Nino reads at the Prince Edward County Authors’ Festival. 3 PM, Saturday 16 April 2016 at the book store on Main Street.

Nino reads at Hamilton’s GritLIT Festival. Friday 8 April 2016 at 8:30 PM at the Hamilton Art Gallery.

Amnesty International Writeathon
Saturday, December 5, 2015 ~ 1 PM to 7 PM
Centre for Social Innovation Annex ~ 720 Bathurst Street, Toronto

WRITE A LETTER. CHANGE A LIFE.
JOIN AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FOR WRITE FOR RIGHTS.

Your hand-written letters, combined with millions from around the world, can change a life. Become part of Amnesty International’s Write for Rights by signing up to host or join a letter writing party, or by writing on your own. However you participate, you’ll be adding your voice to the growing movement for justice and human rights.

Come out to the Centre for Social Innovation Annex at 720 Bathurst Street, Toronto on December 5th or check out the dozens of other Amnesty International activities in your area and across the country in celebration of Human Rights Day on December 10th.

Writers’ Trust Gala 2015
Wednesday, November 25, 2015 ~ 6:30 PM 
The Ritz-Carlton, Toronto

The annual Writers’ Trust Gala is a true celebration of Canadian authors and Canadian literature and a major fundraising event in support of the Trust’s programs. Join some of this year’s hottest authors for an evening of food, fun and conversation. Hosted by Steve Patterson.

The Canadian Authors Series
Thursday, November 26, 2015 ~ 7 PM
Roselawn Centre for the Living Arts
296 Fielden Ave, Port Colborne, Ontario

Reception at 7 PM ~ Reading at 8 PM

For twenty-two years the renowned Canadian Authors Series has been hosting Canada’s finest writers at Port Colborne’s Roselawn Centre for the Living Arts, a haunted but lovely Victorian Mansion featuring a 265-seat theatre. Over the years the series has placed over 10,000 Canadian books into the hands of readers and has donated more than $30,000 to charities including the Niagara Peninsula Children’s Centre, Port Cares, Easter Seals and the United Way.

After its first week in bookstores, Sleep has come in at #2 on the Globe and Mail‘s Canadian Fiction Bestseller List, just behind Lawrence Hill’s The Illegal. Reached at his home, where he had cracked open a bottle of lemon Perrier in celebration, Ricci commented, “I think people will finally understand now what it means to come from a big Italian family. I don’t think they actually read any of my books, but at least they buy them.”

On the main Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List, Sleep comes in at #6, ahead of Harper Lee and Danielle Steele.

“I’m hoping this is just the beginning,” Ricci said. “Given how long it takes me to finish a book, I’m going to have to live off this one for quite a while yet.”

Sleep hit the ground running at its September launch, 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 takes 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 has 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 trade publication Quill & Quire, closely watched by booksellers and industry insiders, was followed by their starred pre-publication review, which has 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. Ricci now begins a national tour with stops in a dozen cities, including Montreal, Windsor, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria. For information on upcoming appearances, visit his Events page.