Travelling the Met

>> Blue Metropolis celebrates 10 years
of literary festivity and focuses
on travel writing

by JULIET WATERS

This year, the Blue Metropolis literary festival turns 10 years old. Blue Met deserves a lot of credit for lasting this long and for bringing international writers to Montreal, which, because of its language quirks, remains off the beaten track for many book tours.

Over the years, I’ve had my major and minor gripes. The major one was fixed long ago: the well intentioned but ultimately impractical idea of multilingual panels. And whatever my minor ones, I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity to interview my favourite writer, Grace Paley, who died of cancer eight months ago.

Blue Met has brought in other stars right before they faded, notably Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer. It’s brought some in full blaze, like Paul Auster. And some have stopped by just before they took off, like Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian graphic novelist who was nominated for an Oscar last year for the animated feature Persepolis.

This year, Blue Met honours the bestselling and highly esteemed French writer Daniel Pennac, along with over 350 participants in readings, panel discussions, workshops and other events that will be held in eight different languages.

Out of the writers of English literary fiction, the hottest is incontestably Scottish critic and novelist Andrew O’Hagan. Not yet 40, O’Hagan’s novels have been long-listed and short-listed for all of Britain’s major prizes. The opening chapter of Be Near Me, a novel about an Oxford-educated priest drawn into the dark politics of teen life in a Scottish small town, will send resonant chills up any serious reader’s spine. O’Hagan also writes a regular film column for Esquire. He’ll be interviewed alongside fellow Scot James Meek (The People’s Act of Love), who is making his second appearance at Blue Met.

Also returning is American-Croatian short story master and essayist Josip Novakovich (Infidelities). Another multiple U.S. award winner, Novakovich is the kind of dark, funny writer that is typical of the best of Eastern European writing. This year, he arrives fresh from that recent political hotspot, Pennsylvania, where he currently lives and teaches.

The theme of the festival is travel, so those interested in learning more about travel writing may want to book tickets early for a panel discussion on the topic. “On the Road” will feature Canadian travel writers Karen Connelly and Charles Foran, Scottish raconteur Angus Bell, and Dutch novelist Adriaan van Dis. But keep an eye out for other events featuring Montreal writer and former Vice editor Adam Leith Gollner, reading from his first book The Fruit Hunters: A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession.

Speculative fiction fans will no doubt be excited about the presence of Robert J. Sawyer. The massively prolific science fiction writer, editor and publisher could pretty much be a festival in his own right. Best known for his “Neanderthal Parallax” trilogy, about a planet Earth where Neanderthals have managed to survive to modern times, Sawyer is the only Canadian to score a SF hat trick, as winner of all three major awards: The Nebula, Hugo and John F. Campbell.

Fans of genre fiction should also keep an eye out for Lindsey Davis, known mostly in Britain for her very popular Marcus Didius Falco series. Before the Brits teamed with HBO to create the gritty realism of Rome, Davis was entertaining them with the grimy exploits of her Roman detective. In her latest, Saturnalia, ’tis the season where “the days are short, the nights are for wild parties” and Falco is pitted against his old rival, The Chief Spy Anacrits, in a race to find a fugitive before the government is embarrassed.

From the fringes of contemporary fiction, I remain impressed with the work of Florida native Jeff Parker (Ovenman), who I discovered last year when he arrived with the brilliant and lovingly illustrated mock chapbook, Back of the Line. Parker is making a name for himself with hypertext short stories and returns for a double dose of Blue Met and a panel discussion on electronic literature.

Blue Metropolis 2008 runs from
April 30–May 4 at Hotel Delta
(777 University). More info at
www.metropolisbleu.org.