Dear Friends,
Take a look at the lovely article about The White Space Between and my recent Trepman talk at the Jewish Public Library.
Thanks to The Canadian Jewish News for doing the piece and to the JPL for having me.
Here's the link:
http://www.cjnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18139&Itemid=86
Friday, December 4, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
YOUNG WRITER'S WORKSHOP: REGISTRATION OPEN
WHAT’S THE STORY?
A fiction workshop for young writers
Work intensively with an award-winning, professional novelist and short story author on developing your craft and your own portfolio of stories. Find out how to tap into your richest, deepest material and crack open your stories. Supportive peer critique and the instructor’s critical expertise will help you to get to the next level in your writing. In addition, you will create new stories during class, stimulated by fun catalysts and springboards. We’ll break short story craft down into its key elements, such as voice and point-of-view, (who’s talking?), character (who’s who), action (what’s happening?) dialogue (let’s talk), and setting (where it’s at). In addition, the workshop leader will discuss a few ideal markets for young writers.
This workshop is open to Secondary I, II, & III students from any secondary school. Held at Lower Canada College, 4099 Royal Ave., NDG, Room/L308
Eight Weeks, Thursday afternoons, January 14-March 4th, 4:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m.,
Workshop fee: $200, payable to the instructor, which will reserve your place:
Ami Sands Brodoff
4401 Rosedale Avenue
Montreal, QC H4B 2G8
For more information, please contact Ami at: (514)-481-5270, ami-sands@sympatico.ca.
Ami Sands Brodoff is an award-winning novelist and short story author. Her latest work, the novel, The White Space Between, about a mother and daughter grappling with the impact of the Holocaust won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction. Ami is also the author of a volume of stories, Bloodknots, short-listed for the Re-Lit Award and the novel, Can You See Me? which focuses on a family struggling with schizophrenia. An excerpt of that book was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Ami has won fellowships to Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, The St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Malta and writes for The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, The Gazette, and national magazines. Visit her website at Amisandsbrodoff.com, as well as her blog: chez-ami.blogspot.com
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Pics from the JPL Reception for The White Space Between
Enjoy these pics, taken by my daughter, Rosamond, at the reception following the Paul Trepman Memorial Lecture at the Jewish Public Library on November 18th, where I spoke about the tension between void and voice,when honouring Holocaust Remembrance, read excerpts from The White Space Between, and shared slides from our own memory book: images of our lost extended family, their home village of Slatinskedaly in Czechoslovakia, and maps of the area at key points in history.
Thanks to the JPL for having me!
Thanks to the JPL for having me!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Please Join Me on Nov. 18th for a Special Event!
I am pleased to invite you to join me at the Paul Trepman Memorial Lecture Series where I will present an illustrated book talk on my novel, The White Space Between.
I will be introduced by Dr. Lawrence Knight, Associate Professor of
Medicine, McGill University, and want to express my thanks to the Jewish Public Library for their kind invitation.
Jewish Public Library, 5151 Cote Ste-Catherine Road, 7.30 pm Wednesday November 18
Sponsored by the Paul Trepman Memorial Lecture Fund of the JPL and of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Between the sheets
Not the paper ones we writers scribble on, the ones you put on your bed.
As the nights turn crisp, and twilight blues earlier than usual, I change my crisp cotton sheets to flannel. Upon arriving up here in Montreal during a dark, bitter, damp, rather bleak November a decade ago, I made a trip to Matelas Bonheur and treated myself to two sets of flannel sheets: one in cornflower blue, the second in mint green.
I've stretched and tucked my blue sheets onto the bed, downy and soft with a knap like fleece, deliciously warm and cozy. Like a fine wine, they only get better with age.
During these beautiful bracing fall mornings and nights, I find I want to spend more time in bed...reading, sleeping, lounging. Perhaps like some of my brothers and sisters in the trade, I will even take up writing in bed. Who knows? My sensuous comfort may help me crack open those stories. It's worth a try.
As the nights turn crisp, and twilight blues earlier than usual, I change my crisp cotton sheets to flannel. Upon arriving up here in Montreal during a dark, bitter, damp, rather bleak November a decade ago, I made a trip to Matelas Bonheur and treated myself to two sets of flannel sheets: one in cornflower blue, the second in mint green.
I've stretched and tucked my blue sheets onto the bed, downy and soft with a knap like fleece, deliciously warm and cozy. Like a fine wine, they only get better with age.
During these beautiful bracing fall mornings and nights, I find I want to spend more time in bed...reading, sleeping, lounging. Perhaps like some of my brothers and sisters in the trade, I will even take up writing in bed. Who knows? My sensuous comfort may help me crack open those stories. It's worth a try.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Best? Why Not Favorite?
As autumn draws in around us, we are deluged with literary media about the storm of literary prizes offered here in Canada: The Giller, The Governor General, The Writer's Trust, and on it goes to dozens of smaller, provincial prizes. Each prize claims to honor "the best." But what does "best" mean? When it comes to art, to literature?
To my mind: very little. I dislike this idea of ranking literature as Consumer Reports ranks cars or fridges or blackberry devices. This ranking only diminishes. The beauty of art and literature is that it is like falling in love, people vary in their tastes, these tastes are highly subjective. I find that redeeming, comforting, as a novelist. (And as far as my own oeuvre goes, there are those who love my work and those who hate it, though a strong reaction of any kind is a compliment to me, as I believe powerful fiction should shake one up, move a reader from one place to another.)
Of course, there might be agreement in what consitutes a masterpiece, or a piece of dreck, but even here...I've witnessed differences of opinion.
Clearly, an award can help an unknown author get on the radar. In my own career, winning The 2009 Canadian Jewish Book Award for my recent novel, The White Space Between,certainly helped me garner more readers, more reviews, more events, more respect. And being short-listed for The Re-Lit Prize for Bloodknots, also helped that volume of stories get out there. Writers more than anyone else know, it is all too easy for a book, a novel, a volume of stories, a collection of poetry to drop like a smooth stone to the bottom of a black pond.
However, I hate to see writers writing with THE AWARDS front and center. I don't believe it will produce powerful or original work, just as trying to write to trends leaves the author always one step behind.
Writers, please write what you want to write...and keep that day job or rich spouse or lover or live frugally if you can. Write what is inside you. Write what obsesses you, what keeps you up at night, what you can't stop thinking about. And stop thinking about those prizes. Think about that next enveloping story, that indelible character whose voice you hear inside your head, that image that opens out and unfolds....
To my mind: very little. I dislike this idea of ranking literature as Consumer Reports ranks cars or fridges or blackberry devices. This ranking only diminishes. The beauty of art and literature is that it is like falling in love, people vary in their tastes, these tastes are highly subjective. I find that redeeming, comforting, as a novelist. (And as far as my own oeuvre goes, there are those who love my work and those who hate it, though a strong reaction of any kind is a compliment to me, as I believe powerful fiction should shake one up, move a reader from one place to another.)
Of course, there might be agreement in what consitutes a masterpiece, or a piece of dreck, but even here...I've witnessed differences of opinion.
Clearly, an award can help an unknown author get on the radar. In my own career, winning The 2009 Canadian Jewish Book Award for my recent novel, The White Space Between,certainly helped me garner more readers, more reviews, more events, more respect. And being short-listed for The Re-Lit Prize for Bloodknots, also helped that volume of stories get out there. Writers more than anyone else know, it is all too easy for a book, a novel, a volume of stories, a collection of poetry to drop like a smooth stone to the bottom of a black pond.
However, I hate to see writers writing with THE AWARDS front and center. I don't believe it will produce powerful or original work, just as trying to write to trends leaves the author always one step behind.
Writers, please write what you want to write...and keep that day job or rich spouse or lover or live frugally if you can. Write what is inside you. Write what obsesses you, what keeps you up at night, what you can't stop thinking about. And stop thinking about those prizes. Think about that next enveloping story, that indelible character whose voice you hear inside your head, that image that opens out and unfolds....
Thursday, September 24, 2009
O.K. Into the Fray
So, is it all rubbish?
CanLit or Victoria Glendenning's remarks about our culture and literature here in Canada?
First off, I do think some of her comments were meant as affectionate teasing. Yes, they were ill-timed and in bad form, and a tad condescending(Brits from the former empire can be that way, after all, they are British),BUT, we might demonstrate a bit of a sense of humour about such remarks, demonstrate that we have a sense of humour up here in the North Way, about ourselves.
Is there a grain of truth in what she says? Yes. Does the truth hurt? More than anything.
Indeed, some of CanLit suffers from the QUIET genre of meditating upon the past, complete with granny's letters, if not from the Ukraine, perhaps from some cold corner of Canada, where nothing happens and there is nary any sex, drugs, or rock 'n roll, but everything is cozily P.C. Yawn. I've had to read and review some of these books.
But, there are many outstanding Canadian novelists who do not fit into this soporific genre. Take almost anything by Newfie Kenneth Harvey, the wonderful novel by Gil Adamson, The Outlander, a new daring collection from my adopted hometown of Montreal, Animal, from Alexandra Leggat, The Night is a Mouth, Lisa Foad,the first novel by Camilla Gibb, Mouthing the Words, and the work of Kanuk Nancy Huston, yes, she lives in Paris and writes in French, but she is nonetheless Canadian.
I'm sure there are more. Many.
In the meantime, please let's learn not to take ourselves so horribly seriously. Life is too short, forgive the cliche from this author.
CanLit or Victoria Glendenning's remarks about our culture and literature here in Canada?
First off, I do think some of her comments were meant as affectionate teasing. Yes, they were ill-timed and in bad form, and a tad condescending(Brits from the former empire can be that way, after all, they are British),BUT, we might demonstrate a bit of a sense of humour about such remarks, demonstrate that we have a sense of humour up here in the North Way, about ourselves.
Is there a grain of truth in what she says? Yes. Does the truth hurt? More than anything.
Indeed, some of CanLit suffers from the QUIET genre of meditating upon the past, complete with granny's letters, if not from the Ukraine, perhaps from some cold corner of Canada, where nothing happens and there is nary any sex, drugs, or rock 'n roll, but everything is cozily P.C. Yawn. I've had to read and review some of these books.
But, there are many outstanding Canadian novelists who do not fit into this soporific genre. Take almost anything by Newfie Kenneth Harvey, the wonderful novel by Gil Adamson, The Outlander, a new daring collection from my adopted hometown of Montreal, Animal, from Alexandra Leggat, The Night is a Mouth, Lisa Foad,the first novel by Camilla Gibb, Mouthing the Words, and the work of Kanuk Nancy Huston, yes, she lives in Paris and writes in French, but she is nonetheless Canadian.
I'm sure there are more. Many.
In the meantime, please let's learn not to take ourselves so horribly seriously. Life is too short, forgive the cliche from this author.
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