DRIVEN: Leading Up To The Launch
It’s launch day for Marcello Di Cintio’s Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers here at Biblioasis! We’re taking a look back at some of the latest in news leading up to tonight’s launch, from interviews to twitter takeovers.
Marcello Di Cintio was interviewed about Driven in the Calgary Herald! The article was published in their print issue and online on April 30, 2021. You can read it on their website here.
Eric Volmers wrote:
“Fascinating … Nuanced … In Driven, Di Cintio stayed in his own country and paid close attention to the men and women most of us take for granted. Most were immigrants. Many came from war-torn nations. Many were what Di Cintio calls ‘chess masters of their own lives,’ possessing a genius and ingenuity that few of us recognize.”
Marcello was interviewed on May 3 on Global News Edmonton at Noon to discuss Driven and the Edmonton taxi drivers featured in the book! You can watch the interview below:
An excerpt from Driven was published in the Toronto Star! The excerpt is from the opening chapter in the book about Peter Pellier, a veteran taxi driver from Mississauga, ON. It was published on Saturday, May 8, and you can read it on their website here.
Marcello Di Cintio was interviewed on CBC’s Alberta at Noon on May 10 at 12 PM MDT! You can listen to the show here.
On May 11, Driven was featured on the Road Warrior News website, where they also hosted a book giveaway for drivers! You can take a look on their website here.
Marcello Di Cintio also did a Twitter takeover on The Walrus‘ Twitter on May 6, 2021 to highlight the different drivers in Driven. You can read the thread here.
ABOUT DRIVEN
In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi.
“The taxi,” writes Marcello Di Cintio, “is a border.” Occupying the space between public and private, a cab brings together people who might otherwise never have met—yet most of us sit in the back and stare at our phones. Nowhere else do people occupy such intimate quarters and share so little. In a series of interviews with drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqi National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country with nothing but a suitcase, Driven seeks out those missed conversations, revealing the unknown stories that surround us.
Travelling across borders of all kinds, from battlefields and occupied lands to midnight fares and Tim Hortons parking lots, Di Cintio chronicles the many journeys each driver made merely for the privilege to turn on their rooflight. Yet these lives aren’t defined by tragedy or frustration but by ingenuity and generosity, hope and indomitable hard work. From night school and sixteen-hour shifts to schemes for athletic careers and the secret Shakespeare of Dylan’s lyrics, Di Cintio’s subjects share the passions and triumphs that drive them.
Like the people encountered in its pages, Driven is an unexpected delight, and that most wondrous of all things: a book that will change the way you see the world around you. A paean to the power of personality and perseverance, it’s a compassionate and joyful tribute to the men and women who take us where we want to go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marcello Di Cintio is the author of four books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize, and Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense—also a W. O. Mitchell Prize winner. Di Cintio’s magazine writing has appeared in publications such as The International New York Times, The Walrus, Canadian Geographic and Afar.
Don’t miss tonight’s launch of Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Driver, on Facebook Live or YouTube, where you can join in on a Q&A, and have a chance to win your own copy of the book!
