Latest news with #Writers'UnionofCanada
Winnipeg Free Press
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Lubrin lands Carol Shields fiction prize
Whitby, Ont.-based author Canisia Lubrin has won the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, worth US$150,000 (around $207,000), for her short-story collection Code Noir. In addition to the cash prize, which awards fiction written by women and non-binary writers in the U.S. and Canada, the St. Lucia-born Lubrin also recieves a five-night stay at the Fogo Island Inn. Buy on Code Noir is also a finalist for the Writers' Union of Canada's Danuta Gleed Literary Award, a prize awarded to the best short-fiction collection by a Canadian author. The other finalists are Vincent Anioke for Perfect Little Angels, Billy-Ray Belcourt for Coexistence, Shashi Bhat for Death By a Thousand Cuts and Nicola Winstanley for Smoke. The winner of the $10,000 prize will be announced in early June. ● ● ● Winnipeg poet (and Canadian poet laureate) Chimwemwe Undi's debut collection Scientific Marvel has made the long list for two prizes presented by the League of Canadian Poets. Undi is up for the 2024 Gerald Lampert Award for a debut work of poetry as well as the 2024 Raymond Souster Award for a new book of poetry by a League member. Also up for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award is Winnipeg's E. McGregor for the collection What Fills Your House Like Smoke. The short lists will be revealed Wednesday, and the winners of each of the $2,000 prizes announced on May 14. For a complete list of longlisted poets see ● ● ● More books prize news: the five finalists for the Writers' Trust of Canada Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing have been announced, with subjects ranging from residential schools to health care to the rise and fall of Justin Trudeau and beyond. The finalists for the $25,000 prize are: Canada's Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity by Raymond B. Blake; The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau by Stephen Maher; Health for All: A Doctor's Prescription for a Healthier Canada by Jane Philpott; The Adaptable Country: How Canada Can Survive the Twenty-First Century by Alasdair Roberts; and The Knowing by Tanya Talaga. The winner will be announced on Sept. 24. ● ● ● A trio of book launches are on tap at McNally Robinson Booksellers' Grant Park location over the next week. University of Manitoba labour studies and sociology professor David Camfield launches his latest, Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism for the Future of the Left, tonight at 7 p.m. Camfield traces the history of communism through the U.S.S.R., China and Cuba through to how today's left is needing to reckon with some uneasy truths if a liberatory alternative to capitalism is to come to be. Camfield will be joined by Andrew Loewen and Tami Gadir. Buy on Ottawa-born former first lady of Iceland Eliza Reid returns to Manitoba to launch her debut work of fiction, Death on the Island. Set on the remote Westman Islands off Iceland's mainland, an ambassador's wife must unpack how and why her husband's deputy was poisoned at a dinner party. Reid, who also wrote 2022's Secrets of the Sprakkar, will be joined at Sunday afternoon launch, which gets underway at 2 p.m., by former CBC host Shelagh Rogers. She'll also launch Death on the Island in Gimli at the Unitarian Church (76 2 Ave.) today at 3:30 p.m. Buy on On Friday, Montreal-based Madeliene Thien launches her new novel The Book of Records at 7 p.m., where she'll be joined in conversation by Jenny Heijun Wills. Thien's new novel is her first in nine years, following her Governor General's Literary Award-winning novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing. In the sprawling The Book of Records, a teen and her ailing father navigate a building called The Sea, which seems exists outside space and time. As migrants come and go, the teen yearns to learn about her past and how she got to The Sea. Buy on ● ● ● Poets, sharpen your pencils (if you in fact use pencils): the next edition of the Speaking Crow open-mic event takes place Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at Saint Boniface Library (131 Provencher Blvd.); those wishing to read should show up early. This month's featured poet is Ottawa's Christine McNair. books@ Ben SigurdsonLiterary editor, drinks writer Ben Sigurdson is the Free Press's literary editor and drinks writer. He graduated with a master of arts degree in English from the University of Manitoba in 2005, the same year he began writing Uncorked, the weekly Free Press drinks column. He joined the Free Press full time in 2013 as a copy editor before being appointed literary editor in 2014. Read more about Ben. In addition to providing opinions and analysis on wine and drinks, Ben oversees a team of freelance book reviewers and produces content for the arts and life section, all of which is reviewed by the Free Press's editing team before being posted online or published in print. It's part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
CBC
07-04-2025
- CBC
Meta is using pirated books to train AI — including those by N.L. authors
Artificial intelligence can't do the dishes or the laundry, but it can replicate the writing style of just about any writer, including those from Newfoundland and Labrador. St. John's author Trudy Morgan-Cole was far from flattered when she saw her name and seven of her recent book titles on a searchable database published by The Atlantic in March. It meant she was one of the millions of authors whose work was scraped from Library Genesis, a pirating website, to train Meta's AI language model. Meta is the parent company of social media sites Facebook, Instagram and Threads. "I was horrified," Morgan-Cole told CBC News. "It's being done without the author's permission," she said. "Writers have been given no opportunity to say yes or no, and certainly no compensation." What can this AI model do? Uses of artificial intelligence are rapidly growing by the day, and Morgan-Cole believes that it has legitimate uses in sectors like science and medicine. However, she draws the line when it comes to producing literature. The historical fiction author said she thinks the goal of AI in the world of writing "is to train it to replace human writers." "I'm sure it'll be a long time before we see a Governor General's Award-winning novel written by an artificial intelligence," said Morgan-Cole. "But things that human authors get paid for now, like writing articles, writing copy for websites… I think there's going to be a big push to say, 'let's have that done by AI.'" Morgan-Cole said the use of artificial intelligence to write takes away from human authors, replacing it with a "vastly inferior product." She'd like to see publishers and writers' organizations step up to protect intellectual property. What can we do? John Degen, executive director of the Writers' Union of Canada, says the organization is working on that. Speaking from Toronto, Degen said "it's deeply offensive to most authors" to have their work used to train AI to write — and the Library Genesis database is far-reaching. "The last book I published was 20 years ago, and that book is in there," he said. "So if I'm in there, just about any Canadian author working today is in there." The Writers' Union of Canada is pressing governments to put regulations in place so that companies like Meta have to seek permission and offer payment to writers in order to use their intellectual property. He added that writers are also free to take matters into their own hands. "You can contact Meta directly and tell them that you do not give permission for this use. You can contact Library Genesis and ask them to take this stuff down," Degen said. "Do I have confidence that that's going to do anything? I don't, really, because we've been dealing with this kind of illicit use from the tech sector for about 20 years now." That's why Degen wants leaders to take action and take artificial intelligence's power seriously — to give authors and other artists more agency over their content. CBC asked for an interview with a representative from Meta. In an emailed statement, the company said "we respect third-party intellectual property rights and believe our use of information to train AI models is consistent with existing law."
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Vancouver Writers Fest founder Alma Lee dies at 84
Alma Lee, the founder of the Vancouver Writers Fest, has died at the age of 84, according to family and friends. A champion for writers and the written word, Lee helped launch the first Vancouver International Writers Festival in 1988 and also helped found the Writers' Union of Canada and the Writers' Trust of Canada. Vancouver Writers Fest events draw 30,000 attendees annually, according to its website. Over the years, the festival has allowed readers to hear from established authors, such as Lee's friend Margaret Atwood, and provided a springboard for new, emerging writers. Atwood told CBC News she worked with Lee in the 1970s to help form the Writers' Union of Canada, which describes itself as the national organization of professionally published writers. "She was absolutely essential to the writers' union and she founded the Readers and Writers Festival in Vancouver," Atwood said. "These things all take a lot of work and a lot of networking, and she was very good at that." Alma Lee is seen in 1995 at the Vancouver Writers Fest. She said it was a fantastic opportunity for readers to interact live with writers. (CBC) Lee was born on May 5, 1940, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the daughter of a bagpipe-maker who was an avid reader. She immigrated to Canada in 1967. Atwood described Lee in that era as a "little Scottish hippie" who was "always just full of enthusiasm." "All of our things that we were doing in the '70s came out of an enthusiasm for Canada … that was our motivation," she said. Margaret Atwood says her friend Alma Lee was very good at networking. (Evan Mitsui/CBC) Lee played a key role in forming the writers' guild and served as its first executive director. "Nobody knew anything about contracts at that time," Atwood said. "We didn't know what was supposed to be in them. There weren't any agents.… Those were some of our problems, and that's why we formed the union and Alma was the person who organized it all and kept everything going." Lee also served as executive director of the Writers' Trust of Canada, which describes itself as a charitable organization that supports Canadian writers. Writers' festival highlighted newcomers She would later turn her attention to forming the Vancouver International Writers Festival. Speaking to CBC News in 1995, Lee said the festival was designed to "give people a fantastic opportunity to interact live with writers." Over the years, the festival has hosted noted writers such as Atwood, Miriam Toews, Carol Shields, John Irving and Salman Rushdie. Leslie Hurtig, the current artistic director of the festival, knew Lee for over 25 years. She said that when Lee created the writers' festival in 1988, she brought over a Scottish format for the literary fest, inherited from the Edinburgh Book Festival. "She used that same model, which is panel discussions, one-on-one conversations and readings — featuring not only established and well-known writers, but also emerging writers, sharing a stage together," Hurtig told CBC News. "She wouldn't just put Margaret Atwood on stage. She'd put Margaret Atwood on stage with an emerging writer so that their voices could be held up and given equal space." Hurtig said Lee was driven and incredibly organized, and that when she believed in something, she would fight for it. "That could ruffle feathers sometimes," Hurtig said. "But it also resulted in incredible quality of events, quality of friendships. "And I have nothing but respect for that kind of activism. I admire it greatly. I think there was a fire inside her." Lee was invested into the Order of Canada in 2005. She is survived by her sons, Kenny and Alan. An exact cause of death was not released, but Hurtig said Lee died at home surrounded by family and friends.
CBC
29-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Vancouver Writers Fest founder Alma Lee dies at 84
Alma Lee, the founder of the Vancouver Writers Fest, has died at the age of 84, according to family and friends. A champion for writers and the written word, Lee helped launch the first Vancouver International Writers Festival in 1988 and also helped found the Writers' Union of Canada and the Writers' Trust of Canada. Vancouver Writers Fest events draw 30,000 attendees annually, according to its website. Over the years, the festival has allowed readers to hear from established authors, such as Lee's friend Margaret Atwood, and provided a springboard for new, emerging writers. Atwood told CBC News she worked with Lee in the 1970s to help form the Writers' Union of Canada, which describes itself as the national organization of professionally published writers. "She was absolutely essential to the writers' union and she founded the Readers and Writers Festival in Vancouver," Atwood said. "These things all take a lot of work and a lot of networking, and she was very good at that." Lee was born on May 5, 1940, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the daughter of a bagpipe-maker who was an avid reader. She immigrated to Canada in 1967. Atwood described Lee in that era as a "little Scottish hippie" who was "always just full of enthusiasm." "All of our things that we were doing in the '70s came out of an enthusiasm for Canada … that was our motivation," she said. Lee played a key role in forming the writers' guild and served as its first executive director. "Nobody knew anything about contracts at that time," Atwood said. "We didn't know what was supposed to be in them. There weren't any agents.… Those were some of our problems, and that's why we formed the union and Alma was the person who organized it all and kept everything going." Lee also served as executive director of the Writers' Trust of Canada, which describes itself as a charitable organization that supports Canadian writers. Writers' festival highlighted newcomers She would later turn her attention to forming the Vancouver International Writers Festival. Speaking to CBC News in 1995, Lee said the festival was designed to "give people a fantastic opportunity to interact live with writers." Over the years, the festival has hosted noted writers such as Atwood, Miriam Toews, Carol Shields, John Irving and Salman Rushdie. Leslie Hurtig, the current artistic director of the festival, knew Lee for over 25 years. She said that when Lee created the writers' festival in 1988, she brought over a Scottish format for the literary fest, inherited from the Edinburgh Book Festival. "She used that same model, which is panel discussions, one-on-one conversations and readings — featuring not only established and well-known writers, but also emerging writers, sharing a stage together," Hurtig told CBC News. "She wouldn't just put Margaret Atwood on stage. She'd put Margaret Atwood on stage with an emerging writer so that their voices could be held up and given equal space." Hurtig said Lee was driven and incredibly organized, and that when she believed in something, she would fight for it. "That could ruffle feathers sometimes," Hurtig said. "But it also resulted in incredible quality of events, quality of friendships. "And I have nothing but respect for that kind of activism. I admire it greatly. I think there was a fire inside her." Lee was invested into the Order of Canada in 2005.
