Reproduction wins the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize!

September 2, 2019

I am aware

that I need to update this site.

But I would prefer if we could catch up while uncoiling a Cinnabun into our mouths.

May 23, 2019

Re: my previous question re: Amazon First Novel Award

Sure, I can hope. I can hope as much as I want.

But who’s to determine whether my hope gets satisfied over someone else’s.

Impossible not to be moved by @caseyplett's genuine expression of joy at winning the #AmazonFNA. It was electricity bouncing bw her and all of us in the room. https://t.co/ENlVaVwi9R
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) May 23, 2019

April 26, 2019

Reproduction is a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award

Do I dare hope?

Read in The Walrus

Read on CBC

Read in Toronto Star

March 16, 2019

Google alerts, 2

As I’ve mentioned before, my agent occasionally sends me Google alerts of what I and other Ian Williamses are up to.

Google Alerts

Ian Williams Daily update ⋅ March 15, 2019

NEWS

Ian Williams thrives on stylistic daring in debut novel Reproduction Straight.com Reproduction, the debut novel by acclaimed poet Ian Williams, looks at how love, ambition, and sorrow recur in the families we both inherit and …Flag as irrelevant

Man arrested for allegedly hitting a child with a leather belt WKRG News 5 The boy told her he was punished by 30-year-old Ian Williams for his actions at school. The arrest report states the alleged abuse happened on …Flag as irrelevant

March 13, 2019

$165 000 US or $218 790 CAD x 2

I should add that David blurbed my book.

Does the influx of money mean his opinion is literally worth more now?

March 13, 2019

$165 000 US or $218 790 CAD

David Chariandy won the Windham-Campbell prize for Brother.

He’s won, or been close to winning, a lot of prizes. Definitely, the book has made him over a quarter million dollars in prize money alone. For part of an afternoon, a few of my writer friends and I fantasized about what we’d do with the money.

I had just come back from playing tennis so I was thinking I might spend more of my time doing that. In the short term, I might get a new racket (I dislike that spelling but, alas, I’m giving in). That would leave $218 600 to spend on tennis balls.

A colleague at the Peter Wall Institute, younger than me, said she sometimes takes a day off and pretends that she’s retired. She informed me that one needs 1.3 million dollars to retire comfortably off the interest.

Anyway, Twitter showered David with love, although he’s not on it.

I'll convert the numbers to words for the writers out there.

That's one hundred, sixty five thousand United States dollars

Or two hundred, eighteen thousand, seven hundred, ninety Canadian dollars.

Congrats, David! https://t.co/aEIQ3syD8B
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 13, 2019

March 11, 2019

Reading Zadie Smith’s Feel Free

Here are some highlights from Feel Free, via my Twitter self.

The most beautiful phrase I've read today comes from Zadie Smith:

"Their muscles seem outlined by a fine pen."
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 11, 2019

"If novelists know anything it's that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed" ZadieSmith still
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 7, 2019

"I am by nature not a political person and these are the darkest political times I have ever known. My business, such as it is, concerns the intimate lives of people." Zadie Smith, FEEL FREE.
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 7, 2019

A morning dose of Zadie Smith, FEEL FREE: "Back then, we were all still willing to take the 'risk,' if 'risk' is the right word to describe entering into the lives of others, not merely in symbol but in reality."
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 6, 2019

From Zadie Smith's essay on Bieber: "All real living is meeting. But what most of us do, most of the time, feels more like 'presenting.' As in: I present myself, with all my individual qualities, to you, and you present yourself back. You experience the style of me, my identity."
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 6, 2019

Zadie Smith's got my back when you get upset at my forgetfulness: "I have the kind of brain that erases everything that passes, almost immediately."
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 5, 2019

"You don't *have* to become a doctor. In fact as long as you don't expect your dreams to be financed in any way whatsoever you are pretty much free to dream your little head off." Zadie Smith on being raised lower middle class.
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 5, 2019

Warning: there may be a lot of Zadie Smith tweets in coming days. I'm reading FEEL FREE.

"Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything to stay."
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 5, 2019

February 20, 2019

The book trailer for Reproduction

Have you seen this yet? I strut in slow motion down Queen West in Toronto. I look pretty tough. I appear to be thinking, I run these streets out here, y’all.

Then I write some poetry into a yellow notebook.

My favourite sentence is the last one, starting at 1:16, where I lean in and get all serious. That’s about as intense as I get, believe it or not.

February 19, 2019

Marlon James, 2

Introducing.
Drinking lemonade on the porch with a shotgun.
Crooning for the Grammys.
Winning at his game show.

(Thanks for the photos, Aaron.)