Atlantic Books Today COVER FEATURE
Celebrating 30 Years of Atlantic Books Today
Philip Moscovitch on books geared From a secret Saint Mary’s office and sporadic issues to toward the conversation starter, ABT has given the award-winning hard workauthors of their first “big-time” moment many Atlantic individual and collective healing
by Stephen Kimber
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oday, Lesley Crewe is a best-selling author of a dozen novels, one of which, Relative Happiness, was turned into a motion picture, and another, The Spoon Stealer, longlisted for CBC’s 2022 Canada Reads competition. But Crewe still remembers that day back in 2006, when “my name and the cover of my first novel, Relative Happiness, showed up in the pages of Atlantic Books Today (ABT) … I knew I had hit the big time.” Lesley Choyce, Nova Scotia’s own Renaissance Man publisher—not to forget the author of more than 100 of his own fiction and non-fiction books—can also recall his big-time moment a decade before Crewe’s. “I was very much a younger, struggling-to-be-noticed writer.” Atlantic Books Today had reviewed a few of his young-adult novels, then a more ambitious book, The Republic of Nothing. “At some point, they even slapped a stylized picture of me on the cover of the then-tabloid publication. It meant the world to me.” This year, Atlantic Books Today celebrates its 30th anniversary as the go-to gathering place for writers and readers in Atlantic Canada—and beyond. Plus a “big-time,” “meant-the-world-to-me” moment-maker for scores of regional authors. This issue—the first of two print editions for 2022—is being distributed to a targeted audience of 30,000 book-loving readers. A slightly expanded premium version—64 pages instead of 48—will be available via Issuu, a digital publishing platform. All that content, including book news, reviews, profiles, trends, features, Proust Questionnaires and more—not to forget web-only stories about holiday books, awards seasons and a twice-a-year VOICES campaign “amplifying the work of writers from underrepresented communities”—will eventually find its way to atlanticbooks.ca/stories. You might assume, given its front-of-the-stage place in today’s Atlantic Canada literary firmament, that Atlantic Books Today has always been there, or that there is some inspiring origin story to mark its birth. TOP: Lesley Crewe BOTTOM: Lesley Choyce (Photo by Larry Battle)
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