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KV Johansen’s Torrie and the Snake Prince receives international recognition

Negotiated by her publisher, translated by an academic in Eastern Europe, the Macedonian edition of her children’s fantasy novel Torrie and the Snake Prince seemed a rather distant affair to author KV Johansen until she actually held it in her hands.

"It really brought home that it was translated," the author says. "I can look at the letters, and look up the Cyrillic alphabet on Wikipedia, and say, ‘There’s my name!’ "

It will have felt even more vivid this week as she visited the small, landlocked republic on the Balkan Peninsula. Located north of Greece, ringed by Albania, Kosovo, Serbia and Bulgaria, Macedonia is about a third of the area of New Brunswick. It is home to a little more than two million people, more than half of whom speak Macedonian as their first language.

The trip, Johansen’s first to Europe on book business, was to accept the International Anna Frank Award for best children’s author at the 22nd International Book Fair in Skopje, which runs April 13 to 18 in the Macedonian capital.

While JRR Tolkien famously corresponded with his translators, Johansen didn’t have any contact with Marija Todorova, who instigated the Macedonian translation. The two met for the first time this week: Johansen is staying with her translator during her stay.

Todorova had translated other books in the genre, including The Hobbit and The Chronicles of Narnia.

"Krista’s book enchanted me with its story, the language and the scenery," explained Todorova.

Torrie and the Snake Prince, about a pedlar-girl who saves a prince, is a "second-world" fantasy, set in a completely made up world, "which explains its own unfamiliarity to everyone as it goes," Johansen says.

The fantasy genre has always been the most natural way for Johansen, who has nearly 20 children’s books to her credit, as well as adult short stories and non-fiction, to tell a story.

Posted: April 20th, 2010
Author: Lee
Categories: KV Johansen

KV Johansen wins Anna Frank Award

Feniks publishing house and the Makedonija Prezent Foundation of Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, will be presenting the International Anna Frank Award to Canadian writer KV Johansen at the 22nd International Book Fair in Skopje, which will be held from 13 to 18 April 2010.

The award jury – Hristo Petreski (president), Aleksandar Prokopiev, Velko Nedelkovski, Tode Ilievski and Svetlana Ivanovska – selected the author of the book Torrie and the Snake-Prince, which was published in the Macedonian language as Тори и принцот-змија by Vermilion Books, translated from English by Marija Todorova.

KV Johansen is also to be a guest of the Skopje Book Fair.

Johansen, a scholar who has, in addition to her many novels for children and young adults, written two books on  the history of children’s literature, will also be taking part in a panel discussion on children’s literature in Canada and Macedonia with Macedonian academic Vlada Ursevic as part of a Day of Canadian Culture organized in co-operation with the Canadian Embassy in Belgrade.

On her way to Macedonia, Johansen will be in Vienna, Austria, on April 9 and 10 for the launch of her latest book, The Shadow Road, at an event organized by the Canadian Embassy in Vienna. The first book in this series for teens, Nightwalker, was included in VOYA’s Year’s Best List 2007, was an Ontario Library Association Top Ten Best Bets book for 2007, and winner of the 2008 Ann Connor Brimer Award.

For more information on the tour or Johansen’s works, please visit her website at: www.pippin.ca

Johansen’s travel is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Posted: March 22nd, 2010
Author: Lee
Categories: KV Johansen

Warden of Greyrock by KV Johansen

An invasion, a hostage-taking, an age-old secret…

In this third book of the Warlocks of Talverdin series, Maurey, the half human, half Nightwalker Warden of Greyrock, and Annot, the dauntless Baroness of Oakhold, have settled down in Greyrock Castle, but those who still hate and fear the Nightwalkers threaten to destroy all they’ve worked for. While Maurey hunts for two outlaws who may guard an ancient secret, his liegeman Korby begins to uncover the truth about the cult of the Yehillon. Their enemies are always one step ahead of them though.

Captured by the Yehillon and held as hostage against Maurey, Annot struggles to survive and escape. A terrible choice lies before Maurey. If he abandons his defence of the border to save Annot, all Talverdin may fail as the Yehillon, led by their veiled prince, finally carry out a long-laid plan to wipe the warlocks from the face of the earth.

Fantasy Book Review will shortly be reviewing Warden of Greyrock.

KV Johansen [link to biography, bibliography], who has a master’s degree in Medieval Studies, lives in a bit of another world herself; she grows exotic trees indoors and seedling oaks and apples outdoors in what used to be a vegetable garden. and hopes some day to have her own forest, because both the house and the yard are getting rather crowded. She lives in Sackville, New Brunswick.

• The Storyteller and other tales by KV Johansen book review

Posted: April 12th, 2009
Author: Floresiensis
Categories: KV Johansen

KV Johansen to attend The Oshawa Public Libraries Festival

The Oshawa Public Libraries Festival is running during the month of November. In this this time four branches if the library will host visits by Canadian children’s authors as students celebrate the written word.

To celebrate the launch, comedian and children’s author Sean Cullen addressed the adults gathered at the McLaughlin branch. He said he reads everything, adding the first book he read that influenced him was JRR Tolkien‘s The Hobbit. Cullen makes his appearance at two branches on November the 19th, meeting with students from grades 4 to 7.

Other authors taking part in the festival are Jacob Berkowtiwz, Edward Butts, Pat Hancock, Melanie Jackson, Marthe Jocelyn, KV Johansen, Rosa Jordan, Norah McClintock, J. Fitzgerald McCurdy, Kenneth Oppel, Trudee Romanek, Richard Scrimger, Kathy Stinson, Teresa Toten, Edo Van Belkom.

Library services in Oshawa are older than our country. Canada became a confederation in 1867, but library services in Oshawa began in 1864, three years earlier. Oshawa was incorporated as a village in 1850 with a population of 2,650. By 1864, it had mushroomed to 3,350 people, George Grierson was the village Reeve, and George Pedlar’s factory on the corner of Bond and Simcoe was three years old.

Posted: November 7th, 2008
Author: Lee
Categories: JRR Tolkien, KV Johansen

Latest book review: The Storyteller and other tales by KV Johansen

The Storyteller and other tales by KV Johansen is a collection for adults and older teens that will take you on a journey through exotic worlds and times.

Demon bears take human shape and devils walk in the north of a world where every hill hosts a god and every river and spring a goddess. The storyteller Moth draws Ulfleif, a warrior-princess who would rather carry a lyre than a sword, into an unfinished tale, and old lays of vengeance and betrayal wake into bloody new life around her.

A slave in Bronze-Age Korthan sees his lovers suffer and die for the crime of worshipping outlawed gods and in the midst of horror at their sin, finds his own faith shaken and takes his own first steps on the road to rebellion.

In a tale built on the familiar legends of our world, Merlin’s daughter relates the story of the fall of Arthur’s Britain as you have never heard it, a tale of adultery and treachery old and well-known, yet fresh and startling in Nimiane’s telling.

The unnamed common men of England who faced a later generation of sea-raiders are given voice once more in the historical tale of the Battle of Maldon, when English fought Vikings at the Blackwater and lost.

The Storyteller and other tales book review
KV Johansen biography

Posted: August 17th, 2008
Author: Lee
Categories: KV Johansen

KV Johansen to tour Quebec in November

KV Johansen will be part of TD Canadian Children’s Book Week 2008 that will be touring Quebec  from November the 15th until the 22nd. A national not-for-profit organization and registered charity, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre (CCBC) was founded in 1976 to promote, support and encourage the reading, writing and illustrating of Canadian books for children and teens.

For more information on KV Johansen and the tour follow this link – http://www.bookweek.ca/KVJohansen.htm

KV Johansen biography

Posted: July 27th, 2008
Author: Lee
Categories: KV Johansen