Benjamin LefebvreI recently stopped by Melanie Fishbane’s blog, Wild about Words, for a Q&A about Volume 1 of The L.M. Montgomery Reader. Check it out!
Category: Media
A new website has been launched for The Maud Squad: A Documentary, a film by Lisa Lightbourn-Lay that follows five individuals (including this one) whose lives and careers have been affected by the legacy of L.M. Montgomery. The film, shot throughout the centenary of Anne of Green Gables in 2008, is currently in post-production, but a trailer is now available for viewing.
The photograph above (taken by Jason Nolan) is of me holding hands with a stuffed L.M. Montgomery in Norval Presbyterian Church in November 2002. Yes, you did read that correctly.
UPDATE: The Maud Squad can now be viewed on Vimeo.
I will be interviewed on Ontario Today on Monday, 14 December 2009, sometime between 12:00 and 12:30, on CBC Radio One:
L.M. Montgomery’s last manuscript, The Blythes are Quoted, has just been published for the first time in its entirety. The manuscript was submitted to Montgomery’s publisher the day she died. It’s the ninth volume in the Anne series. The editor who re-discovered the typescript will be our guest on Ontario Today. And of course Ed Lawrence will join us as well.
UPDATED 15 DECEMBER 2009: The interview can be streamed from the Ontario Today website for the next thirty days.
The Blythes Are Quoted has been included in the Canadian fiction section of Quill & Quire‘s Fall Preview, compiled by Steven W. Beattie and included in the July-August 2009 issue, available now:
Benjamin Lefebvre edits The Blythes Are Quoted (Penguin Canada, $25 cl., Oct.), a posthumous novel from L.M. Montgomery that features the author’s usual themes: adultery, misogyny, revenge, and murder.
Quill & Quire has published an article about my edition of The Blythes Are Quoted: “Penguin set to publish ‘new’ L.M. Montgomery title.”
I did another interview for CBC Radio 1 last week—on Anne of Green Gables again, but this time in English—and have been told it will air tomorrow morning between 5:45 and 6:00 A.M. I probably won’t be awake to hear it, but if anyone is awake at that hour go to http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ and click on “Atlantic” under the CBC Radio One banner.
I will be interviewed by Line Boily on her radio show Les arts et les autres on Monday, 2 June 2008, at 1:05 EST, on Radio-Canada 1 (French-language CBC). The topic is Anne of Green Gables and I will be commenting on its origins, its continued international popularity in the centenary year, and its success in adaptations such as movies, musicals, and tourist sites in Ontario and Prince Edward Island. Since I am presently in Vancouver attending Congress, I will be speaking to her from Studio C at CBC Vancouver.
Les arts et les autres is broadcast across Ontario; to find your local frequency, click here. You can also listen to it live through the Radio-Canada website. On the homepage for Ontario, click on “Écoutez en direct—Première chaine” and choose your nearest location.
Also, today I am participating at a one-day symposium on Anne of Green Gables at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia. In addition to co-chairing an ACCUTE panel on “Anne of Green Gables: New Directions at 100,” I will be one of seven participants in a roundtable called “Anne of Green Gables: A Literary Icon at 100: Canadian Scholars and Critics Reflect on Anne of Green Gables in the Centenary Year,” chaired by Irene Gammel:
This round table of leading Canadian critics and scholars takes stock of Canada’s most famous literary icon, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, at its centenary anniversary. What is behind the popularity of the novel? What is its global value and status? What is its future in Canada and the world? We also invite the public to submit questions to our panel of experts via email: Anne100@mlc.ryerson.ca.
My five-minute paper is titled “Confessions of a Male Montgomery Scholar” and will include a discussion of my Green Gables toenail clippers. I am also presenting a paper as part of the ACCUTE conference on the fiction of Joy Kogawa.
Je serai l’invité de Line Boily à l’émission de radio Les arts et les autres ce lundi, 2 juin 2008, à 13h05 (heure normale de l’est), à Radio-Canada (première chaine). L’entrevue porte sur le roman Anne… La Maison aux pignons verts : ses origines, sa popularité internationale continue pendant l’année de son centième anniversaire, et son succès dans les médias connexes, telles que le petit écran, la comédie musicale, et le site touristique en Ontario et à l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard. Étant donné que je suis présentement à Vancouver pour assister au Congrès des sciences humaines, je lui parlerai du Studio C à Radio-Canada Vancouver.
L’émission est diffusée à travers l’Ontario; vous trouverez votre fréquence locale ici. Vous pouvez également écouter à l’émission au site web de Radio-Canada. Une fois rendus à la page pour l’Ontario, choisissez la rubrique « Écoutez en direct » ainsi que votre région.