Miranda Hill, author of the acclaimed short story collection Sleeping Funny and the founder of Project Bookmark Canada, announces the newest Bookmark going up this Thursday in Winnipeg, and offers you a chance to win a thrilling prize pack of Carol Shields titles.
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At Project Bookmark Canada, we’re turning the library inside out, bringing text from stories and poems to the exact physical locations where literary scenes take place. With the help of readers across the country, we’re building a national network of sites and stories so that we can all read our way across Canada.
On October 24, it’s lucky Bookmark 13: The Republic of Love by Carol Shields, in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village. Carol Shields’ work has introduced many readers across the country and around the world to Winnipeg, so it seems fitting that this Bookmark is introducing Project Bookmark Canada to the city. And does the city ever shine in The Republic of Love, a story about the people and places that steal our hearts. Winnipeg is so much a part of the novel that it’s almost a character itself.
Shields is magnificent at taking things we thought we knew all about and making us look at them in deeper, more nuanced ways. Her writing is deceptively simple, disarming us with the ease of falling headlong into the story before we understand that our perspectives have been altered.
Project Bookmark Canada and 49th Shelf were talking about some of our favourite Carol Shields lines. Here’s one of mine: “’Love is the only enchantment we know,’ the woman in the green blazer was saying.” That’s from The Republic of Love. And here’s another that appears as part of the Bookmarked passage: “Geography is destiny, says Fay’s good friend Iris Jaffe, and Fay tends to agree.”
We’re wondering about some of your own favourite lines from Shields’ large collection of novels, stories, poetry, non-fiction and plays. Share them here and you’ll be entered in a draw to enter a Carol Shields prize pack from Project Bookmark Canada and Random House. And remember to visit the Bookmark in Winnipeg at River Avenue and Osborne Street.
Contest Details:
Write your favourite line from a Carol Shields book in the comments section below, which will make you eligible to win the Project Bookmark/Random House prize pack including one copy of each:
The contest ends October 31, 2013. The winner will be selected randomly and will be announced November 4, 2013.