My work has enjoyed some local Alberta love lately. This week I found out that Walls: Travels Along the Barricades has been shortlisted for both the Alberta’s Readers’ Choice Award and the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction. Also, “A Hymn in Aramaic”- my story about Chaldean priest Noel Farman – is up for the James H. […]
Thoughts on a Persian New Year
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Iran has been on my mind for the past 48 hours. Last night, I had the great pleasure of visiting with a Calgary book club. This particular club has been gathering for the better part of 30 years, and I was honoured to sit in on such as venerable group. Last night they met to […]
March
08
Walls wins!
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
On Wednesday night, at the ‘Politics and the Pen’ gala in Ottawa, Walls: Travels Along the Barricades was awarded the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. I cannot express how honoured I am to be chosen for the prize. Admittedly, I had no idea what being nominated for the prize actually entailed. My fellow finalists […]
March
02
Walls, the American edition
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
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 […]
