It is the nature of collectives to stick together, and at our recent AGM the t&p editorial collective voted to devote this brief posting (our first after returning from vacation) to praising the work of another book-besotted bunch of Vancouverites, a gang of five who call themselves the Book News Collective.

According to their most recent mailing the BNC consists of Hal Wake, Shirarose Wilensky, Brenda Berck, Sandra Millard and Ann McDonell. Hal Wake is, of course, the Artistic Director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival, which this year will take place between October 17 and 22; the remaining BNC members are VIWF staff, and together they produce a weekly mailing of absorbing links to recent literary news stories, many (but not all of them) with a Canadian slant. There are links to reviews of Canadian books, interviews with Canadian authors, updates on the many literary awards, and dozens of other fine examples of bookish curiosa.

The mailings are also a good source of information on upcoming literary events around town (“town” being Vancouver in this case) — a resource which we have been craving for decades — and we urge local event organizers to make the listing even more complete by feeding their event info directly to the BNC by email.

These mailings have been going for almost a year now, and we urge anyone with an interest in the West Coast literary scene to join immediately. You can do so by visiting this web page and providing your email address (the BNC assures subscribers that they “will only use your email address to inform you about events”); you can unsubscribe at any time.