David Hockney - The Biography

In 1956, as an excited, hopeful, 20 year old young man, I began a career in the feature animation department of Walt Disney Productions, now known as Walt Disney Feature Animation. At the time I just thought that anyone who could draw a little could work there, after all they hired me. I soon found that it took a great deal more talent and skill than just to be able to draw a little.

After many years of working in the field as a special effects animator, with many established, successful old timers, I came to realize that my time and place was very special. I did learn to draw a lot and to be helpful in the process of making some very extraordinary motion pictures.

I retired, January 2004, and have written my fun story, Flyin? Chunks and Other Things to Duck, illustrating my struggles to continue in the field of animation, all the while managing to duck those flyin? chunks which are always a part of every ones effort to live life.

Dorse Lanpher

Collected here for the first time in book form are the expurgated sections of artist, writer, and rebel Emily Carr's unpublished journals, her important "Lecture on Totems" about Native art and people, and letters to and from several key figures in her life. The unpublished journal entries include long passages about her first meeting with Sophie Frank, a Squamish basket maker who became a confidante; anguished meditations on her spiritual mission; musings about Native culture and the white community's reaction to it; and thoughts about her sisters and relatives. This collection also features commentary by noted literary historian Susan Crean that offers cultural and historical context.

The autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini was started in the year 1558 at the age of 58 and ended abruptly just before his last trip to Pisa around the year 1563 when Cellini was approximately 63 years old. The memoirs give a detailed account of his singular career, as well as his loves, hatreds, passions, and delights, written in an energetic, direct, and racy style. They show a great self-regard and self-assertion, sometimes running into extravagances which are impossible to credit. He even writes in a complacent way of how he contemplated his murders before carrying them out.

The autobiography has been considered and published as a classic, and commonly regarded as one of the most colourful autobiographies (certainly the most important autobiography from the Renaissance). 

"Laferriere...writes movingly and cleverly about race, nationality, and, ultimately, the multiple conflicting ways we form our identities. His prose...is deadpan and devious." -- This Magazine

"In his unique fashion, Laferriere captures the spirit of our culture, where cultural boundaries are erased and the real and the unreal intimately coexist." -- National Post

A devilishly intelligent new novel by the internationally bestselling author and Prix Medicis winner.

A black writer from Montreal has found the perfect title for his next book: I Am a Japanese Writer. His publisher gives him an advance on the strength of the title alone. The problem is, he can't seem to write a word of it. He can scarcely summon the energy to put pen to paper, and so he nurses his writer's block by taking long baths, re-reading the works of Japanese poet Basho and engaging in amorous intrigues with rising pop star Midori and her entourage of vampire girls. For the writer, though, the title isn't just a title: he really does believe he is a Japanese writer. He makes this declaration in a mall, and, the next thing he knows, he's an international celebrity. The book becomes a cult phenomenon, even though he still hasn't written a word of it. In Japan, it sets off a cultural revolution. A Japanese writer even publishes a book called I Am a Malagasy Writer. On the nightly news, a Japanese officer declares, "I Am a Korean Soldier." No wonder a pair of attachÈs from the Japanese embassy has been following our hero around. At first, he is delighted to discover his celebrity. But things quickly go wrong. Part postmodern fantasy, part Kafkaesque nightmare and part travelogue to the inner reaches of the self, I Am a Japanese Writer calls into question everything we think we know about what-and who-makes a work of art.