WORDWORKS Summer 2007
T h e Vo i c e o f B r i t i s h C o l u m b i a Wr i t e r s
What a long strange trip it’s been… A Rumination on the Fed’s Early Years
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News
Features
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A Note From Our President
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The Legislative Library of BC BC Author Questions Moving of Archive Material
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Author! Author! Terror in the Stairwell By Anne DeGrace
Minutes of the AGM—April 27, 2007
10 THE 2007 AGM LECTURE Hints for Heavy Lifting By Lynne Van Luven
15 What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been… A Rumination on the Fed’s Early Years By Trevor Carolan
Community 23 Launched! New Titles by Federation Members
Contests & Markets
27 Regional Reports Member News From Around the Province
21 Contests & Markets
Cover photo: Alice Niwinski, K.O. Kanne, Alan Twigg, Trevor Carolan and Jan Drabek meet at the famed Sylvia Hotel for the “Malcolm Lowry Brown Bag Mystery Literary Tour,” in the summer of 1986.
WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
WORDWORKS THE FEDERATION OF BC WRITERS IS THE VOICE OF WRITERS IN BC—SUPPORTING, DEVELOPING AND EDUCATING WRITERS WHILE FOSTERING A COMMUNITY FOR WRITING THROUGHOUT THE PROVINCE.
A Note From Our President
W Publisher THE FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
Editorial Committee MARGARET THOMPSON LINDA CROSFIELD GAIL BUENTE SHIRLEY RUDOLPH
Managing Editor FERNANDA VIVEIROS
Production & Design SHIRLEY RUDOLPH
Webmaster GUILLAUME LEVESQUE
2006-2007 Board of Directors PRESIDENT—JAN DRABEK VICE PRESIDENT—JOY HUEBERT INTERIM TREASURER—GREG BALL SECRETARY—ANDREA LOWE PAST PRESIDENT—BRIAN BUSBY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR—FERNANDA VIVEIROS
Regional Representatives 1. NORTH—AUDREY L’HEUREUX 2. SOUTH EAST—ANNE STRACHAN 3. CENTRAL—KAY MCCRACKEN 4. FRASER VALLEY—SYLVIA TAYLOR 5. LOWER MAINLAND—TBA 6. THE ISLANDS—DAVID FRASER THE FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS PO BOX 3887 STN TERMINAL VANCOUVER, BC V6B 3Z3 T: 604-683-2057 BCWRITERS@SHAW.CA WWW.BCWRITERS.COM ISSN # 0843-1329
PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40685010 POSTAL CUSTOMER NO. 7017320 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO FEDERATION OF BC WRITERS BOX 3887 STN TERMINAL VANCOUVER BC V6B 3Z3
hen I set out for the BC Interior on my spring reading tour, Federation members there were alerted that the new board president was coming. I felt that the only way to do it right was to put on a stovepipe hat and start the readings with something akin to the Gettysburg Address. For several reasons I decided against it. One of them was that I could not come up with anything as profound as the famous piece of oratory— though that has never stopped me from opening my mouth before. More important was the fact that while Lincoln spoke at the dedication of a war cemetery, I am leading the board of an organization that is lively, exuberant and growing. No funereal overtones here. We now have almost 600 members who come in all sizes, shapes and specializations. We offer a profusion of interesting programs and generally inspire this most literaryminded province in all of Canada. As I write this, the AGM of The Writers’ Union of Canada which took place in Vancouver in early June is still fresh in my mind. At the meeting of the powerful BC contingent and at the plenary sessions I discovered valuable tidbits. One was the struggle for maintaining the Legislative Library of BC, another for greater transparency from Access Copyright. I plan to work closely with TWUC’s new BC representative, Louise Clark. On June 9 I attended the Spring Book Hatching at the Vancouver Public Library and was once again impressed by the dynamics of the BC writing scene; this time by the authors and illustrators of children’s books. Many are Federation members. Some of you may not know that this is something of a return engagement for me. I was first elected president of this organization in 1985, when I was still relatively young and exuberant. The following year I was re-elected. It was the year of Expo 86 and of the completion of the Coquihalla Highway and I attended the opening of both events. There was lots of ebullience attached to all these events, but the Federation was still struggling. Even with all that enthusiasm around us, we weren’t at all certain that the organization would get the necessary funding and support in order to survive. But despite various vicissitudes, survive it did. The situation is quite different today. With your continued support and executive director Fernanda Viveiros’ organizational genius I am confident the Federation will continue to flourish. –Cheers, Jan Drabek
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WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
NEWS
The Legislative Library of British Columbia BC Author Questions Moving of Archive Material FBCW member Lynne Stonier-Newman would like fellow FBCW members to join her in a letter writing campaign in support of preserving the Legislative Library of British Columbia. The Legislative Assembly is proposing a significant change to the location and storage of the province’s archival history, a change which would directly affect writers’ access to valuable research documents. “From my perspective,” says Lynne, “if the Legislative Library does eventually have to be moved, its full collection needs to go directly into its new building with no storage intervals. I was pleased to receive a reply from the Premier and from the Speaker, recognizing my concerns. But since I believe many voices are preferable to one, I hope others will join with mine to ensure our legislators hear how interested British Columbians are in preserving their B.C. Legislative
Federation members are encouraged to send letters to the Honourable Bill Barisoff, similar to this one sent by Lynne in April.
Library. A letter to the Speaker is preferable to an e-mail, as letters have more archival significance.” Lynne is the author of Policing a Pioneer Province: B.C. Provincial Police, 1858 - 1950; The Lawman: Adventures of a Frontier Diplomat; Canadian Eh!; The Whys of Women audiobook; and a radio play: Tangled Truths (Gustafsen Lake). She is currently working on a new book: Peter O’Reilly, B.C. Gold Commissioner & Indian Lands Commisioner.
April 2, 2007 The Honourable Bill Barisoff, Speaker The Legislature of British Columbia Room 207, Parliament Buildings Victoria, BC, V8V 1X4 Dear Honourable Barisoff: I understand that you are the primary property manager for the Legislative Assembly of the B.C. Liberal Government—whom I helped to elect. I respectfully urge you to preserve and protect theLegislative Library of British Columbia, maintaining it as one entity, and continuing to provide ongoing librarians’ expertise and assistance for all users. The B.C. Legislative Library is our province’s only comprehensive record of British Columbia’s consecutive administrations. It explains why and how each group of MLAs legislated as they did. As well, our historical holdings also represent one-tenth of Canada’s archival heritage as well as B.C.’s colonial relationship with Great Britain. As a knowledgeable researcher, electronic offerings do not effectively replace the value of working directly with Sessional Records and the interrelated secondary records. I am an author who writes about B.C.’s history, using our Legislative Library’s extensive holdings. For over 25 years, I have benefitted from its helpful continued next page
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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
Legislative Letter cont’d and expert staff. Without having had a librarian’s assistance, I would not have been able to locate the information that has formed the core of my books. Those invaluable materials tell how B.C. developed—and about its various governance, about who was elected when, and the details about our MLAs’ savvy or narrow-minded management. The Legislative Library preserves the historical overview of British Columbia. It records where and how our mining, timber and fishing industries developed—and thrived or failed—details about land exemptions and settlements, the fights over water rights —and why and where the Indian reservations were carved out. Those unique pages also record why and where early schools, roads and railroads were built and who used them. Like a jigsaw, our heritage holdings allow one to put all the pieces together, to gain an understanding about the decisions our elected representatives made to preserve and expand British Columbia’s well-being. I understand that seismic concerns are being identified as the main issue around your considering breaking the Legislative Library into two—and moving its irreplaceable archives into questionable facilities, radically limiting its accessibility. If those seismic concerns are critical, will the Premier’s office, the Speaker’s office and all the MLAs’ offices—and Hansard—also have their turns at being moved to the WWII-era buildings, temporarily? If the move more relates to requiring the space for future MLAs, projected to be added during the current redistribution of seats, is using the Library’s space to house them provident? Legislative neophytes will benefit—with professional librarian assistance—from being able to research conveniently at the Legislative Library. And, perhaps, if more research was effectively done, it would lessen the risk of repeating unwise decisions. Are you aware that British Columbia already has a shameful history of preserving its archival past? The comprehensive records related to maintaining law and order in British Columbia during the1940s—all through the WWII years and for those following years of massive growth and confusion—were, by authorization of B.C.’s Coalition Government in 1950, put into “temporary” storage. Plans were that those would be sorted “within a year or two” and would be appropriately distributed between our Provincial Archives, our B.C. Attorney General’s holdings and our Legislative Library. Yet that collection was improperly stored. All that decades’
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administrative records of the BC Provincial Police, and all the original reports from its extensive number of detachments, including those policed under 48 municipal contracts, were lost. A roof leaked, and those invaluable boxes of B.C.—and Canadian—history became soaked, mildewed. They rotted. Then, ten years later, all those boxes were discreetly dumped into Victoria’s outer harbour. I would appreciate answers to the following questions: Who participated in the consultative process and decided that the B.C. Legislative Library’s heritage holdings may be broken into two and moved from its current location? Is it correct that archival access to all users will be drastically altered and that, as a researcher/writer, I and my fellow writers of B.C. history, will have to factor into our costs considerably longer stays in Victoria to accommodate accessibility delays to the Legislative Library’s resources? How are the library’s holdings to be organized to allow the reduced staff to locate materials? Are both the facilities, tentatively planned to be used as “temporary” storage of our recorded heritage, secure against fire loss, water damage and malicious destruction? Is the temperature of the“temporary” facilities going to be maintained to within archivally correct standards? Also, related to the Legislative Library’s possible move, how long is “temporary?” Please consider finding an alternative solution: for instance, have you considered using British Columbia’s history more effectively in our educational system and tourism offerings - instead of burying it? The Legislative Library is a valuable, primary, resource of British Columbia’s essence. As we invite people from around the world to join us for our 150th Anniversary of becoming British Columbia in 2008; as we welcome those coming for the World Police and Firemen Games in 2009; and as we host the Olympics in 2010, please help us preserve, share and celebrate our Legislative Library. I look forward to hearing from you, Sincerely Lynne Stonier-Newman cc: Honourable Gordon Campbell, premier; Honourable Wally Oppal, attorney general; Honourable Kevin Krueger, minister of State for Mining; Honourable Claude Richmond, minister of Employment and Income Assistance; the Director, Legislative Library of British Columbia; The Writers’ Union of Canada; Federation of British Columbia Writers; Creative Non-Fiction Collective of Canada.
WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
NEWS
Minutes of the AGM—April 27, 2007 1. Call to Order & Welcome There being a quorum of FBCW members, Past President Margaret Thompson called the meeting to order at 6:37 pm. on Friday, April 27, at the Bedford Regency Hotel in Victoria, and welcomed members and guests. She conveyed regrets from President Brian Busby who was absent on family business.
2. Approval of the Agenda Moved by Kenn Joubert; Seconded by David Fraser; Carried that the agenda be approved as circulated.
3. Approval of the Minutes Moved by Kenn Joubert; Seconded by Gail Buente; Carried that the minutes of the Annual General Meeting of May 26, 2006, be approved as circulated.
4. President’s Report President Brian Busby noted in his report, read by Margaret Thompson, that the Federation was stronger, healthier and more vibrant than when he first took the position two years earlier due in part to the efforts of the new Executive Director, Fernanda Viveiros. He commended board members and regional representatives who were instrumental in guiding Fed programs, sharing information, initiating new projects and working with the Executive Director to encourage membership participation and support of regional events. Much had been accomplished in the past year—new database and office systems implemented,
website re-designed, workshops reinstated, establishment of a twicemonthly e-bulletin connecting members to Federation and industry activities, and close attention paid to financial realities. Given the size of the Federation budget —less than half of what it was even five years ago—the organization’s growth in 2006 could be considered “miraculous.” Brian expressed concern that although the Federation enjoyed the services of a full-time Executive Director, the organization could afford only parttime wages but said that plans were underway to establish additional funding for staff in the year ahead. The report closed with Brian thanking Margaret (which Margaret read, albeit with a smidgen of embarrassment): “During these past two years, she has demonstrated time and time again, this is anything but a honorary title. Margaret has been a source of advice, reason and energy. I thank her and hope to follow her example as your new Past President.” With no questions or comments, it was Moved by Joy Huebert; Seconded by Kenn Joubert; Carried that the President’s report be accepted.
5. Executive Director’s Report As this report was included in the AGM package in full, Fernanda Viveiros chose not to read the entire report, but to address specific points. She noted that the changes and improvements made to the Federation during 2006, including working through a backlog of administration duties, took up a lot of time and resources but now that those muchneeded changes and office infrastructure were in place, she would have more time
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to devote to specific new projects in 2007 and 2008 while expanding current programs and services. She emphasized that even with current restraints the goal is to ensure the Fed fulfills its mandate of supporting emerging and established writers throughout the province. Fernanda mentioned a meeting earlier that day with a BC Arts Council representative—a productive meeting which might show results when grants are awarded later this year. However, she noted that there’s a pressing need to expand funding support, and rectify reporting lapses from prior years that currently disqualify the organization for being eligible for Canada Council and City of Vancouver grants. Stated goals for the coming year include completing the Fed anthology project, strengthening partnerships with BC’s literary/publishing community through joint endeavours and sponsorship, rebuilding and making accessible the Members’ library (currently in storage), and exploring funding possibilities for making sets of Off The Page participants’ books available to host schools. The Executive Director closed her report by thanking Barbara Coleman for her support in the office, and Shirley Rudolph for her valuable assistance with the production of WordWorks. Fernanda also acknowledged the work and dedication of board members who give up so much of their time, expertise and energy to ensure that the Federation of BC Writers delivers valuable programs and services to members. She also thanked Federation members, many of whom have given back to the Federation and who have continued to support the continued next page
FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
Lynne Van Luven and Joy Huebert
organization through recent lean years. Moved by Michael Hetherington; Seconded by Ken Joubert; Carried that the Executive Director’s Report be accepted.
6. Treasurer’s Report In the absence of treasurer Greg Ball, Fernanda presented the Financial Statements for the year ended December, 31, 2006. It was noted that last year the Fed had forecast revenues of $59,950 for 2006. Actual income in 2006 was $69,498, a significant increase over 2005. She was also pleased to report that in 2006 the Federation was finally able to retire its accumulated deficit. This was accomplished primarily through a concerted effort to issue membership renewals on a timely basis and by reducing expenses involved with the editing and production of WordWorks. A new version of QuickBooks and a monthly bookkeeping system maintained by the Executive Director contributed to budget planning. Public funding applications are underway and although not finalized for the upcoming year, the initial reaction from the funding agencies is favourable. It was noted that the method of accounting for membership dues has changed. Membership dues are now recognized when they are received and no provision is made to defer them until they are earned. In 2006, the Federation
Sharleen Johnson McCooey and A. S. Penne
collected $21,061 in membership receipts plus an additional $4,838 in deferred membership revenue from 2005. The budget for 2007/2008 has been prepared on the going concern basis, which assumes that the Federation will be able to realize its projected revenue and expenses in the normal course of business for the forseeable future. In conclusion, Fernanda noted that Greg Ball had stepped down as Treasurer but would continue as Interim Treasurer until a new treasurer could be found. Moved by Kenn Joubert; Seconded by Sandra Janssen; Carried that the Treasurer’s Report be accepted. Following the passing of the report, Fernanda Viveiros responded to a question from the floor about the programs benefiting from BC Gaming’s Direct Access Program Grant: The Federation continues to use the grant to fund WordWorks; Off The Page; website development; and the Reading, Writing & Publishing Opportunities program.
7. Committee Reports The WordWorks Report was read by Margaret Thompson. She was pleased to announce that the membership magazine had been delivered on time and far below budget during 2006, thanks in great part to the efforts of the volunteer staff and editorial 6
Ann Graham Walker and Margaret Thompson
board members. She noted that distribution of WordWorks has been extended to publishing houses, creative writing departments and select libraries around the province in an effort to reach additional emerging and established writers. Last but not least, she thanked Federation members for contributing their writing over the years and assured them that “modest honoraria for contributors is our next goal.” Moved by Kenn Joubert; Seconded by Andrea Lowe; Carried that the WordWorks Report be accepted. The Website and Off The Page Reports were read by Lois Peterson. The Federation’s website, located at www.bcwriters.com, averaged over 315,000 individual page requests per month during the first three months of this year, a significant increase over last year. It underwent a much-needed re-design in October 2006 which has simplified the process of updating online material and adding new pages. Webmaster Guillaume Levesque maintains and troubleshoots the site on a regular basis. The Executive Director produces and updates website material frequently and there are plans to bring on a volunteer to assist with the website in the future. The Federation website has proved to be a cost-effective way for members to access information on programs, services and literary events taking place throughout the province.
WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
NEWS
Lynne delivers a “strong” lecture
FBCW members enjoy conversation and refreshments after the AGM
One of the Federation’s most successful programs is the Off The Page writersin-schools program. In 2006, thirty writers from all over the province received funding to make presentations in schools in their own communities. They interacted with students from Grade 1 to Grade 12, and reports and evaluations were overwhelmingly positive. Concentrating on Off The Page, which affects well over 1,200 students every year, seems the very best way to fulfill our mandate to foster young writers, showcase emerging and established BC writers, and contribute to cultural awareness and literacy. Off The Page participants are pleased with the re-design of the OTP section on the website as they are able to send new images and copy to the Fed office for regular updates to their profile page throughout the year. Moved by Kenn Joubert; Seconded by Mary Ann Moore; Carried that the Website and Off The Page reports be accepted. Ruth Kozak gave a brief verbal account of her Off The Page presentations and recommended the program as “always a very worthwhile and enjoyable experience.” Community Outreach (Regional Reports) were not read aloud due to length but members were encouraged to read the report included in the AGM package. Moved by Gail Buente; Seconded by David Fraser; Carried that the Regional Reports be accepted.
8. Nominations and Election of 2006/2007 Directors Margaret Thompson announced the slate of candidates presented by the Board: President – Jan Drabek; Past President – Brian Busby; First Vice President – Joy Huebert; Interim Treasurer – Greg Ball; Secretary – Andrea Lowe. With no nominations from the floor, it was Moved by Kenn Joubert; Seconded by Ursula Vaira; Carried that the slate of candidates be elected by acclamation. Following their election, Jan Drabek, Joy Heubert and Andrea Lowe spoke briefly about their backgrounds and their support of the activities of the Federation. Regional representatives elected by members in their regions for the 2007/2008 term: North – Audrey L’Heureux; South East – Anne Strachan; Central – Kay McCracken; Fraser Valley – Sylvia Taylor; Islands – David Fraser; Lower Mainland – remained vacant. Islands representative David Fraser spoke of activities in his region and thanked the Executive Director and fellow board members for their work in supporting regional events and Federation writers.
9. Other Business Fernanda invited the membership to comment on a motion to establish firm guidelines for Student and Senior rates presently set at $35 for annual membership. As there is a disproportionate
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Michael Hetherington and Fernanda Viveiros
number of members claiming senior or student rates—which seriously affects the organization’s revenues—it was recommended that Senior rates apply to members aged 65 years and over, and Student rates apply to students enrolled in full-time program at post-secondary institutions. It was noted that individual discounts will be considered on request to the Executive Director. The motion was Moved by Joy Huebert; Seconded by Mary Ann Moore, and carried. General discussion on this issue yielded the suggestions that an Associate Membership category be considered in the future, and that membership material should include the information that those eligible for either the senior or student discount would of course be welcome to pay the full membership fee if they wish.
10. Adjournment There being no further business from the floor, and with a banquet table groaning beneath trays of splendid appetizers and a bartender at the ready, the meeting was adjourned by Margaret Thompson at 8:00 pm. The Annual Report, including full reports from the President, Executive Director, Treasurer, Regional Representatives and committee members, can be viewed online on the Federation website at www.bcwriters.com.
FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
AUTHOR! AUTHOR!
Terror in the Stairwell How I Nearly Missed My First Public Reading By Anne DeGrace
You could draw some literary allusions to this, I thought, after descending two floors in the dimly lit concrete stairwell: Dante; Hesse. Perhaps, it occurred to me after three or four more, it’s more like a pessimist’s metaphor for life; by fifteen floors, it was the stuff of nightmares.
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photo by Fred Rosenberg
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y first book wasn’t due out ’til the fall, but in the spring of 2005 Janet at McArthur & Company emailed me in her cheery, breezy way: would I be available to go to Vancouver and speak about my book at the BC Bookfair? Yes! I emailed within seconds. Of course! I live in the wilds of the BC Interior, a paradise 500 miles from anywhere with more than a handful of dining choices. A paid flight to Vancouver is like a ticket to Disneyland. I arrived at the Coast Plaza Hotel in plenty of time— Capricorn that I am—in a taxi that cost me a whopping (by Kootenays standards) $18, but feeling the heady rush of a new author whose publisher would actually reimburse the fare. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that I would try to collect all the major food groups on my cocktail napkin at any event offering free refreshments. I was dressed in my best, a lovely blue sleeveless number I’d picked up at a roadside stand at the Balfour Ferry Terminal. I was to give a ten-minute presentation about my book at a BC Bookfair breakfast: my first professional, publisher-sponsored public reading. I was to speak at 8:00. The room was to open at 7:30. As I entered the hotel, my watch read barely 7:00. My email from the sales rep said to go to the “Shoreline to Cityview Room,” which the nice people at the reception desk told me was on the thirtieth floor, so up I went. Being from a town whose tallest building is five stories, this in itself was a
long trip. But when the elevator button for the thirtieth floor lit up and I stepped out, the sandblasted glass doors to the swank restaurant were still locked. Looking around, I saw a sign saying “washroom” and pointing to a doorway up a short set of stairs. A washroom seemed an excellent place to kill a little time and freshen up. I did, after all, want to look my best.
WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
FEATURES
There was something substantial about the way the hall door closed behind me. A finality. That extra little click. Yup. The door was locked. So was the door to the washroom. There was a third door in the tiny hallway that said “Exit.” So I did. Did I mention I was on the thirtieth floor? I descended the concrete stairwell to the next floor, which was, indeed, the twenty-ninth. The sign beside the locked exit door told me so. Twenty-eighth floor: same thing. Twentyseventh floor: you guessed it. Did I mention my congenital knee weakness? I’m great at going up mountains—useful, living in the Kootenays—but the down-trip is hell, often a sort of sideways crab-walk punctuated by expletives.
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o, down the concrete stairwell I hobbled, heart racing, knees swelling, fighting a rising panic that I would die trying to get to my first-ever publisher-sponsored public reading, or at least arrive without my knees. Twenty-fifth floor; twenty-fourth. How could all these exits be locked? What’s the point of exit signage if it’s not possible to exit? Oh, wait. I was trying to enter, wasn’t I? What if I had a heart attack here? I imagined the headlines: “Promising Author Found Decomposing in Hotel Stairwell.” By the nineteenth floor, sweat stains were making large half-moons on the underarms of my carefully chosen reading ensemble. Somewhere along the way the signs inexplicably stopped, so I began counting in my mind. Was that the eighth floor, or the seventh? Does it matter, since I’m going to die in this downward spiral, a now obvious metaphor for my writing career? At what may have been the final floor (I was past counting) a sign beside the door said: No Exit Below This Floor. I tried the door, and—oh, thank God!—it opened. I found myself in a narrow hallway with plywood walls that here and there opened out into rooms housing what looked like Beelzebub’s ovens. I was in Hell for sure. I stumbled down the hall calling feebly, “Hello?” Better any devil at this point. No-one responded. At last another door, and a sign that read: NO EXIT! ALARM WILL SOUND. Hyperventilating, I pushed on through. No alarm sounded. I was out! But I was now behind the hotel by the dumpsters; it took several more minutes to find my way back to square one. When I arrived back at the reception desk, panting and sweaty, I was informed the BC Bookfair breakfast was on the first floor—just up a tiny flight of stairs! Why hadn’t I told them the name of the event I was attending in the first place? I hobbled
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in, almost unable to bend my knees. The story of my literary descent, replete with allusions and personal metaphors, was, in the end, a gift. An unknown writer with a fresh story that makes people laugh becomes memorable—for the story, if nothing else. Afterwards, it was good to tuck into the á la carte breakfast. I had, after all, worked up an appetite. Anne DeGrace is a librarian, journalist, writer and illustrator living in Nelson, British Columbia. Her novel, Treading Water, inspired by the community of Renata that once flourished on Lower Arrow Lake in British Columbia, was published in 2005 by McArthur & Company.
FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
THE 2007 AGM LECTURE
Hints for Heavy Lifting: How to Maintain Writerly Stamina in Challenging Times By Lynne Van Luven
It is always equal parts honour and pleasure for me to speak to a room of writers. Oh, yes, and terror; don’t let’s forget the inevitable tablespoon of terror. The Federation of BC Writers is a formidable group, and this is an important annual gathering. About four minutes ago, I panicked quietly at the back of the room as I realized my deadline was indeed truly up; I actually would have to make good on the ambitious topic I had picked for this evening. (Would someone clear the way to the nearest exit please?)
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arlier this week, I had one of those zany moments of poor judgment masquerading as creativity when I wondered whether, to forge unity between form and content (surely this is still a writer’s concern, especially in the days of Facebook?), I should perhaps dress for this occasion in a weight-lifter’s costume, including minuscule bathing suit of shiny fabric, rubber-soled gym shoes and backsupporting leather belt. Yes: you are writers and you can easily imagine the overall effect. Luckily for all of us, my innate prairie Puritanism vetoed such career-destroying flamboyance. I have, however, as a particular nod to the dramatists among us, brought a couple of props: these two five-pound weights that somehow survived one of my periodic, brief, self-improvement binges. Feel free to come up and borrow them if you feel bored or restless during my remarks. In fact, please do come forward and put them to the test; it took me almost an hour to find them (they were readily at hand, in the basement, in a corner, under my sewing machine, behind a box of fabric remnants!). “Writer is a weasel word…It covers a multitude of wistful fancies, this weasel word. It includes all those who would really like to write seriously but “can never find the time.” It embraces the innocents who are forever waiting, vainly, for the muse to strike. It numbers in its ranks all the tortured
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souls who have accumulated a lifetime collection of rejection slips and cannot understand why the insensitive and corrupt publishers have failed to appreciate their genius.” —Pierre Berton.
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s the late, prolific Pierre Berton right, I wonder? Should we find another term for “writer,” a term free of “weaselyness”? Aside from seeking inspiration from books by other, better, writers, whenever I have to talk about writing, my preparation always includes intermittent stints of fretting, fossicking and ferreting, The Three Fs. Some writers call it research; others call it process. Me, I just call it “faunching,” a pseudo-word which captures the jittery discomfort and angst I always suffer when required to think and write my way towards clarity.
“
Be realistic, but not too depressing,” the Fed’s Fernanda Viveiros had suggested back in February, when she offered me this gig. “Something funny, yet inspiring?” I prodded, nervously. “Yes, something like that,” she said. And somehow, from there, we got here, to Heavy Lifting and Writerly Stamina. I beg the exercise-phobic among you to bear with me while I maul my metaphor. Honestly, there is a logical and philosophical link between weight-lifting and writing. Like
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writers, weightlifters build their strength through a series of initial exercises (remember your early poems from Grade 6? Your high school short stories?) they then shape into routines, sets and repetitions; they start with light weights and work up gradually; the successful among them realize that consistent, determined effort results in bulk and stamina. At the end of a regimen, they have a body of work, as it were, to show off, all flexed and buff. And, minus the oil and the bulging veins I hope, at the end of a workout with an essay, novel, poem or play, so do you. Replace the sweat-encrusted bench with your writing table or laptop, swap the clanging barbells for clamouring phrases, and what is a writer’s work space but a cerebral gymnasium? True, many days you have to talk yourself into sitting down at that “bench” and picking up your 500-pound story, the very same one you threw down in despair yesterday. And yes, sometimes each word does seem to weigh about 90 pounds as you manipulate it into its proper place. True, sometimes a dumbbell actually sits at the bench: you, resisting your own best instincts. You think you won’t have the strength or the talent or the insight, but yet you keep at it—the routine, the repetition, the groaning, the strain, the incremental gain.
“You will be published if you possess three qualities—talent, passion and discipline” —Elizabeth George.
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t’s far too easy to slip into stereotypes, myth-making or doomsday prognostication when ruminating about Heavy Lifting and Writerly Stamina. And sometimes, for brief self-indulgent moments—perhaps during occasional stints in the bar or tucked up for tea with a friend—such talk is cathartic, maybe even necessary. But stereotype and myth are unhelpful tools on the writerly bench. We need to face the harsh realities instead. In Write Away, her 2004 memoir, suspense novelist Elizabeth George offers wonderfully nononsense antidotes to all the facile self-help prescriptions floating about: “You will be published if you possess three qualities—talent, passion, and discipline,” she declares in her final chapter. “You will probably be published if you possess two of the three qualities in either combination—either talent and discipline, or passion and discipline. “You will likely be published if you possess neither talent nor passion but still have discipline. Just go to the bookstore and pick up a few “notable” titles and you’ll see what I mean. “But if all you possess is talent or passion, if all you
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possess is talent and passion, you will not be published. And if by some miracle you are published, it will probably never happen again.” Sobering cautions, are they not? The crucial element, George says, is self-discipline. “A lot of writing is being willing to show up day after day, same time same place,” she reminds us. “A lot of writing is being able to put the work first simply because it is the work. A lot of writing is being able to delay gratification.” That’s exactly what my friend Kevin said, when he was into pumping iron, a process I mockingly dubbed crimping metal. “Show up, sweat, and repeat. Increase your lift-load gradually. Repeat.” He did in fact, by this process, turn himself from a weedy poet into a rather studly young man. Alas, shortly after this transformation, he left the writing game entirely, studied for an MBA and now is a computer wizard with a large corporation. Okay, so maybe he is not a good example of perseverance (which surely lies at the heart of stamina?), but I’m confident that most of you are too far gone down the writers’ road to consider such a defection. continued next page 11
FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
“A novelist’s job is to imagine conversations, motives and states of mind… But I have also been very conscious of the obligation to the known facts of these terrible events…” —Justin Cartwright.
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do not think this is a particularly bad time to be a writer; nor do I think it is a particularly good time to be a writer. It is the time it is, with its own particular problems and possibilities. But because there seems to be a lot of official lying going on these days, in high places, we need principled, clear-eyed writers more than we ever have. For instance, following the House of Commons’ late-April furor about the Afghan detainees-issue, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was reported as saying: “We will conclude a formal agreement so that we never again face these kinds of baseless accusations.” Talk about bafflegab and doublespeak. So the government will act on baseless charges? Where’s the logic in that? Probably even the PM himself is confused about what he meant, but here is my translation: “We have not flubbed this, but just to shut you up, you mewling critics, we are going to take the steps we should have taken, before we ever denied getting this wrong in the first place.”
In Canada where writers are seldom jailed and very rarely killed, we tend to forget what a perilous pursuit speaking truth to power can be in other countries. And because we forget, we perhaps tend to devalue ourselves, our task and the difference we can make. Consequently, we sometimes fail to speak out when we should—and could. Truly, well-crafted sentences can be weighty objects, particularly if you have set yourself a lifetime task of creating and disseminating them. And they work best when wielded with rapier thrusts, rather than as blunt weapons; change and awareness do result when readers encounter one fine phrase after another, inexorably unrolling a story, or building a case for justice or freedom or equality. So let’s try to remember this, always: writing is important work. Writing is frustrating work, lonely work, and sometimes you don’t know why you do it at all. Some days you fantasize about building stone walls for a living or running a garlic farm or raising goats, to cite three of my own frequent escape fantasies. And yet you keep on. Through good years and bad, through inspired projects and sad experiments, through praise and silence. I hope by now I have convinced you how difficult your work is, because without the proper exercise and diet for
#46 bad jobs:
ON N EWS STAN DS NOW !
We’ve all had one (at least!). Whether it’s an 8-hour shift over a 500-degree flattop grill, pumping gas for Shell, or scraping crusty dough bins at 4:30 a.m., the bad job experience seems to be ubiquitous and is explored here to humorous and sad effect. Also in this issue: the winners of the 2006 Lush Triumphant literary awards: John Vigna (Fiction), Bill Pollett (Poetry), and Michael Hall (Creative Non-fiction), and new writing from Lyle Neff, Ann Cavlovic, Matthew Firth, Catherine Owen, and Stuart Ross. Plus: photo essays by Esther Rausenberg and Karen Moe, book reviews, and more. Get it from your local bookseller, mag hawker, or directly from us for $5—and we’ll pay the postage! Cheque/money order to the address below. UPCOMING ISSUES:
# 47 #48 #49
STUDENT WRITING
S P O RTS
(WINTER ’07)
SPECIAL FICTION ISSUE
For more information on forthcoming theme issues, subscription rates, or submission guidelines, please visit www.subterrain.ca SUBTERRAIN MAGAZINE, BOX 3008, MPO VANCOUVER BC V6B 3X5
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(SPRING ’08)
FEATURES
both body and mind, you are at risk for all sorts of pulled ligaments, brain strain and muscle fatigue, not to mention mood swings, outright despair, wrecked backs, substance abuse and the odious “writers’ pot.” Whether your creative fate be short or long lines, prose or poetry, dicing with words and keeping in writing trim is an onerous task. It is also a vital one both we and our society must take seriously.
“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you are conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.” —Anne Lamott.
“
Don’t write for free,” I told my most eager student last year. “If you practise your profession for nothing, you undermine the value of all the writers in your community. You debase your craft.” She looked crestfallen, then thoughtful. “Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll just write for almost nothing,” And the sad fact is, until she is well established, and for perhaps even longer, she will be expected to do just that. While a weight-lifter’s career may be short, and many writers’ careers are long, there is still poverty, that slavering puppy beneath the bench. Not for nothing did Dr. Samuel Johnson observe, back in 1776, that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” Be honest now. How many of you would be overjoyed if a darling offspring were to announce that s/he too wanted to be a writer, just like mom or dad? (Yes, indeedy, there go your hopes of THEM taking care of YOU in your old age.) And how many of you hesitate to list your occupation as “writer,” before you fill in a census form. There must be, you think anxiously, a euphemism, another phrase that might be taken more seriously: “semantic deep diver,” for instance, or perhaps “word lapidarist.” Something that sounds official and sort of scientific? Like me, perhaps you imagine that the folks who moil for fish and lumber and daffodils and cranberries in this province—the real workers of British Columbia— are happily ensconced in concrete jobs which earn them respect, free from bouts of doubt or identity crisis. You might even, in your worst moments, wonder: wait a minute, do others, the real people of the world, regard writers as workers at all? If the lumberjacks and lumberjills of B.C. (only a handful of whom also multi-task as writers) think of us at all, do they envision pasty, flabby, shambling souls who hunch over keyboards day after day, clad in only their unravelling terrycloth bathrobes and a pair of tattered red wool socks? Do they see us sitting in a dither on park
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benches, disturbing the pigeons as we flutter our journal pages, stooping to scribble a few precious observations now and again? And what of the accountants and lawyers and doctors, the professionals who get real respect and earn the bucks too? Do they, if they think of us at all, imagine that we whine a lot, gather in anxious little knots at our rivals’ book launches and stump around convinced no one understands us? Where DO they get such ideas, we ask, resenting such stereotypes, even as we concede their shades of truth. As a panacea for all such misperceptions, perhaps it is high time for us to cease being doubting Thomases/Thomasinas. If we write, we are writers. If we do it all the time, we might even get good at it.
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s many of you have discovered by now, a sense of the ridiculous must also be added to the writers’ tool bench; the world ain’t fair, and it’s never going to be. Consider the fine profession of plumbing, for instance, and encourage your offspring in that direction. We all know that it’s easier to get a politician to admit error than it is to find a plumber for an emergency repair. But if you’re stupendously lucky, and actually entice a plumber to your ailing bathroom, you know it’s a dead-serious business. The last thing you’d do is tell him (so far, I have yet to meet a woman plumber, though I strongly desire to do so) how much you “admire his work” before asking him to fix your toilet flapper for free—just, you know, as a kind of demonstration good-will gesture, to entice you to perhaps sample his other work, sometime, maybe later, but not right now. Yet on how many occasions are writers asked to help out a cause/magazine/fundraiser/project by donating a bit of their writing, editing or judging time? That’s because writers are supposed to be selfless, to enjoy living below the poverty line and to like nothing better than giving their work away. Anti-social as it may seem, perhaps we all need to perfect more writing exercises culminating with the N-O word.
“Ultimately you write alone.” —Ursula K. Le Guin.
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h, yes, heavy lifting indeed. But look at us: we’re a good crowd here, gathered because, even though the writer’s task involves long stints of rumination and solitary “derrière to the chair” struggle, we also crave the companionship of others who are bashing away through the same thicket, stumbling towards some weird green light. Consider this heartening evidence. The Federation of BC continued next page
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Heavy Lifting, cont’d Writers has about 540 members these days. And there are 7,000 writers of all sorts registered in BC Bookworld’s Author Bank. The Writers’ Union of Canada boasts a membership of 1,600 and is holding its AGM this year in Vancouver where its ambitious keynote is “The Future of Truth.” No doubt many of you here tonight are registered with the Author Bank and hope to attend the TWUC meeting. Why? Because as much as writers are cranky, contrary and mainly solitary, they also need to indulge their pack-animal status on a regular basis. Everyone needs to network and hobnob at least once or twice a year. Writers crave recognition for what they do, and they need to be included in a scrabble of peers. None of that will stop them from remaining a contentious lot of individuals who often disagree on even “motherhood” issues. (Surely, that double-sided word “cleave” was invented to describe writers?) Yet the fact remains that, over the past three or four decades, Canadian writers, working together, have won many victories for their craft: they have garnered public recognition; they have established prizes, captured the flighty attention of bureaucrats and built bodies of legal, moral and financial support for the greater good of both themselves and their audiences. They have discovered that in unity lies strength. As the late June Callwood often remarked, “we are more alike than different,” when we make the effort to gather and discuss our concerns honestly.
“I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened.” —Stephen King.
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o I sense some impatience growing in the audience? Okay, you say, I get the damn weight-lifting metaphor, I get the idea of hanging in for the long haul, I get the dichotomy between isolation and community. But what about meeee? I still need to succeed; I need to finish this manuscript, to find a publisher, to promote the work… I don’t have time for balance, for solidarity, for a regimen of consistency. It’s all or nothing, the writer’s life. Well, since you brought it up, I’d say that’s a charming fiction embroidered by wisps of truth. It is all about you, on one level. But you are not alone. Therefore, it tends also to be about us. Consider what Carolyn See has to say in her wise, witty book, Making a Literary Life: “Your ego is a big, messy, undisciplined, anxiety-ridden dog. It barks and whines and pees on the floor and sheds all over 14
the furniture and takes nips at passing strangers and goes crazy when it sees another dog that might be bigger or smarter or prettier.” That dog, she maintains, inhabits us all and is “untrainable.” I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with that last point, but even See does not advocate letting the dog run amok to bowl over small children and rub suggestively against perfect strangers’ legs. The solution, she says, is to try to keep the dog “on a fairly short leash.” Which, I am duty-bound to point out, brings us right back to that bench where we pursue discipline and repetition and focus. Establish and follow your own regimen, and you have every chance of being the best damn dog on the street—and the one with the most stamina when someone requires you to fetch a big, big stick. Lynne Van Luven has taught journalism and creative nonfiction at the University of Victoria since 1997 and has over 20 years of experience as a print journalist and a PhD in Canadian literature from the University of Alberta. Lynne is the editor of Nobody’s Mother, which was nominated for a 2007 BC Book Prize award.
NOTES The Joy of Writing: A guide for writers, disguised as a literary memoir by Pierre Berton (Toronto: Anchor Canada, 2003). Page 14. Write Away: One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and the Writing Life by Elizabeth George (New York: 2004). Page 253. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott (New York: Anchor Books, 1995). Page 225. Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew by Ursula K. Le Guin (Portland: Eighth Mountain Press, 1998). The Song Before it is Sung by Justin Cartwright (London: Bloomsbury, 2007). Pages 275-76. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (New York: Scribner, 2000). Page 18. Making A Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers by Carolyn See (New York: Random House, 2002). Page 103.
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What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been… A Rumination on the Fed’s Early Years By Trevor Carolan
Trevor Carolan was a founding member of the Federation and its first Executive Director. In l986 he left to coordinate the XV Olympic Winter Games literary arts festival in Calgary. He has since had a varied career: working on behalf of Aboriginal land claims in northern BC, struggling to end logging in Vancouver ’s public watersheds, campaigning against the development of its North Shore forests, and serving as a municipal councillor. Following a term as Director of literary programs at The Banff Centre, he has resumed English teaching at UCFV in Abbotsford. The author of 12 books, his current work of autobiographical fiction is entitled The Pillowbook of Dr. Jazz (Ekstasis).
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ollowing up on a recent invitation by Fernanda Viveiros to visit the Federation office near Stanley Park, I remarked how the state of the place reminded me of the Fed’s first office beside the Birks Building Clock downtown in the mid-eighties. That’s where Carolyn Zonailo, Jan Drabek, K.O. Kanne, Sonia Craddock, Bella Chen, myself and others spent long hours looking after the organization amid piled boxes of documents, books, publicity announcements, and a couple of desks cleared for action. “A blast from the past?” Fernanda asked. “Yeah, a real rave from the grave.” We got to talking about whether things have changed appreciably for writers since the heady days back in 1981-82 when the hard work was being done to create an organization for BC writers similar to that of Alberta and other provinces. I’m not sure if we fully answered that searching question, but Fernanda’s inquiries brought to mind some old remembrances of the Fed’s early days. In 1978, I’d returned to BC after a couple of university years in California. Like many another hopeful, I was turning out poems and stories but had limited knowledge about getting them published. My expanding collage of rejection slips was just beginning to give way to a rash of acceptances when I saw a notice at the New Westminster public library advertising a costly $40 day-long writers’ conference at UBC. Sponsored by the Periodical Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) it was themed “Is Survival Possible in the Local Freelance Market?” continued next page WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
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What a Long Strange Trip, cont’d I was dying to know the answer myself, so I registered. I’m still not sure whether it was the best investment I ever made, or whether that conference flat-out wrecked my life because I’ve been carpentering a living ever since by working with words. You know how the story goes: the dealer always gives you the first few tastes for free. I joined PWAC, made useful personal connections that helped my work appear more frequently in print, and soon found myself hooked on the writing life. Have been ever since.
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riting freelance is all about living by your wits, following your passion and scribbling it down. From magazine work I swerved back to poetry, then to translation. From there, I moved on to compiling anthologies and on to creative nonfiction. Joseph Campbell sums it up when he says, “Follow your bliss.” Part of the early buzz for me was representing PWAC in a discussion group with emissaries of other writers’ groups— The Writers’ Union of Canada, League of Canadian Poets, Playwrights Guild, ACTRA, Canadian Authors Association—regarding formation of a BC provincial writers’ organization. Involvement with one or another of these various national literary outfits had already, for most of us, demonstrated the wisdom of getting plugged in. National organizations provide conduits to funding and publishing opportunities, plus fellowship and the dynamism that comes from a larger group’s collective writing and editorial expertise. Joining has its advantages. There are probably as many versions of how the Federation actually began as there were individuals who attended the ongoing series of meetings in 1981 where we discussed the concept on behalf of our respective organizations. In a file I recorded the names of a dozen writer representatives who attended these meetings. At one, for example, three were from The Writers’ Union (Sandy Duncan, BC rep; Keith Maillard, national executive; and Jan Drabek). Three were from the CAA (Frank Gerber; Betty Millway; Madeleine Allsbury). Two were from the Guild of Canadian Playwrights (Richard Payne; Leonard Angel). Others were Gary Marcuse for ACTRA; Mona Fertig for The Literary Storefront; Robin Skelton for the League of Canadian Poets; and me for PWAC. Already there was a lot of talent in the room. We’d bring news and views from our groups, air and share ideas, strike subcommittees. The questions of the day were: how to define more acutely what exactly a BC Federation could achieve; what a set of bylaws might look like; what kind of structure
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would be best; what kind of membership should a Federation have—one tier, for professionals only? Open, for anyone who’d like to join? Or two-tier, a combined membership with full voting privileges plus non-voting associates? From time to time other reps came and went. Calgary’s Aritha Van Herk, in town for a teaching gig at UBC and fresh from winning the $50,000 Seal First Books Award was an active and vocal proponent of BC getting hip to the success of the Alberta Writers’ Guild next door. Writers there were tapping into generous piles of cash courtesy of provincial oil revenues. Surely BC could follow? Aritha broke the mold of dowdy literary haberdashery by wearing a fur coat and tooling around Vancouver in a Porsche. She looked as if she knew something about literary economics. From the beginning, The Writers’ Union and CAA were dedicated in their vision and efforts. Aritha from The Writers’ Union, Frank Gerber of the CAA, and I from PWAC formed a sub-committee to consider the best models of organizational structure. Sandy Duncan and others investigated various organizations for models of constitutional bylaws. An organizing committee began planning a founding meeting. That meeting was held on Saturday, March 20, 1982, at Langara College. The day’s registration fee was $10. The turnout included establishment figures, street poets, freelancers, a few names from the news, what have you. Some legal help had been volunteered, so we’d drafted a proposed set of bylaws and the necessary paperwork to let us solicit memberships. Local writers billeted out-of-towners. The announcement flyer read: Please come prepared with ideas and suggestions. The Federation of British Columbia Writers will only succeed if you give it your invaluable support and if we are able to speak as a strong and united body of writers. This meeting will be essential in shaping the direction and the future of the federation. I kept notes. Ron Stanaitis of PWAC manned the registration table—it was a good place to see who was coming and going. Once things got underway, there was agitation early on regarding membership criteria. Some voices wanted a strictly professional body; others said we already had those with our national outfits, and that we needed a large, open organization to get the government’s attention. There were the usual difficulties regarding an orderly process of discussion, and a general shakiness about rules of order. Fortunately, Sandy Duncan provided strong leadership in moving things along and the work got done.
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Names and faces in the crowd included a regal David Watmough who would be elected first Chair; James Barber in an arty red tie; Christie Harris; Mona Fertig from The Literary Storefront; Andreas Schroeder, who proclaimed “being published can be an act of God”; bill bissett, championing ultra-democratic open membership; Jan Drabek; the natty Michael Mercer, playwright; David Conn, serving as Treasurer; Aritha; Scott Dunlop; curly-headed Keith Maillard; freelance writer Daniel Wood; Province literary essayist Alan Twigg; Dona Sturmanis; Richard Payne; ACTRA President Christopher Moore; Jennifer Alley; K.O. Kanne.
Mona Fertig (Founder & Managing Director of The Literary Storefront) and Ingrid Klassen (Executive Director of the BC Branch of the Writer’s Union of Canada), 1978.
Peter Haase, Dorothy Livesay and Mona Fertig, with Tom Wayman in the background, after Dorothy’s reading at The Literary Storefront, July 28, 1978. WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
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hrough the morning, issues were debated intensely. What specific advantages could be gained from a provincial writers organization? Would the Federation be able to discipline its members like a union? How could the Fed help its members earn more? How might we contribute toward making “thinking for a living” respectable? Could we establish a “talent bank” and advertise our members’ skills? Could we lobby for putting a member on the BC Arts Board? The most contested point was who qualified as a member. Discussion dragged on through various political subdebates for two full hours. Nipping outside for a quiet breath of air, I met Alan Twigg. He noted the irony of an intense artistic membership debate here on the west coast where many, by nature, are not joiners. On my way back in, David Watmough passed by. “The rumblings of discontent continue,” he said. “Some of them think we professionals are elitist. I say it’s beginning to smack of populism!” Keith Maillard finally ended the membership impasse with compromise wording. Magazine writer Donna McCluskey turned to me and said, “With all the brainpower in this room, how come nobody thought of this before?” Michael Mercer pressed for a vote on acceptance of the bylaws and it was carried. All that remained was to vote for the Federation’s first executive council: Watmough for Chair; James Barber, First Vice-Chair; K.O. Kanne, Second ViceChair. Other council representatives included writers John Lent, Tom Wayman, Fred Wah, Christie Harris, Michael Mercer and Christopher Moore. It all felt decidedly historic. The array of people you could, and still can meet through Federation activity is astonishing. I know that I learned a lot—about writing, about conducting oneself as a writer, about working collegially with other creative people, about collaboratively sharing labour, about the publishing trade and generating publicity, about how to organize events, compile budgets, write newsletters and teach workshops. That’s a pretty good return on your membership dollar. I’ve made a living using these acquired skills ever since. During the early- and mid-eighties Fed-sponsored poetry and literary readings became regular features. The Women’s Resource Centre at 1144 Robson St., La Queña at 1111 Commercial Drive, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and The Classical Joint at 231 Carrall Street in Gastown all hosted Federation events. Andreas Nottinger, who ran The Classical Joint, was especially sympathetic and eventually his club became a regular venue for such Thursday night readings which were followed by saxman Gavin Walker’s jazz unit. By applying for local cultural grants the Fed was able to pay writers $100 for their appearances and stick posters up around town to publicize the shows. continued next page 17
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Storefront’s collection of taped readings are still held by the Vancouver Public Library. Later, when bookseller Wayne Holder and Tom Ilves (now President of Estonia) carried on management of the Storefront after Mona, Vancouver’s literary community was able to rub shoulders with imported guests including playwright Edward Albee, and poets Joseph Brodsky, William Everson and Stephen Spender. Heady stuff back then.
What a Long Strange Trip, cont’d
The late Rocket Ron Brunette and his partner Paul Kryzewski at Pi Ka Graphics on Clark Drive produced the Fed’s trademark posters. Over the years readers included Anne Marriott, Sandy Duncan, Robin Skelton, Carolyn Zonailo, Peter Trower, bill bissett, Carol Itter, Robert Harlow, Joanna Byers, Judith Copithorne, Britt Haggarty, Lidia Wolanskyji, myself and many others. Lidia, who con 1984, the Federation committed to running a downhosted Co-op Radio’s VanLit program, talked up the readtown office on Granville Street. Small and cramped with ings for us, as did Jack Christie on his popular Friday books, the room held a desk, typewriter, extra chairs and afternoon show Pigeon Park Review. an electric kettle. At least we had a regular place for meetOccasionally the Fed collaborated with university, ethnic, ings, although monthly executive gatherings were still more and political fellow travelers to host special readings by comfortable at various members’ homes. As the Federation’s visiting writers like Hungary’s George Faludy and Estonia’s first paid Executive Director at the princely sum of $300 Jaan Kaplinksi, and L.A.’s punk La Loca (Pam Karol). This era is noted in Keith McKellar’s Neon Eulogy: Vancouver Café and Street (Ekstasis, 2001). It’s worth remembering that a block around the corner from the Joint, Mona Fertig had launched her Literary Storefront operation at 314 West Cordova Street. Mona’s innovative Storefront paved the way for regular reading George Faludy, Trevor Carolan, Jan Drabek, and Robin Skelton, 1985. events and dozens of BC writers had an opportunity to work out their material thanks to her efforts. My monthly, I was able to devote time to scouting out funding own first downtown reading came at one of the Storefront’s opportunities to support Federation activities. In the fall of Sunday afternoon open mikes. Dona Sturmanis ran her 1984, we ran an item in the Federation newsletter calling for publishing enterprise out of an office at the back of the project ideas for the city of Vancouver’s Centennial celebraStorefront, and The Writers’ Union of Canada also had tions in l986. It would all be in aid of the huge whoop-up office space there with Ingrid Klassen sharing operating now known as Expo 86 and the Mulroney government in duties. On one shining occasion the CBC’s then star news Ottawa put up $500,000 for cultural hoopla that year. program, The Journal, made a rare trek out to Vancouver to One of the overlooked benefits of volunteering on boards of film a presentation on W.P. Kinsella, whose career was directors is that you learn how to solicit funding support hotter than a firecracker at the time. The Storefront was through grant writing. It’s a chore and nobody ever really the obvious venue and all that afternoon local writers wants to do it, but once you learn the techniques of successcaught a glimpse of what literary celebrity could actually ful application-building strategies, you’re in—heck, why look like as truckloads of camera and lighting equipment not? So the Fed threw its hat in the ring and we landed were lugged up and down the stairs for the gig. The $10,000, our first major independent score apart from the
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provincial government’s annual operational support grant that was also steadily growing under the diplomatic helm of president Jan Drabek. Employing a good cop/bad cop routine, Jan and I began journeying to Victoria to harangue Ministry of Tourism and Culture officials. While I hollered at them for more, Drabek in the well-dressed, urbane style that would eventually see him appointed an ambassador by President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, soothed the ruffled bureaucrats with a more “modest” grant request. In this way we managed to bump up the provincial grant from $5000 to $10,000 and it would keep growing for some years.
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nyway, when the summer of Expo 86 rolled around, the Federation had a super-duper twister pitch of an idea for books and literary folks. Learning that professional librarians would be gathering for an AGM in the city, and knowing that literary journalist par excellence Alan Twigg was hard at work researching his Vancouver and Its Writers (Harbour, 1986), it seemed natural to bridge the two. And so “The Malcolm Lowry Brown Bag Mystery Literary Tour” was born. Working with Alan we mapped a halfday tour of the Vancouver area stretching from UBC to Deep Cove, and in a chartered bus that departed from the Sylvia Hotel at English Bay—long one of the city’s favourite watering holes for writers—over two days one weekend, Twigg led participants in a fascinating tour tracing Vancouver’s until-then largely neglected literary history. What a hoot! The tour attracted as many local book buffs as it did out-of-towners. Working from the front of the bus with a microphone in the style of a Beverley Hills “tour of the stars’ homes” conductor, Alan pointed out addresses
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where writers famous and not-so famous alike had lived, or were still living, or that figured in novels, poems, plays, films, you name it. We stopped for a special Vancouver & BC Books display at Octopus Books in East Vancouver and brown-bag picnicked above Lowry’s old shack site in North Vancouver’s Cates Park. The two sold-out tours introduced book fans not only to stories from the city’s colourful past, but more importantly to a living tradition of working with continued next page
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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
What a Long Strange Trip, cont’d literature that has continued in Vancouver from its first novelist, Morley Roberts, onward (well, from the Royal City of New Westminster ten miles along Kingsway, but who’s counting?). I think that more than anyone it was Alan Twigg who woke up Vancouver and the west coast to its own legitimacy as a Canadian and North American literary hub. In the introduction to his book that cites more than 100 authors, 100 literary landmarks and 300 literary works, Alan observed how only 20 years before, “local author” had been a pejorative connotation in the book trade. Residual colonial attitudes still ranked local writing no better than fourth-rate after Dead Brit Greats, those “praised in the New York Times”, and those from Eastern Canada. Man, how times have changed! Just a few of the names Twigg brings up: Pauline Johnson, A.M. Stephen, Earle Birney, Stan Persky, Anne Cameron, Emily Carr, Chief Dan George, James Clavell, William Deverell, George Woodcock, Marya Fiamengo, Joy Kogawa, Dorothy Livesay, George McWhirter, Eric Nicol, Al Neil, Eileen Kernaghan, Warren Tallman, Bill Schermbrucker, and Ethel Wilson.
Trevor Carolan, Peter Trower and Carolyn Zonailo, early 1980s.
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left for another gig at the end of that Expo summer. Things must have gone okay because Jan Drabek and the executive board presented me with a suitcase which I’ve still got. It’s knocked around the world plenty since then, but it’s kept on coming back with me to the coast, usually somewhere around Vancouver’s workaday inner harbour. The Federation has had its bumps through the years, but simply by surviving as a community that writers all around this sprawling province can join and profit from, it’s already accomplished a lot. The readings, workshops, newsletter, and WordWorks journal you are now holding remain as valuable as we hoped they’d be when a dozen or so idealists, pragmatists and nutty organization-builder types figured the idea of a Federation was worth a shot. It’s been a long, strange trip these past 25 years and some of the old brigade who got the Fed rolling do their writing in another place now, where the editors and publishers are all a soft touch, but I don’t think any of us would have missed out on the ride.
George Faludy and Robin Skeleton, 1985.
Trevor Carolan and David Watmough, early 1980s.
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CONTESTS & MARKETS
Contests & Markets Please note that inclusion in WordWorks is not an endorsement of any contest or market. We encourage our readers to thoroughly research all contests or markets before submitting work and it’s recommended that you read one or two copies of the publication in question to make sure your writing “fits” publication requirements. Be sure to read submission guidelines. Our home page at www.bcwriters.com lists recent additions to Contests and Markets. Be sure to let your regional rep know when you win a contest or get something published so it can be included in the regional report. Good luck!
LOOMING DEADLINES Malahat Review Creative Non-Fiction Prize www.web.uvic.ca/malahat/ creative_non-fiction.htm Postmark Deadline: Aug ust 1, 2007 August Send 2000 to 3000 word personal essay, memoir, cultural criticism, nature writing, or literary journalism to The Malahat Review, Creative Non-Fiction Prize, University of Victoria, Box 1700 STN CSC, Victoria B.C. V8W 2Y2. The $35 entry fee gets you a one-year subscription.
15th Annual Surrey International Writing Contest www.siwc.ca/contest Deadline: August 3, 2007 Note the new, earlier deadline this year. Four categories: short story 3,500 – 5,000 words; poem up to 36 lines; non-fiction to 1,500 words; and writing for young people in the form of a short story, maximum length 1,500 words. Mail entries to Surrey Conference Centre, Unit 400, 9260 - 140 Street, Surrey, BC V3V 5Z4, or by email within the body of the message. Attachments will be deleted, unread. Entry fee of $15 per submission must be received before entry will be considered. First prize is $1,000 in each of the categories. Full details on website.
30th Annual 3-Day Novel Contest www.3daynovel.com/ Deadline: Register by August 31, 2007 and write September 1–3. Here’s your chance to see if it’s really possible to write a novel in three days. Entries average 100 pages. Registration form is online.
sub-TERRAIN Magazine www.subterrain.ca/ Deadline: September 15, 2007 Deadline is for winter 07 issue’s theme of “Sports”, which should be identified on the envelope. Theme issues also feature “regular” work in fiction, maximum 3,000 words or non-fiction to 4,000 words. Unsolicited poetry must relate to themes. Submissions will not be considered without SASE. Send to: subTERRAIN Magazine, PO Box 3008 MPO, Vancouver, BC V6B 3X5
Ascent Aspirations Poetry Contest www.ascentaspirations.ca Deadline: September 30, 2007 Poems may be previously published as long as you hold the copyright, maximum length 60 lines. Fee: $5 for one poem, $10 for three. Send both electronically and by mail. Full details on website. Ascent Aspirations Publishing, 1560 Arbutus Drive, Nanoose Bay, BC V9P 9C8
Arborealis Prize For Poetry www.theontariopoetrysociety.ca/ arborealis.html Postmark Deadline: Sept ember September 30, 2007 The Ontario Poetry Society is looking for unpublished poems in the People’s Poetry tradition, maximum 36 lines. Entry fee: $15 for up to three poems. All prize-winning entries plus up to 60 additional Runners Up to be published in Arborealis: An Anthology of Canadian Contemporary Poetry. Blind judging. Attach a cover page with poem title(s), contact information, and a 50word bio. Send entries to: The Ontario Poetry Society, 31 Marisa Court, Thornhill, Ontario L4J 6H9.
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Broken Pencil http://www.brokenpencil.com/ Considers fiction from 50 to 3000 words, just not at the same time. Query them about articles on indie/alternative culture. They have a rant section, too.
The Fiddlehead www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/Fiddlehead/ Reads fiction to 4,000 words and poetry (3 to 5 poems). The Fiddlehead prides itself on its rejection notes, responds in up to 6 months, and requires a SASE if you want to hear back from them. Send to: The Fiddlehead, Campus House, 11 Garland Court, UNB, PO Box 4400, Fredericton NB E3B 5A3
Filling Station http://www.fillingstation.ca/ Fiction and poetry journal considers all contemporary writing, including poetry, fiction, one-act plays, essays, short film/ video treatments and scripts, as well as black-and-white artwork. Send to: Filling Station, PO Box 22135, Bankers Hall, Calgary, AB T2P 4J5. Better yet, send via e-mail. Include contact information and a short bio. Oh, and you know how it says at the top of the page that you should read submission guidelines carefully? You should note the polite reminder from Filling Station’s editor: “Accepted manuscripts may not appear exactly as submitted. Concerns with respect to editorial alterations (to form, etc) should be addressed at the time of submission.” Couldn’t be clearer. Filling Station also accepts simultaneous submissions and expects the usual courtesy of letting all parties know, should your work be accepted.
FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
LWOT Magazine www.lwot.net/
Prairie Fire www.prairiefire.ca/
LWOT (lies, with occasional truth) has been around, in one form or another, since 1908. Looking for fiction, up to 3,000 words. Send work as a Word doc attachment. The website, which is well worth a visit, has all the details.
Send a maximum of six poems OR one short story (maximum 10,000 words) per submission, along with a brief cover letter with a short bio, your contact information, and title(s) and genre of the piece you are sending. Let them know if you are just starting to send out your work. Send SASE if you want your manuscript back. If not, say so in your cover letter and send a small SASE or postcard, or your e-mail address, so they can respond. Prairie Fire Press, Inc. 423 - 100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 1H3.
New Orphic Review Send submissions of fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays, along with SASE, to New Orphic Review, 706 Mill Street, Nelson, BC V1L 4S5
The New Quarterly www.newquarterly.net/ Accepts submissions of no more than one short story, 3–5 poems, or 1–3 postscript stories (under 5 pages) at a time.
On Spec www.onspec.ca Quarterly magazine features speculative fiction, fantasy, and horror. Some poetry, mostly prose.
Other Voices www.othervoices.ab.ca Accepts submissions of unpublished poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction prose, essays, solicited reviews, photographs, and artwork. Publishes summer and winter. Send, with SASE if you want a reply, to: Other Voices, Box 52059, 8210-109 Street, Edmonton, AB T6G 2T5.
paperplates www.paperplates.org/ Wants unpublished submissions of short personal essays, memoirs, and travel accounts, prose and poetry. Make sure your work follows their style guide, published on the website. Prefers to receive work on paper, with SASE if you want to get it back. Accepts simultaneous submissions if they are clearly marked as such. Send to paperplates, 19 Kenwood Ave, Toronto, Ontario M6C 2R8.
Qwerty http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/ QWERTY/ Qwerty likes innovative and unconventional poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. Send up to 5 poems, fiction and non-fiction to 3,000 words with SASE (or work will not be considered or returned) to: QWERTY, c/ o UNB English Dept., PO Box 4400, Fredericton, NB E3B 5A3. Qwerty happily accepts emailed submissions. Either way, include a cover letter with your name, address, phone number, bio, and e-mail address.
West Coast Line www.westcoastline.ca/ West Coast Line publishes work by writers and artists who are experimenting with or expanding the boundaries of conventional forms and contexts. Interested in work engaged with problems of representation, race, culture, gender, sexuality, technology, media, urban/rural spaces, nature, and language. Before submitting you should familiarize yourself with the journal, and with the work of recent contributors. Reading period is June 1 through August 31. Submissions received outside these dates will not be read. Send, with SASE, to: West Coast Line, EAA 2027, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6.
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Prism international Literary NonFiction Contest www.prism.arts.ubc.ca/ Deadline: September 30, 2007
Send maximum 25 pages, doublespaced, 12 pt font with title of manuscript on each page (but not the author’s), and a cover letter with your contact information and the title. All entrants will receive a one-year subscription in return for the entry fee of $27. Mail entry and fee to: PRISM NonFiction Contest, c/o PRISM international Creative Writing Program, UBC Buch. E462 , 1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z1.
ONLINE
Duotrope’s Digest http://www.duotrope.com/ Easy-to-sort database for over 1200 current markets for short fiction and poetry.
Fringe www.fringemagazine.org/ Describes itself as “the noun that verbs your world.” Accepts submissions in all sorts of categories. Guidelines? You know what to do.
New Pages www.newpages.com/ “Good reading starts here” says the website, and they’re not kidding. Great place to find lists of online lit mags, alternative magazines, indie bookstores, and more.
The Pedestal Magazine www.thepedestalmagazine.com/ Interested in high-quality literary fiction of all sorts, including traditional and experimental works and flash fiction. Considers a wide variety of poetry, from the highly experimental to the traditional.
Places for Writers www.placesforwriters.com/ Good place for up-to-date market information. Lots of interesting content, including links to a variety of Canadian writers’ sites.
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Launched! New Titles by Federation Members
For a Fistful of Soil/ Per un pugno di terra Diego Bastianutti Zeisciu Centro Studi (Italy), February 2007 ISBN 88-87405-18-2 $25.00 In this third collection the poet offers us the most complete gamma of his lyric to date: together with themes of exile and the continuous grappling with painfully new lands and milieus, he offers us an explicit glimpse of his own trust in the harmony of human existence and the wisdom that should govern it. Because of the breadth of its themes and paucity of any topical references, his lyrics are poetry tout court, emblematic of a pandemic and universal exile shared by all humanity, which dreams the ever more distant garden of its infancy while inhabiting a world all the more disquieting. An Italian-born Professor of Spanish and Italian literature at Queen’s University (1970-97), and Honorary Vice Consul of Italy (1977-95), Diego Bastianutti is the author of numerous academic publications including the definitive English translation of A Major Selection of the Poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti (Exile Editions, 1997, winner of the 1998 John Glassco Prize).
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Leaving the Farm Ross Klatte Oolichan Books, March 2007 ISBN 0-88982-237-9 $22.95 This poignant, funny, beautifully rendered memoir about growing up on a small Minnesota dairy farm in the 1950s tells the story of the struggle between a bookish, daydreaming boy and his self-made, driven father — the tension between real life on the farm and the boy’s imaginative world. One day he is shocked awake, into dreadful reality, when his four-year-old sister is killed on the farm. Within a year and a half of that terrible accident, his parents hold an auction of their livestock and machinery and the boy leaves for Navy boot camp. This memoir is Ross Klatte’s tender requiem for his lost sister, for the father with whom he struggled for freedom, and for his childhood on the farm, whose shape has indelibly imprinted itself on the man he has become. Born in Minnesota, Ross Klatte worked as a reporter for several large American city newspapers before immigrating with his wife to Canada in 1971. The opening chapter of his memoir is adapted from his original essay, which won the first prize in the CBC Literary Competition for 1990. He lives in Nelson and winters in Mexico.
FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
Mother Time: Poems New and Selected Joanne Arnott Ronsdale Press, March 2007 ISBN: 978-1-55380-046-0 $14.95 After reading this collection, you will never look at mothers—at the playground, at the elementary school, or across the kitchen table—in quite the same way again. Beginning with a poem of pregnancy, written by her twenty-five year old self, Joanne Arnott leads us through a span of twenty years of inwardand outward-facing struggles, centred firmly in the ongoing work of becoming a mother. Through visiting and revisiting pregnancy, childbirth, lullabies, and multi-generational rage, the poetry moves from the desperation of survival through to a tender place of clarity. The sexual, the spiritual, and the sociological weave together here to shock, cajole, and ultimately to transform our picture of the inner life of the mother. “Like babies, these poems spring from the womb. Arnott draws us into the healing circle of her words, with urgent beauty, in tune with the temper of our times.” —Susan Musgrave Joanne Arnott, a Metis/mixed blood writer, is a mother to six children ranging in age from three to twenty years. A literary performer and publishing poet since the mid-1980s, Joanne’s first book, Wiles of Girlhood (Press Gang, 1991), won the Gerald Lampert Award. She has since published four additional books including a children’s illustrated story, a nonfiction collection and poetry (Steepy Mountain: love poetry, Kegedonce Press).
My Enemies’ Enemies Mike Shepherd (aka Mike Charles L’Anglais) Mike Charles L’Anglais Publishing, May 2007 ISBN 978-0-9783821-0-0 $16.95 My Enemies’ Enemies, featuring the exploits of Colonel McCalister, has been called “prophetic.” The story delves behind the invasion of Iraq and Iran and the exciting narrative is based on the author’s in-depth research. Beginning with an assault on British and Norwegian interests in the Eastern Atlantic the story rapidly develops: organised crime, political corruption, sedition, national self-interest and the unfathomable reasoning of terrorist groups leads the Canadian premier to ask the Colonel if he will intervene. Upon his acceptance there will be only three rules: no collateral damage; no recall for political expediency; no rules of engagement. This is a team with moral rectitude, honour and the deepest commitment to democratic principles. But once launched there is no recall until the mission is carried out.
Dinner wit da Dons: The Underworld’s Links to Italian Cuisine Olindo Romeo Chiocca Black Scorpion Press, May 2007 ISBN: 978-0-9780818-1-2 $28.00 The only book of its kind in the world, Dinner Wit Da Dons is a twisted gastronomic look at the links between the early American Underworld and traditional Italian cooking. Written with a battery acid edge, the cookbook is packed with Italian recipes and a litany of scenes, tales, profiles and quotes from the most notorious Mafia and underworld gangsters ever to walk the streets of New York and Chicago. Nelson resident Olindo Chiocca is professional engineer who spends most of his time walking through devil’s club in the beautiful forests of British Columbia. When he’s not working, he spends his spare time eating, biking and stringing sentences together.
Mike Shepherd has travelled globally. Educated to post-grad level, he has worked with police, military and corrections teams and has wide experience in the field and in institutions. The scars on his body and soul tell their own stories.
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Extreme Edge Heather Kellerhals-Stewart James Lorimer & Company Ltd, May 2007 ISBN 978-1-55028-966-4 $9.95 Jay is determined to make his name by climbing a tough rock face known as “The Wall”. No partner, no ropes, no fancy equipment. His friend Brad has equally ambitious plans—to do a crazy ski jump. Trouble is, unlike Jay, Brad doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. Can Jay reach for the top and stop his friend from going to extremes? In this exciting rock-climbing adventure, acclaimed author Heather Kellerhals-Stewart looks at the desire to break barriers and the questionable role of the media in the dangerous pursuits of extreme sports. About the author: Heather KellerhalsStewart is the author of several acclaimed books for children, including Brave Highland Heart. A former social worker, she lives, writes, and runs an organic farm on Quadra Island, BC.
Free Rice: Writings from Room 105
The Three Great Ways: Work, Love and Wisdom
Anthea Penne, Editor Printorium, May 2007 ISBN 978-0-9698173-0-7 $10.00
Julia L. Star Deep Water Press, August 2007 ISBN 978-0-9731795-6-9 $18.95
Free Rice: Writings from Room 105 features the work of nine new Canadian writers. Each of the individual voices in Free Rice reflects a distinctive meeting with the outside world and speaks to a highly developed sense of connection (or disconnection) with that world. The authors are members of an ongoing workshop at Chatelech Secondary School in Sechelt, BC, where for two years they have held weekly meetings in Room 105. Free Rice does away with the notion that teenage angst is a phase and provides proof that a new generation of writers is poised to assume their position in the literary world. A production of the Sunshine Coast Festival of Written Arts, sponsor of the writing workshops, Free Rice is edited by A. S. Penne.
A fellowship of channelled beings called The River first made contact with a trance medium in the spring of 1983. Since then, they have channelled on a regular basis on a wide plethora of topics. The Three Great Ways distils twenty years of channelling. Here the fellowship begins by explaining a three-fold path to develop personal happiness for ourselves, to be compassionate towards others and to live joyfully with a vision of the whole. The book offers techniques to quickly resolve deep-rooted neuroses, discover our own soul paths, resolve traumas of this life and past lives, find true inner guides and accept The Other as mirror and teacher. For the first time, unique soul counselling techniques are explained and demonstrated.
A.S. Penne has published and won awards for her short fiction on both sides of the Atlantic. An excerpt from her first book, Old Stones (TouchWood, Victoria, 2002), won the 1999 Prairie Fire Creative Nonfiction Contest and was shortlisted for the Western Magazine Awards. She is the coordinator of Youth Writes, a writing workshop sponsored by the Festival of Written Arts in Sechelt, BC.
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Julia Allen writes under the name of Julia L. Star and lives in Cowichan Bay. She most recently published a short story in Geist. Her novel Dandelion Dust will be ready for publication in fall 2007.
FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
Regional Reports
Lynda Williams, chair of UNBC Press, announced the publication of Devil’s Club, Black Flies, and Snowshoes: A History of Aleza Lake Forest Experiment Station 1940-1964 by John Revel.
North
Central
Audrey L’Heureux, Prince George alheureu@shaw.ca
Kay McCracken, Salmon Arm kaymcc@jetstream.net
Award-winning poet Jacqueline Baldwin visited with the Prince George SS Writing Salon on March 14 and read from her first book, Threadbare Like Lace and her latest title, Northern Women. On April 24, Jacqueline presented a poetry reading accompanied by blues guitarist Mark Roland. The evening, hosted by the Prince George Public Library, was part of the Local Writers Series. Robert Budde was one of the featured readers at the Magazine Cabaret held in Prince George on April 25. Hosted by Betsy Trumpener, a magazine columnist for Northword, the event was one of several Magazine Cabarets held throughout the province to celebrate BC Book & Magazine Week. Robert was also a reader, April 2, at the UNBC launch of the UNBC GAIA Anthology of Creative Writing and Visual Art: Mixtape. Si Transken enjoyed a busy writing season: she presented two essays at the Canadian Women’s Studies Association AGM; two for the Canadian Association of Schools of Social Work; one for the Canadian Association for Studies in Education and one for the Association for Literature and Life at the congress conference held in Saskatoon in May. Si also facilitated a chapbook written by survival sex trade workers and their allies here in Prince George and her poems were published in Cultural Studies, Critical methodologies and in the spring issue of the Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin. She shared the $250 Barry McKinnon Chapbook Prize with Jeremy Stewart for her submission, Un/Ruled Performances, a collection of poetry. The prize is sponsored by the UNBC Arts Council Donna Kane will be one of the featured poets reading at The Whitehorse Poetry Festival taking place June 22 to 24. Mike Shepherd has published a new book, My Enemies’ Enemies, under his own publishing imprint: Mike Charles L’Anglais Publishing.
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OWL (Okanagan Writer’s League) is flying and hooting thanks to Patricia Donahue, Devon Muhlert and Barbara Shave. The OWL writing group promotes their members’ work in newspapers, libraries, and at events throughout the Interior. They’ve established a twice-monthly “OWLS” section in “Event,” an insert in the Kelowna Daily Courier, which prints short stories and poetry. On May 22, CBC Daybreak featured Estelle Noakes and Irene Campbell, highlighting their work in collecting life stories from the elderly residents at Piccadilly Terrace in Salmon Arm and presenting these stories with music and photos. On June 3, Sheryl MacKay, host of CBC’s North by Northwest program, interviewed Garry Gottfriedson who
Harold Rhenisch, Deanna Kawatski and Sylvia Olsen enjoy lunch outside the Salmon Arm Okanagan College.
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spoke of his profound love of the land, his love of language and sound, and how riding horses inspires the rhythm of his poetry. In honour of Poetry Month in Canada, Kay McCracken organized “Wild West Revisited” as a fundraiser for SAW and as promotion for Garry Gottfriedson’s book Whiskey Bullets: Cowboy and Indian Heritage Poems (Ronsdale). Alex Forbes of Kamloops read from his latest selection of poems about Bill Miner. FBCW members Karen Bissenden, John Vivian, Howard Brown, Miranda McLaws, Marilyn McAllister, Patsy Alford, Maureen Egan, Elizabeth Lute, Kay McCracken, Jeff More, and Claire Paulette Turcotte shared poems with an enthusiastic audience. Poet Ken Firth and his band The Dust Puppets were a huge hit. Sharon Stearns was one of 18 playwrights chosen from across Canada to attend the Banff Playwriting Colony at the Banff Arts Centre in May. Sharon completed a draft of her play Shout Sister, and a condensed version will be produced by her company, Wishbone Productions, at the Enderby Drill Hall in August. Look for Heidi Garnett’s poems in the anniversary issue of Room of One’s Own and in Issue 148 of Antigonish Review. Susan McIver continues to write mainly for the Penticton Herald, The Okanagan Saturday and The Western Producer out of Saskatoon. David Baxter, of Chase, read several of his short stories at the Sunnybrae and Celista Coffee Houses. Wayne Cunningham travelled to Toronto to attend the Arthur Ellis awards dinner for the Canadian Crime Writers. His review of Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game was the lead review for the online January Magazine. Steven Mills sold his fantasy story, “If Giants Are Thunder,” to the anthology Tesseracts 11, edited by Holly Phillips and Cory Doctorow, and due out from Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy in November 2007. As an Off the Page delegate, Mills spoke to a Grade 11 English class at George Elliot Secondary School in Winfield, exploring the topic, “What do you hate about writing?” Finally, along with Patricia Donahue, LB Greenwood and Stan Sauerwein, Steven read at The Magazine Cabaret: Kelowna on April 25, in celebration of BC Book and Magazine Week. At a Federation-sponsored workshop, held May 12 at Okanagan College in Salmon Arm, Harold Rhenisch opened participants up to the unique possibilities in the genre of creative non-fiction. Harold had recently returned from the Creative Non-Fiction conference in Banff, also attended by Deanna Kawatski of Celista. On June 1 and 2, Deanna and Harold presented workshops at the Spirit of Writing Festival in Nakusp.
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Those who attended the Shuswap Lake International Writers’ Mini Festival May 26 in Salmon Arm faced some tough choices with all the great authors and workshops to choose from. The Prestige Harbourfront Resort crackled with excitement as last minute writers registered for their choice of workshops by eight authors/presenters. John Lent espoused the latest approaches to form, design and closure in contemporary fiction, FBCW member Miranda Pearson spoke on the creative decisions involved in writing poetry, Al Forrie of Thistledown Press gave the inside story on what to expect when sending your manuscript in to a literary publisher, Don Sawyer, with illustrator Bob Beeson, presented a talk on writing for children, Anthony Dalton spoke on the creative process of research and Arthur Black on humour, while Bernice Lever provided tips on uncovering memories and life writing. Dorothy Rolin, President of the Shuswap Writers Group, organized the “Arthur Black and Friends” coffee house on Friday, May 25, co-sponsored by SWG and the Shuswap Association of Writers, to kick off the festival. John Vivian (emcee), Deanna Kawatski, Elizabeth Lute, Bernice Lever, and Lee Rawn primed the audience with hilarious stories and poems before Arthur Black charmed the packed Art Gallery audience with his wit and wisdoms. SAW acknowledges the support of the Federation of BC Writers.
Six of the eight authors who presented workshops at the May 26 Shuswap Lake International Writers’ Mini-Festival enjoyed visiting with one another at lunch in the hospitality suite of the Prestige Harbourfront Resort. From left, standing: Bernie Lever, Anthony Dalton and John Lent. Seated, Miranda Pearson, Al Forrie and Don Sawyer. Arthur Black and Klay Dyer missing from photo.
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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
Anne Strachan, Nakusp sisinwriting@hotmail.com
photo by Alan Twigg
FBCW members in the SE Region are writing and remaining connected to each other in this large area of the province. I’d like to thank Barbara MacPherson and Linda Crosfield for their invaluable assistance in helping me organize, co-ordinate and host a successful Spirit of Writing Festival here in Nakusp in early June. I’d also like to thank the Federation of BC Writers, Selkirk College Nakusp, the Nakusp Public Library and the Columbia Basin Trust & Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance for their generous assistance. The Spirit of Writing Festival took place June 1 to 3 and featured FBCW members Susan Andrews Grace (Poetry: Acts of Courage), Deanna Kawatski (Writing on the Wild Side), Harold Rhenisch (Opening the Work, Say the Word, and Blue Pencil Sessions), and Alan Twigg (The Writing Scene: BC Style) who presented workshops
over two days, with a total of 42 writers participating. Susan, Deanna and Harold, along with authors Linda Crosfield and Stephen Lones, read at a Friday evening coffeehouse following the first set of workshops. On Saturday, after another busy day of classes, everyone gathered for dinner, after which 19 writers read a diverse selection of their work at the Open Mic. A birthday cake in honour of the Federation of BC Writers, complete with the new logo in icing, went well with the after-dinner coffee. Various door prizes and a raffled basket in honour of the memory of Vi Plotnikoff, author of Head Cook at Weddings & Funerals And Other Stories Of Doukhobor Life (Polestar Press Ltd. 1994) were also part of the celebration. The Roving Book Table (a Kootenay tradition since 2000) was an important component at the festival, bringing in over $500 to authors, all invited to provide copies of their books for sale. Linda Crosfield and Heather Haake provided this service with a smile! And finally, on Sunday morning, people gathered for a no-host breakfast at the Anne Strachan, Alan Twigg and Nakusp Deli. To view more Barbara MacPherson photographs from the photo by Linda Crosfield
South East
Workshop presenters and writers at the Spirit of Writing Festival take over downtown Nakusp.
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Fraser Valley
photo by Linda Crosfield
Sylvia Taylor, Langley words@sylviataylor.ca
Stephen Lones, Harold Rhenisch, Barbara MacPherson and Paula Rogers browse the Roving Book Table presided over by Heather Haake.
festival, go to Linda Crosfield’s blog at http:// purplemountainpoems.blogspot.com Barbara MacPherson, of Nakusp Spirit of Writing Festival fame, had an article published in the summer issue of Herb Quarterly on Native American birthing herbs. Margrith Schraner and Ernest Hekkanen published the spring issue of The New Orphic Review, entitled “The Luddite’s Lament.” They are in Europe for five weeks, in part doing research for books they are working on. Linda Hunter, editor for Deep Water Press, will publish The River Books, Book One, The Three Great Ways, Work, Love and Wisdom, by first-time author Julia Allen of Duncan. Wendy Scott of Riondel has gathered, edited and written a collection of stories spanning Riondel’s first one hundred years. Self-published, A Recollection of Moments: Riondel 1907-2007, will be launched during Riondel’s Centennial Celebration in early August. Nelson’s Olindo Chiocca launched his new cookbook, Dinner wit da Dons, on June 9 at the Oxygen Studio. Olindo included a brief visual presentation, a discussion on the process of selfpublishing, and served Italian treats from recipes in the book. McArthur & Company has accepted Anne DeGrace’s second novel, Wind Tails, for publication in hardcover in September. Anne worked with Shaena Lambert through the Humber College mentorship program, as well as local editor Verna Relkoff. Angie Abdou is teaching at the Sage Hill Teen Writing Experience in Moose Jaw from July 14 until July 20. She will launch her new novel, The Bone Cage, at The Festival of Words in Saskatchewan, July 19-22. Linda Crosfield’s flash fiction piece was accepted at Ascent Aspirations. We extend condolences to friends and family of New Denver’s Kathryn LeMessurier, who passed away recently.
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Fraser Valley regional representative Sylvia Taylor of TaylorMade Communications launched her new website at www.sylviataylor.ca. Along with coaching, writing and editing for local and international clients, she will work with the Portland, Oregon Willamette Writers Conference for the fifth year this August. She is also working with several Lower Mainland organizations in LifeStory and personal memoir programs, including the interviewing and documenting of fragile seniors’ life-bios for a publication scheduled for launch this fall. Susan McCaslin was awarded a Canada Council grant for 2007-2008 to work on a volume of poetry, The Demeter Poems, on eating disorders, perfectionism and addictions and their effect on teens and their families. A volume of poetry, Lifting the Stone, has been accepted by Seraphim Editions and other recent work has appeared in The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Monkscript, Prism International, Hammered Out, and Room of One’s Own. Anthony Dalton delivered a workshop on the business of writing with Bernice Lever in Victoria, and presented a research workshop at the Shuswap Lake Writers Festival in Salmon Arm. His autobiographical book, Alone Against Arctic Seas, will be published by Heritage House in October. Jane Watt was awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing by Iona Campagnolo in Victoria, from the BC Historical Federation for her book, High Water: Living with the Fraser Floods. Kudos to Pam Kent whose short story, “What We Knew About Clive” for The Writers Union and her Lichen submission, “Regarding Clive” (which has to be less than 101 words and written without one particular vowel), have both been short-listed. Former FBCW Secretary, Lois Peterson, presented a Fed workshop, Having Your Say: Writing the Personal Essay, and launched a new workshop, Fundraising (in general) and Grantwriting (in particular), for the Arts Council of Surrey. She will also moderate a summer critique group and writing workshops in collaboration with the Surrey Public Library. Her fourth article for The Writer magazine, “May I Put You on Hold? Strategies for Dealing with Interruptions,” appears in the August issue.
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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
The Islands David Fraser, Nanoose Bay ascentaspirations@shaw.ca
From January to May, Cindy Shantz, David Fraser and Pat Smekal, along with their committee, successfully organized and hosted WordStorm, Nanaimo’s monthly spoken word event at the Bombay Lounge, held downstairs at the Acme Food Co. The next WordStorm (www.wordstorm.ca) will take place on September 27. The 30th Anniversary Celebration of the Federation of BC Writers on April 14 featured readings by David Fraser, Cindy Shantz, Angelika Kolompar, Christel Martin, Kim Goldberg, Margaret Thompson, Betsy Symons, Lyn Hancock, Ursula Vaira, Kay Stewart, Joyce Yardley, Andrea McKenzie, Joan Donaldson-Yarmey, and Yvonne Blomer. Margaret Thompson gave an introductory speech on the Federation’s history. Door prizes were donated by Margaret Thompson, David Fraser, Ursula Vaira of Leaf Press, Roger Touchie of Heritage House and Chapters, Nanaimo. The Acme Food Co. generously donated the Bombay Lounge for our event. Kay Stewart organized a one-day mini conference in celebration of National Crime Writing Week, presented jointly by Crime Writers of Canada and Victoria Public Library. In May, Kenn Joubert launched his novel, Escape To Freedom, the first title in a “Huguenot Trilogy.” In celebration of BC Book and Magazine Week, Chris Smart, author of Decked and Dancing read poetry accompanied by Alan Miceli on classical guitar, and Rachel Wyatt (The Magician’s Beautiful Assistant) read fiction. In April, Yvonne Blomer hosted Poetica Erotica, an event presented by The League of Canadian Poets, with readings by FBCW members Andrea McKenzie, Barbara Pelman, Harold Rhenisch, Elizabeth Rhett Woods, and Susan Stenson, among others. Katherine Gordon was awarded the Roderick HaigBrown Regional Prize for her book, Made to Measure: A History of Land Surveying in British Columbia, at the BC Book Prize Gala held in Victoria on April 28. Joanna Weston has had four poems published in Myth Weavers (Serengeti Press) an anthology edited by Katherine L. Gordon.
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Garth A. Buchholz published an article “IntraBranding: Why your intranet needs its own personality” on Digital Web, a feature article “Open a Web Toolkit for your business for under $100/month” in Douglas Magazine, and a feature article “Music artists reach for long tail in 3D virtual community” in The Globe and Mail. Kim Goldberg’s short story, “The Timely Demise of Entropy,” appeared in the Spring 2007 issue of The Dalhousie Review along with her poem “Tidal Pull.” Her poetry has also appeared in recent issues of PRISM International, Nimrod International Journal, Rampike and Chimera Magazine. In March, she gave a poetry presentation at Nanaimo District Secondary School sponsored by the Federation’s Off The Page program. Yvonne Blomer taught three one-day poetry courses: The Language of Poetry, Going Deeper – Making Literature from Life, and Writing: Getting Started Whatever the Form in June and July. Kathy Page has accepted a position on the fiction/narrative prose faculty for 2007 of the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre. Christine Lowther will co-edit, with Anita Sinner, a nonfiction, nature-celebrating anthology tentatively titled In Love With Place: Finding Home at Clayoquot and the West Coast (Ronsdale, 2008). The book will include pieces by First Nations and new writers alongside well known authors Susan Musgrave, Alexandra Morton, Brian Brett, Betty Krawczyk, Andrew Struthers, David Pitt-Brooke and FBCW members Joanna Streetly and Adrienne Mason. Joanna Streetly’s essay, “The Dark Water,” has been accepted to appear in the Anthology, Between Interruptions, 30 women tell the truth about motherhood, edited by Cori Howard (Key Porter, Sept 2007). Joanna recently illustrated Frank Harper’s book, Journeys (Cherub Books, 2006). Elizabeth Rhett Woods’ fifth book of poetry, 1970, has been accepted for publication by Ekstasis Editions and will be launched in the fall of 2007. David Fraser published his second collection of poetry, Running Down the Wind, (Ascent Aspirations Publishing, 2007). Mostly Poets, a writers group which includes FBCW members Vera Jensen and Elizabeth Bartel, launched A Murder of Crones, an anthology, with many readings on the island. Reader’s Digest, Australian Edition, August 2007 accepted for publication “Mouse The Rat’s Extra-Vehicular Activity” —a true animal tale, written by Gabriola Island’s SheLa Morrison and Christopher Hamilton, about an ingenious pet rat who designed a fabulous flying car. SheLa was also interviewed in Best Friends Animal Society Magazine, May/ June 2007, on her stories about her pet rats that have
WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
COMMUNITY
appeared in the popular international fundraising book series of true animal tales, Animals Are Smarter Than Jack. Adrienne Mason launched an early reader, The Drop of Doom, at CWILL’s Spring Book Hatching event in Vancouver on June 9. KNOW, the magazine Adrienne edits, was short-listed for the Best New Magazine category of the Western Magazine awards. Adrienne will teach “Writing Non-fiction for Children’s Magazines” as part of SFU’s Summer Publishing Workshops. Shirley Skidmore had a signing, reading and launch for her latest book- Murder on the Galloping Goose at the Reading Room Cafe, Saturday, May 26. Krista Vejvan’s poetry appears in Dancing on a Cream Puff, an anthology of poetry published by Skrivan Publishing and the Comox Valley Community Arts Council. And kudos to new FBCW Vice President Joy Huebert whose short story, “Windows,” garnered her second place in a contest run by the Vancouver West End Writer’s Group.
Lower Mainland Compiled in-house
On April 1, Michele Adams launched the Red Letter Reading Series at the Café Montmartre with readings by FBCW members Pauline Holdstock, Sandy Shreve and Ryszard Dubanski. Executive director Fernanda Viveiros hosted a BC Book & Magazine Week event at Café Montmartre on April 25 with readers Carl Leggo, Andrea MacPherson and Rachel Lebowitz. Irene Livingston won first prize in the West End Writers Contest for one-page-prose. Her second Finklehopper title, Finklehopper Frog Cheers, was nominated for the Chocolate Lily Award and a postcard story, “Like Ants on a Kicked-Down Anthill,” will be published in an upcoming issue of Geist. Financial writer Doug Welbanks saw his article, “Show Me the Money,” published in the spring edition of Transitions Magazine (Vanier Institute of the Family’s quarterly journal). Gordon Mumford had an article and several photographs accepted by the Old Africa magazine for their June-July 2007 issue. Paul Jones is pleased to see his recent book, Shaheen: A Falconer’s Journal from Turkey, released in hardcover by Hancock House. Ted Bird (aka Edward Michel-Bird) is pleased to report the publication of two books, A Stolen Identity and Shadows of the Seine: Paris 1952, both printed by BookSurge.
WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007
A.S. Penne has signed a contract with Turnstone Press for her first collection of short fiction. Reckoning will be published in 2008. Jan Redford had two personal essays published in newspapers: “Who’s The Real Christian?” in The National Post in March, and “I Married a Stuntman,” in The Globe and Mail. She also presented her first public reading in March, at the Blenz downtown. Jancis Andrews’ postcard story “Declaration” was a finalist in The Writers’ Union of Canada postcard story competition. Susan McNicoll’s postcard story was also short-listed as was Andrew Boden’s submission, “Dry Fire.” Andrew has a story coming out in the June issue of The Writers Post Journal. Fed members from all over the province participated in the Spring Book Hatching at the Vancouver Public Library on Saturday, June 9. Jacqueline Pearce, Louise Phillips, Lee Edward Fodi, Kristin Butcher, Heather Kellerhals-Stewart, Adrienne Mason and Vivien Bowers presented new books for children and adults. The event was hosted by CWIBC and Pandora’s Collective. Bonnie Nish and Sita Carboni of Pandora’s Collective are preparing for their annual Summer Dreams Literary Arts Festival which will be held on July 21 in Stanley Park this year. Carl Leggo (Come-by-Chance, Breakwater Books) participated in the Yukon Writers’ Festival in Whitehorse, held May 2 to 5. Pam Galloway’s poem “Laden” has been accepted for publication in the next issue of the UK magazine Orbis. She attended the AGM of the Canadian League of Poets and read from her new book, Parallel Lines. She is pleased to have received a second invitation to submit a poem to the website of the Parliamentary Poet Laureate, John Steffler. Sandy Shreve read from her book, Suddenly So Much, at the City Poets series at the VPL downtown. Sandy, Kate Braid and Barbara Nickel presented a reading on April 26 sponsored by Mission Arts Council and by the University College of the Fraser Valley. Kate also read with Ivan Coyote at the North Shore Writers Festival on April 27 and participated on a panel on form (poetry) at the League of Canadian Poets’ AGM in Edmonton. As the Woodward Chair in Women’s Studies at SFU this year, Kate sponsored a conference for women in trades on April 20 and 21. One of the workshops was on “The Culture of Construction” and, led by Gabriola welder and performance poet, Hilary Peach, the women in that group—mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, tradeswomen all—each wrote a poem about their work. The collection of poetry will be published in chapbook form.
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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
New Federation president Peak newspaper, on the Jan Drabek toured the Monday’s Poem web site Central region, meeting (Leaf Press), in the Haiku FBCW members and Canada 30th Annual reading from his latest book, Members Anthology, and The His Doubtful Excellency: A Antigonish Review 149 Canadian Novelist’s Adven(Spring 2007), a special tures as President Havel’s issue dedicated to the Ambassador in Prague memory of George (Ekstasis Editions, 2006). Sanderson. On June 7 at the North On April 22, Joanne Vancouver City Hall council Arnott launched her new chambers, Trevor Carolan collection of poetry, Mother moderated and read at a Time: Poems New and Central regional representative Kay McCracken and Kamloops Fed member Sylvia Olson meet new board special Civic Centennial Selected (Ronsdale), at a president Jan Drabek at his reading in Kamloops on June 6. evening celebrating North reading with authors Vancouver writers and Marilyn Dumont, Russell writing. Also reading were Wallace and Richard Van John Moore, Warren Sommer, Russell Thornton, Mary Camp. In May, Joanne participated in—and helped orgaNovik, Blanche Howard and Anosh Irani. nize—Mother’s Journey, a week-long master class and Margaret Anne Hume read from her recent biography, writing retreat featuring established and emerging aboriginal Just Mary: The Life of Mary Evelyn Grannan, at libraries in artists. Moncton, Saint John, Victoria, and Winnipeg in April and Kudos to Richmond author Giles Slade whose book, May, and at the McNally Robinson Bookstore at Grant Park Made To Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America in Winnipeg. Agatha Moir interviewed Margaret about the (Harvard University Press, 2006), won the Independent book on The Weekend Morning Show on CBC Radio One, Publishers Gold Medal for best environmental book of Winnipeg, on May 5, and the Moncton Times and Transcript 2007. The paperback edition will be released in October. reviewed the book on April 14. Slade now writes for HuffingtonPost.com. Bernice Lever’s eighth book of poetry, Never a Straight Alan Twigg presented a noon hour talk in Vernon on Line, will be published this fall by Black Moss Press. In June, June 1 and a workshop in Nakusp on June 2, before flying Bernice read at the LitLive series in Hamilton, ON, and at off to Spain to finish his soccer book for M&S. He’s also the Ottawa Public Library. She delivered a memoir presenta- busy organizing the Reckoning 07 conference taking place in tion at the 40th anniversary of Richvale Writers, which she Vancouver on September 14-15 at which bill bissett will founded, and will read at the Canadian Authors Association’s receive the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award conference opener in Ottawa in July. (formerly the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award). RegisOn May 25, Fiona Lam, along with several other tration for the conference will be opened to Fed members in authors, participated in a reading celebrating favourite August (see ad on inside front cover). twentieth-century dead poets writing in English. She also On May 30, on CBC Radio’s Outfront series, new FBCW presented in-depth discussions on writing and publishing member Esmeralda Cabral aired her piece, “To My Parents, to several classrooms at University Hill on May 28 and 29 With Love”, a story about grief, loss and growing up. as part of the Fed’s Off The Page writers in school Diego Bastianutti launched his bi-lingual volume of program. poetry, For a Fistful of Soil/ Per un pugno di terra (Zeisciu Allan Brown took part in a public reading hosted by the Centro Studi, Italy), with readings at bookstores around the Malaspina Writers Association on April 19, and another Lower Mainland. He participated in the US Consulate’s organized by Ekstasis Editions in Victoria on April 29. He video conference on poetry linking writers from New York, also gave a three-part solo reading at the inaugural Jazz Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver and four of his poems Vespers ceremony at St David and St Paul Anglican church were published in the Voices Israel Anthology 2007. On June in Powell River Townsite on June 9. He has had three 16, Diego was awarded second prize for his short story, reviews published in Jones Av. XII/2 (Spring 2007), and “Appeso a un fico,” at the Italian Week Literary Awards poems in Island Catholic News (Victoria), the Powell River sponsored by the Italian Embassy in Ottawa. 32
WORDWORKS–SUMMER 2007