I am thrilled to reveal the cover image for the U.S. edition of Walls: Travels Along the Barricades. The designers at Counterpoint Press did a fantastic job with this, and I couldn’t be more pleased. The image manages to be both beautiful and tragic at the same time, and echoes with the sort of sadness […]
Shaughnessy Cohen smiles on Walls
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Yesterday I received the happy news that Walls: Travels Along the Barricades has been shortlisted for the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. The nomination both thrilled and surprised me. Although the book is set along fortified political lines, I never regarded Walls a political book. I considered it a travelogue. And I never thought […]
Talking Walls on Q
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
When I speculated what sort of Canadian media attention I might get for Walls, there was no program I wanted to do more than CBC Radio’s ‘Q.’ This morning, very early, I got my wish. Well before dawn in Calgary, guest host Jim Brown and I talked about the book for a national radio audience. […]
Quill and Quire review
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Quill and Quire reviewed Walls in their current issue. Q&Q was kind to the book, giving it a ‘starred’ review and saying nice things like: This is, however, no superficial travelogue. Di Cintio immerses himself in his chosen locations, providing historical background and rich reportage of the many social and political realities of being walled […]
December
07
Calgary Herald Christmas Fund
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Each year at this time, The Calgary Herald’s Christmas Fund gathers donations to help out worthy community organizations and charities in the Calgary area. The Fund asked me to contribute to the campaign by writing a piece for the newspaper about my own encounters with the city’s poor and downtrodden. I wrote about my work […]
December
07
National Post Review
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Another review for Walls, this time in the National Post. The reviewer, Vit Wagner, said the book is “mostly a litany of tears, anger and woe, leavened by bitterly absurdist irony.” Coincidentally, this is exactly how I describe my wrestling career. Wagner liked the book, though, and I am grateful for the kind review. You […]
The Long and the Short
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
On the same day I found out that Walls: Travels Along the Barricades did not, sadly, make it onto the shortlist of the B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, I also learned that Walls did, happily, make the longlist for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. Thank you to the Charles Taylor jury for considering […]
Walls reviewed in Alberta Views
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Author Myrna Kostash reviewed Walls: Travels Along the Barricades in the current issue of Alberta Views. Myrna was terribly kind to the book, concluding her review with: Di Cintio writes vividly, conscientiously, compassionately and, in his concluding paragraphs, optimistically in spite of all he has witnessed – for he has also witnessed moments of beauty, […]
Walls makes the ‘Globe 100’ list
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Thank you to the editors of The Globe and Mail’s “Books” section for naming Walls: Travels Along the Barricades to their roster of the top 100 books of 2012. Walls shares the nonfiction list with 42 other books including titles by Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens, Alain de Botton and Nahlah Ayed. And I’m especially happy to […]
November
23
“Wrapped in Chains”
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Montreal blogger Mercedes Sharpe Zayas wrote an excellent essay about the l’Acadie fence on the website, Petite Mort. The post, titled “Wrapped in Chains,” recounts both the history of the fence and the community that erected it. She also discusses what, if anything, the fence represents. Again, I am amazed that a decades-old “feeble relic,” […]
Elsewhere 