Words Alive » Blog Archive » Words Alive 2010
On October 15 and 16, the Brandon Book Festival Association presents the fourth annual Words Alive, Downtown Brandon’s Premiere Book Festival. Taking place at the Music Studio (940 Rosser Avenue), both evening programs begin at 7:00 p.m.
This year’s opening evening presents Craig Russell (”Black Bottle Man”), Michelle Berry (”This Book Will Not Save Your Life”), and Thomas Trofimuk (”Waiting for Columbus”).
On Saturday evening, Pat Johanneson (”Tesseracts 14?: ‘Heat Death’), Kathryn Borel Jr. (”Corked”) and Joseph Boyden (”Extraordinary Canadians: Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont”) will be in the spotlight.
At 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 16, novelist Anita Daher will give a workshop entitled “Writing for Young Adults”, while the afternoon session, beginning at 2:00 p.m. will feature filmmaker Danishka Esterhazy, who will delve into the art of screenwriting.
Admission to readings and workshops is free and the public is welcome to attend.
Craig Russell (Brandon, Manitoba)
Craig Russell grew up six miles north of Carman, Manitoba. A lawyer who now lives in Brandon, he has contributed to the local theatre scene as an actor and director. His most recent stage work was directing the Mecca Productions’ presentation of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”, in June 2010.
His first foray in young adult fiction has been successful. “Black Bottle Man” was picked up by Great Plains Publications, one of four publishers that Russell approached with his manuscript. “He’s quite an amazing talent,” said Great Plains Publications editor Anita Daher. “He’s got such a sense of story. I’m very excited about his book coming out.”
Thanks to Daher’s support, the novel underwent very few changes and was published within months, rather than years as is usually the norm. “It was such a clean manuscript. It only needed a few months of going back and forth, and it was ready for publication. What was fast was the decision-making. From the very first read, it absolutely blew me away,” she said. “It was one of those stories that I wanted to read from beginning right through to the end.”
She describes “Black Bottle Man” as very original with a distinctive and strong main character, great pacing, balance and very clean language.
Michelle Berry (Peterborough, Ontario)
Acclaimed Peterborough author Michelle Berry is the winner of Enfield & Wizenty’s inaugural Colophon prize for fiction for her novel “This Book Will Not Save Your Life”. Michelle Berry describes her novel as being about “morbid obesity, arson, attempted murder, magicians and Dr. Benjamin Spock.”
Though she doubts Dr. Spock would approve her story, Berry identified a rampant problem in many modern families — that of relying too much on how-to books for help in raising children. “In the old days they would have asked their mothers or grandmothers for advice,” she said. “The novel is not about Dr. Spock. It’s about a dysfunctional family.”
Berry has been widely published in many Canadian literary magazines, national newspapers, and anthologies. Two of her three novels have been published in the United Kingdom and Canada, and she has published two previous collections of short fiction. Born in California and raised in Victoria, B.C., she lives in Peterborough, Ontario with her family.
Thomas Trofimuk (Edmonton, Alberta)
Thomas Trofimuk is an Edmonton-born writer who has penned poetry, short-fiction, and novels. His first novel, “The 52nd Poem”, was published by Great Plains Publications in the spring of 2002. The book went on to win a few awards including the 2003 Alberta Novel of the Year and the City of Edmonton Book Prize.
A second novel, “Doubting Yourself to the Bone”, was published in the fall of 2006 by Cormorant Books and has received high praise from critics, including being named as one of the top 100 must read books of 2006 by the Globe & Mail.
In 2009, Trofimuk’s third novel, “Waiting for Columbus”, was released onto the international stage, with a Canadian (McClelland & Stewart) and US (Knopf-Doubleday) releases. This year, the book was released in the UK (Picador), Serbia and Brazil. The book was also released as an “audio book” in the US through Blackstone Audiobooks.
Trofimuk is a founding father of Edmonton’s Raving Poets movement and he’s an occasional reviewer for the Edmonton Journal’s book page. His poems and short stories have been published in literary magazines and journals across Canada, and broadcast on CBC radio.
Pat Johanneson (Brandon, Manitoba)
Patrick Johanneson grew up in small-town Canada, and now lives in small-city Canada (a.k.a. Brandon, Manitoba.) A self-proclaimed computer monkey, he is a black belt in judo, an instructor in that art, and is the president of the Brandon Judokan judo club.
An avid writer of mostly short, sci-fi stories, he has been published online in InterText, and on paper in OnSpec and, now, his work “Heat Death, or, Answering the Ouroboros Question” was accepted for publication in Tesseracts 14. This series of anthologies features strange Canadian fiction, innovative short stories and poetry by 23 of Canada’s finest speculative fiction writers.
Currently Johanneson is working on a handful of projects: One novel about a young man’s coming of age on a backwater colony, another about a time-travel war spanning millions of years, and a third about sailors and the undead — though, it must be said, there are no zombies and few pirates in it. He can be found on the web at patrickjohanneson.com/
Kathryn Borel Jr. (Toronto, Ontario /Los Angeles, CA)
A former founding producer of “Q”, CBC Radio One’s arts and culture show, Kathryn Borel Jr. was nominated for a Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour earlier this year. She was one of the youngest writers to receive this literary nod. Since her break from the CBC, she has driven to Los Angeles, where she is now based.
After receiving her Bachelor of Journalism from King’s College, she moved to Toronto in 2002. In her decade-long journalism career, Kathryn Borel has written and broadcast for many local and national top-rated CBC programs, including Metro Morning, GO! and As It Happens. Her print journalism work includes a past column for The National Post called “Indignities”, a humorous food column called “Column Dine” for Eye Weekly magazine.
Her first book, “Corked: A Memoir” is a vehicle for her unique voice as she bares her feelings, her memories, her unhappiness and her fleeting moments of joy. It recalls two darkly humorous weeks in a tumultuous father-daughter relationship, replete with the author’s mutually escalating insecurities: Insecurity about paternal love and the inevitability of death, lover love, wine love, wine speak and insecurity about insecurity.
Joseph Boyden (Toronto, Ontario / New Orleans, LA)
If life experience is the best tool for a writer, Joseph Boyden’s success is not a surprise. To fund his yen for travelling, the Toronto-born writer has been a gravedigger and groundskeeper at a cemetery, tutor, dishwasher, waiter, and bartender. The Greyhound bus or his motorcycle took him to destinations all over North America, including South Carolina and Louisiana, the latter which is now his home.
The third youngest in a family of 11 children, he was only eight years old when his father died. He had grown up hearing stories of the Second World War, in which he father had served as a medical officer, and tales of the wilds of Northern Ontario, in which his uncle lived. After obtaining a Master of Fine Arts in writing from the University of New Orleans, he became a professor of Aboriginal programs on James Bay. There he was introduced to the Mushkegowuk Cree, northern cousins of the Ojibwe.
“Stationed in Moosonee, I worked for two years up and down the reserves of the west coast of the bay — Moose Factory, Fort Albany, Kashechewan, and Attawapiskat — teaching communications, my wanderlust satisfied by moose and caribou hunts and snowmobile treks into the frozen wilderness of Hudson Bay,” he wrote on his website. “Over the last ten years this gateway to the last great wilderness has become my muse and obsession, refusing to loosen its grip on me even now that I am back in New Orleans teaching in the same MFA program that birthed me.”
His first novel “Three Day Road” garnered several awards, including Winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Winner of the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year, Silver Medal Winner of the 2005 McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year, Winner of the 2007–2008 London Reads Competition, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. “Through Black Spruce”, his second novel won the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The latest work penned by Boyden is “Extraordinary Canadians: Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont, published by PenguinCanada.
Joseph Boyden’s articles can be read in Macleans, Zoomer, The Walrus and other publications.
Anita Daher (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Anita Daher draws writing inspiration from the many places she’s been fortunate to spend time, including Summerside, PEI; Yellowknife, NT; Churchill, MB; Baker Lake, NU and Sault Ste. Marie, ON. Since 1995 she has been entrenched in the book publishing industry writing books, articles and reviews, and leading workshops and presentations. She has worked on occasion as marketing director, editor, and radio broadcaster, and is currently associate teen book editor at Great Plains Publications. When she’s not working with books she enjoys playing her guitar, and riding her horse. Anita divides her time between Winnipeg, MB, and a small Francophone community in Manitoba’s cottage country.
Danishka Esterhazy (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Canadian filmmaker based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Esterhazy began her film studies at the Winnipeg Film Group – the quirky cooperative which also produced filmmakers Guy Maddin and John Paizs. Esterhazy is a graduate of the Director’s Lab at the Canadian Film Centre – the renowned film school founded by Norman Jewison. In 2004, Esterhazy won the National Screen Institute’s Drama Prize for her short film “The Snow Queen”. In 2006, she won the National Screen Institute’s Features First prize for her feature script “Level 16?. Most recently, Danishka won the 2010 Jury Prize for Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto Female Eye Film Festival.
