This piece, originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of Eighteen Bridges, is now available online.  Read it here.

The Canadian Children’s Book Centre is now accepting host applications for Book Week 2012.  Teachers and librarians can get more information here.

The genesis of a book cover isn’t usually something the author is privy to. Not so with Groundwood, who kindly sent me the cover of my forthcoming (Spring 2012) middle-grade novel, Middle of Nowhere, in stages as artist Simon Ng worked on it.

Here is the preliminary sketch.

Here is the final version without the title.
And with the title.

Interestingly, the original title went from In the Middle of Nowhere, to The Middle of Nowhere.  Then Simon accidentally left off The and we discovered we liked that better anyway!

For more information about Simon Ng and his work, click here.

My book list, Imperfect People, is posted at Canadian Bookshelf.

I am delighted to have been selected for the 2012 TD Canadian Children’s Book Week, 5 to 12 May, 2012.  I’ll be touring schools and libraries in Ontario with two new children’s books: Jasper John Dooley, Star of the Week (Kids Can 2012); and Middle of Nowhere (Groundwood 2012).  For details on on the touring roster, visit the Canadian Children’s Book Centre website.

Found Press is republishing my uncollected, meta-fictional story ‘Obscure Objects’ (The New Quarterly 90) in its digital quarterly.  I’m so pleased it will reach fresh readers in this brave new format.  Advance praise from high places…

Barbara Gowdy: “Caroline Adderson is such a graceful and intelligent writer that the work that must surely go into creating her hilarious, prismatic stories is never betrayed in the language.  There is no strain on the page, not of bead of sweat.  I think of her as a writer’s writer.  I envy her talent and learn from her sentences.  The short story, ‘Obscure Objects,’ is, I’m happy to report,  Adderson at her glorious best.”

Meg Wolitzer: “‘Obscure Objects’, Caroline Adderson’s fierce and affecting workplace comedy, is a deadpan gem: droll, moving, snapping-smart.”

Pre-order here for a special Signature Edition.  A steal at only $0.99, or $3.75 for all four stories in the issue.

Received recently from a reader: “I want you to know that I’m reading Anna Karenina as a result of The Sky Is Falling…  I’m enjoying it thoroughly and am not even absolutely sure that would be the case had I not recently read and liked The Sky Is Falling so much. Just so you know what influence you wield.”  A writer could do worse than send readers to Tolstoy!

A piece I wrote for The New Quarterly’s “Magazine as Muse” feature (Winter 2010) has been chosen for inclusion in The Best Canadian Essays 2011 from Tightrope Press.  Thank you to editors Ibi Kaslik and Christopher Doda, and to Kim Jernigan for originally commissioning it.  Read “Highlights for Children” here.

I, Bruno is now in second printing.  Thank you to young readers everywhere!

On the newsstand now is the latest issue of Eighteen Bridges.  Catch the launch if you are in Toronto, or better yet, subscribe. In it you’ll find my piece about the trials of maintaining pacifist principles while raising a son – “How I Lost the War Against War and Learned to Love Arnold Schwarzenegger.”