Glover lives in Saratoga Springs, but is a Canadian, whose novel Elle won the 2003 Governor General’s award. Now, he’s won a Writers’ Trust of Canada lifetime award.

From the Toronto Star:

Glover earned the $15,000 Timothy Findley Award for a male writer in mid-career.

Glover joked that his son has decided to follow his example and become a writer.

He quoted his son as saying: “You’re at home and do nothing all day. And people give you prizes.”

Congratulations, Douglas.

Here’s some more info (added 3/12/07):

WILTON RESIDENT DOUGLAS GLOVER RECEIVES TIMOTHY FINDLEY AWARD FOR FICTION FROM CANADA’S WRITERS’ TRUST

WILTON, NY – (March 9, 2007) — Fiction writer Douglas H. Glover, a Wilton resident, was named winner of The Timothy Findley Award for a Writer in Mid-Career, in Toronto last night. The Award recognizes a body of work comprised of at least three works of literary merit, predominantly fiction, rather than a single book, and is accompanied by a $15,000 prize.

Glover is best known for his 2003 novel Elle, which took top honors in Canada in 2003, garnering him the prestigious Governor General’s Award for fiction. Governor General jurors said: “This headlong, intense interior monologue combines humor, horror and brutality with intelligence and linguistic dexterity to forge a revised creation myth for the New World.”

Findley was an acclaimed Canadian actor and writer who won the Governor General’s Award in 1977. He was a founding member and chairperson of the Writers’ Union of Canada, which established the Timothy Findley Award in 2003, a year after Findley’s death. The Writers’ Union of Canada is a national organization which brings writers together for the advancement of their collective interests. The organization aims at embracing and fostering diversity and inclusiveness.

Born in 1948, Glover grew up on the family tobacco farm in southwestern Ontario, studied philosophy at York University and the University of Edinburgh, and then worked on a series of daily newspapers in New Brunswick, Ontario, Quebec and Saskatchewan before earning his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1982.

A Canadian citizen, Glover has been living in and around Saratoga Springs for decades. He has authored five story collections and four novels, including the critically acclaimed The Life and Times of Captain N. (Knopf), hailed as one of the best books of 1993 by The Chicago Tribune, and his essay collection, Notes Home from a Prodigal Son (1999, Oberon Press). His short story book, A Guide to Animal Behavior (1991, Goose Lane Editions, Canada), was a General Governor’s Award nominee. His 16 Categories of Desire (2000, Goose Lane Editions, Canada) was named one of the best books of 2000 by the Toronto Star. His stories are frequently anthologized, notably in Best American Short Stories, Best Canadian Stories and The New Oxford Book of Canadian Stories. Additionally, he has written for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, The Boston Globe Books, and The Los Angeles Times. He was recently the subject of a TV documentary in a series called The Writing Life and a collection of critical essays, The Art of Desire, The Fiction of Douglas Glover, edited by Bruce Stone, and has been the subject of a dissertation.

Glover has been editor of the annual Best Canadian Stories since 1997. He has led workshops for the New York Writer’s Workshop and taught at Davidson, Colgate and Skidmore colleges and the State University of New York at Albany and is on the faculty of Vermont College’s MFA Writing Program. In addition, he has been writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick, the University of Lethbridge, St. Thomas University and Utah State University.

He is the father of Jacob (15) and Jonah (12).

Here are the top circulating items in the Mohawk Valley and Southern Adirondack Library System.

People weekly.

Cross by: Patterson, James, 1947-

Plum lovin by: Evanovich, Janet.

My sister’s keeper : a novel by: Picoult, Jodi, 1966-

Consumer reports.

Step on a crack by: Patterson, James, 1947-

Dear John by: Sparks, Nicholas.

The innocent man : murder and injustice in a small town by: Grisham, John.

Judge and jury by: Patterson, James, 1947-

Over the hedge [DVD] by: Johnson, Tim, 1961 Aug. 27-

The collectors by: Baldacci, David.

Good Housekeeping Country living.

Next : a novel by: Crichton, Michael, 1942-

Little Miss Sunshine [DVD]by: Dayton, Jonathan.

From Christopher D. Ringwald’s A DAY APART press release:

Ringwald is a journalist (and a former Times Union reporter) and educator based as a visiting scholar at The Sage Colleges in Albany, NY. A DAY APART has been hailed by Asma Gull Hassan as “a solemn, brilliant call to multi-faith commonalities and by Solomon Schimmel as “illuminating and inspiring.”

(Oxford University Press, Jan. 2007; Aly Mostel, publicist, 212 726-6111)

Lecture by author with responses by Jewish and Muslim clerics (invited). Wednesday, February 28, 2007, 7p.m. Bush Memorial, Russell Sage College, Troy, NY (Bush is a former church at First and Congress streets)

Talk about fiction for short-attention spans. Esquire sent writers napkins upon which to write short stories. You can see them all here.

For those with the cash (about $1,700 or so) and the space to spare — not to mention a certain kind of sensibility — let me introduce you to the Bookman (two models shown below).

Bookman 1

Bookman 2

More info is here.

The link comes courtesy of Reading Matters.

Media Bistro reports that the Daily Show helps boost sales of serious books after their authors appear on the show, and that the TV outlets for serious authors are shrinking.

The blog post is here.

Do you read a special book every year? Did a book that you read when you were a child set you on a specific path? I’m still looking for contributions for an upcoming column on influential books in the lives of our readers. Post them here, or send me an e-mail at bibliofiles@hotmail.com.