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Spring Events 2014

I’m honoured to be part of the lineup at the North Shore Writers’ Fest again this year. From 2:30-3:30 Saturday, April 12, I will be on the panel Enlivening the Past with historical fiction writers Sandra Gulland, Daniel Kalla, and Roberta Rich. CBC’s Jen Sookfong Lee will be the moderator. The North Shore Writers’ Fest takes place at the North Vancouver City Library, 120 West 14th Street (Lonsdale & 14th). From 5-6:30 pm, readers and authors will mingle at a reception in the atrium, which will feature wine, appetizers, music, and door prizes. Attendance is free to all festival events, people are friendly, and there’s always a lot of fun going on. As a nice follow-up, I will be the guest speaker at the North Shore Writers’ Association meeting on April 14, which will be held at the Capilano branch of the North Vancouver District Library, 3045 Highland Boulevard. On April 26, the 4th Annual North Shore Art Crawl will be happening all over North and West Vancouver. 32 Books & Gallery at 3185 Edgemont Boulevard in Edgemont Village will be participating and Roberta Rich and I will be signing copies of our new novels in the store. For more information, call 604 980-9032.

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Secrets of the Avignon Popes

Muse is set in medieval Avignon during the period when the popes resided there, rather than in Rome. Writers such as Francesco Petrarch flocked to the city to seek patronage from the Pope and cardinals. The city was bursting with craftsmen, merchants, goldsmiths, and money lenders as well as the architects, master masons, and artists who worked on the Pope’s immense palace. Under Clement VI, who appears in Muse, the palais des papes became the most celebrated court in Europe, a salon for the artists, musicians, and intellectuals who were the avant-garde of the Renaissance . . . read more

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Muse & Woman Hero’s Journey

My novel Muse arrived, imaginatively speaking, when I was teaching a literature course in which we were exploring Joseph Campbell’s concept of the hero’s journey. We were riffing on that, looking at ways of describing a woman hero’s journey, when a student told me about Veronica Franco, an “intellectual courtesan” of 16th-century Venice. This discovery was one of the triggering ideas for Muse. From the poet Veronica Franco, who had unfortunately been written about, I made the leap to the walled city of Avignon, which I had recently visited, guessing that courtesans, as well as popes, had lived there in the 14th century . . . read more

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The UNESCO World Heritage City of Avignon

Attractively situated on the southern Rhône in France, Avignon is a walled city with spectacular medieval sights. The historic centre has many charms to offer the tourist. Today Avignon is a UNESCO world heritage site, where tourists, not 14th-century clerics, throng the narrow, winding streets and visit the grand palace of the Avignon popes. The towers of the palais des papes are visible for miles as you approach on the fast train, the TGV from Paris. You must enter the wall through one of the twelve gates where medieval travellers were likely to be greeted by a traitor’s rotting torso or severed leg to warn against committing treason. Today, the main artery running north to the palace is as mercantile as during the time of the popes . . . read more

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January-March 2014 News & Events

My first review for 2014, by Susan Fish in the Guelph Mercury, ended with these lovely words, “Muse is a treat to read and would be a terrific book for a book club to feast upon”. In February, I had great fun being guest author at my first Muse book club and look forward to being invited to visit other Vancouver clubs reading Muse or Conceit. You can get in touch via my contact page; if you live outside Vancouver, I can skype you. To make Muse even more yummy for book clubs, Doubleday will be bringing out a smaller paperback, which will be published May 27, 2014. Less expensive than the French flap edition, the smaller paperback will have very readable print and a spiffed-up cover with a gold foil title plate. I’m also looking forward to the French edition of Muse, which will be published within the next year. The official announcement appeared on Quill & Quire on December 17: “Éditions Hurtubise has acquired world French-language rights to Mary Novik’s novel Muse. Ron Eckel arranged the deal on behalf of Dean Cooke of The Cooke Agency.”

I’m honoured to be part of the North Shore Writers’ Festival again this year. From 2:30-3:30 Saturday, April 12, I will be on the panel Enlivening the Past with historical fiction writers Sandra Gulland, Daniel Kalla, and Roberta Rich. The festival takes place at the North Vancouver City Library, 120 West 14th Street. Afterwards, there will be a reception in the atrium in which readers can mingle with festival authors. Attendance is free to all festival events. On April 14, I will be the guest speaker at the North Shore Writers Association meeting at the Capilano branch of the North Vancouver District Library, 3045 Highland Boulevard.

 

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Balancing Fact & Fiction in Muse

The inspiration behind my novel Muse is the amazing town of Avignon in France, where the popes resided in the 14th century. I visited it five times to explore the popes’ palace, the city wall, the rivers and canals, and the surviving medieval streets and buildings. I went there to soak up the atmosphere and walk in Solange’s shoes . .  . read more

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Balancing Act Between Fact and Fiction in Muse

The inspiration behind my novel Muse is the amazing town of Avignon in France, where the popes resided in the 14th century. I visited it five times to explore the popes’ palace, the city wall, the rivers and canals, and the surviving medieval streets and buildings. I went there to soak up the atmosphere and walk in Solange’s shoes . .  . read more

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Where Do Ideas Come From? My Apprenticeship as a Novelist

I often get asked “Where do you get your ideas from?” Actually, I waited for years for my first good idea to come along. Finally, when I was about fifty, I stumbled across the story of Veronica Franco, a poet and “intellectual courtesan” in 16th-century Venice . . . Were there any courtesans in papal Avignon, a city equal in splendour to Venice? . . . read more

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November-December News & Reviews

On All Saints’ Eve, I flew to Toronto for my first appearance in the International Festival of Authors, buoyed up by an interview in the groovy on-line mag, Hazlitt. Once settled in the authors’ hotel, I walked over to the festival site to check it out, then back to the hospitality suite, where authors unwound every night from the day’s activities. One of the perks of staying in the same hotel was author-spotting. A highlight was eavesdropping in the bar as Joseph Boyden skyped a friend to report on the Zoomer interview with Conrad Black! On Friday,  I was squired around to bookstores to sign copies of Muse, treated to a posh lunch with my editors and publicist, and appeared in a Reading with Rodge Glass, Catherine Bush, and Meg Wolitzer. A bootleg video of my reading appears here. On Saturday, I had a free day to attend IFOA events, tuck into a three course authors’ dinner at Le Select, then perch in the balcony for the Tribute to Alice Munro. My second event, on Saturday, was a round table, Ahead by a Century, with Elizabeth Ruth and Justin Cartwright, nimbly moderated by Brendan de Caires. The authors’ final dinner at a brewhouse was subdued, with regretful leavetaking and exchanging of contact details. IFOA knows how to treat its authors and it was intriguing to discover, googling some of my companions afterwards, how famous some of them are. As is so often the case, the best-known authors are the most friendly and humble.

Terri Baker’s two articles on Muse appeared in November. Her essay, “Solange’s Petrarch: Reclaiming Female History in Mary Novik’s Muse“, appeared in Historical Novels Review, #66 (November 2013) along with her review of Muse. Imagine how excited I was to receive a box of books from Italy–my author’s copies of L’amante del Papa, the Italian translation of Muse. L’amante has been receiving some interesting reviews in Italy, which I’ve listed here. The latest is the Repubblica.it review on December 2 by Felice Laudadio, Jr.

On December 8, I appeared in a lively on-line forum hosted by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, in which Canadian authors suggested books to give for Christmas 2013. On the same day, Robert Wiersema discussed his Christmas book picks on Sheryl MacKay’s CBC program North by Northwest and I was pleased that he included Muse. On December 18, on the Retreat books blog, I’ll be profiling types of readers and listing some light-hearted fiction picks for Christmas. I’ve already received the nicest gift: learning that Random House is planning a smaller paperback of Muse, to be published May 27, 2014, at a very reasonable $20.

For more details about news, reviews, etc. please see Resources and Critiques, where you’ll find additional support material as well.

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L’amante del Papa, the Italian Muse

L’amante del Papa, the Italian Muse

A box of copies of L’amante del Papa (the Italian Muse) has just arrived. Happy days! Heartfelt thanks to all the people who made this happen: Newton Compton Editori, The Cooke Agency, The Cooke Agency International, Dean Cooke, Suzanne Brandreth, Ron Eckel, Antonella Pappalardo, Elisabetta Colombo, Monica Ricci, Marco Vigevani Agenzia Letteraria, and Emanuele Sana. The roses were a gift from my sweet husband! I’m going to take him out for a delicious Italian meal to celebrate.

Here’s L’amante del Papa’s sizzling Italian trailer, for which Emanuele Sana won the Caffeina festival prize: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdmSJmraBic

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