Interested in writing as a career or book publishing? Wondering why many people are self-publishing their Big Idea’s? Thinking of ways to turn that manuscript into an E-book? What are publishers in Toronto looking for, and which publishers support diverse works? 

Come join me on February 16, 2013 for a stimulating, educational FREE ADMISSION event that breaks down the do’s and don’ts of publishing in 2013. I’ll also be discussing my fifth book Far From Over about actor/rapper Drake that has been featured on CTV’s Canada AM, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, City’s Breakfast TV, and CBC’s Metro Morning. FAR FROM OVER: The Music and Life of Drake is the first biography of the platinum-selling hip-hop artist to hit bookstore shelves.

Where: Ben McNally Books – 366 Bay Street (Bay/Richmond), Toronto, February 16, 2pm – FREE ADMISSION
Why: It’s Time To Kickstart Your Own Publishing Revolution! A quick scan of the
major agents, editors, publishers, authors, and booksellers in Canada, from front to back, reveals a publishing landscape that is disturbingly devoid of your voices. Its time to change that!

More info: daltonhiggins@gmail.com / follow me @daltonhiggins5 / BAND Gallery 647 701 4323

For those pop culture junkies interested in studying the background cultural conditions in Toronto and the US that helped create the Drake phenomenon, this book is for you…its my fifth book, so pls. march on over to your fave major and /or indie bookstore and check it out!

Saludos,

Some of Canada’s most acclaimed multicultural personalities, public figures, intellectuals, entertainers, athletes, and activists share stories, memories, insights, and revelations about fatherhood, from the comic to the tragic. Through critical essays, first-person musings, interviews, conversations, spoken word, and dub poetry, this collection examines the place where cross-cultural fatherhood intersects with the worlds of technology, hip hop, and hipster culture — a cool diverse dads movement!

Fatherhood 4.0 spots trends across a newer generation of media-savvy multi-culti dads influenced by everything from George Lopez and Bill Cosby to the Osbournes and Obama, with keen insights and essays from fatherhood activists. It includes essays on the “baby daddy” phenomenon and Bob Marley, pops in popular culture, technology and parenting, and crucial research on aboriginal fatherhood by Dr. Jessica Ball.

The book contains candid interviews with: The Argo’s Michael “Pinball” Clemons, Broken Social Scene’s Charles Spearin, Fucked Up’s Damian Abraham, D.C United’s Dwayne De Rosario, Peep Diaries’ Hal Niedzvicki, Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes), and many more!

A Bientot

IT’S A HIP HOP WORLD, and you’re just living in it. For most music-addicted earthlings, hip hop culture is the predominant global youth subculture of today. For the non-music initiated, hip hop has become the black jewelry-laden elephant in the room filled with rock, country and classical music — an attention grabber whose influence is impossible to miss on the daily news, in school playgrounds, during water cooler conversations or in a political debate.

What is hip hop, and why should you care about it? Hip hop — a term coined by pioneering rapper Space Cowboy in the early 1970s to mimic a scat, and then popularized later by rapper Lovebug Starski — is quite simply the world’s leading counterculture, subculture and youth culture. Hip hop encompasses four distinct elements: vocalizing (rapping/emceeing), visual art (graffiti), dance (breakdancing) and manipulation of pre-recorded music (deejaying).

Much has been written about hip hop’s gritty African-American origins in the South Bronx, but the primary American consumers are young suburban whites whose fascination with black youth culture has led to Caucasian rappers Eminem and the Beastie Boys becoming two of the biggest-selling rap artists of all time. Once a predominantly African-American youth form of expression, or as legendary hip hop group Public Enemy’s lead vocalist Chuck D once called it, the black people’s CNN, rap has taken root around the world as a primary news source for disenfranchised Asian, South Asian, First Nations, Latin American, Australian, African, Middle Eastern and European publics.

Buy Hip Hop World here.