Kenneth J. Harvey

'box' a new short film by kenneth j. harvey

2011-12-05T18:22:00.004-05:00

‎'box' a new short film by kenneth j. harvey. click the 'watch film' link (below) to view the film.

Watch Film

Thank you, Bob Rae, for Stealing My Plane Seat

2011-10-18T16:31:00.006-04:00

Latest piece by Kenneth J. Harvey in the Globe & Mail

Click Here to Read

IT'S A GIRL, a new film by Kenneth J. Harvey

2011-10-11T17:01:00.000-04:00

(photo by Roger Maunder)

'I'm 14 and I Hate the World' Wins at Atlantic Film Festival

2011-09-26T18:50:00.004-04:00

Newfoundland author-turned-filmmaker Kenneth J. Harvey was one of the big winners at the 2011 Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax, Canada, this past weekend.

Harvey's first short film, "I'm 14 and I Hate the World" won the Best Atlantic Short award sponsored by Kodak. The award came with a prize of $3,000 in film stock.

Over thirty short films were in the running for the award.

To date, "I'm 14 and I Hate the World" has been selected for ten film festivals around the world (Italy, Russia, India, South America, US and Canada) and has been nominated for two US-based Maverick Movie Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Performance (Song)

Reinventing the Rose in The National Post

2011-07-24T10:54:00.023-04:00

To read the first two chapters of REINVENTING THE ROSE, please click here

"Profoundly Entertaining." - The National Post

A gynecologist sues his artist girlfriend to terminate her pregnancy as "return of property."

Kenneth J. Harvey's new novel, Reinventing the Rose, has just been released and is already going into second printing.

Order the novel by clicking on the cover below:

"Particularly Beautiful... Marvellous" -- The Chronicle Herald

2011-07-21T12:05:00.013-04:00

Reinventing the Rose is "Particularly beautiful... Marvellous" - The Halifax Chronicle Herald.

To read the first two chapters, click here

"I'm 14 and I Hate the World" is Going to Russia

2011-07-06T11:00:00.003-04:00

"I'm 14 and I Hate the World" is going to Russia. The film has been selected for the competition program by the programmers at the Deboshir Film Festival in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. This is the fourth film festival to accept the film.

Official Selection, Nickel Film Festival (Opening Night)

2011-06-03T15:32:00.009-04:00

"I'm 14 and I Hate the World" has been chosen as an Official Selection of the 2011 Nickel Film Festival. The film will premiere opening night of the festival on June 21st.

This is Kenneth J. Harvey's first short film.

Coming Soon: A New Short Film by Kenneth J. Harvey

2011-03-28T10:39:00.000-04:00

Reinventing the Rose in Canada

2011-01-16T21:30:00.008-05:00

Kenneth J. Harvey's new novel, Reinventing the Rose has been bought by Dundurn Press, Canada's largest independent publisher. It will be released in Canada, June 2011.

To read the first two chapters, click here

Order the novel by clicking on the link below:

TOWN in 6th US paperback printing

2010-12-03T16:14:00.005-05:00

* Now in its 6th Printing

U.S. Paperback Edition
The Town That Forgot How To Breathe

Picador USA

Order here:

Reinventing the Rose, Bestseller in Russia

2010-09-05T17:35:00.000-04:00

Kenneth J. Harvey's new novel, Reinventing the Rose, is a bestseller in Russia.

The novel concerns a pregnant artist whose gynecologist boyfriend takes her to court with the intention of forcing her to abort her fetus.

Running side by side with the main conflict is the minutely detailed, day by day, development of the embryo.

The book has been the publisher's (Centrepolygraph) number two bestselling book for the past three months. Click here to view publisher's website

This marks the first time that a Canadian author's novel has been published in Russia before any other country.

This is Harvey's fifth novel to be published in Russian translation.

Blackstrap Hawco Wins 2010 Atlantic Canada Reads

2010-07-01T09:49:00.004-04:00

Blackstrap Hawco has won the 2010 Atlantic Canada Reads competition.

"One of the quintessential CanLit texts." -Steven W. Beattie, That Shakespearean Rag

The other nominated books were:

February, Lisa Moore
Annabel, Kathleen Winter
The Republic of Nothing, Lesley Choyce
The Push & the Pull, Darryl Whetter
George & Rue, George Elliot Clarke

A Best Book of the Decade, 2000-2009

2010-04-13T08:41:00.001-04:00

Blackstrap Hawco by Kenneth J. Harvey has been selected by Amazon.ca as one of the 50 Best Books of the Decade.

A selection of other titles included on the list:

* The Book of Negroes, Lawrence Hill
* The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
* Life of Pi, Yann Martel
* Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
* The Road, Cormac McCarthy
* The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
* Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky

A Best Book of the Decade

2009-12-14T10:57:00.017-05:00

The Town that Forgot How to Breathe

has been named a
Best Book of the Decade

by The National Post, along with:

* Island: The Collected Stories by Alistair MacLeod:

* Life of Pi by Yann Martel

* Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje

* River of the Brokenhearted by David Adams Richards

* The White Bone by Barbara Gowdy.

Blackstrap Hawco Nominated for IMPAC

2009-11-02T07:00:00.009-05:00

Blackstrap Hawco has been nominated
for the $160,000 International IMPAC
Dublin Literary Award

"Canadian original Kenneth J Harvey
should impress the judges with Blackstrap Hawco,
a daring extravaganza of voices about a
Newfoundland family."

-The Irish Times

Booklist Does Blackstrap, First US Review

2009-10-31T11:48:00.008-04:00

-Booklist, November, 2009

Blackstrap Hawco.
Harvey, Kenneth J. (Author)
Nov 2009. 840 p. IPG/Harvill Seeker,
hardcover, $24.95. (9781846551543).

Harvey’s searing narrative encapsulates the brutal,
majestic history of Newfoundland by outlining the
events and experiences that shaped the characteristically
dismal history of the extended Hawco family.

Stretching back and forth through time as Blackstrap
details the often painful exploits and ordeals suffered
by the Hawco clan during the twentieth century, the
hapless narrator serves as both a pitiable victim of his
hardscrabble working-class circumstances and as a
noble symbol of endurance and tenacity.

Starkly elegant, the author’s prose mirrors the
desolate magnificence of the island itself. After years
of being overshadowed by its culturally overpowering
neighbor to the south, Canadian literature is finally coming
into its own and savvy readers are sitting up and taking
notice of writers like Harvey who mine uniquely
Canadian experiences to tremendous effect.

Two Kenneth J. Harvey Books in 100 Greatest

2009-10-29T15:33:00.004-04:00

Inside
and

The Town That Forgot

How to Breathe

have been selected
for inclusion in

Atlantic Canada's
100 Greatest Books

THE TOWN in China

2009-09-08T13:08:00.006-04:00

The Town That Forgot How to Breathe

has been released in China
by Beijing Hongwenguan

STALKERS Released in Russia

2009-08-25T19:02:00.000-04:00

Centrepolygraph has released STALKERS in Russia

Shortlisted for Commonwealth Writers' Prize

2009-02-23T09:04:00.006-05:00

BLACKSTRAP HAWCO by Newfoundland author Kenneth J. Harvey has been nominated for the international Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Best Book, Canada and Caribbean region).

The two regional winners (for Best Book and Best First Book) from Canada and the Caribbean will be announced on 11 March 2009.

The two overall winners, chosen by an international panel of six judges coming together in New Zealand, will be announced on 16 May at the Auckland Writers' and Readers Festival (AWRF).

The overall winner receives £10,000, and will take part in various international events, including a week-long celebration in New Zealand, and an audience with Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.

#1 Best Book Out of Canada, 2008

2009-01-02T13:50:00.023-05:00

amazon.com (US) has selected
BLACKSTRAP HAWCO as the
#1 Best Book Out of Canada for 2008.

5 Best Books Out of Canada
This Year

01. Blackstrap Hawco, Kenneth J. Harvey
02. The Origin of Species, Nino Ricci
03. Cockroach, Rawi Hage
04. Through Black Spruce, Joseph Boyden
05. Dark Days, Kerry Pither

Published by:

First Sale in China for Harvey

2008-12-12T07:13:00.005-05:00

The Town That Forgot How To Breathe

(originally published in Canada by Raincoast Books)

has sold in China.

The sale to Chinese publisher Beijing Hongwenguan was
negotiated by Harvey's Chinese agent Gray Tan
of The Grayhawk Agency.

The Town That Forgot How To Breathe has already been
published in over a dozen countries.

A Best Book of the Year-- The Globe & Mail

2008-11-29T09:40:00.008-05:00

Blackstrap Hawco has been been selected as a Globe & Mail Top 100 Best Book of 2008

A Best Book of the Year-- Quill & Quire

2008-11-22T17:12:00.010-05:00

Blackstrap Hawco has been named a Best Book of the Year by Quill & Quire Magazine.

Quill & Quire, Canada's book publishing magazine, selected 15 titles that "mattered most in 2008."

The announcement will be featured in the December, 2008 issue.

"An Instant Classic"- Ottawa XPress

2008-10-27T17:08:00.006-04:00

"Easily the best book of the year and an instant classic, Kenneth J. Harvey's Blackstrap Hawco is a ferocious 800-plus-page beast that traces the history of the Hawco family, and with it Newfoundland's rough and tumble legacy. "

-Ottawa XPress
October 23, 2008

"Thrilling" - Edmonton Journal

2008-10-14T07:12:00.008-04:00

"A great writer... One of the most successfully ambitious Canadian novels in recent memory... Dirt-under-the-fingernails details rest alongside grandly conceived allegory, and the result is often thrilling."

-The Edmonton Journal

_________________

BLACKSTRAP HAWCO

October 12, 2008

"Harvey does for Newfoundland what Faulkner did for the South -- he's turned it into a place of myth and mystery, if not a place you're likely to see in a tourist brochure."

"Of course, Newfoundland is already a place of myth and mystery to Canadians. Most of us have never been to The Rock, and our understanding of the place doesn't go much beyond the twin stereotypes of the jolly drunk and the unemployed fisherman. Harvey's novel may help to remedy that, and not just because it's almost entirely devoid of jollity. Fifteen years in the making, it's also one of the most successfully ambitious Canadian novels in recent memory."

"Awe-inspiring" - The Vancouver Sun

2008-10-10T07:19:00.001-04:00

"There are moments that are literally awe-inspiring and writing so skilled it almost brought me to tears... more ambitious than any Canadian novel in recent memory."

-The Vancouver Sun

________________

BLACKSTRAP HAWCO

September 27, 2008

"The Newfoundland writer has, over his lengthy career, demonstrated remarkable skill and range, from the magic realism of The Town That Forgot How to Breathe to the cold, parsed minimalism of Inside to the more experimental of his short stories."

"From the role of missionaries in the outport communities to a riveting account of the seal hunt, from rapes to infidelities, from petty crimes to everyday life, from a 13-month pregnancy and an invasion of birds to the life of a shipwrecked ancestor, the first half of Blackstrap Hawco is a polyvalent work that eschews chronological order in favour of an almost cubist sensibility."

"A hundred pages later, I began to suspect that the novel might just be the Canadian equivalent of Gabriel García Márquez's epochal One Hundred Years of Solitude. "

INSIDE in Russia

2008-10-02T08:49:00.005-04:00

Centrepolygraph has released

INSIDE in Russia

Blackstrap Hawco Longlisted for Giller Prize

2008-09-15T20:12:00.006-04:00

Blackstrap Hawco has been longlisted for
The Scotiabank Giller Prize

The Scotiabank Giller Prize awards $50,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection
published in English and $5,000 to each of the finalists.

The Scotiabank Giller Prize is named in honour of the late literary journalist
Doris Giller and was founded in 1994 by her husband Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch.

"A masterpiece" - The Chronicle Herald

2008-09-14T15:25:00.005-04:00

"A masterpiece... brutal, poignant, stunning, infuriating, heartbreaking and hopeful,
hard to read and harder still to put aside."

Review of Blackstrap Hawco

-The Chronicle Herald
Sunday, September 14, 2008

"Something Very Great Indeed" -The National Post

2008-09-13T08:34:00.008-04:00

"Kenneth J. Harvey, Atlantic gale, continues to astonish.
And in Blackstrap Hawco, he has given Newfoundland,
not to mention the world, something very great indeed."

"Canadian authors have largely resisted the urge to write the corresponding Great Canadian Novel, an almost certainly futile task. Mordecai Richler came as close to pulling it off in Solomon Gursky Was Here as anyone is likely to, but most attempts founder on the fact that the country is too broad and variegated to be captured in any depth, no matter how big the Big Book. A province or region might be though, which is Kenneth J. Harvey's wholly successful strategy in his rich and tender new novel."

-Frank Moher, The National Post
Saturday, September 13th, 2008

Tour Dates for Blackstrap Hawco

2008-09-12T13:40:00.001-04:00

Writers at Woody Point
Ticket info: writersatwoodypoint.com
Woody Point, NL

August 14/2008, 8 pm

----------------------------------

Book Launch, sponsored by Downhome
Arts & Culture Centre, Third Floor Gallery
St. John's, NL

September 9/2008, 7 - 9 pm

----------------------------------------------------------

Chapters
41 Mic Mac Boulevard
Info: chapters.indigo.ca
Dartmouth, NS

September 15/2008, 7 pm

----------------------------------------------------------

Harbourfront Reading Series
Harbourfront Centre
Info: readings.org
Toronto, ON

September 17/2008

----------------------------------------------------------

Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival
(Oct 14 - 19) date to be confirmed
Info: wordfest.com
Calgary, AB

October 14/2008

----------------------------------------------------------

Vancouver International Writers Festival
(Oct 21 - 26) date to be confirmed
Info: writersfest.bc.ca
Vancouver, BC

October 21/2008

-----------------------------------------------------------

Ottawa International Writers Festival
(Oct 18 - 26) date to be confirmed
Info: writersfestival.org
Ottawa, ON

October 26/2008

------------------------------------------------------------

Keshen Goodman Public Library
Halifax, NS

November 17/2008, 7 pm

-------------------------------------------------------------

Chapters
70 Kenmount Road
Info: chapters.indigo.ca
St. John's, NL

December 4/2008, 7 pm

Blackstrap Hawco in the Winnipeg Free Press

2008-09-11T10:31:00.008-04:00

excerpt from the September 10th, 2008
Winnipeg Free Press review of Blackstrap Hawco:

"Brilliant... Harvey is as impressive in presenting quiet tenderness as he is raucous action... A loving tribute to Newfoundland"

PagesBooks.ca Interview

2008-09-08T07:06:00.004-04:00

Kenneth J Harvey: The twentieth century, particularly the period following the proliferation of television, will, perhaps, be regarded in history as the decades when people, particularly in North America, as they are the newest of cultures, lost their lives to the lives of strangers, scripted to resemble them in vague ways combined with the product of what a homogenous human is intended to be, as dictated by the standard sit-com living room, the California beach, the streets of New York, the mean-girl high school, the animated feel-good laugh-a-thon, the romantic comedy…. This is what we all are becoming.

To read the full interview, please click below:

http://www.pagesbooks.ca/features.php?type=feature&id=254

Blackstrap Hawco in The Herald (Scotland)

2008-06-20T09:27:00.010-04:00

"Big in every way, it's an ambitious tour de force."

-The Herald (June 14, 2008)

Starred Review for Blackstrap Hawco

2008-06-13T07:24:00.005-04:00

Quill & Quire (Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews)

July, 2008

★ starred review

"Blackstrap Hawco is in every way a large novel: large in scope, large in ambition, and large in achievement."

"The novel, which includes passages lifted verbatim from the author’s previous short stories, as well as historical journal entries, newspaper articles, and the like, exists in the interstices between fiction and history, and it calls into question the very nature of narrative itself. 'Because they do not want the truth,' one character muses late in the novel, 'they want the story.' What Harvey has provided is a story that acts as a kind of Möbius strip, folding in on itself until history and legend become all but indistinguishable." - Steven W. Beattie

Blackstrap Hawco in The Scotsman

2008-06-02T13:28:00.010-04:00

"A big, daring, imaginative saga."

-The Scotsman (June 1, 2008)

2008-05-26T16:41:00.002-04:00

click below to enlarge

A Transcomposite Narrative

2008-05-22T07:50:00.003-04:00

June,
2008:
Harvill Secker
UK

September,
2008:
Random House
Canada

"BLACKSTRAP HAWCO is a story of Newfoundland from its beginnings to its present, and stretching forward to its future. The intensely physical lives of Blackstrap Hawco and his people are as vivid as the blood they spill. The book is gripping and painful but redeemed by love. Kenneth J. Harvey demonstrates the pulse of what it means to be alive."

-Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief

828 pages, Hardcover

Publisher's Description:

Fifteen years in the making, this book is the one Canada’s “heavyweight champ of brash and beautiful literature” was meant to write. An epic masterwork about Newfoundland’s working class, Blackstrap Hawco spans more than a century in gorgeous and widely varied prose, reminding us that even when writing about the degradation of identity and language, Harvey does it magnificently.

Named in a moment of anger, raised to endure the tragedy of a people and culture coming undone, Blackstrap Hawco is heir to an island dominion subsumed, picked over and set adrift by its adoptive nation.

As the end of the twentieth century nears, the Hawco family's bloodlines have grown tainted and confused. Men fail their families through enforced idleness, and the once-vivid ghosts of their ancestors have slipped into murk, forgotten along with the rest of history.

Blackstrap Hawco is a defiant man born with little more than a body and spirit that refuse to give up, and the menacing strength of pride. For the Hawcos of Newfoundland, was it not ever so?

From the arrivals of the indentured Irish to the Victorian drawing rooms of the English merchants, from the perilous adventures of the seal hunt to the raucous iron ore mines, from a notorious disaster at sea to the relocation of outport communities, the Hawco story might be all the family has left. But as "Blackstrap Hawco" - a narrative that will consume you in its dazzling swirl of voices, legends and beautiful hearsay - testifies, a story this haunting, this powerful, might just be enough.

Germany

2008-01-11T14:46:00.004-05:00

The Town That Forgot How To Breathe

paperback edition

forthcoming from Random House Germany

July, 2008

Harvey Signs with Sterling Lord Literistic

2007-12-11T16:25:00.000-05:00

Kenneth J. Harvey has signed with renowned New York
agent, Peter Matson, at Sterling Lord Literistic.

Matson is Co-Chairman of the agency. Some of the most successful books he has sold include Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and John Irving's The World According to Garp. He is equally proud to represent the books and stories of writers such as V.S. Pritchett, William Trevor and Barry Lopez, to name just a few. Recent successes include The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester and Kent Haruf's Plainsong and Eventide.

Matson will represent Harvey's literary fiction in Canada, the US and the UK, starting with Harvey's new novel Reinventing the Rose, which concerns an artist who becomes pregnant, and her gynecologist boyfriend who takes her to court with the intention of forcing her to have an abortion.

Throughout the text, the detailed development of the embryo runs side by side with the story of the battle between man and woman.

Reinventing the Rose has already been bought by Centrepolygraph in Russia.

Harvey will continue to deal with his own foreign agents in all other territories.

BLACKSTRAP HAWCO, Final Pages

2007-12-03T16:56:00.000-05:00

INSIDE in The Cleveland Plain Dealer

2007-12-02T08:57:00.000-05:00

The Plain Dealer

Sunday, December 02, 2007

The protagonist, Mr. Myrden, has just left prison, cleared by DNA tests of a murder for which he spent 14 years behind bars. His attempt to go back to his wife, children, friends, enemies and, simultaneously, his longing for a different and better life (aided by a compensatory state award of more than $1 million) constitute the bones of the plot.

"Inside" is an appealing, often dramatic, and ultimately tragic tale about class and agency.

Harvey, the Canadian author of 16 books, employs clipped, repetitive and fragmented sentences... The effect of his unorthodox prose is claustrophobic and unrelenting, carrying the ghost of years lost, a forced routine, confinement without deviation... This cadence... reveals, sometimes brilliantly, often heartbreakingly, Myrden's confusion and regret...

Harvey has achieved remarkable craft and character with this book... a gifted, inventive, courageous writer.

Four Titles in Russia

2007-11-06T10:01:00.000-05:00

Kenneth J. Harvey's Russian agent, Svetlana Pironko of Author Rights Agency, has sold four of Harvey's titles to Russian publisher Centrepolygraph.

They are: Directions for an Opened Body, Stalkers, The Town That Forgot How To Breathe and Inside.

This is the first foreign sale for Directions for an Opened Body, Harvey's first book, a collection of stories, originally published in 1990 by The Mercury Press.

The remaining three titles have been published in various countries.

INSIDE in Entertainment Weekly

2007-10-06T09:15:00.000-04:00

Reviewed
October 12, 2007

"Harvey illuminates the inner world of the improbably named Mister Myrden, who receives exoneration after 14 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. Released to his money-grubbing wife, roughneck friends, and resentful grown children, Myrden tries to forge a more meaningful life, a struggle Harvey beautifully captures in broken, staccato sentences. Myrden's journey goes from blue-collar bars to a snooty Toronto hotel to the Spanish countryside ("Lemon trees. Everything crystal clear at a distance. Unreal") until Harvey expertly steers his troubled, inarticulate hero toward the fate he's been tempting all along. "

INSIDE Nominated for 2008 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

2007-09-18T18:53:00.000-04:00

St. John's Public Libraries is pleased to announce its nomination to the longlist for the prestigious IMPAC Dublin Award, the largest international prize if its kind:

Inside, by Kenneth J. Harvey, will appear on the longlist of titles competing for the 2008 prize.

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is an international fiction award, open to fiction written in any language. The winning author gains recognition throughout the world, plus a prize of 100,000 Euros.

INSIDE, Kirkus Reviews (starred)

2007-08-15T09:24:00.000-04:00

INSIDE by Kenneth J. Harvey

(US edition, published by Harcourt, October, 2007)

* starred review

"A moody, brooding portrait that will leave readers chilled and profoundly moved."

PW Reviews INSIDE

2007-07-16T15:04:00.000-04:00

Canadian Harvey's spare, terse and intense novel is about the outside, as in "outside of prison."

The story focuses on the bitter, ruined life of Mr. Myrden (his first name is conspicuously omitted) and begins as Myrden is consumed by a phalanx of reporters as he leaves the prison gates on his first morning of freedom after serving 14 years for a murder he didn't commit. (DNA evidence belatedly cleared him.)

Harvey (The Town That Forgot How to Breathe ) examines the minutiae of how the former inmate deals with being on the outside, where so much has changed: his wife has left him, his children have grown (Myrden is now a grandfather), his friends have changed in unexpected ways, and he reconnects with a long-lost love.

His attorneys arrange a substantial settlement that leaves Myrden and his wife more than $1 million (she's suddenly less estranged when money's involved), but the windfall is anything but a blessing, as Myrden soon discovers.

Harvey's prose is startlingly economical and plain ("One fast action. Release. Noise and flash") and gives the reader immediate access to Myrden's inner conflicted reticence. In the end, it's tough to tell which is crueler: prison or the outside.(Oct.)

INSIDE in the US

2007-06-01T08:35:00.000-04:00

Harcourt will publish INSIDE in the US

October, 2007

One of the Greatest Honours Imaginable

2007-05-15T21:40:00.000-04:00

Kenneth J. Harvey with the
musical voice of Canada,

Gordon Lightfoot

Board of Directors

2007-04-10T16:59:00.000-04:00

Kenneth J. Harvey has been appointed to the Board of Directors of the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

Canadian Paperback Released Today

2007-04-10T10:53:00.000-04:00

INSIDE
Vintage Canada

INSIDE in Italy

2007-04-04T17:33:00.000-04:00

Italian publisher, Einaudi,
has just released INSIDE
under the title DENTRO.

INSIDE Wins 2006 Winterset Award

2007-03-30T08:17:00.000-04:00

Newfoundland author, Kenneth J. Harvey, has won the 2006 Winterset Award for his novel INSIDE.

The Winterset, administered by the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council(NLAC), celebrates excellence in Newfoundland and Labrador writing.

The two other nominees were: Ken Babstock for Airstream Land Yacht and Russell Wangersky for The Hour of Bad Decisions.

Harvey received the $5,000 award at a ceremony on Thursday, March 29th at Government House in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The Lieutenant Governor of Newfoundland and Labrador is Honourary Patron of the Award.

Kenneth J. Harvey and Winterset juror (and Newfoundland novelist) Edward Riche having tea at Government House (where the award was announced) in St. John's on Thursday, March 29th.

2006 Winterset Award reception.

INSIDE Wins 2006 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

2007-03-09T09:57:00.000-05:00

INSIDE has won the 2006 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

The $15,000 prize was presented to Harvey at a ceremony in Toronto on March 7th.

The jury citation:

"Quite simply, Inside by Kenneth Harvey is a tour-de-force. Daring, difficult, and utterly uncompromising, the novel is a profound exploration of one man’s halting attempt at redemption.

The language of the book, like the main character it evokes, seems to be wrought in violent poverty, tempered in prison, and determined to break through into grace.

After fourteen years of incarceration, Myrden is finally released when his conviction for murder is overturned; wrongfully accused and imprisoned, he will be a rich man after he receives his legal settlement.

In pitch-perfect prose, without a moment of sentimentality, Kenneth Harvey takes the reader inside Myrden’s world in a rough St. John’s neighbourhood. We meet his friends, his betrayers, his avaricious wife, his alienated daughter and loving granddaughter. And we watch as his attempt to change his life and the lives of those he loves brings the novel to a conclusion as inevitable as it is riveting.

In a world of formulaic fiction, Inside is a point-blank godsend."

-- 2006 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize jury

(Karen Connelly, Jeffrey Moore, and Anna Porter

Anne Collins (Publisher, Random House Canada), Kenneth J. Harvey and Craig Pyette (Harvey's editor)

Sweden

2007-02-28T17:53:00.000-05:00

Staden som slutade andas
(The Town That Forgot How To Breathe)

will be published in Sweden
by Bra Bocker

March 14, 2007

The Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

2007-02-07T08:26:00.000-05:00

INSIDE, by Newfoundland author Kenneth J. Harvey, has been nominated for the 2006 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

The award is sponsored by Canadian media giant, ROGERS, and is administered and promoted by The Writers' Trust.

On March 7th, the selected winner will receive $15,000, with $2,000 presented to each of the finalists.

The Rogers Writers' Trust Award is one of the annual Writers' Trust Awards, worth a total of $123,000.

Past winners of the award include: Alice Munro, Austin Clarke and Joseph Boyden.

INSIDE in Russia

2007-01-26T12:06:00.000-05:00

Russian rights to INSIDE have been bought
by Centrepolygraph in Moscow.

Harvey's Russian agent, Svetlana Pironko
with Lora Fountain & Associates, made the sale.

Centrepolygraph will publish INSIDE in 2008.

New Korean Agent

2007-01-24T13:45:00.000-05:00

Alex Lee with Shinwon Agency
is Kenneth J. Harvey's
new literary agent in Korea

Inside

2007-01-13T19:24:00.000-05:00

A MAN WRONGFULLY CONVICTED OF MURDER

"A tough, unrelenting novel, thrilling and darkly eloquent and, in the end, a celebration of what life offers in even the harshest of circumstances."
—John Banville, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea

"CanLit's most unknown genius... There is no other writer like him, Canadian or otherwise."
— Lisa Gabriele, The Globe & Mail

"Edgy, redemptive and utterly compelling."
—Sandra Martin, Elle Canada

"Compassionate, endlessly inventive and daring...the work of a major writer, and one who single-handedly shifts our literary centre of gravity to the east."
—Frank Moher, The National Post

"Inside is classic Harvey. No one else can write like this."
—Bill Gaston, author of Sointula

"Inside is the kind of novel that brings temporary life back to such cliches as 'gripping' and 'page-turner'... Myrden will probably stand as one of the more vivid and full-blooded characters of all the Canadian novels being published this year."
— Nathan Whitlock, The Toronto Star

"A writer like no other."
—Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief

"An extravagantly haunted imagination."
—J.M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize-winning author of Disgrace

"Unsettling and yet exhilarating... Readers will emerge battered, but somehow invigorated."
— Stephen Knight, Quill & Quire

"Deeply affecting for its dark realism."
— Mark Callanan, The Independent

"A gripping, moving story... a great book and a real achievement."
— Joan Sullivan, The Telegram (St. John's)

. . .

La Ville Qui Cessa de Respirer

2007-01-11T11:42:00.000-05:00

French publisher, Flammarion, will
publish The Town That Forgot How To Breathe
as : La Ville Qui Cessa de Respirer,

April, 2007

Toronto Star, Best Book of the Year

2006-12-31T16:30:00.000-05:00

The Toronto Star

has selected INSIDE
as a Best Book of '06.

"The best of his
prolific career."

U.S. Paperback in 4th Printing

2006-12-24T15:44:00.000-05:00

* Now in 4th Printing

U.S. Paperback Edition
The Town That Forgot How To Breathe

Picador USA

Release date: August 22, 2006

CBC Radio, Best Book of the Year

2006-12-19T15:29:00.000-05:00

CBC Radio's
Talking Books has listed

INSIDE
as one of the
Best 25 Books of 2006

"A great, great book."
-Ian Brown

Ottawa XPress, Best Book of the Year

2006-12-16T18:07:00.000-05:00

The Ottawa XPress

has named INSIDE
one of the books of
'Finest Fiction' of 2006.

Ottawa Citizen, Best Book of the Year

2006-12-10T09:57:00.000-05:00

The Ottawa Citizen

has honoured INSIDE

by naming it one of the top

ten Best Books of 2006.

This is the fifth Best Book

listing for INSIDE.

Amazon.ca, Best Book of the Year

2006-12-07T12:57:00.000-05:00

INSIDE has been
included in the
Top 50
Books of 2006

as selected by
Amazon.ca

National Post, Best Book of the Year

2006-12-02T19:15:00.000-05:00

The National Post
has picked INSIDE
as one of the best books
of fiction for 2006.

Globe & Mail, Best Book of the Year

2006-11-25T06:21:00.000-05:00

INSIDE has been chosen
as one of the year's best
books of fiction by

The Globe & Mail.

It was featured in the
annual Globe 100,
November 25th.

Quill & Quire, Best Book of the Year

2006-11-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

INSIDE has been selected
as one of the top ten books
(fiction/non-fiction) published
in Canada in 2006.

QUILL & QUIRE (Canada's book
publishing magazine) recently released
the list in their December issue.

Ottawa International Writers Festival

2006-10-03T15:20:00.000-04:00

Kenneth J. Harvey will appear at the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

He will read from his novel INSIDE on Wednesday, October 4th at 8:30pm.

Books in Canada Cover

2006-09-24T10:41:00.000-04:00

An interview with Kenneth J. Harvey is printed in the September issue of Books in Canada (now available).

Harvey is featured on the cover. The photograph was taken at Mad Rock, Newfoundland.

(photo: Katherine Harvey)

Giller Prize

2006-09-23T21:26:00.000-04:00

INSIDE has been longlisted for the Giller Prize.

The shortlist for this year’s Giller Prize will be announced at a news conference on Tuesday, October 3 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto. The finalists will be honoured and a winner announced at a gala black tie dinner and awards ceremony to be held on November 7th.

The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson and distinguished Canadian authors Alice Munro and Michael Winter comprise the 2006 Giller Prize jury panel.

The Giller Prize awards $40,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English and $2,500 to each of the finalists.

The Giller Prize is named in honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller and was founded in 1994 by her husband Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch.

The Netherlands

2006-09-11T11:16:00.000-04:00

The Dutch edition of
The Town That Forgot How To Breathe

has just been released from Prometheus
October, 2006

The End of August

2006-08-29T18:56:00.000-04:00

Globe & Mail Feature

2006-08-27T09:05:00.000-04:00

A feature on Kenneth J. Harvey ran on page three of the Arts Section, August 22nd.

Click below to read:

'A Writer Like No Other'

Books in Canada Interview

2006-08-16T14:05:00.000-04:00

Books in Canada will feature an interview with Kenneth J. Harvey in their upcoming September, 2006 issue.

Drenka Willen buys INSIDE

2006-08-10T17:05:00.000-04:00

Legendary US editor, Drenka Willen at Harcourt, has bought US rights to Newfoundland author Kenneth J. Harvey's novel INSIDE.

Willen's authors include three Novel laureates: José Saramago, Octavio Paz and Wislawa Szymborska.

Umberto Eco, Gunter Grass, Arturo Perez-Reverte, Cees Nooteboom and Georges Konrad are also Willen's authors.

Harcourt will publish INSIDE in the fall of 2007

Harvey Wins Italy's Libro del Mare

2006-08-04T18:58:00.000-04:00

(Kenneth J. Harvey with Claudio Borea [left], the mayor of Sanremo, and Monica Belmondo, Harvey's Italian interpreter [click photo to enlarge])

Newfoundland author Kenneth J. Harvey has become the first Canadian to win Italy's 'Libro del Mare' for his book The Town That Forgot How to Breathe (La città che dimenticò di respirare).

Harvey received the award in Sanremo, Italy on July 27th during a ceremony in the rooftop garden of the Sanremo Casino. A cheque for 5,000 Euros ($7,200) was also presented.

Sanremo is situated along the Italian Riviera, and neighbours Monte Carlo, Nice and Cannes.

The 'Libro del Mare' was conceived by renowned Italian literary figure and filmmaker, Folco Quilici, and is presented each year to the best book published in Italy which deals with the sea.

The Town That Forgot How to Breathe has been sold in over thirteen countries, and has been translated into French, German, Italian, Russian, Dutch and other languages.

(Harvey with prize president, Folco Quilici)

________________________________

Harvey nominated for Libro del Mare

2006-08-02T10:50:00.000-04:00

The Town That Forgot How To Breathe (La città che dimenticò di respirare), the international bestseller by Newfoundland author Kenneth J. Harvey,

has been nominated for Italy's Libro del Mare.

http://www.sanremolibromare.it/finalisti.html

The winner receives 5,000 Euros at a ceremony in Sanremo, Italy, on July 27th.

The Libro del Mare is presented each year to the author of the best book about the sea.

The Town That Forgot How To Breathe

2006-07-15T05:51:00.000-04:00

2006

2006-07-03T23:59:00.000-04:00

Reader Mail #1, The Truth is Stranger Than...

2006-07-02T15:39:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Harvey,
Absolutely amazing!

I just read your novel (The Town That Forgot How To Breathe). It caught my eye because my Dad and generations before him came from Bareneed (I live in Vermont) and we have this strange disability that has plagued every generation of our family (including me). We forget to breathe! It leads to a number of other symptoms that you describe in your book. Did you know about this strange malady when you researched your book or is this a coincidence. Just curious.

--PDD

1987

2006-06-16T17:14:00.000-04:00

Denmark

2006-06-16T07:34:00.000-04:00

Danish rights for The Town That Forgot How To Breathe have been sold to Husets Forlag.

It is Harvey's first sale in Denmark. The deal was brokered by the Lennart Sane Agency AB.

"Very Beautiful Tragedy"

2006-06-12T10:59:00.000-04:00

"INSIDE... reads as simply as Ernest Hemingway with the darkness of Dostoyevsky...a book like no other, a fully achieved and very beautiful tragedy."
-- Diana Adams, Edmonton Journal

Third Week on Bestseller List

2006-05-26T08:27:00.000-04:00

The Town That Forgot How To Breathe
continues to place on the Arianna Bestseller List
in Italy.

The book has been on bestseller lists for the past
three weeks, since its release.

Einaudi, Harvey's Italian publisher, has also bought
Inside, and plans a 2007 release.

Italian Bestseller

2006-05-20T17:06:00.000-04:00

Grazie, L'Italia

La città che dimenticò di respirare
(The Town That Forgot How To Breathe)
enters four bestseller lists in Italy

#20-- Il Corriere della Sera (foreign fiction), May 28
#8-- La Stampa (foreign fiction) May 20
#20-- La Feltrinelli bookstore chain list
#14-- Arianna (foreign fiction) May 1 -7

The Town moves up to #13-- on Arianna (foreign fiction) list, May 8 -14 (figures obtained from 692 bookstores)

CBC-- Sounds Like Canada

2006-05-10T20:09:00.000-04:00

May 9th Interview with
Kenneth J. Harvey about INSIDE

Click Here to Listen

Blackstrap Hawco (notes)

2006-05-10T19:39:00.000-04:00

TLS

2006-05-10T16:47:00.000-04:00

INSIDE reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement April 21st

"Kenneth J Harvey's brilliant and remorseless novel, Inside, provides a narrative of unsettling intensity."

Globe & Mail Books Cover

2006-04-16T13:04:00.000-04:00

INSIDE featured on Globe & Mail Books cover
April 1st, 2006

Shack

2006-02-21T21:39:00.000-05:00

Dark stories about the people and ghosts that haunt rural Newfoundland. From the author of The Town That Forgot How to Breathe, a new collection of Newfoundland stories rich with legends, personal drama, humour and striking characters.

The thirteen, award-winning short stories in Shack feature Harvey's distinctive landscape of Cutland Junction, a place centred in the woods where characters live an inland way of life rarely witnessed in Newfoundland fiction.

Whether dealing with ghosts, loners, tragedy, or various elements of traditional lore, Harvey captures the people of Cutland Junction with passion, wit and care.

"A true talent and superior storyteller." — Books in Canada

His writing is so darkly, massively powerful that it will likely sweep all his potential competitors away with inexorable, tidal force.”
—Margaret Gunning, The Globe and Mail

Skin Hound

2006-02-20T15:48:00.000-05:00

Why did William Merriam murder his wife and children? What sets him on a trail of perverse destruction that transgresses what is thinkable in human behaviour?

This is a dark, frightening, controversial book about a man who skins his victims, and is merciless toward himself.

"Harvey is the bone man flaying things bare. Beware, beware, no one has woven a circle around him thrice."— Barry Callaghan, author of Barrelhouse Kings

"Kenneth J. Harvey is both funny and ferocious... He is one of Canada's best, and certainly the country's bravest, writer."— Paul Quarrington

"Kenneth J. Harvey is a literary high priest and a moveable feast; a warlock, a sudden shock; the rhyme, the reason, a master of treason— one of Canada's most volatile and valuable resources."— Lynn Crosbie, author of Dorothy L'Amour

1978

2006-02-19T17:08:00.000-05:00

The Woman in the Closet

2006-02-19T16:25:00.000-05:00

"Harvey has been compared to Stephen King and David Cronenberg...He writes with vitriolic despair and pushes the edges of reality with conviction."
- Calgary Herald

"Harvey has crafted a psychodrama worthy of Alfred Hitchcock."
- The Fiddlehead

"Harvey's writing is as sharp as a flensing knife: probing, pointed, and economical. The pace is brisk, breathtaking, disorienting."
- Telegraph Journal

The Hole That Must Be Filled

2006-02-18T12:57:00.000-05:00

Brud

2006-02-17T13:01:00.000-05:00

Russian Edition

A novel about a thumbless simpleton who, following his father's death, becomes a millionaire and must leave his farm and venture into the city for the first time.

Nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award.

The Flesh So Close

2006-02-16T13:03:00.001-05:00

In a similar vein to Directions for an Opened Body,
Kenneth J. Harvey's first book of short stories, this collection explores an intriguing range of honest and intense human longings.

Eloquent, heartbreaking and disturbing, this collection brings wounded beauty, bittersweet humour and commonplace tragedy to light. These twenty stories delve into the strange intimacies that characterize love, hate, and desperation, attentively, hungrily, and with eyes open wide.

"A master builder of solid fiction." - Telegraph Journal

"Harvey is obviously a writer of prodigious talent." - Globe and Mail

"Harvey's prose dazzles and compels...A formidable presence on the Canadian literary scene. Sheer virtuosity." - Canadian Book Review Annual