Award-winning Author
Saturday, September 30th, 2017
7 PM –Lunenburg School of the Arts
The Lunenberg Lit Fest is back this September 29th & 30th, featuring Jill Martin Boutiellier, Pauline Dakin, Terry Fallis, Stephen Kimber, Vernon Oickle, Nino Ricci, and Patrick Woodcock. Catch Nino Ricci and Vernon Oickle at the Lunenberg School of the Arts on Saturday the 30th, with host Stephen Kimber.
Join Nino and the Great Lake Swimmers, along with Alison Pick, Trevor Cole, Roo Borson, Andrew Pyper, Kate Hilton, Antanas Sileika, Michael Fraser, and more.
The Dunedin Literary Festival returns this year promising more of everything: more authors, more music, more discussions, more activities, more vendors, and more walks in the park. An all inclusive, all-ages, one-day family affair that celebrates Canadian arts & literature, music, food, and community in the hopes of inspiring and educating readers of all ages.
This year’s festival will include a stellar line-up of award-winning Canadian authors, musicians, and poets, including Nino Ricci, Claire Cameron, Catherine Bush, Cecily Ross, Alison Pick, Brent Preston, Trevor Cole, Andrew Pyper, and Antanas Sileika.
Antanas Sileika, author of Underground and, most recently, The Barefoot Bingo Caller, talks with Nino about poker, books, and the writing life. Recently retired as the Director of the Humber School for Writers and a frequent contributor to the literary press, Antanas is equally accomplished as both writer and literary commentator.
General admission $25
NINO RICCI IN WINDSOR IN OCTOBER 2016 FOR WINDSOR BOOKFEST. PHOTO BY JASON KRYK/WINDSOR STAR
Nino Ricci talks about his origins in Essex County and about his award-winning novel Sleep. Find out how the small-town boy from Leamington made it to the Big Time, and the role that Leamington’s world-famous tomatoes played in his rise.
Join IAN HAMILTON and Nino Ricci on Monday, April 24 at 7 pm, in Beeton Hall at the Toronto Reference Library, for The Mafia, Triads and Ava Lee. Ian Hamilton, a former journalist, diplomat and entrepreneur, is the best-selling author of ten novels in the Ava Lee mystery series, currently being adapted for television. He appears as part of the spring 2017 eh List Author Series, Toronto Public Library’s celebration of writers from across Canada. His presentation of the latest installment in the Ava Lee series, The Couturier of Milan, will be followed by an onstage interview by Nino Ricci.
Get a sneak preview of the stars of the next generation as the writers
of Nino Ricci’s Creative Writing I strut their stuff.
7-10 PM on Thursday, December 1st, 2016 @ Mare Nostrum
401 Sunset Ave, Windsor ~ 519-973-7030 ~ Corner of Fanchette and Sunset
Literary star Hanya Yanagihara on friendship and on writing that which cannot be spoken. Acclaimed novelist and social commentator Lionel Shriver on the power of fiction. Cinema legend Joko Anwar on the rise (and rise) of Indonesian new-wave cinema. Undercover journalist Suki Kim on what lies behind the closed doors of North Korea’s sons. Youth activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied on writing your own story. Pageant Queen Anastasia Lin on beauty with a purpose. Much-loved performer Magda Szubanski on going beyond comedy, to family and a reckoning. Leading foreign correspondent Stan Grant on human dignity and the soul of a nation. Filmmaker and actress Djenar Maesa Ayu on flirting with the chaotic feminine in Indonesia. Artist and musician Jesse Paris Smith on creative activism. The Brothahood on where hip-hop intersects with faith. Stella Award-winner Charlotte Wood on writing darkness to find the light. Novelist and poet Helon Habila on staring into the hard face of the extreme. And Nino Ricci too!
Nino Ricci reads at the University of Windsor to launch his term as the university’s 2016/17 writer-in-residence.
Workshop dates: July 18 – 28, 2016
Sage Hill Writing Experience’s 2016 summer programs take place at St. Michael’s Retreat Centre near Lumsden, Saskatchewan, a beautiful site in the Qu’Appelle Valley whose 220 acres feature a labyrinth, sun circle and many walking trails.
“Kroetsching: the long-poem sequence” with Phil Hall
“Writing the Real: telling your truth in Non-Fiction & Memoir” with Alison Pick
“Living Fiction” with Alissa York
“Fail Better: taking your Fiction to the next level” with Nino Ricci
“Tales & Technologies” with Ellen Moffat
“The Daredevil Draft” with Wayne Grady & Merilyn Simonds
“The Metaphor: Truly, Madly, Deeply” with Catherine Banks
“Re-enactive Poetry: vision & revision” with Steven Heighton
Sage Hill Writing Experience’s 2016 summer programs take place at St. Michael’s Retreat Centre near Lumsden, Saskatchewan, a beautiful site in the Qu’Appelle Valley whose 220 acres feature a labyrinth, sun circle and many walking trails.
For more information, visit our website or call 306-537-7243.
After a months-long book tour that took its author across the country, Sleep continues to captivate readers and stir debate with its unrelenting portrait of a character in free fall, unable to escape the grip of his own darker impulses. Reviewers at the Toronto Star put the novel in 2015’s Top 5 for Fiction, along with such international bestsellers as The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins and Elena Ferrante’s Story of the Lost Child.
Sleep hit the ground running when it was launched in the fall of 2015, already backed by a starred review from Quill & Quire and a rare rave from Phil Marchand in the National Post, who called it “one of the Ricci’s most deeply felt novels, and one of his riskiest.”
Emily Donaldson, writing in the Globe and Mail, described Sleep as “Ricci’s Bad Lieutenant moment,” though with Sleep‘s David Pace raising the ante on Harvey Keitel’s bad lieutenant. “It’s a novel likely to spur another insipid debate about whether characters need to be ‘likeable,’” she writes, “which David is not. But let’s hope that it doesn’t, and that readers are willing to follow Ricci to the festeringly grim but undeniably compelling place he has travelled to.”
Robert Collison took up that very debate in his Toronto Star review, finding “much to commend in this book, including long bouts of wonderful writing” but describing Pace as “one of the most thoroughly disagreeable characters I’ve encountered in recent fiction.” Spoiler alert: Collison gives away a few crucial plot points, bemoaning, among Pace’s other sins, his “systemic plagiarism,” his “horrendous parenting skills” and his “shockingly disturbing sadomasochistic affair” with a friend’s wife.
Buzz had been building over Sleep since the summer, when the Globe and Mail chose it as one of the 20 books to watch for in the fall season, along with heavy-hitters like Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman and Gloria Steinem’s My Life on the Road. In August Sleep was one of four books excerpted by the Globe as among the fall’s most anticipated. A feature profile of Ricci in the Quill & Quire was followed by their starred pre-publication review, which set the tone for the book’s reception.
The book’s launch was marked by wide media coverage, including profiles in the Globe and Mail and Quill & Quire and appearances on Canada AM and Global’s Morning Show. After its first week in bookstores it came in at #2 on the Globe and Mail‘s Canadian Fiction Bestseller List and #6 on the overall Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List, ahead of Harper Lee and Danielle Steele. Ricci’s touring has taken him across the country, with stops in Eden Mills, Inuvik, Toronto, Windsor, Montreal, Calgary, Whistler, Victoria, Vancouver, Parry Sound, Markham, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Waterloo, Grimsby, Port Colborne, and Hamilton and that included “Torn from the Pages” events in Toronto and Prince Edward County.
A timeline of Sleep‘s reception:
☛The Globe and Mail lists Sleep among “The 20 books you’ll be reading and talking about for the rest of the year,” alongside books by Camilla Gibb, John Irving, Salman Rushdie, Harper Lee and Gloria Steinem.
☛Quill & Quire‘s fall preview profiles “Nino Ricci and The Power of Sleep”
☛The Globe and Mail an exclusive excerpt from Sleep.
☛Quill & Quire, in a starred review, calls Sleep “a frightening and essential addition to the oeuvre of one of this country’s best and most important writers.”
☛Phil Marchand, writing in the National Post, calls Sleep “one of Ricci’s most heartfelt novels, and one of his riskiest.”
☛Emily Donaldson reviews Sleep in the Globe and Mail, calling it Ricci’s “Bad Lieutenant moment” and hoping readers are willing to follow him “to the festeringly grim but undeniably compelling place he has travelled to.”
☛The Toronto Star profiles 5 Good Reads from Word on the Street.
☛Sleep heads Chatelaine‘s list of “Buzzy Fall Books”
☛Toronto Star critic Robert Collison finds “much to commend in this book, including long bouts of wonderful writing,” describing its protagonist as “one of the most thoroughly disagreeable characters I’ve encountered in recent fiction.”
☛Sleep ends its first week of sales at No. 6 on the Hardcover Bestseller List and No. 2 on the Canadian Bestseller List.
☛Marc Montgomery interviews Ricci for Radio Canada International.
☛Nino tackles The Magic 8 at CBCBooks.
☛Nino talks about Sleep with the Calgary Herald‘s Erik Volmers.
☛Susan Schwartz profiles Ricci in the Montreal Gazette.
☛The London Free Press calls Sleep “a page-turner bound to please the award-winning writer’s wide audience.”
☛The Vancouver Sun asks Ricci what is keeping him up at night.
☛Nino Ricci, Marina Endicott, Deanna Young and Anne Enright headline author festival in Parry Sound.
☛The Winnipeg Free Press profiles Ricci in a feature Q&A.
☛Joanne Kelly describes Sleep as a “dark but gripping read” on CBC Manitoba.
☛”Torn from the Pages: Nino Ricci” debuts in Toronto and reprises at Picton’s Books and Company
☛Sleep makes the Toronto Star‘s Top 5 for 2015
☛Sleep makes the Globe and Mail’s Top 100 for 2015
☛Sleep wins the 2016 Canadian Authors Award for Fiction