Here’s my lovely niece bigging it up on Saturday night in Vancouver.

On the wall display my book was posing next to Sarah Palin’s.

A four-part documentary called ‘Empire of the Word’ is currently screening on TVO in Canada.  Made by Mark Johnston, it’s a look at the history and future of reading.  Chris Joseph and I participated in the fourth part, which will air on Wed 16 December; you can also view the parts online.

As well as the tv series, Nomad (Johnston’s production company) also commissioned an online game to take place while the series is being screened. While I was in Toronto for IFOA, I did a little video interview with them for the game website, and that video is available to view now.  Click here then click on the tab ‘Authors on Freedom of Speech’.  My hair’s a mess, but it’s okay otherwise!

While I was in Ottawa last week I did an interview with Nigel Beale for his website and radio broadcast.

Here’s a link to that page of Nigel’s website.

Rideau Hall, 26 November, 2009.  Straight hair, hired dress, Kim my publisher in the background.  Truly memorable evening.

Here I am accepting that cheque in Montreal on Tuesday!!!

‘The Mistress of Nothing’ moved from #6000 on amazon.ca to #30 in the space of one day!  Here’s hoping that it keeps climbing.

Today it was announced that I have won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction with ‘The Mistress of Nothing’.

This is such a huge huge honour and, I’ll admit, a complete and wonderful surprise.

More when I have time - but thanks to all for the tweets, mails, calls, and FB comments so far.  I really appreciate it.

A couple of weeks ago during the Birmingham Literary Festival I went up to record ‘A Good Read’.  This is my favourite BBC Radio 4 book programme. Every week two people plus the presenter chose a book each to read and discuss.  I was on with Catherine O’Flynn who chose Gordon Burn’s ‘Alma Cogan’; I chose Don DeLillo’s ‘White Noise’; and the host, Sue McGregor, chose ‘Chicago’ by Alaa Al Aswany.  It was a great thrill to meet Sue McGregor, and after the recording was finished (in front of a live audience, quite nerve-wracking), I took the train back to London with Sue, who turned out to be completely charming and funny.  We had a great conversation about female news presenters and hard news reporters, and the lack thereof.  Fascinating.

You can hear the programme here for the next week; after that I think it will be in the archive…

This is where I’ll be next week, #network09, in Bergen, Norway.  Really looking forward to it.  After a week of total immersion in the world of books of the non-digital sort, it will be good to head off to Norway to touch base with other digital writers, artists, and academics.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the world of books, just that the two events (this one and IFOA last week) will provide a healthy contrast to one another.

Not that IFOA was totally non-digital of course.  There was plenty of twittering and blogging going on during the week. And we even had the obligatory-new-media-event-tech-meltdown one evening. I got off the plane from London Monday afternoon and had to go pretty much straight onto the stage for the Governor General Literary Awards Readings (did I mention I’m on the shortlist?).  Two of the shortlisted writers, Annabel Lyon and Michael Crummey, were in Ottawa, so they were appearing on stage via a Skype webcamera call.  Not only did this mean that they were represented by huge distorted videos of their heads (you know how your face gets distorted when you lean up too close to the camera?), but their voices kept cutting out and breaking up.  It was so bad that the audience become unruly, heckling and shouting about the ticket price!  Unheard of for a book audience, let alone a Canadian book audience! However, we redeemed ourselves in the second half with some actual real-person-on-the-stage readings. Also, the chair of the event, Lewis De Soto remained calm, and during the interval helped calm us all down when he said it was ‘an easy act to follow’.  Still, how thrilling to witness a new-media-style-tech-meltdown at a venerable literary event!!!

I’ve been in Toronto all week at IFOA - the International Festival of Authors - and have had a fabulous time.  My events have gone well, and the festival is so completely hospitable and friendly with endless numbers of parties, dinners, readings, and general all round good will and generosity.  The GG nomination has meant that there’s been increased interest in my book, so there’s been a fair amount of press and even an interview for CBC News Network - we filmed in the Egyptian Antiquities section of the ROM, which was great fun. It’s not easy to get books on tv so this was a great boost for me; it will be shown in the entertainment segments on CBC sometime in the next week.

Toronto seems quite changed to me; it’s five years since I was last here. As always I find great food, great autumn colours, great neighbourhoods, great shopping, but since I was last here there are a bunch of new exciting buildings and the city seems bigger and more dynamic.  Of course I’m a complete outsider and know nothing, really, but I have a great time whenever I come here.  I hope it’s not another five years before I come back again.