Our ongoing uncertain times have inspired us to get creative! We want to keep supporting authors and to find opportunities to engage them with readers.
We are now on YouTube! Check out what we’ve been doing so far:
Plots & Pandemic: Interactive Meet & Greet for Authors and Readers
Virtual book club launches
Author Interviews
As well, each of us has our own little space in our YouTube community:
Ann’s Corner features videos for writers and readers interested in the writing world.
Fiona’s Corner focuses on book clubs and the reading community.
The Caledon Women’s Book Club with guest author Farzana Doctor
David’s Cornerwill be a series of entertaining videos for writers. More info to come soon.
Is there something specific you’d like to see? We’d love to hear your ideas. Is there an author from our list you’d like to see interviewed or featured in any of our events? Let us know. Email us at info@theauthorsbookclub.ca or comment below.
We have a volunteer team of four here at The Authors Book Club. David and Ann represent the authors and (obviously) have knowledge and connections with the publishing industry. Claire, our newest addition, is our creative tech troubleshooter. Me, well, I am the book club “expert”. I am supposed to get book clubs involved and connected to our authors, and well folks, thus far I don’t think I have done a very good job. Right now we have three book clubs signed up (and one of them is mine). Now, while it is true it is hard to get fired from a job that is entirely voluntary, I am asking for your help. PLEASE consider signing your book club up with us. A brief blurb about your club and a picture would be wonderful. See how the others have done it by visiting our Book Club Page.
IF you sign up (I feel like I should be offering a set of knives or something) you will get advance notice of any of our free digital events and we will be starting a quarterly draw for a signed book from one of 50+ authors.
On a more serious note, we need to support authors and publishers in Canada if we want them to be around in the future, and we need your help. Buy books by CanLit authors, preferably from a local independent book seller if possible. However, you don’t need to spend a dime and you can still do lots to help. Please consider the following:
Request a book from your local library
Write a positive review on Goodreads, Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.ca
If you are on Twitter retweet out a book announcement (book birthdays are always on a Tuesday BTW)
Fiona Ross is teacher librarian and book club consultant with The Authors’ Book Club. From the time she read her first novel, Bimbo and Topsy by Enid Blyton at age 6, she was hooked on fiction. Fiona is an avid reader, a teacher librarian, a current member of two book clubs and past chair of the Secondary Fiction Review Committee at the Peel District School Board. She also serves on the planning committee at the Festival of Literary Diversity, (FOLD). Although her job demands lots of YA she occasionally tries to read a book aimed at adult readers.
It’s August! We’re happy to host our next Plots & Pandemic Series event! Join us on Thursday, August 20, 2020, 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. EDT. Guests can interact with Adnan Khan and with each other. We will begin with a short reading followed by a group discussion and Q & A.
Register for this exclusive free event by emailing us at info@theauthorsbookclub.ca. Spacing is limited to 12 guests.
Adnan is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. He has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and was awarded the 2016 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer award. His debut novel, There Has To Be A Knife, was named a best Canadian novel of 2019 by the CBC, and called “a raw, gritty, shiver-inducing—but very readable—account of a young man in a spiral of grief and self-destruction,” by Kirkus Review. His film work includes co-writing the screenplay Shook, for Scarborough Pictures, and his non-fiction has been published in The Globe and Mail, Maisonneuve, among others. Alongside this, he is regularly invited to speak on panels, has taught non-fiction at the University of Guelph, and is the fiction editor at Puritan magazine. His writing is represented by the Transatlantic Agency.