Dystopian Tour Contest

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting authors Veronica Roth (Divergent) and Lauren Oliver (Delirium) when they were in Toronto for the Dystopian Fiction Tour. InnerSPACE hosted the event that I attended at Indigo Yorkdale and aired the footage of the event during their broadcast the following night! Some fans had been there waiting in line for hours!

So what did Veronica Roth and Lauren Oliver have to say about their trip to Canada? Check out this link for Veronica's blog and this link for Lauren Oliver's blog.

As promised, for those who could not attend the events, I did get books signed. I'm offering up THREE of the following fabulous prize packs:

A Signed copy of both Divergent and Delirium
A Signed poster of Divergent
A 'Swag' bag full of cool tattoos & fun extras

If you are a librarian or teacher located in Canada and would like to win one of these great prize packs, please send me an e-mail at rosalyn.steele@harpercollins.com with Dystopian Fiction Contest in the subject line.

I'll collect entries until 9 a.m. on Friday June 10th and randomly draw three winners from the qualified entrants.

Remember- your odds of winning a fabulous prize on the Dewey Diva blog are MUCH better than winning the lotto!

Summer Reading. . .

The L.A. Times has a sneak preview of lots of great upcoming summer reading.  Check it out here.  Just put your cursor over each title to read more about it.  There are sections on fiction & poetry, biography, travel, history, page turners and children's books as well. I'm looking forward to Nicholson Baker's new novel House of Holes, and Paris to the Past: Travelling Through French History by Train by Ina Caro also piques my interest. 

Bragging Rights!

I attended the CBA Libris Awards dinner on Saturday night which were held in Toronto. Emma Donoghue won for Author of the Year as well as Book of the Year. Our very own Debbie Brown won Sales Rep of the Year! Our company has won the CBA Sales Rep of the Year, three out of the past four years. For a complete list of winners click here!

The Next Day

Last week, Pop Sandbox launched The Next Day during the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto. From the publisher that did Kenk (a Quill and Quire Best Book of 2010), comes an intensely amazing portrait of four people who attempt suicide. The title comes from the question: what if they had waited one more day? The book deals with the suicide attempts right up front, which is a relief; waiting for that until the end of the book would be tough to endure. The reviews have been amazing...from Open Book:"as a rule, Open Book doesn’t post reviews or recommendations, but I am going to break that rule. I urge you to buy a copy of The Next Day. It is a sublimely beautiful, haunting and viscerally moving book." Check out the stunning trailer and the rest of what they have to say here.

Dystopian Tour Stopping in the GTA!

If you are located in the Greater Toronto Area and are a fan of Dystopian fiction, you'll want to mark one of the following events on your calendar!

Critically acclaimed YA author Lauren Oliver will be signing her much lauded second novel Delirium, which to date has received starred reviews from Publishers' Weekly, School Library Journal, VOYA and Kirkus. And you won't want to miss debut author Veronica Roth either- she'll be signing Divergent, the stunning first novel in a thrilling series that reviewers are comparing to The Hunger Games.

Here are the tour locations:

Indigo Yorkdale Toronto, Ontario: Tuesday, May 17th 7:00 pm
Chapters Barrie Barrie, Ontario Wednesday, May 18th, 7:00 pm
Chapters Brampton Brampton, Ontario Thursday, May 19th 7:00 pm

For those readers located out of town, remember to check the blog the week of the 23rd for your chance to win signed books!

May the 4th Be With You

Sorry this is a bit late, but I have been in sales conference. DK Canada is running a great contest celebrating Star Wars Day (May the 4th...be with You)...it's corny but it works! They are asking Wookies and their kind to send in pictures of themselves reading a Star Wars book. By doing so, you could win a complete DK Star Wars library worth over $400 as well as a full set of their Star Wars DK Readers donated to a Canadian school or library of your choice!

For every picture they receive, they will donate a Toonie to Frontier College, Canada's original literacy organization.

There is still lots of time to enter...deadline is May 31st, 2011. Click here to see more details.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

This month the Deweys are visiting SOLS with the topic of Beyond Chick Lit: Women's Fiction. While at sales conference I heard about this very popular blog: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. This is a great site that reviews Romance Fiction. In April 2009, their book, Beyond Heaving Bosoms, The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, was published by Touchtone/Fireside, and is now in use in undergraduate courses at Yale, Princeton, and DePaul.