Brick is edited by Michael Helm, Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding, Linda Spalding, and Rebecca Silver Slayter
News & Events
Brick’s Summer Blockbuster
Brick’s summer issue hits newsstands in a few short weeks, and with nearly sixty contributors, it’s going to be a doozy. In it, Francine Prose, John Irving, Madeleine Thien, Colum McCann, C. D. Wright, Elizabeth Hay, Kamila Shamsie, Pico Iyer, Sheila Heti, Jan Zwicky, and many, many more share their favourite endings with you. You’ll also find poetry by Jim Harrison, John Freeman, and Ben Lerner, essays by Linda Spalding, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Tom Mayer, Isabel Huggan, Di Brandt, and Kilby Smith-McGregor, new writing by David Young and George Elliott Clarke, and interviews with Julian Barnes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Ben Lerner, and Tsitsi Dangarembga.
So don’t let this glorious issue pass you by. If you haven’t yet subscribed to “the best literary publication in North America” (Annie Proulx), get thee to our order page. You can also pick up Brick in bookstores around the world—check out this list to find your local Brickseller.
Brick Contributors up for National Magazine Awards
Huzzah! Two Brick contributors are finalists for National Magazine Awards: Patrick deWitt, in the Fiction category, for his short story “The Looking-Ahead Artist,” and Robin Benger, in the Sports category, for his piece “On Cricket.”
Read an excerpt of deWitt’s story right here, and stay tuned for Benger’s piece on cricket!
In the Land of Birdfishes
Editor Rebecca Silver Slayter’s debut novel, In the Land of Birdfishes, is now out from HarperCollins and garnering some pretty swell reviews. Like this one in the Winnipeg Free Press. Congratulations, Rebecca!
Sharon Olds Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
Hearty congratulations to contributor Sharon Olds! After winning the 2012 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize in January, Olds was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection Stag’s Leap.
“I’d Ask Him for It,” a poem from Stag’s Leap, first appeared in Brick 87, and you can read it right here on our website. So please, take a moment and enjoy!
Oh, the Places Brick Goes!
Brick is getting to be quite the globetrotter, with booksellers from Cape Town to Canterbury, Mumbai to Madrid adding it to their bookshelves. A few kind readers have shared their pictures of some of the displays Brick 90 has graced. Go to our gallery to take a look.
If you get inspired, we’d love you to join in the hunt for Bricks in the Wild. Email your photos to liz@brickmag.com, and we’ll send you a Brickbag to show our thanks.
Brick Recommends: Interview with Colm Tóibín
If you missed this December 2012 Fresh Air interview with contributing editor Colm Tóibín, take some time this weekend to give it a listen. When we heard it here at Brick headquarters, we loved how Tóibín was in talking about his life and work and the way he defended the novelist’s right to invent. Spanning everything from what it felt like to write the real, painful details of death by crucifixion to experiencing beauty in the Catholic Church and Leonard Cohen, this is a conversation well worth listening to.
From the Archives: Brickseller Interviews
Over the past couple of years, we’ve had the pleasure of chatting/emailing with a handful of passionate, dedicated booksellers from around the world about their Brick-carrying bookstores. If you missed these interviews the first time around, here’s a chance to dip back into the archive for conversations that will give you reason to cheer for the future of the book business.
City Lights Books, San Francisco
Type Books, Toronto
Do You Read Me?!, Berlin
The Booksmith, San Francisco
Mac’s Fireweed Books, Whitehorse
Is there anyone else you’d like to see us interview? Email your suggestions to liz@brickmag.com.
Books for Brains Contest Winner
Congratulations to Kathleen Downie, winner of this edition of the Books for Brains contest. We asked readers to use the word “apostasy” in a sentence, and Kathleen submitted this one:
Her head submerged in the waters of the mikvah, eyes wide open while the Rabbi intoned his prayer, marked at once her apostasy and renewal.
The Publishers Group of Canada/Grove Press will be sending Kathleen a copy of Jim Harrison’s new book, The River Swimmer. Thanks to them and to everyone who entered. If you missed this contest, we’re still looking for pictures of “Bricks in the Wild.” See Bricolage 9 for more details.
Brick Recommends
Sean Michaels, whose piece on the Paris underground from Brick 85 won a National Magazine Award, posted this short video document on Twitter, depicting the bi-annual casteller competition in Tarragona, Spain. If you haven’t seen human-castle builders in action before, watch and be amazed. Watch as they exert a gargantuan amount of effort to stay as still as possible. Watch and exclaim when their structures—their bodies in concert—falter. Wonder why they do this, then find yourself answering your own question before the video’s through.
—Laurie Graham
Cities of Refuge Coming out in the U.S.
Next month, to our great excitement, editor Michael Helm’s Cities of Refuge is coming out in the U.S. from Tin House Books. The novel, a national bestseller in Canada and a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2010, will now be available to our readers south of the border. Check out the starred review in Publishers Weekly and start the countdown...
