In case you haven’t heard of it, the Blue Met is one of the (or maybe just the?) largest literary festivals in Quebec. It runs from April 18th through the 23rd, and features a taking place in several different languages and featuring authors from Canada (Perrine Leblanc), the U.S. (Joyce Carol Oates), and the rest of the world (Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Teresa Solana).

The main reason I’m going to be there is to participate in this event:

Friday, April 20, 2:30pm (aka 14:30)
Godin Room, Hotel Opus

Cracking the U.S. Market

Two influential critics, writers and publishing insiders talk about how Canadian writers, editors and publishers can break into the U.S. publishing market and possible directions that the market will take in the next few years.

Scott Esposito, Chad Post, Katia Grubisic (moderator)

First off, it’s awesome to be referred to as “influential,” and also awesome to have a full panel to talk about all these issues with Scott. The three of us have exchanged a few emails about the event, and just based on these, I can guarantee the panel will be fun, funny, and informative.

If you’re going to be at the festival, here are a few other events I’d recommend:

• Friday, April 20, 8pm: Face to Face with Juan Gabriel Vasquez

• Saturday, April 21, 7pm: Writers in Peril: Egypt Today

• Sunday, April 22, 1pm: Translating David Foster Wallace

Hopefully I’ll meet up with some of you there!

The 10th annual edition of the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival will take place April 30–May 4, 2008 at the Delta-Centre-Ville Hotel as over 350 writers, literary translators, cartoonists, storytellers, and publishers from around the world will gather in Montreal for five days of literary events held in English, French, Spanish and other languages.

They have a really great list of authors lined up this year (including one of Open Letter’s!):

Sealtiel Alatriste (Mexico), André Alexis (Canada), Donald Antrim (USA), Anouar Benmalek (Algeria), Geoffrey Brock (USA), Ricardo Castillo (Mexico), Karen Connelly (Canada), Lindsey Davis (UK), Sanja Domazet (Serbia), Sylvie Durbet-Giono (France), Alaa El Aswany (Egypt), Alina Fernandez (USA/Cuba), Anke Feuchtenberger (Germany), Gary Geddes (Canada), Nancy Huston (Canada), Etgar Keret (Israel), Alice Kuipers (Canada), Gilles Lapouge (France), Adam LeBor (UK/Hungary), Alexander Livergant (Russia), Alain Mabanckou (Congo), K. Madavane (India), James Meek (UK), Ameen Merchant (India/Canada), Diane Meur (Belgium), Jacques Neirynck (Switzerland), Josip Novakovich (USA/Croatia), Andrew O’Hagan (Scotland), Glenn Patterson (Northern Ireland), Anna Porter (Canada), Roberto Saviano (Italy), Yu Shi (China), Adriaan van Dis (Netherlands), Padma Viswanathan (Canada), Jorge Volpi (Mexico), Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenya), Ruth R. Wisse (USA), and Dulce Maria Zúñiga (Mexico) and Tang Ying (China).

The full program for the festival should be up sometime today.

And now for the bad news. The Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival takes place April 30 – May 4, which is the exact same weekend as the PEN World Voices Festival in New York. So, we’re going to miss out on it (again) this year, but at least we’re informed.

Now we just have to figure out a way to get them to invite us to the Festival for 2009…