Open Book is celebrating the 24th Annual Trillium Book Award with The Trillium Ten/Trillium Dix interview series. Find out what this year's Trillium Book Award finalists were doing when they heard the news about their nomination, where in the province they most love to write, who their favourite Ontario authors are and more by following our series. Winners of the Trillium Awards will be announced on Friday, June 17th.
Contest! If you enter by noon on June 9th, you could win tickets to the Trillium Book Award author reading and reception that takes place on Thursday June 16th, 2011 at the Toronto Reference Library. Click here for more details.
Toronto-based author Michael Winter is nominated for the English-Language Trillium Book Award for The Death of Donna Whalen (Penguin Group Canada), a work of documentary fiction pieced together from the transcripts and court testimonies of an actual trial.
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Open Book:
Tell us about your Trillium-Award nominated book, The Death of Donna Whalen.
Michael Winter:
It’s a true story about a woman who was murdered. I didn’t write a word of it. What I did instead was erase millions of words.
OB:
What gave you the idea for the book that received this nomination?
MW:
I lived down the street from this woman.
OB:
What were you doing when you received the news about your Trillium nomination?
MW:
I was peeling a banana.
OB:
What book would you give to a visitor to give them a sense of Ontario?
MW:
Tecumseh, A Life by John Sugden, or Snow by Orhan Pamuk.
OB:
What spot in Ontario most inspires you to write?
MW:
In my bed, or over my kitchen sink full of dishes. I often have good ideas then.
OB:
Who is your favourite Ontario-based author?
MW:
I’d rather not say.
OB:
Do you have a favourite quote about writing?
MW:
No.
OB:
What distracts you from writing?
MW:
The crinkling sound of a bag of chips.
OB:
What are you reading right now?
MW:
The Selected Stories of Mavis Gallant.
OB:
What can you tell us about your next project?
MW:
It begins where Stephen Foster ended, “Dear friends and gentle hearts...”
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Michael Winter is the author of The Architects Are Here, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and The Big Why, shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His first novel, This All Happened, won the Winterset Award. He is also the recipient of The Writers' Trust Notable Author Award. He divides his time between Toronto and St. John's.
For more information about The Death of Donna Whalen please visit the Penguin Canada website.
Buy this book at your local independent bookstore or online at Chapters/Indigo or Amazon.
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