Sunday, September 30, 2012

Di Cintio's "Walls" Gets Rave Review

Marcello Di Cintio is a hell of a writer. He's one of Canada's only true travel writers, a modern day Bruce Chatwin. Marcello journeyed to the Sahara and West Africa to capture the stories of nomadic people in his first book (Harmattan). For his second book, he learned Farsi, wrestled with Persians and discussed poetry to unearth the link between creativity and combat in Iran (Poets and Pahlevans: A Journey Into Iran).

His third book, Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, is an extraordinary feat of reportage and political narrative as he documents the stories of people and their families that live in worn torn nations and are divided by walls. It is a gripping, timely read.

Marcello gets a deserved rave review in the Globe and Mail. Read it here.

Better yet, buy it here.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Vancouver is Awesome

"There is a pervasive attitude that men, especially rural men, must be strong at all times."

I sat down with Vancouver is Awesome to discuss the violence in BULL HEAD, the journey in getting it published, and one of my favourite characters in the book.

Read the interview here.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Read All Over

What do Marilynne Robinson, Anne Patchett, Fyodor Dostoevesky, Flannery O'Connor, Breece D'J Pancake, William Faulkner and my wife, the author Nancy Lee, have in common?

Read here to find out.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Interview with the OP

I had the unusual but fun experience of sitting down on the other side of the table to be interviewed by one of my former students, Sharon Miki, Editor in Chief of the Douglas College student newspaper, The Other Press.

Interview and review of Bull Head here.

Friday, September 21, 2012

Raise a Reader

The Vancouver Sun runs an incredible series called Raise a Reader at least once a year. Local celebrities take to the streets and handsell newspapers, athletes write about literacy and writers recommend books that influenced them as young children.

I spoke about The Mad Scientist's Club, a book I read as a child in a Texas bowling alley. More here.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Of Bulls, Bourbon and Books

Photo credit: Janis Brass
So much love at last night's launch. We packed The Bourbon, hoisted a few, caught up with old friends, met new ones, and of course rode the mechanical bull.

It was a fantastic evening and a great head start for Bull Head. Thanks to everyone who attended and special thanks to the incredible crew at Arsenal Pulp Press.

There's a whole slew of photos posted taken by Daniel Sarunic Photography. Enjoy.

Monday, September 17, 2012

“Heart-Scalding…”



A rave review appeared in the Vancouver Sun on the weekend.

"Vigna's stories read like the work of a drug-sick angel wired to crystal meth and cheap whiskey, haunted by the homemade sin and imperfect redemption of country music...his men are violent and self deluded, but the spare, disciplined beauty of Vigna's prose and his evident but unsentimental compassion for them floods this dark material with a kind of tender light." The full review can be read here.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

On Reading

The good folks at the Vancouver Writer's Festival run a cool series of interviews entitled, "Writers on Reading" that they asked me to participate in.

Proust's "À la recherche du temps perdu" might have been a difficult, deeply rewarding read, but Keith Maillard's highly entertaining and moving Raysburg series inspired me to start writing. The brief interview is posted here.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

"Men Possessed of Dignity..."

I was in a meeting on Friday morning when my wife texted me to call home immediately. I feared an emergency, instead she alerted me to this attentive review from Steven W. Beattie in the National Post:

"...Vigna is a very serious writer, indeed. The men in Vigna’s tales resort to physical brutality as an expression of a kind of existential yearning; on a thematic level, these are stories of paralysis — of characters’ inability to rise above their circumstances — that owe as much to the work of Beckett and Joyce as to Hemingway and O’Connor."

Full review is here.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

We've Been Busy


Some of you might ask why it took me over 10 years to finally put one of these things up, and my only response is, we've been busy.

New website is here.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

"Country-Noir Vision..."

The first review of BULL HEAD appeared in Canada's Globe and Mail recently. Here's an excerpt:

"Vigna showcases an aptly spare style and an impressive willingness to explore the fraught relationships of guys deeply flummoxed, or else defeated, by the wintery meanness of getting by in the valley... The outstanding strengths of Bull Head relate to Vigna’s style and voice."

To read the full review, go here.