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The Bibliophile: An introduction from our new Sales Coordinator

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Hello, Bibliophile readers! It’s a pleasure to introduce myself as the new Sales Coordinator here at Biblioasis. This is the last day of my first week of full-time work, most of which I got to spend in the office in Windsor. Toronto is my beloved home base, but I’ve had a great time exploring the city and its environs—including one of the best Turkish bakeries I’ve yet come across in Ontario.

It’s hard to put into words just how exciting it is to have joined the (brilliant) Biblioasis team. Before starting at the press, I was working as a bookseller at the beautiful Flying Books on Queen Street in Toronto, which connected me to a vibrant literary community. I had spent the years between 2019 and 2024 teaching full time at The University of King’s College in Halifax, an experience I found incredibly meaningful, but publishing was my first love. Since as long as I can remember, I’ve had more books than space to accommodate them. Books have accompanied me throughout my life. They have given me a sense of place and rootedness in the midst of many types of transitions.

Sitting in the Biblioasis office with shelves of wonderful titles behind me has been a genuine thrill. There is a lot to learn, but after teaching for so many years, I’m enjoying feeling like a student again, making one discovery after another. Everyone I’ve met so far has been patient, supportive, and welcoming. I’m passionate about our books and I’m looking forward to championing them.

As a bonus, here are some of my favourite Biblioasis titles. Incidentally, they are all works of fiction written from the perspective of mothers: Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport (if you haven’t tackled the tome yet, take this as your sign—it’s more relevant than ever), Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (one of the most lyrical genre-bending works I’ve come across), and Hanna Stoltenberg’s Near Distance (an unflinching modern take on the mother-daughter relationship that I think Simone de Beauvoir would have loved).

Hilary Ilkay
Sales Coordinator

In other news, Lazer Lederhendler is the fiction winner of the French-American Foundation Prize for his translation of The Hollow Beast! The foundation conducted a short interview with Lazer about his experiences working with Christophe Bernard’s “beast of a novel.” We’re delighted to present it here, ahead of the awards ceremony in New York next week.

Q: What did you enjoy most about translating The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard?

Lazer: Problem solving is one of the things I love most about translating good fiction, and I was well served in that department by Christophe’s fabulous beast of a novel. I did a good amount of research on English dialects of Eastern Canada that are comparable to the French spoken on the Gaspé Peninsula, where most of the action is located. This proved to be not the most fruitful avenue, as the linguistic idiosyncrasies of the book are mainly due to Christophe’s unique and highly evocative visual style. In fact, it occurred to me that The Hollow Beast has all the makings of a wonderful graphic novel. So rather than focusing primarily on language equivalencies or approximations, I would picture the characters and scenes in detail and render those images into English (and afterwards, of course, make sure I hadn’t strayed from the original). On the other hand, however, there was the challenge of depicting the evolving speech patterns of the story’s hero, Monty, who starts out quasi-illiterate but through self-education (he carries around a copy of Homer’s Odyssey) progressively acquires a more sophisticated level of French.

Q: You specialize in translating contemporary Quebecois literature. What are some differences you’ve noticed between contemporary French literature in Canada and French literature in France?

Lazer: That’s a huge question, perhaps best left to academics. But one clear difference that does immediately come to mind is this: today, more than ever before, Québécois literature and Québécois culture and language in general are very much creatures of North America, whose references and influences point increasingly south and west rather than to Europe. This is true, at any rate, for most of the writers I’ve translated since the early 2000s — Nicolas Dickner, Catherine Leroux, Perrine Leblanc, et al — who are assuredly representative of contemporary Québécois fiction. Another basic difference worth mentioning is that the literature of France by and large takes the language for granted — ça va de soi. The same can’t be said of Quebec, where the French language has always been a battle field that, as a friend of mine put it, is foregrounded as a constituent part of the landscape.

Q: The French-American Foundation Translation Prize seeks to honor translators and their craft, and recognize the important work they do bringing works of French literature to Anglophone audiences. What does being named a winner for this prize mean to you, and, in your own words, why does a Prize like this matter?

Lazer: Translators are among the unsung artisans of literature endeavouring to carry the words and artistry of writers across the barriers of language and culture. We for the most part labour in the shadows in order to extend the reach and longevity of an author’s works. So it’s always encouraging and gratifying to have one’s efforts as a translator acknowledged and celebrated. What’s more, awards like the FrenchAmerican Foundation’s Translation Prize, spotlight books and writers that otherwise might not get the attention and readership they deserve.

In good publicity news:

The Bibliophile: Taking chances

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Photo: A stack of freshly-packaged envelopes awaits mailing to booksellers. Next to it, a stack of recent and forthcoming Biblioasis books.

A quick Google search tells me that approximately 2.2 million books are published every year. I don’t know how accurate that number actually is, but it’s something I find myself thinking about a lot more these days. How can anyone ever keep up? How do you decide what book is worth your time and attention?

I started working at Biblioasis last November. It’s my first job in publishing. I’ve never really known what I wanted to do career-wise, but I’ve always liked being surrounded by books and hoped that whatever job I had would include large stacks of books on either side of me. I found the idea comforting as someone whose primary thoughts are about what books I’m currently reading and, more often, have yet to read. When I saw the job posting online, I sent in my application with a feeling that I probably wasn’t going to get it. But, to my surprise, they took a chance and hired me anyway. What I’ve come to admire most about independent presses is their willingness to take chances.

It’s been funny to see how it all works after having been just a reader for so long, who never thought about what goes into publishing a book. It involves a lot of hard work to lay the foundation so that a book has the best shot of finding its readers—and then a startling amount of, what seems to me, just luck that it eventually does. You can’t really predict the success of a book. I can’t yet anyway.

Now as a publicist my goal is to make you aware of our books. It’s a process that involves a lot of reading and rereading our upcoming titles to try and come up with the most interesting way to talk about them. That is the fun part. After that it’s a lot of emailing and sending copies out to reviewers, interviewers, booksellers, influencers, and hoping something resonates with them enough that they take a chance to—out of the millions of books being put out into the world and sent to them—read and recommend this one. This can be less fun because a lot of the time I don’t hear back, and that’s alright, no one can read them all. But it’s surprisingly exhilarating when I do get a response. I felt a genuine rush of excitement the first time seeing our efforts result in a prominent review, or from hearing booksellers enthusiastically champion one of our books. I’m generally not a very expressive person, so this did not show on my face or in my voice at all, but in my head I was doing cartwheels and fireworks were going off.

It can feel endless: the new manuscripts coming in, the reading, the pitching, the following up, the waiting. And it hasn’t even been a full year for me yet. What I’ve really learned these last few months is that every book published is its own miracle and that getting the right books to the right readers, by talking about what our books have meant to me in a way that might convince you to give them a chance, is a high that I’d like to keep chasing.

Ahmed Abdalla
Publicist

In good publicity news:

  • Lazer Lederhendler, translator of The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, was announced the winner of the 2025 French-American Foundation Translation Prize in Fiction.
  • Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way by Elaine Feeney was reviewed in a number of outlets this week:
    • Irish Times: “An ambitious, thoughtful, nicely layered book.”
    • Irish Farmers Journal: “Rich in history and drama, Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way reveals the legacies of violence and redemption as the secrets of the past unfold.”
    • Irish Mail on Sunday: “Feeney’s astute lyricism makes for a marvellously engaging story of a woman on the verge.”
    • Irish Independent: “In presenting both a political and personal history, Feeney delivers a moving meditation on enforced female roles in Irish society both past and present, the heavy pall of grief and the unceasing encroachment of the past into the present.”
  • On Book Banning by Ira Wells received a starred review in Publishers Weekly: “Wells delivers a potent behind-the-scenes look at book banning in this standout account . . . a decisive and fascinating take on a hot-button issue.”
  • Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg (translated by Wendy H. Gabrielsen) was reviewed in Scout Magazine: “Nuanced, as well as touching, tense, and cringe-y at different turns, [Near Distance] contains all the stuff of a fraught mother-daughter relationship, impressively depicting its subtle, complicated dynamic.”