Feathertale Review adds monthly electronic newsletter

The Feathertale Review, which started out as a website and then published a paper annual, has further extended its reach with the creation of an electronic newsletter called Egregious. Its style reflects that of the parent magazine and each monthly issue includes work by a featured artist, as well as poetry, prose, banters and interviews with interesting people.

The magazine, its website and Egregious are all edited by Brett Popplewell in Toronto and art-directed by Lee Wilson, who also works as a designer at Institutional Investor magazine in New York.

Feathertale Review recently joined Magazines Canada and, through its distribution system, will likely become more widely available on newsstands across the country. Free subscriptions to Egregious (and opportunities to advertise) are available by e-mailing to egregious@feathertale.com

Related posts:

• Feathertale Review, still online, now on paper (December 8, 2006)

Feathertale Review, still online, now on paper

The quirky, sometimes hilarious virtual magazine Feathertale Review has taken corporeal form as the premier issue of its print annual is now on sale. The 68-page annual is a collection of original humour from Graham Roumieu (Me Write Book), Robert Munsch (Love You Forever) and two-dozen writers, poets, and illustrators. The magazine specializes in short fiction, cartoons and poetry.

Feathertale describes itself as "a high- and low-brow magazine that sits well on your coffee table or next to your toilet to be enjoyed daily or weekly, depending on the frequency with which you drink coffee or tend to your internal plumbing." It's for sale from the magazine's online store or (in Toronto) from Pages or Swipe.

The articles include A Dip in Hemingway’s Pool, by Richard Taylor, A Select Bibliography of William Shakespeare’s Plays in a Series of Haiku, poet Lisa Xing’s imagination at its best, (King Lear: I was dumb, gave land / to two daughters. They in turn / turned on me. Bitches…) plus writing and cartoons by familiar feathertale.com contributors such as Iain Marlow, Ernie Scott, Matt Goerzen, Kamila Mlynarczyk.

Feathertale comes from the agitated imaginations of Brett Popplewell (editor) and Lee Wilson (art director). Popplewell does his end from London (Eng.) and Wilson works in Toronto.

Three literaries band together to create a seasonal pop-up shop

Three literary  magazines in Toronto -- The Feathertale Review, CAROUSEL and Poetry is

Dead -- will be opening a pop-up shop and arts festival called LIT BANG! starting November 26. It will be in the Milk Glass Gallery 1247 Dundas St in Toronto (Ossington/Dundas). The three titles have banded together as Print: Art/Lit Publishers United.

The shop opens November 26 with the launch party for issue 16 of The Feathertale Review and stays in place until December 20. Shop hours are 1-7 pm week days and 11 am - 5 pm weekends. 

"It was made possible by the Canada Council for the Arts, which gave Feathertale a grant to create a dedicated store front to try to promote and sell a group of small magazines," said Feathertale editor Brett Popplewell. "To some extent it's an attempt to create a very targeted and interactive newsstand for our titles on a busy Toronto street." 

Among the highlights (of the more than a dozen events throughout the month) are an opening reception Dec 3 with an art show featuring original work and prints and an ‘All The Words’ Festival Dec 12/13 where on the Saturday, a range of fellow small presses (like Little Brother and Taddle Creek) are invited to showcase their publications; and on Sunday, enthusiasts of the genre can take part in our Chapbook Exchange. Plus artwork, readings, talks and performances by (among others) Margaret Christakos, Mark Connery, Jim Johnstone, Dakota McFadzean, Gustave Morin, Sachiko Murakami, Sarah Pinder, Michael Toke, Fiona Smyth and Jacqueline Valencia.
Full schedule

There's two sides to every story in the Feathertale Review

One of my favourite little but mighty magazines, Feathertale Review, has created its latest version (no. 14) with 152 pages of satirical poetry, fiction and illustrations. That's not unusual, but the format is: a magazine with two beginnings and no end, as demonstrated by the trailer below. (The magazine, which comes out twice a year and won the 2012 National Magazine Award for best single issue, is on the newsstands now for $15.)

"This issue is the end result of a creative and social experiment: a magazine with two beginnings and no end, presented to you like an old vinyl record. Like an LP, this issue has two sides. Unlike an LP, those two sides are equal in merit: that is, the stories, poems and illustrations you find on the B-side are just as entertaining as those on the A-side.

"What’s more, the two sides of the magazine mirror each other. We recently approached thirty writers and told them we had fifteen story titles they could choose to write from. Each writer could take on one title, but each title required two writers. The pairings were not meant to spur a creative duel, but rather a creative duality. And in the end to prove that old adage: that no two minds actually think alike."

Quite a night at the National Magazine Awards

At the risk of redundancy and playing catch up, here are some of the highlights, observations and shout-outs (a word I am henceforth banning) for me among the category winners at the 34th annual National Magazine Awards on Friday night.

• Unquestionably it must have been a difficult task choosing between the three finalists for Magazine of the Year (Print) -- Cottage Life, Canada's History and Money Sense. The selection of Money Sense, one of the most ambitious magazines launched in this country in recent years, was a good one. It has won 9 National Magazine Awards (4 Gold, 5 Silver) in the service: personal finace and business category since its creation in 2003, a good reflection of how it sticks to its knitting. But equally worthy, I think was Canada's History -- which has succeeded extremely well in remaking and rebranding itself from the days of being The Beaver -- and Cottage Life, which hands down is one of the most focussed consumer magazines around, with an unerring sense of what its readers want and need to know. 
• I was pleased to see the award for magazine cover going to The Feathertale Review, a magazine that most of the people in the ballroom at the Carlu had probably never seen. It was Feathertale's first-ever NMA win. The magazine is published twice a year by the team of Lee Wilson and Brett Popplewell. They have a wicked satirical sense in prose and illustration and somehow manage to create this little gem of a magazine as a sideline to their day jobs, which are in Toronto (Popplewell works on the investigative team at the Toronto Star and his byline has been seen most recently on a series of hard-hitting stories about the G20 debacle) and New York (Wilson, who works for Bloomberg Business Week.) I sincerely hope that this win will attract more attention and readership for this quirky, endearing publication.  
• All the nominated work for illustration was the best I have seen for some time. 
• Domenic Macri must be chuffed to be the first art director to have ever won both awards in one category, winning both gold and silver for art direction of a single article. Macri now has won a total of five awards (including 3 gold).
• In what must have been the weirdest "break" in the long history of the magazine awards, there was a brief demonstration by two people of some mashup of dance and martial arts, apparently providing the opportunity for the guy to do some very impressive back flips. At least they didn't ask the whole audience to Zoomba.
• I was somewhat preoccupied on the night, but noticed a few complaints about the variety and availability of the food and the shortage of sweets (several people lamented the non-appearance of a chocolate fountain, though I don't understand the allure). Also, one of the reasons why there is such a hubbub in the room when the awards are going on is probably a direct result of people having been drinking from 5:30 to 8 p.m. before being allowed into the auditorium. (The hubbub may have seemed worse to those seated under the balcony where it was quite difficult to hear what was going on.)
• The most commendable acceptance speech of the night was from Charlie Wilkins, who lauded the sensitivity and generosity of his editor at Outdoor Canada, Patrick Walsh (a former president of the awards foundation.)
• The most useful intervention was Gary Ross, who accepted an award on behalf of one of his contributors, but took the opportunity to update the crowd on the Canucks-Boston score. 
• Not surprisingly, The Walrus led the awards tally with 9 awards (6 gold) and the Report on Business magazine 9 awards (3 gold). Toronto Life, which within memory used to dominate the awards won 1 gold and 4 silver.
• One of the welcome innovations of the awards was to integrate digital category results into the main program,  with Macleans.ca winning as magazine of the year (digital),  Châtelaine winning for best multimedia feature while The Walrus took the award for best digital design. 
• The Malahat Review strides like a colossus through the poetry category, this year with Shane Rhodes winning gold, making it the fourth year in a row Malahat has won and adding to an astounding total of 11 golds since 1978. 
• Tweeting has completely replaced the more stately press releases and reporting. I didn't tally them up, but there must have been hundreds of individual comments, reports of wins etc., at least those with the hashtag #nma11. Therefore this post will be old news to those bent over their smartphones.   

Complete results can be found at the NMAF website.  

Magaward best cover winner said to be "divorced from reality" of the newsstand

Scott Bullock is well-known as a magazine newsstand expert and a guy with strong opinions about what works and what doesn't in driving single copy sales. I defer to his expertise (almost) completely on such matters.

But I have to disagree with his recent post on his CoversSell blog (mirrored on Masthead) about this year's winner in the cover category at the National Magazine Awards.

Bullock felt that the selection of Feathertale Review as best magazine cover flew in the face of commercial realities.Aside from the fact that judges judge the covers which are entered and that he seems not to have noticed the New Yorker parody,  he suggest that circulation and commercial success should somehow be a factor in deciding what the "best cover" should be. (That's what I thought the Canadian Newsstand Awards were about.) Anyway, here's what he said, in part:

I suspect that a very small percentage of the magazine junkies in attendance at the Carlu had ever heard of these titles, let alone ever purchased a copy.   I suspect an even smaller percentage of Canadians have either.   Yet these are the titles held up as the very best examples of what a great cover should look like?  I suppose if this were a fashion show, it would be the equivalent of couture vs. ready to wear.  On the one hand, creative and edgy, on the other, completely divorced from the reality of what it takes to sell single copies or subscriptions.

With a very few exceptions, the magazine awards are, and have always been, based on what is on the page, honouring the work of creators. Not marketers. Not distributors. Not even readers. And how many copies are distributed is irrelevant. Again, you enter, you're judged against all other entries and you win, or not. I have no inside information on how the judges decided, but I have absolutely no problem with Feathertale being the winner.

An intense, enjoyable and celebratory magazines week

Coverage of Magazines Week events has improved dramatically in recent years, so it seems(ed) redundant for me to report on the outcomes of the National Magazine Awards when there is an excellent summary distributed moments afterwards by the National Magazine Awards Foundation.

However, here are a number of miscellaneous observations about things that struck me at the event and during the MagNet conference and Magazines Week which preceded it.

Best cover

• The proverbial pin could have been heard to drop as this year's recipient of the Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement, Stephen Trumper, spoke from his wheelchair and from his heart. He struck a pitch-perfect balance between advocacy for the disabled and his love of being an editor and mentor.
• Small literary and cultural magazines are indeed the seedbed of the industry, giving people their start and making them available, if they wish, for transplantation into mainstream publications. Certainly that's true with Sierra Skye Gemma who won for best new magazine writer for her piece "The Wrong Way" in The New Quarterly. It's the kind of prize that reflects the effort and passion that TNQ puts into developing new voices.
• The buzz of MagNet was probably about the MagNet Marquee keynote with the charming publisher of Garden & Gun magazine Rebecca Wesson Darwin. The fact that she and her team get readers to pay a fee to belong to Garden & Gun clubs (some as much as $500 a year) had people talking. As did her emphasis on following her "gut". Of course it was a fairly experienced gut; she was no neophyte, having been the first female publisher of The New Yorker and publisher of Mirabella.

Read more »

Cultural mags collaborate on the latest LITBANG pop-up shop and festival

Several literary and cultural magazines are once again collaborating on the LITBANG Pop-Up Shop in Toronto. Participating will be The Feathertale Review, Taddle Creek, Broken Pencil, CAROUSEL and Poetry is Dead. The shop, at 982 Queen West, is open from April 7 to April 30, Tuesday to Sunday (with the exception of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.) 

The organizers say the event is more than a retail experience, though there are magazine issues and swag to purchase, of course, but is also a festival/community literary hub. For instance, there is a workshop where you can learn to use such social media as Twitter and Facebook to promote "yourself and your craft". On April 22, starting at 4:30, Broken Pencil is presenting a drop-in zine-making party. Plus there's a children's literature section, a writer's work space and a café.

National Magazine Awards nominations have been released

[This post has been updated]The three finalists for the coveted award Magazine of the Year in this year's 34th annual national magazine awards are Canada's History, Cottage Life and MoneySense. Finalists for the awards were announced today.

For the best new creative talent award, the nominees are:

• Marit Mitchell "This Little Piggy Went To Market", Maisonneuve
• Mark Peckmezian "A Man Called Cope", Report on Business
• Matthieu Aikins "Last Stand in Kandahar", The Walrus

Magazine of the year (digital) nominees re:

• Besthealthmag.ca
• CanadianLiving.com
• Enroute.aircanada.com
• Fashionmagazine.com
• Macleans.ca
• Openfile.ca
• Readersdigest.ca
• Sparksheet.com
• Torontolife.com
• Torontoist.com

A complete list of finalists is available here.

There were nearly 2,000 individual entries nationwide; 379 submissions from 88 different Canadian publications for awards in 43 written, visual, integrated and online categories, reviewed by more than 208 volunteer judges. The Gold, Silver and Honourable Mention awards will be announced in Toronto on June 10, at the 34th annual National Magazine Awards gala, presented by CDS Global.

Seven French-language publications garnered 39 nominations, with L'actualité (22), Châtelaine (6) and Quebec science (5).

Leading the nominations were:

• The Walrus (35)
• Report in Business (31)
• Toronto Life (30)
• L'actualité (22)
• explore (18)
• Maisonneuve (16)
• Maclean's (13)
• enRoute (12)
• Swerve (10)
• Canadian Geographic (9)
• Cottage Life (9)
• Chatelaine (9)

First-time nominated magazines this year include Eye Weekly, Maison & Demeure, The Feathertale Review, Open File, Sparksheet, Boulderpavement, CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries, Corporate Knights, Garden Making, Hardly Magazine, International Architecture & Design, Legion, Moi & cie,Musicworks, Western Living Condo, and Your Business.

Several writers are nominated multiple times.

• J.B. MacKinnon received four nominations, each for different magazines. 
• Alison Motluck's article "The Human Egg Trade" for The Walrus is nominated in three categories:Investigative Reporting, Politics & Public Interest, and Health & Medicine.
• Valérie Borde garnered three nominations for her work in L'actualité; 
• Ian Merringer is nominated three times for explore magazine. 
• Robert Hough has three nominations for Toronto Life. 
• D.W. Wilson received three nominations in the Fiction category for work in different magazines. 
• TyeeBridge also received three nominations for writing in Swerve and Vancouver Magazine.

Among visual nominations

• Dominic Macri of Report on Business is nominated a total of six times for Art Direction for a Single Article and Art Direction for an Entire Issue. 
• Photographer Donald Weber received three nominations in the category Photojournalism and Photo Essay, each for work in different magazines (The Walrus, Canadian Art, and Chatelaine).

[We quote, with a blush, from the NMAF's release:]

The NMAF's most prestigious individual prize since its inception in 1990 is The Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement. This year, the NMAF is honoured to name D.B. Scott as the recipient for his exceptional contributions to the Canadian magazine community. He is currently the president of Impresa Communications Ltd, a consulting firm specializing in Canadian magazine and publishing companies and presides over the industry's most widely read and go-to blog, Canadian Magazines. In calling for his nomination as this year's Outstanding Achievement recipient, John Macfarlane, editor and co-publisher of The Walrus called D.B.'s blog a "public square" and noted, "when [D.B] chooses to mount his soapbox, he is invariably informed, fair-minded and wise." Read more about D.B. Scott and the Outstanding Achievement Award at www.magazine-awards.com

The foundation's release also said

On April 6, 2011, a list suggesting possible names of nominees was made public as a result of a system error that dynamically drew nominations from the submissions and judging database. The NMAF sincerely regrets this unfortunate incident and any confusion caused to individuals who were named on that list but are not nominees for this year's awards.

The National Magazine Awards Foundation (NMAF) is a non-profit organization (disclosure: I was a board member for several years and the president in 1991) that promotes excellence in Canadian magazine journalism through the judging and awarding of over 2000 submissions from across the country. The NMAF recognizes the outstanding efforts of more written and visual artists than any comparable organization on the continent, and is supported in part bythe Government of Canada (through the Canada Magazine Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage.)

Readers win when magazines make combined subscription offers

Collaborative circulation promotion is hot these days, we see. 

• Three small art/literary journals — CAROUSEL, The Feathertale Review and Pilot — are offering a 3-for-1 sub deal by which two issues of each magazine are mailed to Canadian subscribers for $30, about 60% off the combined newsstand price.

• And The Walrus magazine and This Magazine are making a combined subscription offer, both publications for $30 (effectively subscribing to 10 issues osf The Walrus and getting foursix issues of This Magazine free). Essentially 16 magazines for $1.88 each.) (We understand this is the last week for the offer.)

Both excellent deals. 

250 exhibitors at Montreal mag, book and zine fair this weekend

There are 250 publishers, comic artists, magazine and small press exhibitors in both French and English at Expozine, Montreal’s annual small press, comic and zine fair, this Saturday and Sunday, 29th and 30th, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Over the past 7 years it has become one of North America's largest book and magazine fairs; the admission-free event is held at 5035 St-Dominique (Église Saint-Enfant Jésus, between St-Joseph and Laurier, near Laurier Métro).

Among the many magazine exhibitors will be Ascent magazine, Broken Pencil, Matrix, Drawn & Quarterly, Fish Piss magazine, Place magazine, Worn Fashion Journal and The Feathertale Review. See the whole exhibitor list here.

Nouveau Projet magazine of the year at the National Magazine Awards

Nouveau Projet, a French-language literary and arts magazine published by Atelier 10 in Montreal was named Magazine of the Year tonight at the National Magazine Awards in Toronto. It also won gold for art direction of a single issue (“Automne/Hiver 2014”) and the words and pictures category (“La pointe des utopies”) as well a silver for editorial package (“Régénérescences”). The jury which made the gold award said

“Nouveau Projet is a near-perfect symbiosis of subject matter, expert writing and exceptionally original design. It sets itself apart thanks to inspiring themes and bold covers. The magazine offers a fresh take on the genre and dares to cover topics that are virtually absent in other media. The energy of the editorial team is tangible page after page. Nouveau Projet embodies the spirit of print magazines.”

The top magazine in terms of awards was once again The Walrus, with 9 awards including 4 golds and 5 silvers. (It is the 9th time in 10 years that The Walrus has received the most awards.) Report on Business won 6 awards, including 5 gold. Today’s Parent magazine won 4 awards, all of them gold and L’actualité won 8 awards, including 3 golds. (With its 2 golds and 3 silver, Toronto Life has won 235 awards since they began to be offered in 1977 and has now overtaken Saturday Night (231).)

Maisonneuve magazine distinguished itself by winning a gold for essays, 2 silvers and the awards for best new illustrator and best new magazine writer. 

The following won 1 Gold: Azure, Châtelaine, Cornerstone, Cottage Life, Fashion Magazine, New Trail, Precedent, The Grid, The New Quarterly, Vancouver Magazine, Western Living. (It was the first NMA for Precedent.)

Winning 1 silver award were: Arc, Canadian Business, ELLE Canada, enRoute, Flare, MoneySense, NOW Magazine, PRISM International, Swerve, Sub-Terrain.
The leading winners in the awards were [click to enlarge]

As previously announced, the Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement, the industry's highest honour, went to publisher and circulator Michael Fox (Maclean-Hunter, Rogers Publishing, Inspiring Media, Inc.)

New this year, the gold award for best magazine brand went to Cottage Life magazine, for demonstrating innovation in delivering on its mandate on at least three platforms. 

Among other highlights:

• Tablet magazine of the year:  
  Today’s Parent (“Books Issue” August 2014)
• Magazine website of the year: Hazlittmag.com (Hazlitt)
• Best new magazine writer: Genna Buck, “Finding a Place” (Maisonneuve) 
• Best new illustrator or photographer:  Hudson Christie, “A Portrait of the Artist with Testicles in Hand” (Maisonneuve)

This year more than 200 magazine submitted work by more than 3,000 writers, editors, photographers, illustrators and other contributors. 326 were nominated and awards were made in 43 written, visual and integrated categories, with more than $53,000 in cash prizes awarded. 

Complete list of winners in all categories.

Read more »

Word on the Street festival gives readers opportunity to meet, greet and buy Canadian magazines

Magazines will be meeting their readers at Word on the Street book and magazine fair events this weekend across Canada. All events are free.

Toronto (Sunday, Sept. 21 11am - 6 pm, Queen's Park Circle)
(mostly in the Magazine Mews)

• Alternatives Journal
• Brainspace magazine
• Brick: A literary journal
• Broken Pencil Magazine
• C Magazine
• Canadian Art magazine
• Canadian Dimension
• Canadian Monarchist News
• Carousel
• Cineaction
• Cinema Scope magazine
• Dandyhorse 
• Descant Magaizne
• EcoParent magazine
• Feathertale
• Geist Magazine
• Green Teacher
• Hazlitt Magazine
• Humanist Perpectives
• Kid Scoop News
• Little Brother Magazine
• Ontario Nature
• Owlkids
• People's Voice
• Point of View Magazine
• Pure Green Magazine
• Shameless Magazine
• Sky News Magazine
• Spacing magazine
• Taddle Creek
• The Humber Literary Review
• The Message
• The New Quarterly
• The Walrus Magazine
• This Magazine
• Toronto Life Magazine
• Vallum: Contemporary Poetry
• Voice K Magazine
• Worn Fashion Journal
• Zoomer Magazine

Kitchener (Saturday, September 20 11am - 5pm, Downtown Kitchener City Hall

Halifax (Sunday, September 21, 11am - 5pm, Halifax Waterfront)

Saskatoon (Sunday, September 21, 11am - 5 pm,, Civic Square)

Lethbridge (Sunday, September 21, 11am - 5 pm, Main Library, 5th Ave S. & 8 St. S.