Ink (Canadian comics news and culture blog), Bryan Munn draws our attention to the passing of Richard Langlois, a trailblazer in French comics criticism:

Richard Langlois, a pioneering historian and scholar of French-language comics, died July 19 in Sherbrooke, Quebec, after suffering from cancer. Langlois introduced the teaching of comics at the college and university levels in Quebec and was responsible for several historical comics-themed exhibits and publications over the last 40 years, as well as working as a comics journalist and critic.

Langlois’ work has helped to shape and define not just what comics are (and were in his own day) but how they could be re-imagined and more deeply appreciated. In my opinion, we owe a great deal of the current appreciation of comics today to tireless writers like Langlois, who began his work 40 years ago.

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We would be at a great loss without Canadian scholar and journalist Jeet Heer, who (among everything else that he does) writes regularly for the wonderful comics blog Comics Comics. Two recent posts caught my attention. In the first, Heer points to the great critical body of work that cartoonists and others have undertaken in the form of the interview (there’s also some wonderful background on the subject via David Hains). In a second piece, Heer examines the nationalism in the works of many Canadian cartoonists, speculating on the reasons for this trend and comparing it to the rest of our national literature:

What is noteworthy is that comics don’t fall into the periodization seen in literature. The sort of nationalist themes that [Russell] Smith’s characters were dismissing as dated in 1998 – small towns, historical figures such as Riel – are in fact a major concern to the best Canadian cartoonists: Seth’s whole body of work, indeed, revolves around such topics, as do the most popular works of Chester Brown and David Collier (who did a fine biographical portrayal of Grey Owl, another Canadian icon).

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Webcomics may come and go, but a webcomic is not created every day by Alan Bunce—or, no, wait, yes it is. Back in 2000, Bunce, formerly a senior storyboard artist at Nelvana and director of Babar: The Movie, decided to self publish his vision of what a children’s comic should be. Shortly after he won that year’s Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award.

This year Bunce is trying his hand at a webcomic version of Funny Forest, at funnyforest.ca. I can’t seem to get enough of it— the work is irreverent, self-referential, meta-comics. It also works as silly slapstick and mad-cap humour. Funny Forest captures so perfectly the joyousness and exuberance of spontaneous comic creation.

Books@Torontoist editor James Grainger spoke about the map with Ben Spigel, who also provided us with a mind-blowing visual that you’ll have to scroll down to view.

Torontoist: How did you come up with the idea of putting together the ultimate Toronto-centric Scott Pilgrim map? How long did it take?

Ben Spigel: I’m actually a geographer by training: I’m a PhD Candidate in the department of geography at U of T and I also did my undergrad here as well. So map-making comes naturally to me. I love Scott Pilgrim for any number of reasons, but what really sets it apart from most other comics is that it takes place *somewhere*. Other comics like Batman and Superman take place in a made-up city. Even comics that supposedly take place in a real place—Spiderman in New York City—just use the urban geography as window dressing. When’s the last time Peter Parker had an argument with Aunt May about where to find the best bagels?

I think I came up with the idea for a map a few years ago, but it was only now, with the excitement of the sixth volume and the movie, that I got around to doing it. My girlfriend Ana helped out immensely, both helping me track down some of the most obscure and hard-to-find places and also with the actual programming of the map.  I think all in all,  it took around 20-30 hours of going through the books page by page, using the annotated notes that the author Bryan Lee O’Malley wrote a few years ago, and abusing Google Street View to track everything down.

Torontoist: Are you anticipating a number of new Toronto locations with the final book?

Spigel: I’m not expecting too many new locations in the sixth volume. There seem to be fewer and fewer with each volume, since the story is heading toward a climax.

Torontoist: Why is your map the best one?

Spigel: There are a lot of great maps out there! I think my is the most obsessive and complete, but that’s because I wanted to combine my twin loves of geography and Scott Pilgrim. The National Post was the first to make a map, but there’s was mostly just the public places, like Dundas Square and Honest Ed’s. Same thing with the Toronto Star, which published a short walking tour of the public locations. The Scott Pilgrim-age, where someone went around and took photos of all the locations is also really great. There are so many amazing interior shots that Google Street View can’t get. What I like about my map is that since I got some other data on the locations, like how many scenes and panels take place at each location, I can make some cool map porn of where Scott Pilgrim does his hangouts (See image below)

"Intensity of Scott Pilgrim per Square Yard" (Ben Spigel)

Torontoist: How do you think the specific geography and culture of Toronto impacts Scott Pilgrim’s world? Could the series have taken place in any city?

Spigel: That’s a hard one. It has to be Toronto because so many of the characters are based off people in Toronto. Its very strange to know people who are both represented in a comic book, and then also in a movie! What surprised me after making the map is that the locations actually make sense. Wallace and Scott’s apartment is close to Steven Stills’ house. One of my assumptions for making the map was that Scott was lazy, so once I found his house, everything else would be in walking distance. I think the comic could have only taken place here in Toronto since that’s what O’Malley knew best at the time. It really is tied in to our urban fabric.

Torontoist:  In general, do you think comics artists more willing to use Toronto (or Montreal or any Canadian locale) as an “overt” setting for their work than, say, novelists and filmmakers? If so, why do you think that is?

Spigel: There are a surprising number of Canadian cartoonists, and I think they’re all very proud of showing off Canada. A city like Toronto is good for cartoonists, because it has a a few really famous buildings (the CN Tower, for instance) that are easy to draw and quickly place their comic. As for movies and novels, more of them should take place here, but I think the key is to really engage with the city instead of just using a few sites as window dressing for a story that could take place anywhere.

Torontoist: How long have you been following the Pilgrim books? Were you in on the series from the start?

Spigel: I’ve been reading it from the get go. If I recall, I accidentally bought the first volume thinking it was by someone else I was following. Since then, my life has been fairly intertwined with the comic. I used to work part time at The Beguiling, where O’Malley used to work and where several of the characters in the book come from. Once you’re part of a community like that, you’re a Scott-o-Hollic for life.

Torontoist: The movie: looking forward to it or dreading it?

Spigel: When I first heard of the movie, I was kind of dreading it. I mean, it’s always hard when something that you love gets picked up by someone else and changed. But after seeing the trailers and some other previews, I am 100% excited. It’s going to be different from the comic, but that’s okay. It’s got a great director and cast, and it really looks like it captured the sprit of the comic, which is the most important thing. The video game also looks simply amazing.

The plight of the indie bookstore continues with the upsetting loss of Toronto institution This Ain’t the Rosedale Library. Throughout its 30-year existence, the shop served as a hip beacon of readerly love, providing a home to Canadian authors, a massive offering of contemporary poetry and small press publications, and an immaculately curated collection of works that covered niches from underground culture to kid lit. While we mourn its loss, we also celebrate its shining tenure as one of the city’s—hell, the planet’s—best independent bookstores.

1979: This Ain’t the Rosedale Library is founded by American expat Charlie Huisken on Queen Street East, following Huisken’s stint as a book monger at Book Cellar, an indie book shop located in a clinging-to-countercultural Yorkville. As its tongue-in-cheek names suggests, the bookstore immediately makes a mark as an alt-culture oasis.

1981: Huisken’s friend Dan Bazuin joins Huisken as business partner. This partnership will last for the next 27 years.

1986: Gord Ames joins as a third business partner, and This Ain’t moves to Church Street, where it will remain a prominent fixture for over two decades. It’s here that the bookstore cultivates its reputation as the place to encounter literary rarities and rub elbows with such iconoclasts as Hunter S. Thompson and William S. Burroughs, who are among the shop’s many distinguished visitors.

1994: Ames departs from his position as business partner, but remains a friend of the store.

2005: The Guardian‘s Jeremy Mercer names This Ain’t as Canada’s best independent bookstore, and one of the top ten bookstores in the world. The newspaper credits This Ain’t with being a model of indie bookstore survival, citing the store’s approach—building a community around the store and providing insight and inspiration for its customers—as being key to its longevity.

2008: Facing the increasingly caviar tastes of their Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, the book rebels at This Ain’t pack up and move west for the third time, finding a new home in Kensington Market. It’s around this time that Huisken’s son, Jesse, joins the ranks as his father’s business partner. Bazuin remains in the picture as Partner Emeritus and continues to remain visible at the store’s many literary events.

2009: Authors at Harbourfront Centre throws This Ain’t a 30th-birthday bash. In true This Ain’t fashion, the event features a plethora of local author readings.

2010: In June, the bookstore suddenly closes due to what the Huiskens describe in two blog posts as part of “a long story about the plight of bookstores in Toronto and in many North American cities,” a consequence of the recession, big-box competitors, and the “predatory pricing of Amazon”—that, and the landlord changes the locks. In a blog post that was initially deleted shortly after it was published, and then put back online once more, Jesse and Charlie write that “we have to accept that the store has no future at this location…. Our only hope is to imagine that the store may reemerge in the long-term.” On July 5, a reading outside the bookstore becomes a bittersweet sendoff to one of Toronto’s literary cornerstones—perhaps forever, or perhaps just for now.

—Kelli Korducki

About the Canadian shortlist Jacob has this to say: ”One never wants to assign too much sociological significance to what three people in a room will do, but it seems like time to pass the torch, yes? P.K. Page is a legend, but nobody believes this is her best book, and the nominaton alone seems like enough posthumous recognition. Passing that torch all the way to Kate Hall also seems unlikely, as no first collection has ever won, and those who’ve previously been shortlisted did so on a lot more hype and momentum than Hall’s surprising little book. So it’s Karen Solie’s year, I think.I don’t believe Pigeon is her best book, but it’s strong throughout, the best among the three, and after years of calling her Canada’s best young poet, it seems like time to back that up with an award, dont ya think?”

Of the international shortlist: “I’ve only read two of these. The International Griffins are really into name worshipping, though, and the biggest one here would be Gluck’s. Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin has a shot as well, but the only thing they like more than big names is Americans. Gluck by a nose.”

For other predictions, coverage, and acts of Griffin punditry check out the Globe, the Post, and the Star.

In other awards news, the shortlists for the Trillium Book Award, along with the nominees for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, were announced on Tuesday. The winners of the Trillium Book Award (one for English, one for French) will each receive $20,000, with their respective publishers each taking home $2,500 to promote the winning title. The Trillium Book Award for Poetry winner bags a cool ten grand, with his or her publisher receiving $2,000. On June 23 the public are invited to celebrate the Award finalists with a group authors’ reading in the Bram & Bluma Appel Salon, Toronto Reference Library, 2nd Floor, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto. On June 24, the Honourable Michael Chan will announce the winners at a Toronto luncheon. Below are the English-language nominees.

Trillium Book Award

Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood (McClelland & Stewart)
Ian Brown, The Boy in the Moon (Random House Canada)
Alexandra Leggat, Animal (Anvil Press)
Anne Michaels, The Winter Vault (McClelland & Stewart)
Alice Munro, Too Much Happiness (McClelland & Stewart)
Emily Schultz, Heaven Is Small (House of Anansi Press)
Cordelia Strube, Lemon (Coach House Books)

Trillium Book Award for Poetry

Susan Holbrook, Joy Is so Exhausting (Coach House Books)
Karen Solie, Pigeon (House of Anansi Press)
Matthew Tierney, The Hayflick Limit (Coach House Books)