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Nino Ricci

Award-winning Author

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Extraordinary Canadians TV

PMA Productions presents Extraordinary Canadians, an innovative series of portraits pairing Canada’s most distinguished writers with great Canadians who have shaped our thinking. Based upon Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians collection of books edited by John Ralston Saul, the series gives personal takes on the lives of eminent Canadians, capturing the relationship between writer and subject that lies at the heart of the biography process.

Airing on City TV, Biography, and Omni starting October 2011. For more information, visit Extraordinary Canadians.

 

 

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: Extraordinary Canadians, Pierre Elliott Trudeau

Bridging the Digital Divide

Ricci Website Earns First Comment on Origin of Species

Almost three years after Nino Ricci’s novel The Origin of Species was first published, its webpage has finally garnered its first reader comment.

“I am at a point in this book where I am not sure I want to finish reading it,” wrote Linda Anderson Stewart, going on to describe the book as “one of the most depressing ” she had read in a long time.

Ricci was ecstatic when the comment showed up on his website dashboard.

“Never mind the Governor General’s Award, never mind the Order of Canada. As far as I’m concerned, this is what counts. Contact. Bridging the digital divide.”

Ricci says he hopes Ms. Anderson Stewart’s comment will spur other readers to post their opinions of his novel.

“I am no Polly Anna,” Ms. Anderson Stewart ended her post, “but I don’t find any of these characters worth reading about, other than to confirm all my worst opinions of human nature.”

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: comment, The Origin of Species

Tim Hortons to Take Over Toronto Libraries

Photo by mjb84In an historic union of public and private sector interests, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has inked a deal to have the Tim Hortons coffee empire take over management of the Toronto Public Library system.

“It’s a natural fit,” said Ford, who credited his brother Doug with the inspiration for the scheme. “I mean, the only difference between a library and a Tim Hortons is the coffee. You’ve basically got a lot of lowlifes sitting around effing the dog all day.”

“Mind you, the coffee might actually make libraries worth the trip,” added Doug, who will be quitting his position as a city councillor to take up a senior management position with Tim Hortons. “From where I’m sitting, Roll Up The Rim has done a lot more for literacy than any commie-pinko novelist ever has.”

Tim Hortons president Paul House says he has big plans for Toronto’s libraries, including a massive sell-off of old inventory to make room for retail space.

“We just want to even the balance a bit,” said House. “At the end of the day, your average Joe isn’t going to miss Plato or Joyce or any of those guys.  But don’t take away his double-double!”

Tim Hortons founder Tim Horton could not be reached for comment.

PHOTO BY MJB84

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: Doug Ford, Margaret Atwood, Rob Ford, Tim Hortons, Toronto Public Library

Order Up!

OTTAWA – Nino Ricci was among the 50 new appointments to the Order of Canada announced on June 30th by Governor General David Johnston. Rumours that the inclusion was an administrative oversight have so far proved unfounded. As a Member of the Order, Ricci will receive a lapel pin as well as the right to include the initials C.M. after his name. He will also have the right to be addressed by the honorific “Mister,” commonly abbreviated as “Mr.”

Recipients will be invited to accept their lapel pins at a ceremony to be held in the nation’s capital. A request by Mr. Ricci for a public reading at the event of the Open Letter he addressed to Stephen Harper during the recent election campaign has so far gone unanswered.

The Order of Canada, one of our country’s highest civilian honours, was established to recognize a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to community and service to the nation. Ricci expressed hopes that his appointment did not constitute a departure from those aims.

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: Governor General, linkedin, Member of the Order of Canada, Order of Canada, Stephen Harper

Open Letter to Globe & Mail – For those who missed it

The following is an open letter addressed to The Globe and Mail‘s editor-in-chief, John Stackhouse, and its publisher, Phillip Crawley, regarding the serious financial crisis the newspaper is apparently currently weathering.

22 March 2011

John Stackhouse, Editor-in-Chief
Phillip Crawley, Publisher
The Globe and Mail

Dear Sirs:

I am writing to express my deep concern at the troubling and increasingly inescapable evidences that Canada’s august and historic national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, has fallen on hard times, and, further, to offer my apologies if I myself have been in any way responsible for the newspaper’s present difficulties.

Allow me to explain.

Last September I was commissioned to write a travel article for the special relaunch edition of The Globe and Mail that appeared on newsstands on October 2nd, 2010. (Let me just add as a sidenote: Love the gloss!) To my delight, I was able to negotiate a fee for the article that was well in excess of the frugal freelance rates The Globe is normally obliged to pay in the digital age, and indeed was nearly at the level of the premium rates that used to be in effect when I first started freelancing twenty years ago. At The Globe’s insistence I was also allowed to put all my expenses on my own credit card rather than on The Globe’s, thus accumulating points toward eventual free travel. Since my expenses included international flights, the points I was able to rack up were considerable, enough, say, for round-trip business class travel between Toronto’s island airport—were it not that political considerations make using that facility awkward—and the airport at Buttonville (had it not closed).

I had cause to regret exacting such onerous conditions from your newspaper, however, when, nearly two months after I submitted an invoice, I had yet to receive any payment or reimbursement. Enquiries to The Globe soon made clear where the problem lay: Due to cutbacks, I was told, the accounting office that dealt with payments to freelancers had suffered numerous layoffs, by that point reduced to a single secondary school student logging the community service hours she needed in order to graduate. I became concerned, on learning this, that it had been unduly selfish of me to have negotiated a fee increase or indeed to have insisted on reimbursement of my expenses, given the travel points I had accumulated. This concern grew to alarm when, after four months had passed and still no payment was forthcoming, The Globe was unable to provide any new explanation for the delay, which suggested that not only had its accounts office been gutted, but its public relations office as well. Now nearly six months have elapsed and my enquiries have ceased to receive a response of any sort, leading me to fear that despite the hope expressed in The Globe’s October relaunch, of which I was proud to be a part, whole wings of the newspaper’s offices now stand abandoned, victims of the unreasonable demands of greedy freelancers like myself.

My intention in writing to you, then, is not to lament my own fate but to express my fear and regret for yours. As a writer, I am accustomed to living frugally, and have come to believe I am a better person for it. We all know writers who through one fluke or another have come into sums of money approximating a living wage only to descend at once into profligacy, indulging in Mexican all-inclusives or brand-name clothing or, worse, allowing a distasteful optimism and joy of life to creep into their work. I have no desire to be among that class. Nor, indeed, is the carrying of debt of any great concern to me, since for the past number of years I and my wife, also a writer, have lived almost exclusively on the line of credit afforded to us by the unreasonable rise in real estate values in our city over the past decade. Unlike our unhappy neighbours to the south, whose economy was laid low by credit line excesses, we Canadians seem to have managed to limit our use of credit to the sort of bridge financing that recessions or the non-payment of fees sometimes make necessary. For writers, the arrangement is especially propitious, and indeed may represent the solution to every problem of arts funding that has ever plagued this country. Here is how it works: Every month my wife and I borrow as much money as we need to maintain the lifestyle we have grown accustomed to, our only obligation being that we make a monthly interest payment that can itself, wonder of wonders, be borrowed from our credit line. The added bonus is that should we ever reach our credit limit—which at current rates is not likely to happen before the fall, or even later, should we decide to suspend the university educations of our two eldest children—we need only turn over our home to our bank, and our entire debt is expunged.

So my concern here, as I say, is not for myself, but for your venerable newspaper, and, more particularly, for your own situations, given that people on fixed incomes like yourselves often have much less leeway in organizing their finances than those of us who are self-employed. Should it be then, that my unreasonable demands for payment have in any way compromised your newspaper’s finances or interfered with the speedy processing of your own paycheques, please let me know and I will at once cease and desist in those demands.

Yours sincerely,

Nino Ricci

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: credit line, financial crisis, Globe and Mail, invoice, linkedin, open letter, profligacy

Writer Endorses Beta Testing for Novelists

Movies have their test screenings, pharmaceuticals have their trials, software has its beta versions. Now writer Nino Ricci is throwing his support behind the notion that novels should have beta versions as well, to help stave off the nasty reviews that often accompany a book’s release.

“Writers aren’t gods,” says Ricci, whose own novel Testament presents the reputed son of a god, Jesus Christ, as the bastard offspring of a Roman soldier, a gambit that earned him the ire of fundamentalists and made him a subject of attack on several phone-in radio shows. “They make mistakes. Beta versions would give them a chance to catch them before the critics do.”

Ricci claims that many writers have seen a drastic reduction in editorial attention in recent years as publishers have trimmed staff to cut costs.

“They push you out there to the wolves and meanwhile nobody has noticed that the name of your major character changes three times or that your Foucaultian analysis of twentieth century materialism has entirely failed to take into account Homi Bhabha and Georges Bataille. No other industry operates with such a lack of quality control.”

Ricci’s idea is simple: instead of using a single editor to hone their novels, writers would use the feedback of a carefully selected community of first readers, preferably made up of people who are overworked and underpaid and very crotchety, to simulate the actual reviewing community.

“The beauty of the scheme,” says Ricci, “is that even if the feedback was negative you wouldn’t necessarily have to change your book. Instead you could just plaster the cover of the final release with negative quotes from the beta comments, and reviewers would feel obliged to disagree with them they same way they feel obliged to disagree with positive ones.”

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: beta version of novels, literary critics, Testament

An Open Letter to Stephen Harper

18 April 2011

The Right Hon. Stephen Joseph Harper, P.C., M.P.
Prime Minister of Canada
Langevin Building
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6

Dear Prime Minister,

I am writing today, in the midst of what is quickly developing into the most exciting federal election this country has seen in months, to commend you for your own excellent campaign and to apologize for any slights that I or any of my fellow fiction writers might have directed against you in the past. Many of us fictionists had initially assumed that Mr. Ignatieff, as a novelist in his own right, would be our man in this election, but what your campaign has amply shown is that where fiction is concerned, the Harper Conservatives are without rivals.

Nowhere is your mastery of fiction more evident than in your decision to run on your economic record when you don’t actually have one. Smart of you to take credit for Canada’s financial stability in the current global recession when it was exactly neoconservative policies like yours that unraveled the economy south of the border, and shamefacedly socialist ones, put in place before your party even existed, that protected our own. (I don’t know if you remember, for instance, a certain Liberal decision back in 1998 to pull the plug on some major bank mergers.) Then, instead of decrying the blatantly Keynesian stimulus package your minority government was forced into passing, one that has racked up deficits not seen since the days of that notorious closet Trotskyite Brian Mulroney, you have brilliantly managed to embrace this left-wing travesty, one that betrayed every principle for which your party stands, as a triumph of neo-conservatism.

Perhaps I misspeak myself, however, when I talk about a betrayal of principle. That is to imply the existence of an actual principle to betray, and hence to overlook how deeply fiction informs every aspect of your political project. Your Keynesian flip on deficit spending, for instance—and this from a finance minister who once swore he would rather spend a month on a desert island with Jack Layton than run a deficit—takes on a Proustian elegance when seen in the light of the fiction of policy that has marked your party since its inception. We all remember your boldness in throwing out years of work on setting up a national childcare program of the sort they have in developed countries and instead offering families cash for their kiddies to let the grandparents look after them or the unlicensed pedophile down the street. “Family values,” you said, with your smile (okay, the smile still needs work), cleverly suggesting the fiction of social policy for what was actually vote-buying on a scale even Sir John A. Macdonald would have envied. And of course the great beauty of a fictional policy as opposed to a real one—a point the other parties do not seem to have cottoned onto—is that it requires absolutely no effort on the government’s part, and entails absolutely no risk. Instead, every year families send money into the government in the form of taxes, and every month the government sends a tiny bit of it back, the only cost being the massive bureaucracy required to keep all this machinery in motion.

Over the past five years you have employed strategies of this sort on every front. For vote-buying-masquerading-as-policy, nothing has beaten your GST reduction—why don’t the other parties think of these things? why are they always going on boring rants about health care and the environment and education as if these mattered more than extra cash for a new flat screen TV?—while your law and order campaign has taken fiction to heights even Dan Brown has not dreamed of, employing tax dollars you don’t have in amounts you don’t know to achieve results that are unproven against a threat that doesn’t exist.

A recent study into corporate tax cuts showed that, contrary to your party’s view, corporations tend to hoard tax savings rather than create jobs with them. Confronted with these facts, your finance minister, Mr. Flaherty, admitted they made your tax policy a “tough sell,” but said he would stick with it because corporations and the experts liked it, and, “most importantly, because it’s a confidence builder in Canada, and a way of branding Canada.” Clearly, Mr. Flaherty has studied the art of fiction at the feet of a master, showing, here, how even logic is no obstacle to the expert fictionist. Branding, indeed: I can almost feel the pleasant burn of those cuts in my flesh, along with the pride of knowing that in Canada, at least, fiction reigns, and what matters is not whether a policy works but only if people believe in it, or at least believe that they can make others believe.

Politics is nothing if not the art of making others believe. So kudos to you, Mr. Harper for sparing us in this campaign any view of the real Stephen Harper, in all his nakedness—and the mind balks at such a notion even as mere metaphor—and giving us the fictional one, infinitely more complex and convincing. In so doing you have given inspiration to all of us for whom fiction is a way of life. Let me end, then, with my own fiction, namely my hope that on May 2nd you get the majority we all believe you believe you deserve, and we can look forward to the spectacle of five more glorious years of the Harper Government (formerly known as the Government of Canada).

Sincerely,

Nino Ricci

Watch the video on YouTube.

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: Canada, Election 2011, Jim Flaherty, linkedin, Michael Ignatieff, Stephen Harper

Writer Vanishes After Receiving Globe Cheque

Toronto (XP) 6 April 2011 – Writer Nino Ricci has disappeared from his Toronto home after receiving a cheque from The Globe and Mail newspaper that was six months overdue. Earlier, Ricci had written an open letter to The Globe expressing concern that his requests for payment had placed the newspaper in financial difficulties.

Ricci was last seen leaving his home clutching The Globe‘s cheque and a recent statement from his frequent flyer program.

“When the cheque came he just got the funniest grin,” Ricci’s wife reported. “Then the last thing he said to me before he left was, ‘It turns out I was wrong about Buttonville.’ Those were his exact words. What do you suppose he meant?”

Sources close to Ricci speculate that the reference was to Buttonville Airport, which Ricci erroneously identified in his open letter as having recently closed. Though slated to close, the airport continues to operate.

Ricci left no other clue as to his whereabouts, although his wife reported finding a stack of unpaid bills on his writing desk topped with a note that read, “Do not pay until 2012.”

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: Buttonville, Globe and Mail, late payment

Ricci Lauds Globe’s Late Payment Policy

TORONTO (QP) 11:42 AM 28 Monday 2011 – Nino Ricci has learned that as of Friday, March 25, 2011, a cheque from Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper for an invoice that had gone unpaid for six months began wending its way toward him through the reliable services of Canada Post. Average Canada Post delivery times suggest the cheque should reach Ricci’s home, which is located about a fifteen-minute cab ride from The Globe‘s offices, only a week to ten days after he sent out an open letter to The Globe calling attention to the missed payment and expressing fears for the newspaper’s finances.

“I’m certainly glad they didn’t waste any money on a courier,” said Ricci. “That was what I was afraid of at first, when they were so apologetic. But it’s only costing them the usual fifty-nine cents.”

Ricci was also extremely pleased to learn that The Globe and Mail would NOT be including in their cheque to him a late payment charge he had added to his most recent invoice to cover interest charges on expenses he incurred on The Globe‘s behalf as well compensation for deferred income and for the time and energy he has put into seeking payment. The Globe‘s payment policies, Ricci was informed, do not permit it to make any compensation for late payment.

“This is wonderful news!” said Ricci. “I didn’t even know you were allowed to have policies like that! You can be sure I’m going to be setting my own in place right away, so I won’t have to be paying late charges any more to any of my creditors.”

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: Globe and Mail, open letter

Fears of Globe’s Difficulties Unfounded

TORONTO (NP) 25 March 2011 – After an open letter to Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper expressing concern that his unreasonable demands for payment had placed the paper in financial difficulty, writer Nino Ricci has been assured that the paper is alive and well.

“The best part is they’re still going to pay me. . . . I can’t wait to tell my children.”

“I’m sorry we’ve put you through this,” responded editor-in-chief John Stackhouse in the face of Ricci’s contrition, and added, “other writers have suffered the same,” suggesting that Ricci has not been alone in experiencing guilt for a relentless pursuit of payment.

Ricci, for his part, was greatly relieved to learn that his actions had not placed the paper in peril. “And the best part is they’re still going to pay me. The cheque is in the mail, they said. I can’t wait to tell my children.”

Filed Under: News Archive Tagged With: Globe and Mail

Canadian Writers Speak Out on Copyright

The Writers’ Union of Canada, under the leadership of its Chair Alan Cumyn, has put together a video about the perils of Bill C-32, Canada’s controversial new copyright bill. Check it out right here, or on YouTube at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qrcNksj5DE

Then help spread the word about it by whatever social networking means you are most comfortable with. Blog about it. Include the link in your emails. Send out a tweet. Alert your Facebook friends. Pick up the telephone. Or just knock on your neighbour’s door and have a chat.

For more information on C-32, check out the Canadian cultural industries’ Joint Statement on Bill C-32, supported by nearly 90 organizations representing more than 600,000 creators and copyright owners. Then let your elected representatives in Ottawa know your own feelings about C-32, including the members of the Special Legislative Committee on C-32 that is currently holding hearings regarding amendments to the existing bill. You can find email addresses for all MPs at www.parl.gc.ca, but here are a few to get you started.

Prime Minister’s Office (PMO)

  • Rachel Curran: rachel.curran@pmo-cpm.gc.ca
  • Sean Speer: sean.speer@pmo-cpm.gc.ca

Department of Canadian Heritage

  • James Moore, Minister: moore.j@parl.gc.ca (CONS Port Moody – Westwood – Port Coquitlam BC)
  • Brendan Marshall, Executive Assistant to the Minister: brendan.marshall@pch.gc.ca

Department of Industry

  • Tony Clement, Minister: clement.t@parl.gc.ca (CONS Parry Sound – Muskoka, ONT)

Special Legislative Committee on C-32:

  • Gordon Brown, Chair: brown.g@parl.gc.ca (CONS Leeds – Grenville)
  • Charlie Angus: angus.c@parl.gc.ca (NDP Timmins – James Bay ONT – NDP Critic for Heritage and for Digital Issues)
  • Pablo Rodriguez: rodrigues.p@parl.gc.ca (LIB Honoré – Mercier QUE)
  • Mike Lake: lake.m@parl.gc.ca (CONS Edmonton – Mill Woods – Beaumont ALTA – Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister)
  • Dan McTeague: mcteague.d@parl.gc.ca (LIB Scarborough – Guildwood ONT)
  • Serge Cardin: cardin.s@parl.gc.ca (BQ Sherbrooke)
  • Ed Fast: fast.e@parl.gc.ca (CONS Prince Edward – Hastings)
  • Sylvie Boucher: boucher.s@parl.gc.ca (CONS Beauport – Limoilou)
  • Dean Del Mastro: delmastro.d@parl.gc.ca (CONS Peterborough ONT)
  • Peter Braid: braid.p@parl.gc.ca (CONS Kitchener – Waterloo)
  • Carole Lavallée: lavallee.c@parl.gc.ca (BQ Saint-Bruno – Saint-Hubert QUE)
  • Marc Garneau: garneau.m@parl.gc.ca (LIB Westmount – Ville-Marie QUE – LIB Critic for Industry, Science and Technology)

Filed Under: News Archive

Don’t Be Afraid

Look for Steven Hayward’s new novel Don’t Be Afraid, published this month by Knopf Canada to rave reviews.

Born and raised in Toronto, Hayward currently teaches creative writing at Colorado College in Colorado Springs and is s frequent contributor to the Globe and Mail and the Literary Review of Canada. His first novel, The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke, won Italy’s prestigious Premio Grinzane Cavour prize.

  • Read the Globe and Mail review of Don’t Be Afraid.
  • Read the National Post review of Don’t Be Afraid.

Filed Under: News Archive

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Nino Ricci

About Nino

Nino Ricci is the author of award-winning novel The Origin of Species and of the Lives of the Saints trilogy, adapted as a miniseries starring Sophia Loren. For more on Nino's life and work, including his acclaimed biography of Pierre Trudeau, contact Nino's parole officer. Or you can also poke around this nifty … Read more.

News

Italian Week Ottawa

Ottawa's Italian Week hosts an evening of conversation with Nino Ricci, including a sneak peek at his new novel, set in London, England in the months leading up … [Read More...]

Librissimi

Lino Rufo, Dom Fiore, Andrea Ramolo and Nino Ricci open this year's Librissimi, Toronto's Italian book festival, with a tribute in music and spoken word to the … [Read More...]

I Migliori Awards

Nino Ricci has been named one of the recipients of the Pirandello Lyceum's 2025 I Migliori Awards. This year marks the 40th anniversary of an award that Boston … [Read More...]

Amnesty International Book Club

Check out the Amnesty International Book Club, the largest free book club in Canada. Members enjoy lots of perks, including free signed books, invitations to author events, and free merchandise. You'll also get discussion guides and a chance to share the authors' own insights on their work.

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