THIN AIR presents...HOT AIR

THIN AIR 2009

2009-09-22T11:09:00.003-05:00

Hey all,

We're blogging again this year, over at thinair2009.blogspot.com.

Come visit!

Hands on: Jane Munro

2008-10-04T00:45:00.004-05:00

Jane Munro with the ring she won as part of the prize for Prairie Fire's Bliss Carman Poetry Prize.

(Yah, I know it's blurry. You try taking a good pic of someone's hand in uncertain light with a cellphone!)

Jane Munro with a motley assemblage of PF board/staff (Perry changed hats just prior to the taking of this photo...he's the chair of PF's board when not GM-ing for THIN AIR).

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), was launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

what a MAINSTAGE looks like

2008-10-04T00:29:00.011-05:00

The point of this blog is to give people a sense of THIN AIR, and, sometimes, a behind-the-scenes glimpse that even festival attendees with their cash on the barrelhead don't get to see...

I think this video does a bit of both. But then, I'm biased.

Just for the record, this is the very end of the Saturday night Mainstage, namely the Poetry Bash, namely the last Mainstage of 2008.

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), was launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

Video: JonArno Lawson

2008-10-03T23:19:00.007-05:00

Here's the first of the last of HOT AIR material I collected over the course of the festival.

I know, I know, it's a bit late. But I had to launch a book this week!

As you can tell from the tittering, people were quite delighted with Lawson, who seemed surprised, muttering about how "no one ever had him read."

He proceeded to give a rapid-fire career retrospective of his five books of poetry for children and adults.

Good stuff, even a week or so later.

More to come, dear HOT AIR devotees...

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), was launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

Bloat

2008-09-30T23:05:00.002-05:00

Hey all,

As you may have noticed, THIN AIR is over.

That doesn't mean that HOT AIR is also over-and-done. Unlike festival staff, who are even now re-acquainting themselves with beds all over the city, we here at HOT AIR still got a couple of videos, a end-of-fest slideshow, and some summarizing comments yet to make...

The only thing is that the rest of our lives have taken over, now that we no longer have the excuse of the ACTUAL festival and ACTUAL events.

I hope to post my gak by end of week. But, then, I said that last year.

Still, there's enough here to bloat even the most highly-interested voyeur or a herd of the most avid literati.

So, digest a bit, leave comments, and come back regularly to see what bright, shiny new content appears.

Thanks, all!

And So, We Come to the End

2008-09-29T19:43:00.002-05:00

Does anyone else get an odd feeling that something’s not quite right when they leave a movie theatre when it’s still light outside? Perhaps it’s because while you’re in the theatre you inhabited a different world for a while and when you get back outside in the daylight you see that it’s the same old place you left a couple of hours ago. If that’s the case then no wonder I was so disoriented upon leaving Moving Stories Films; I had just visited 13 different worlds in one afternoon.

Perhaps “different worlds” isn’t quite the right way to describe the diversity of the films. They were more like a variety of different dishes, all with different ingredients, methods of preparation and presentation. Yes, dishes is a more appropriate term. These little short films were just perfect wee morsels of delicious story. Watching the films sort of felt like being at a buffet where you nibble away at this and that and then realize later that you’ve actually had quite a lot to eat. Unlike a buffet though, where if you fill up on too many diverse substances, your stomach may rebel, the components of this buffet complemented each other very nicely. “No Bikini,” “The Perfection of the Moment,” and “Nagasaki Circus” were particularly memorable and tasty.

And this was the perfect end to a perfect festival. Such amazing and inspiring talent came through our fair city this week, and I learned so much, that I have absolutely no excuses to not write and I can’t wait find out who’s coming next year.

Thanks for reading!

* * *

Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.

The missing post

2008-09-29T19:40:00.004-05:00

Jay,

Please don’t read this. Send it directly to Ariel after your Saturday post appears. It would be a big help if you could. Thanks.

Your Friend, Jay

(Ed. Note : followed by three blank pages)

Well guys, it looks like the end is near. I just spent the last hour in the very same room I saw George Elliot Clarke and all I feel is warm fuzzies. No resentment, no hatred. Just a warm fuzzy feeling towards the young writers of Juice magazine getting their starts in the very same place I got mine. The drugs are taking over.

From this point forward please don’t believe anything I write. Especially Saturday.
Saturday is the Poetry Bash. I have two weaknesses in this world; poetry and room temperature cheese. The Poetry Bash will have both. The drugs will take over between a clever line and the gouda. I’m sorry I couldn’t be stronger. You need to be.

While listening to those young writers I saw the most tragic part of the festival’s tyranny. It’s the kids. You have to keep fighting for the children. Today I had to watch these poor kids believe the festivals biggest lie; that being a writer is a good thing. That this kind of life is something to strive for, but it isn’t.

The pay sucks and the hours are long. You never get to sleep. You have to try and say something that hasn’t been said before, better. Have you ever tried that? Do you know how many things have been said perfectly by this point in our history? A hell of a lot. The whole point of your job as a writer is to do the near impossible. If you don’t, you have to work in a warehouse. And don’t think warehouses are cool just because they have forklifts. They’re usually cold and crass. You wouldn’t like it if you were heading there having previously wanted to be a poet. Trust me. And you know what the worst part is, the worst part is how everybody thinks you’re lazy. I’m thinking for crying out loud. Do you think things think themselves into existence? Ha!! Overall, being a writer is pretty brutal life’s work (however, if you marry someone with a good job you can take care of the kids and write for quite a while before anyone gets really pissed off).

Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can barely think straight. I think this is the end.

As my last act of defiance I’m going to hide this from myself. I want this post to appear after the Saturday night column. This way the last you hear from me will not be the festival’s propaganda, but instead, a message of solidarity and resilience against this Evil Empire. Stay fast my friends and let your unity buoy you. Together you can defeat them. And always remember, that somewhere, behind my glazed eyes, I applaud you.

J

* * *

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.

Some not-so-incriminating photos

2008-09-28T23:29:00.007-05:00

Stefan Aarino and Margaret Eve Mackinnon canoodling. Margaret Eve is another of my creative writing classmates, she is also the daughter of Margaret Shaw-Mackinnon. Stefan used to work at UMFM; he the one who suggested I apply for a radio show.

A Sears glamour shot of Tricia.

Jenny Yee and Kristel Jax, catching up. Thin Air: reuniting old friends. Jenny writes short fiction, Kristel writes online zines.

"Hey Adam Koreker, how's the novella you're writing for your M.A. thesis going?"
"Good!"

Stefan hoarding the gouda. The first time I met Stefan, he was talking about the "post-modern" paper he handed in for his Chaucer class. It was several blank pages, followed by a bibliography.

Sitting in the splash zone during JonArno.

The Thin Air crew: small, but powerful.

The infamous Loud Chair.

Adris Taskans and blogger-in-chief, Ariel.

Oh, cheese table. I think I'm going to miss you most of all.

Tricia got me back for posting those unflattering pictures of her, by taking this horrendous one of me and Mr. Mierau. No, he hasn't read my post yet.

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

Walking to the Poetry Bash or Confessions of a Kid from St. James

2008-09-28T23:24:00.002-05:00

My relationship with poetry is a reluctant one, like there is something echoing through me saying, don't waste your time on this. I don't know why this is, or where it comes from. But it's there and I struggle with it.

Growing up, poetry was not a part of my life. Hockey, basketball and video games, snowboarding, drinking and girls: this was high school and a good chunk of university. It's not that I don't think poetry isn't compatible with these things, it just wasn't in the mix. It wasn't even a thought.

Last night, on my way to the Forks for the last night of the Writers' Festival, walking down McMillan and Wellington, through the Village, over the Osborne Bridge and then East on the River Walk, I decided that tonight, at the Mainstage Poetry Bash, I would try to figure out what poetry has come to mean to me.

As far as what poetry is, I'm not sure. Last night, Charlene Diehl put it well when she said there really isn't much point in trying to define what poetry is. Whether you think it's just playing around with the way words bounce off each other, or it's just writing with forms, like sonnets and villanelles, or if it's about images and metaphors, chances are that sooner or later you'll come across a writer that shatters your expectations and understandings of what a poem is or should be. Besides, I find myself more interested in how poems come about and why.

Roo Borson, as I wrote in a post below, mentioned that she collects images and thoughts and conversions wherever and whenever she can, scribbling them on whatever scrap of paper she can find, keeping them for later. I thought I might try this as I walked to the Forks, to see what came of it and to see if it helped me to understand why I have come to like poetry. Here are some things that I wrote:

• The railing that runs the length of the Osborne Street bridge is a little wider than my hand, fingers spread. Last week I watched a man walk this railing like it was a tightrope. There was a slight wind and he would wobble when it blew, throwing his arms out for balance. Cars slowed as they passed. I worried that he would fall, knowing I'd be helpless to save him.

• An old man shuffles his walker forward, leans on it, takes a couple steps, and then starts again from the beginning. A young man and a young woman walk at his side, checking their strides so as to keep the old man's pace, careful not to walk ahead. We are kind in small and important ways.

• Some fallen leaves are scratching and tumbling along the sidewalk. I'm still trying to figure out what Rilke meant when he wrote of Autumn that: Whoever has no house now, will never have one./ Whoever is alone will stay alone,/ will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,/ and wander along the boulevards, up and down,/ restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

• There are some people standing along the banks of the Assiniboine River, fishing. There is something about this that immediately disgusts me. But I don't know why it is that they're standing there, what it is that brought them there, and I shouldn't assume.

• Some graffiti on a wall reads: The wind dies.

• Using the kids urinal, which is lower to the floor, is oddly emasculating.

These thoughts are pretty random, yet so are the things that can happen to you and occur to you through the course of a day, let alone a thirty minute walk. The above is not supposed to be some sort of poem as a list, but I am starting to think that what I like about poetry is that it helps me make sense of this randomness.

Roo Borson, to refer to her again, writes about a friend whose cabin had recently burnt down. When the friend went to see what was left of the cabin, Roo went with her. She writes that, while there, looking through the charred remains, a neighbour approached them:

"'We'll always have our memories," said a kindly widowed neighbour, 'nothing can take those away.' But I wondered. There is the random, roving willfulness that plays through the senses - and a willful randomness which tampers, in our very cells, with what we hold beloved." (Personal History, page 61)

I still don't know what poetry means to me. In a way, I hope I never come to a firm answer. Yet, I think I will let the idea of "random, roving willfulness" guide how I approach poetry for the next while: willfully roving and logging all this randomness.

Until, of course, something comes along and changes everything.

* * *

Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.

Thanks + also poetry

2008-09-28T23:13:00.005-05:00

I was supposed to publish a piece on the Juice launch, but it seems I can’t find it. It was the big finish. Funny thing is...I can’t really remember what it was about. I hope that doesn’t mean it will fall flat.

It had something to do with how the room the launch was in was the same room I saw George Elliot Clarke and that the festival was suckering more kids into this life of misery. Giving them false hope or whatever. But I don’t really remember so we’ll both have to wait until I find it to see how it all ends. It shouldn’t be hard to find. I think I might have saved it in my wife’s files. She was using the computer before me and I forgot to check if she changed the “save to” destination when I saved Friday’s blog. I should find it tonight and get it up by Monday.

Anyway, this week has been great. I actually got to go to the Winnipeg International Writer’s Festival for free because that was my payment for having to write for their official blog. How cool is that. This has honestly been one of the best experiences of my life. It was like vocational school for writers. I had my theory in the reading and book chats, and the practice in writing for the blog. What more could a guy who just quit his job to give being a writer one more chance ask for. I got a crash course in what I need to do. It’s been great.

I’ll get on to telling you about Saturday’s Poetry Bash in a minute, but first I want to say some thank yous.

The first one is to my family. Thank you for understanding Dad had to work. You boys were awesome. I love you.

Thank you Annette, for letting me try this craziness one more time. And for not being mad about me missing this Saturday night. I love you.

I’d like to thank Chandra for telling Ariel about me. You’ve always helped me, right from the beginning. From helping me get published the first time, to taking me to readings I needed to hear, you’ve kept me connected when I couldn’t write. Thanks.

I’d also really like to thank Ariel for letting me do this and always giving me enough rope to hang myself. It’s nice having a boss who will let you try new things and not get mad at you for being silly (though I’m pretty sure she’s the kind of lady who would have thrown me under the bus if it had become necessary). But really, thanks Ariel. And good luck with your launch on Wednesday at Aqua Books. Everybody go. It’s Ariel and Kerry Ryan. Yea, Manitoba writers.

I’d also like to thank everybody I made fun of at the festival. Everyone was a great sport and didn’t give me a hard time about anything I wrote. They all have great senses of humor. You guys are great.

I’d also like to give a big shout out to the rest of the blogging team. I loved reading all of your posts. It was awesome to have such a talented group of writers to share this stage with. And let me tell you, I looked into what the bloggers from last year went on to do and think the trend of “great things to come” will continue with this group.

Last, but certainly not least, I’d like to thank Charlene Diehl. She is a great lady. It was either the first or second time I met her, but she said to me that I should give it to her “with both barrels”. Charlene, I did my best. I think this city is lucky to have someone like Charlene running this festival. She seems to be everywhere. It’s amazing this woman gets through the week constantly moving at the speed of light. Charlene, thank you for all you do for this festival.

Oh wait, I almost forgot Perry. Perry is also the guy you see everywhere, but with him you never really get to see what he does. He’s the guy behind the scenes. He’s the guy who makes the festival go. And on top of everything else he does, he’s always there to sell you a raffle ticket if you are not a contracted employee of the writer’s festival. Thanks Perry.

Well that does it for the thank yous, on to the Poetry Bash.

Since I am poet by trade, the Poetry Bash is always my favorite event. Every year I have gone something amazing happens. Every year I am reminded of what poetry can do. This year was no different.

As soon as I walked in I headed straight for the McNally table. I knew my friend Ryan was working and I was excited he was there. I’ve known Ryan since I was a kid. He’s one of my best friends even though he doesn’t really like poetry. He reads a lot and is really smart, but he’s just never connected with poetry. Who can blame him, sometimes poetry is odd. I was just glad he was there; things happen here.

When I got to the table I saw that my friend Erin was also helping out. She works at McNally too. Actually, if it hadn’t been for Erin, I probably wouldn’t be doing this. I don’t remember what she said exactly, but a few months ago Erin reminded me why I write and why it is still important. She’s also a terrific poet herself. Having both Erin and Ryan here led me to believe that tonight was going to be special.

The reading opened, as always, with Charlene. She was wearing a flashy red top...that looked great. Her intro was brief and before long the poets were on.

Now for me, poetry has always been a hit or miss thing. Some poets blow my mind. Some poets don’t. That’s just the way it is. It doesn’t mean other poets aren’t good, it just means I couldn’t find a thread to grab onto. Poetry is like that.

On this night, I found two threads.

The first to lasso me was Douglas Burnet Smith. His book Sister Prometheus is awesome. Smith’s delicate descriptions of a soldier’s war wounds reminded me of the power of poetry. The language was as sticky as the soldier’s wounds. I could see, hear and smell every detail of Currie’s visit with the dying man. It was incredible.

The second strand came from JonArno Lawson. I can’t really explain to you how amazing this guy is. The only way I can describe it is to say this; what he does is the best use of the English language in a long time. That’s it. That’s all I can say. Read his books and you’ll know what I mean.

So that was it. I had once again found some amazing poets to read thanks to the Poetry Bash. Overall it was a great night, but not really as life altering as I had hoped. But I figured given the radical changes in my writing life in the last few months, maybe it was time for a little peaceful joy instead.

With the set over, I went to see what Erin and Ryan thought of things. As I got behind the table something amazing did happen. I leaned down and asked,

“What’d ya think”?

“I think I’m starting to get it.”

“Jay, he’s coming over to our side, yea.”

“I’m buying this one and this one.”

And with that Ryan pointed to one book by Douglas Burnet Smith and one by JonArno Lawson.

I was right; things do happen here.

I guess that’s why I keep coming back.

Anyway, that’s it. I hope you all had a good time, I know I did. I promise I’ll get that Friday Juice piece over to Ariel as soon as I find it. In the meantime, why don’t you guys throw up some comments on the blog? We’ve been giving our thoughts on the festival all week, let’s hear yours. I think we only have like three comments.

Come on, you can do better than that.

Take care all.

J

* * *

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.

Flicker-ing: locusts

2008-09-28T16:51:00.001-05:00

Flicker-ing: locusts, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Thin air volunteers at the volunteer party at Aqua.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The last ABC

2008-09-28T08:43:00.007-05:00

To commemorate the last Afternoon Book Chat.

I guess everyone was at The Gap?

JonArno Lawson and Charlene do a sound check.

Charlene introduces JonArno and Douglas Burnet Smith. Douglas asked me if I was the one he saw sneaking out of the Hospitality Suite this morning.

People have trickled in.

"Bueller? Bueller?"

Douglas talks about completing a book: "After you've given birth, you're just changing diapers."

I'm no photographer.

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

Oh dear...

2008-09-28T08:23:00.002-05:00

...I got to the Afternoon Book Chat at McNally Polo Park a little late this afternoon. Curses, Winnipeg Transit! Is there anything more wretched than a bus into, or out of, downtown on a Saturday afternoon? Well, yes I suppose there is, but I’m grumpy today and I want to indulge myself for a moment.

My surliness was not helped by the fact that I missed JohnArno Lawson reading from A Voweller’s Bestiary, full of poems I really wanted to hear. All that word play and vowel juggling is right up my alley.

Crankiness was lifted when I got to hear Douglas Burnet Smith read a couple of selections from Sister Prometheus, Discovering Marie Curie. The poem about the death of Pierre Curie kind of sucked the breath right out of us all in attendance; it was so intense and heartbreaking.

I wish I’d been able to see all the Afternoon Book Chats, because if they were all as interesting as Saturday’s I would have enough inspiration and motivation to keep my creative fires stoked well into the winter. As it is now, it looks like I’ll be hacking up my furniture by February, for firewood and a fresh idea.

But I did get something of an inspiration boost by seeing these two fine poets, who couldn’t be more different in their approaches to their latest projects. Obviously, the material, word play for children and the inner life of Marie Curie, dictates a different approach for each, but the process of poetry for these two authors was fascinatingly dissimilar. JohnArno Lawson talked of keeping lists of vocabulary and dictionary definitions and “workshopping” his work with his children, while Douglas Burnet Smith explained that he did a lot of research in Paris and Warsaw and that generally he writes by himself, and tends not to seek or receive comment from fellow writers or editors.

This reinforces the idea, which has been told to me many times, that there is no right way or wrong way to go about the business of poetry. It’s heartening to see such different approaches both resulting in success. Now, though, I can’t attribute any lack of success in my future to: Poetry. Yer doin’ it wrong.

* * *

Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.

Overheard

2008-09-28T08:17:00.000-05:00

A few sound bites from Andre Alexis, author of Asylum.

On stock characters: "What they [the characters in Asylum] represent are people at different moments trying to do the right thing. They are recognizable within what it is to be Canadian, but their responses are unique. Although they come from places you know, they act in unpredictable ways."

On growing up as an immigrant: "It's difficult to write about it directly. When characters have to come to terms with coming from an outside place...that's how I talk about it. To me, that's the essential immigrant experience."

On providing answers: "Literature is not the ideal place for political answers. I would write an essay, where morally, simplicity is necessary. Literature isn't a place for simplicity."

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

Flickr-ing: working title

2008-09-27T22:19:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: working title, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Paul friesen, a member of the Winnipeg slam poetry team, works on his poem from the fainting couch.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

The City blog

2008-09-27T18:42:00.002-05:00

a city is a place you are/ who you are is a place in a city

Is it the way you are shaped by memories of walking across the Maryland bridge? Maybe you walk it everyday on your way to work/maybe all it is to you is that one time you were following the ambulance that was taking your sister to the ER/maybe its where you live/maybe you don’t even know where it is.

No matter what it is to you/ its presence or absence in your life/ it is a part of this city. And in some way, it is a part of you.

Maggie Helwig tells us that cities are about how we live in them/who is included and excluded.

Cities are about our lives/and our lives are about our cities.

And when we write, our setting is something that is living

Our characters live in it and through it.

Andre Alexis, with the soothing hum of his beautiful voice, read to us a story of a man trying desperately to kill himself. But his city just kept interrupting him.

Does your city ever interrupt you?

Larry Krotz told us of being in Nyrobi, Kenya. Of being the strange white man, there to learn from the Sex Workers Committee/saying the wrong half of the 2 part greeting he learned in Swahili. And when he is not in Africa/catching a hint of just the right accent/caught on the wind/sending him right back to Kenya.

Who are you when you are not in your city?

War-torn Sarajevo and a cellist who plays for hope. Steven Galloway asks us to come inside human connection in the midst of a snipers internal conflict with killing. The war inside the war, and the question “Does the music sound the same to him?”

How are you at war with your city? And how much is this about how you are at war with yourself?

Maggie Helwig, with her eccentric charm takes us under a bridge and into the mind of a man living in the liminal, both within himself and within the city.

Where do you exist within your city and where does your city exist within you?

Fantasies of having power over those who condemn you, by the colour of your skin, to a place of unrelenting powerlessness. So that you cannot walk down the street, take a breath, without remembering those hands of your back, that gun up your skirt. Austin Clarke takes us to a place of fear and resistance. A girl in a city that sees herself pushing back. A black girl that sees herself in the black man going through her garbage and begs him to push back too.

All of the faces in your city - who do you see yourself in?

What do you do with that/what does that do to you?

Charles Wilkins brings us to the city of the dead-with hints of who might walk there. Digging a grave that is filling with water, and dreams of a man with one arm who grows it back.

Is not our whole city one big cemetery? Which ghosts are yours as you wander through these familiar streets?

Home.

And the cities where we live.

* * *

Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”

She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).

By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.

Photos from this morning's Words On Screen seminar.

2008-09-27T18:27:00.010-05:00

I needed a permission letter to get in. Note Tavia's stationary.

Perry videotaping the panel discussion.

The Words On Screen speakers: Judith Keenan, Susin Nielsen, and Paul Quarrington.

We got to watch a bit of one of Susin's projects, Alice, I Think. Susin has written episodes of Ready or Not, which I'd say is only to Degrassi High as the greatest Canadian teen sitcom (which Susin has done, too).

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

An Interview with Kerry Ryan

2008-09-27T16:58:00.004-05:00

When I was first asked to blog for the Writers Festival, one of my many demands, my shouting, fist-banging-table demands, was that I be allowed to interview Kerry Ryan. I had never met Kerry (I still haven’t, come to think of it), but I had read her collection of poems, The Sleeping Life, and I really enjoyed it.

I would like to thank Kerry for taking the time to answer the questions below, and encourage everyone to pick up her book.

(Psst, I heard a little rumor that Kerry Ryan and Hot Air's own Ariel Gordon, who has her own book of poems coming out soon, will be heading out on a reading tour some time in the near future. I'd keep my ear to the ground on this one, if I were you.)

* * *

Brad Hartle: Many of your poems seem to exist somewhere between our sleeping and waking lives, and they do so with a very slow, dreamlike feel. In one, called writing to sleep, you write:

i fall asleep inside a poem,
inking dreams onto a page
until you gently slide the pen
out of my hand,
refill the aperture
with your fingers

Eyes like a camera and poems you feel asleep in. Its wonderful, and it seems sum up much of The Sleeping Life. What is it about this half-awake world that made you want to write about it?

Kerry Ryan: First of all, thanks. That’s a nice thing to say. But, really, sleep: it’s such a good idea. I love, and am fascinated by, anything sleep-related – including those delicious overlaps between sleeping and waking. I find it such mysterious territory to think about and write about, but at the same time, if I try to analyze it too much it kind of loses its charm. Like trying to explain your dreams to someone and realizing that they’re not actually funny or terrifying, or even that interesting. Dreams only work when you’re asleep. So, I guess, in the poems, I was just trying to capture the little bit of that that secret, crazy other life and pin it down to look at it in the daylight.

And, in some ways that semi-sleeping, half-dreaming experience is kind of like my writing process, in the sense that I might know where I’m starting out but then have no, or little control, over where I go or what happens. I like that too.

BH: There are also a few travel poems in the book, such as saturday night in new orleans. How do you go about writing travel poems and what are some things that you watch for while traveling?

KR: I really don’t think of a poem being a “travel poem” or having any kind of label like that. But I do write a fair bit about place, now that I think about it, whether it’s my house or my neighbourhood, or wherever I am in the world. I don’t consciously look at things and think “there’s a poem in that” but I find that I remember little details when I travel. And sometimes those details become the basis of a poem that tries to capture a place. My husband and I were in Portugal earlier this year and after a few days all the churches and castles and important landmarks kind of blurred together for me, but I remember that in Serpa – a gorgeous, ancient, picturesque town – there was an old guy wandering around whistling Jingle Bells really loud, in March. So, that’s the kind of thing I’d write about.

BH: The language in your poems is never pyrotechnical, in that it never seems like you are reaching for obscure words (like pyrotechnical). Rather, your poems flow with a very smooth and plain spoken tone. Is this something that you strive for while writing. If so, why?

KR: I’m not sure if I’m striving for it or if it’s my default. Honestly, I think it’s just that I don’t have a huge vocabulary. If I’m not comfortable using a word in a regular conversation, or have to look it up in the dictionary, I won’t use it in a poem – even if it has the sound and meaning I’m looking for. I definitely feel there are some words that are off limits because they’re just not me. I think my aesthetic tends toward simplicity – I love really spare line drawings, or, musically, just a guitar and a voice.

BH: Once you have an idea or a draft of a poem on the page, how do you go about revising and editing?

KR: For me, revising mostly means cutting stuff out, paring a poem down to the essentials. I can tinker with poems indefinitely. I never have much of a plan and I don’t really know what I’m doing (shh! don’t tell anyone) so, I just wing it – trying to figure out why a line or an image doesn’t feel right and playing with it until it does, or – often – cutting it if making it work is too hard.

BH: What's the best advice you have ever received about writing?

KR: Don’t quit your day job.

* * *

Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.

Dear Ruby,

2008-09-27T16:52:00.003-05:00

You are 16 months old and are learning to say things like “eye” and “soulier” (which currently takes the form of “shh shh” and you, pointing down at my foot).

When your mum asks you “Ruby, c’est ou ton bouton?” You lift up your shirt and show us your beautiful round belly and point to that one spot in the middle that allowed you to be brought into this world.

You love to dance by shaking your bum and throwing your arms up in the arm at random moments. You are like a magnet to anything expensive-like cell phones and cameras.

Mostly though, you really love to show me your books and listen to your maman read them to you.

And today Ruby, I went and listened to David Bouchard tell stories at the library, and I wished you were there.

He talked about being a father, an author and Métis. He told us how he gets to travel all around the world and how much he loves it, but it also makes him sad, because he has to be away from his 10 years old daughter.

But don’t worry, because every single night, he goes on his computer and reads her a bedtime story and then blows her a kiss, and it flies right to her, right through the computer screen and onto her cheek.

He played his drum for us, and sang a story. He showed us the eagle feather and the sweet grass that he keeps inside of his drum. Did you know that an eagle is a scared animal because it flies close to the creator and sees everything and knows what is true? And did you know that sweet grass is braided like hair because it is the hair of Mother Earth? He told us so today at the library.

He told something else too. He told us how important it is for kids to read. He told us how he didn’t read as a kid because he has this thing called dyslexia and that means that things get mixed up in his head. He thought this meant he couldn’t read or that is wasn’t important. But then he told us how, when the creator gives you a problem, he also gives you a solution. And he learned that he could read things that had rhythm. And he writes books now. He has written lots and lots of them. And they have beautiful pictures, and the words have rhythm. And he writes for kids like him, who have trouble reading. He writes so that kids will read.

I bought you one of his books today called “If You’re Not from the Prairie...” and I can’t wait to read it with you.

Love, Auntie Courtney

* * *

Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”

She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).

By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.

Flickr-ing: sustenance

2008-09-27T16:19:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: sustenance, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The line up for grub at pint of bitter murder.
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Flickr-ing: the writer the book

2008-09-27T16:09:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the writer the book, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Michael van rooy looking at his chapbook just before his reading at Aqua books.
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Video: Roo Borson

2008-09-27T14:02:00.004-05:00

Since most of my bloggers have commented on Roo Borson's Big Ideas lecture on creativity, I'm not going to try to find some angle not covered, some thought not aired.

So, here is a short reading by Borson from her new book Personal History.

Since Flickr hates me

2008-09-27T11:44:00.013-05:00

My mobile provider, for all their youth-targeted advertising, isn’t Flickr friendly. My first attempt at a Flickr post was actually sent with a caption:

“I checked out Shutter Speed by Larry Krotz from the library. After my overdue fines I should have just bought it.”

Here’s a picture post to hold you over until I get down to writing something about the four events I went to today. These were all taken at The Mainstage event, The City.

Rob Ross and Tricia Arden Caldwell: festival volunteers, emerging writers, my chums. We all met through being writers U of M. Trish and I were in the same creative writing class, and I met Rob at her post-Manitoba Book Awards party. Yes, we do sit around and talk about writing. It’s all very esoteric.

Rob hamming it up with my name tag, because he didn’t have his with him. For this year’s festival he played chauffer for the flown-in writers. Fun fact: Rob did his M.A. in Creative Writing at the U of M, the same program that Saleema Nawaz graduated from.

A very bad picture of Tricia. She’s actually quite cute. And a poet. On her Facebook page she claims her religion is “e.e. cummings.”

Two professional writers: Amy Karlinsky and Charles Wilkins. Amy is an art critic, curator, and teacher in Winnipeg. I took her Writing About Art class when she was at the university. You know that Bruce Head exhibit on at the Winnipeg Art Gallery right now? That’s her work. She’ll also be doing a stint as the writer-in-residence starting next week at Aqua Books. She’s pictured here with one of tonight’s readers, Charles Wilkins.

Tomorrow I will bring a real camera around. Expect lots of pictures of above-camera-phone quality!

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

A Roo Borson Inspired Writing Exercise

2008-09-27T11:38:00.002-05:00

I've been suffering from writer's block. I had some good stuff going earlier in the year, and then when school finished (and subsequently my creative writing class), I stopped. "The worse thing you can do is stop," my professor Struan Sinclair told me.

For the past few months I've been struggling to get my momentum back. I am stuck. I have fragments, but no real story. Before I could sit down and crank out 1000 words, now I trudge my way through 200. It's pathetic and sad. But more sad.

When I heard that Roo Borson was doing a talk on creativity for the Big Ideas series, I thought, "Ah-ha! Just what I need!"

Part of her creative process is writing fragments of ideas down ("Hey, I have those!"). She then takes years worth of these fragments, and collages them together like "newspaper clippings, except you wrote all the content."

I asked her, "What do you do when you have trouble putting together the pieces?"

Her response: "Rearrange them to get new ideas, but you'll likely have to write more to fill in the gaps."

"Write more."

So here are some fragments of my own from my Big Ideas experience:

Would David Waltner-Toews consider writing about the appropriation of food chemicals by molecular gastronomists?

My best friend started to pick "fair trade" when we went for coffee, but I think she just liked the taste.

A man had a U-shaped foam cushion strapped to his hiking backpack. He placed on his seat, but spent most of the reading standing up.

I eyed the last piece of a California Roll on the platter. The disposable chopsticks wrappers said "Sushi Train," but I was so hungry it didn't matter.

It's silly to stop the elevator going down on the second floor.

Now to fill in the gaps. Arg.

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

Line of Inquiry: Lorna Jackson

2008-09-27T10:02:00.000-05:00

After a decade singing in saloons, Lorna Jackson decided to study writing with Jack Hodgins and Mark Anthony Jarman. She has published a collection of short stories, Dressing for Hope, and a novel, A Game to Play on the Tracks.

Now an exacting university writing teacher by day, Lorna Jackson is a raucous hockey aficionado by night, and two recent biblioasis titles are hard evidence of that. Cold-Cocked has been called “absolutely one of the best hockey books of our era.” Her other new title, Flirt: The Interviews, is a cheeky collection of fake interviews with real famous people—including several notable hockey players.

Lorna Jackson lives on Vancouver Island.

* * *

1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

I spent many years as a saloon singer in some pretty rough BC bars and learned to call that performance and convince myself that I was getting something out of it. So reading and engaging with readers at public events feels incredibly civilized and genteel, compared to, say, that one grim Halloween, 1981, at the Blackstone Hotel in Vancouver.

I've also been teaching for about 15 years, so I'm relatively calm with a bunch of folks looking at me and expecting something to happen. Even so, the transition from that "time spent alone" you mention, to "time spent entertaining strangers" can be jarring, even mortifying. At least when we're at our desks, deep inside our own imaginations, even if we're filled with self-doubt, we seem whole and unified. But when we're on a stage and reading our work (also, self-doubting), the risk is a weird sort of fragmentation, or maybe disassociation when we're back at our desks. Who was that woman? Who does she think she is?

2) What do you want people to know about Cold-Cocked / Flirt?

Both books are intentionally irreverent. Cold-Cocked: On Hockey reads the game - and certain players - and celebrates unofficial explanations as to why we watch and cheer. While I wouldn't say it looks at hockey through a woman's eyes, I think it looks at the game through the eyes of a literate, sensitive, aging and funny woman who happens to learn a great deal about herself through an unexpected obsession. I was determined to say something new about hockey, and to say something artful.

Flirt: The Interviews is essentially comic, although the stories – each takes the form of an interview with a famous person - are pretty dark and cover some unsettling topics: suicide, addiction, regret, grief, the role of the artist in an increasingly contemptuous culture. The interviewer is desperate to use her time with these people -athletes and musicians and writers who treat her with patience and even kindness - to unearth her own past and its tragedies.

3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

This is my first time, yes, and I've heard from writers that Thin Air is their favourite festival, that the audiences are fantastic. Of course I have a deep fondness for Winnipeg as not only the home of the Manitoba Moose, but as the only legitimate next home for an NHL team.

4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

I've just finished Bill Gaston's wonderful, The Order of Good Cheer, Haruki Murakami's elegant little book on running and novel-writing, and my current fave writer, Tim Winton's novel, Breath, about a coupla surfer dudes growing up badly in Australia. I am full of their wonderful work.

As for writing, I'm into a novel, a collection of stories, and just gearing up for hockey season and the blogging I'll be doing.

5) Your most recent book is Flirt, a "cheeky collection of fake interviews with real famous people." How do I know this interview isn't fake?

How do you know the ones in Flirt are?! Pour me another glass of ginger ale, take this cat off my lap, and ask me something else. Ask me about that time at the Blackstone Hotel.

* * *

Lorna Jackson will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 26 - Rural Tour, Selkirk, with Cara Hedley and Randall Maggs.
September 27 - Afternoon Mainstage, with Cara Hedley, Randall Maggs, and Paul Quarrington.

Flickr-ing: before after words

2008-09-26T22:32:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: before after words, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The view down the stairs at Aqua books just before Shane Koyczan goes on.
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Flickr-ing: the night

2008-09-26T22:00:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the night, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The night outside mainstage.
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Roo Borson on Creativity

2008-09-26T19:30:00.003-05:00

Dressed in black - black blouse, black pants, black shoes - and standing against the matte black walls of the Carol Shields Auditorium at the Millennium Library, Roo Borson looked like a talking head, literally.

I decided, before she started speaking, that if her talk was in any way dry and uninspired, if she was only going to stand there and ramble like so many professors I've had in the past, then I would go with the talking head angle, and the post would write itself.

But then she started her discussion with the following quote, taken from the epigraph of the essay she was going read:

"Are both your parents still alive?"
"Yes."
"Then you still have two lessons to learn."

It was then that I shimmied up to the edge of my seat. She had me.

For the next forty-five minutes, Roo read from her new book, a collection of essays entitled Personal Histories, periodically stopping to explain and elaborate on what she had finished reading.

For Roo Borson, creativity is grounded in experience, and writing is a response to experience - to the way our experiences echo inside us and throughout our lives. It's as though she logs all the little ways she associates the people she loves with the world around her; little associations we all make without always realizing, such as the faint rumbling sound her father's car made as it pulled up to the house. After our loved ones have died, we begin to miss these little things, and it is this absence that our writing responds to.

She also took a few questions after her reading, teasing André Alexis, who was seated in the crowd, to come up and answer one she wasn't sure how to answer. Her answers, like her reading, where honest and well thought out (and after watching Katie Couric interview Sarah Palin, I almost forgot questions could be answered that way).
Roo's talk was anything but dry and uninspiring. It was personal and engaging. She is far from a talking head. She is a poet, in the best sense of the word.

* * *

Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.

Flickr-ing: dinner

2008-09-26T18:24:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: dinner, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The eat platter and roo borson at Aqua Books.
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Sex & Politics

2008-09-26T18:02:00.001-05:00

How do you call the Northern Lights?
How do you cope with a broken heart in middle age?
How is your sexuality represented ?
What do you want to say about it?
Who will be listening?

There are huge political under and over tones to the topic of last nights main stage event “Me Sexy”. We could get into them here.

Certainly my response last night was in part about what it means for the sexuality of First Nations people to be represented in the media in one of three ways, as outlined by Drew Hayden Taylor, 1)focusing on sexual abuse suffered in residential schools 2) dead hookers 3) sexual transmitted infections.

And because of this reality, how revolutionary and necessary last night was. How essential it is for everyone to have space to speak the truth of their experience and to be listened to. We could speak of that here.

But what about how to call the Northern Lights?

Richard Van Camp says, Rub your fingernails tonight. And whistle.

But if you’re in Nunavut, rubbing your fingernails together will send them away.

You need to know how to do that too.

So that they don’t come down so far that they scoop you up and take you away forever and ever.

What about the Earth that seduces the moon in Rosanna Deerchild's poem?

What about Marilyn Dumont being greeted with teenage angst in the midst of a broken heart in middle age?

What about Joseph Boyden’s characters moving towards each other for the first time, undressing each other with all of the new smells and unfamiliar skin that goes along with those first moments of exploration with someone different?

What about desire and longing. Passion, hesitation and self worth. What about sadness and heartache.

What about aching.

Can we deny, like in Richard Van Camp's reading - that we all have baby pictures? That we were all babies once?

Can we ignore that we all have valid and interesting and complex sexualities, desires and sexual lives?

And if we deny and ignore it - what does it do except create violence. And send us further and further apart.

I’m more interested in being drawn towards you, not pushed away.

Last night pulled you in, wrapped you up in words of sex and pain, love and lust, childhood first kisses, and making love with someone new for the first time.

Last night was layered in its meaning and significance.

Last night left me longing for more.

* * *

Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”

She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).

By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.

Flickr-ing: on creativity

2008-09-26T17:21:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: on creativity, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Brad's notes on creativity.
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Flickr-ing: the finished drawing

2008-09-26T17:18:00.003-05:00

Flickr-ing: the finished drawing, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Ian at the library, having finished his sketch.
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Flickr-ing: big ideas and box lunches

2008-09-26T17:17:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: big ideas and box lunches, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Andre alexis grabs a bite to eat before roo borson's talk at the library.
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Sex on Thursday

2008-09-26T15:07:00.003-05:00

Last night I attended the mainstage reading entitled “Me Sexy.” It wasn’t because I had to (my festival addiction had been satiated earlier in the day using an Austin Clarke reading), but instead, because I wanted to.

I know what you’re thinking, “My God, they finally broke him. How will we ever know what’s really going on?”

But please allow me to put your fears to rest, neither have they broken me, nor will I cease providing you with the truth about this festival.

I was merely attending “Me Sexy” in an investigative capacity. I needed to find out why the writer’s festival deemed it necessary to turn the main stage into a wanton display of sexuality. It takes place at Manitoba Theatre for Young People for crying out loud. There were delicate ears in the building. Have these people no decency? Oh, wait, they’re drugging us, they have no decency.

Anyway, I was there to figure out why.

At first I thought this reckless presentation of human carnality was for shock value. As any celebrity can tell you, the best way to increase interest in you is to do something controversial. But was the festival really playing the Paris Hilton of the local arts community? After careful consideration, I thought no.

If there is one thing I’ve learned about these people, it’s that the easy answer is never the truth. There was something underhanded going on and I was going find out what it was.

As always, the evening began with Charlene. She went on and on with her writer’s fest propaganda as usual. It was writer’s fest this, and books are good that, and do you like my shoes and so on and so forth. While I tried to ignore most of it, some things did catch my ear.

Near the end of her speech, Charlene began to rant and rave about how if people checked out the blog they shouldn’t believe any of it. She said it was called Hot Air for a reason. She said everyone should just consider it irreverent commentary.

Irreverent my butt. Every word I have written has been carefully researched. I’m not one of those writers who goes around making stuff up. I only deal in the truth (or possibly shades thereof).

Anyway, once Charlene had finished her blathering, the writers began to read. That’s when something strange began to happen.

All of a sudden, somewhere between Drew Hayden Taylor’s harlequinian introduction (wasn’t he in that wine tasting movie) and Rosanna Deerchild’s saucy new shoes (now those were nice shoes), I noticed a TWITTER in my stomach and an aching in my loins. All I could think about was getting home to my wife. I couldn’t help myself. So as soon as intermission came, I hit the road.

The drive was excruciating. I don’t live all that far from the Forks, but I’ll tell you it felt like I was coming back from Headingly. I think I hit 80 down St. Mary Avenue. I needed to get to my wife; the Spanish in me was awakened.

I must have made it home in five minutes flat. Within seconds I was in the house and had my arms wrapped around my wife. I leaned her back and kissed her like the war was over.

She slapped me.

“What are you doing, it’s not Saturday.”

She was right. It wasn’t Saturday. I don’t have sex on Thursdays. It’s only for Saturdays and every second Wednesday. How could I lose my head?

Then, it hit me (the reason why, not my wife). It was the festival. They read me dirty poems so I’d get all wound up and try to have sex. Why? Because if I have sex, I could make a baby. And why does the festival want me to make a baby? Because babies of addicts are addicts too. The festival would have a self-replicating fan base. This madness could go on forever.

So there you have it. That’s why they had erotica on the main stage. It’s just a ploy to get you to have sex and make festival-addicted babies. I was lucky my wife helped me stop before it was too late. I implore you, don’t count on luck.

Do the only responsible thing; don’t ever have sex again (please disregard if you have a same sex partner, you guys are fine).

* * *

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.

Out-take: sketchbook

2008-09-26T11:25:00.005-05:00

This is Ian Sokoliwski, fantasy and comic book artist who lives in Winnipeg.

I know Ian from around. I've seen his work around and he/it looks nifty.

Anyways, I spotted Ian at yesterday's Afternoon Book Chat with Joseph Boyden and Marilyn Dumont as I slid into my seat. He'd installed himself at a table and already had pencils and a couple of sketchbooks out.

During the readings and subsequent conversation, Ian sketched in both books.

Though it may have looked like he was ignoring the goings-on - which, incidentally, focused almost entirely on handiwork like beading and sewing and writing - I think he was drawing under the conversation.

I've often written poems while at lectures. It wasn't that I wasn't paying attention, it was that whatever was being discussed had twigged something.

And if you don't pay attention to those jabs, those improbable gifts of image and language and energy, then you're just dumb.

After everything was all over, Ian let me photograph his hour's work.

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

An Interview with Chandra Mayor

2008-09-26T10:27:00.008-05:00

Chandra Mayor, the ever-so-gracious Winnipeg writer, agreed to answer a few questions about her new collection of short stories, All the Pretty Girls.

Chandra is the author of two previous books: a novel, Cherry, and a book of poetry, August Witch.

She also teaches creative writing here in Winnipeg.

Brad Hartle: There is something about your writing that is unmistakably Winnipeg. It's in the tone of the stories, the language that characters use, in the things they spend their time doing and the things they scoff at doing. How has Winnipeg influenced your writing and what is it about this city that has made you want to write about it (aside from the fact that you live here)?

Chandra Mayor: Actually, part of my answer is, truly, because I live here. I realized the other day that I haven’t spent more than a week in any other place than Winnipeg for over 20 years. That’s a long time. Mostly, though, that’s by choice. There’s much that I like about living here, and very much that I like about writing here, and about writing about here. I think that in some ways it’s much harder to set a book in New York or Toronto or London; so very many of those stories have already been told, and so many of those places have already been written. And so many of Winnipeg’s stories are still unwritten. For me, it’s a city of ghosts (ghosts of people I’ve known, places that might or might not still exist, and ghosts of various versions of myself), without quite the same literary ghosts clouding one’s vision. (How do you write about Toronto ravines, for example, without Atwood’s terrifying little Cat’s Eye girls smirking at your elbow?). And chasing ghosts always feels compelling to me.

Plus, Winnipeg is such a bizarre and ornery and tangled up city – wildly diverse and defiant neighbourhoods that barely deign to be part of Winnipeg at all (think Transcona or St. Boniface). Winnipeg is permeated with this fierce, no-bullshit, blue collar mentality that cuts any attempts at pretension off at the knee caps, and yet it wraps its arms around these incredible, abrupt, and almost unbridgeable socio-economic and racial divides – our dirty little secrets. It’s an isolated prairie island – hours and hours away from any other city – that serves to both protect its quirkiness, and also to nurture a DIY attitude to everything from culture-creation (music, theatre, festivals, etc. etc.) to fashion (remember late 80s Cougar boots and long-johns under flowered peasant skirts?) to accents (listen to Jian Ghomeshi interview Randy Bachman sometime) to political movements (Nellie McClung was a Manitoban).

It’s a “Hey, let’s put on a show!” kind of town – and the people putting on the shows all have booster cables in the trunks of their cars, and know how to use them. Winnipeg’s hearts are tough and scruffy and scarred and frost-bitten – and still, wide-open. As a writer, what more could you ask for?

BH: With the publication of All the Pretty Girls, you have now completed a book of short stories, a novel and a book of poems. As you were writing the stories within All the Pretty Girls, did you find that writing short fiction is more like writing poetry or closer to writing a novel? Or is writing just writing?

CM: When you’re sitting at the computer, staring at the blank screen and weeping a little, writing is just writing. At the same time, the interplay between form and content fascinates me. When I started the stories in All the Pretty Girls, I didn’t really know a damn thing about short fiction. I’m not sure that I still do, but I learned a lot. The short story form requires a similar kind of economy, of writing close to the bone, that poetry does, and yet, more like a novel, is engaged with different kinds of plot requirements. (Or, at least, expectations of plot). It’s the notion of plot that I feel I learned the most about in this project.

Sometimes I’d send drafts of the stories to my girlfriend (then living in Montreal). She’d call me and say, “The writing’s really beautiful [she’s required to say that, obviously], but, you know, nothing really happens.” I’d be silent on the other end of the phone for a moment, and say, “Oh, yeah. Do you think that matters?” “Umm,” she’d very diplomatically answer. “Yes. Yes, I do.” And I’d laugh, and take another crack at it. I started off that project trying to capture moments. I hope, by the end of it, I also, sometimes, figured out how to capture movement.

BH: Your stories are filled with telling little gestures, gestures that hint at the reader that everything isn't as it seems. Sometimes these gestures suggest that things are far worse than they seem, like the way an old man runs his fingers through the hair of a little girl, and sometimes these gestures are in the form of small acts of kindness, even grace, like a bag of Wonder Bread left on the doorknob of a down-and-out neighbour. These moments, however brief, however sparse, seem to shine amidst all the gritty-meanness and selfishness that mark so many of your characters. Why is it important to you that your fiction contain these little gestures and how do you work to incorporate them into your stories?

CM: This is a great question, and a difficult one to answer. I’m not sure how to respond without sounding trite. I think that people are complicated, messy, and fragile. No one is reliably selfish absolutely all of the time (just as no one is reliably kind all the time). It’s part of what makes bad relationships so hard to extricate yourself from; just at the moment that you decide that your partner is a total jerk, they do something small and vulnerable and sweet, and you get sucked back in. Black-and-white characters and situations don’t make for compelling fiction – largely, I think, because they’re just not true. And if it’s not true, it doesn’t resonate. And if I’m writing untrue things and characters, and it doesn’t resonate with anyone, I’m doing a lousy job as a writer. (And probably being lazy). When I write, I try to get right inside of those places and those people. For me, if it doesn’t feel emotionally wrenching to create, then I’m probably not actually inside, and I’m probably not writing the true things. But when I can get inside the true things, then those small gestures and moments don’t feel like something I have to consciously incorporate or layer – in some ways, the gestures and moments themselves are the story, and everything else gets built around them.

BH: Children play an important part in your stories, like in Casey and Finnegan. The kids are usually on the periphery of things, but they are crucial to the tension that your stories have. What is it about children you hope to capture and what are the challenges in writing about them?

CM: One of the biggest challenges in writing about children is just getting it right...would a three year old really say that? When is it they start walking? The children in my stories are all quite young, but my own daughter is 14 now. Trying to remember some of that stuff is like digging back into the dark ages. I don’t have any illusions about the supposed innate wisdom and purity of children – like everyone, they also have immense capacities for cruelty and kindness and everything in between. There is sometimes nothing more boring in the world than playing the same game, for the millionth time, with a two year old. And there is sometimes nothing more astonishing and revelatory than playing the same game for the millionth time with a two year old. They’re creatures of routine, and yet also wildly unpredictable. Incredibly resilient, and yet immensely fragile. Children, especially small ones, are often the wild card in any setting or life, both in terms of their own selves in their own bodies, and also in the various ways that adults interact with and react to them. They exist in completely separate worlds, and yet are entirely dependent on us, on our own capacities to care for them. Or not.

BH: How do you edit your stories? Do you finish a draft and then go back over it or do you edit as you go? What have you learned about self-editing since you started out?

CM: I do a lot of editing as I go, and try to not have drafts that need substantial revisions. (Probably due to the aforementioned laziness). Learning more and more about writing (through reading, through courses, through just doing it, and a great deal through teaching) has taught me a great deal about self-editing. I think I learned the most crucial thing about self-editing from Catherine Hunter. I’d write something, and I’d suspect that there was a word or a line or something that wasn’t quite working. But I’d think, “Oh, good enough. No one will notice.” And, of course, it was always, always the first thing she’d notice. And circle. And write a pointed comment about. It was fantastic. It helped a lot with the laziness. And it also helped to create and strengthen my instincts and critical awareness of what I was doing. Or, at least, trying to do.

BH: What's the best writing advice that you have been given?

CM: Oh, this one’s easy (and also came from Catherine Hunter). The best writing advice I’ve ever been given is to just write. Write and write and write. I mean, you have to read, talk to other people and writers, learn about the craft however you can, etc etc etc. That’s all important too. But at the end of the day, it’s just you and your notebook. You may have read millions of books, know lots of important authors, and have taken hundreds of courses. But whether or not your notebook is blank or full is only up to you. No one’s first poem is any good. Probably your fiftieth poem still isn’t particularly great. But maybe, maybe your two-hundred-and-fiftieth poem will finally be getting somewhere. You learn by doing it. So do it. Lots of people in this world have great ideas, or a facility with language, or a particular sensitivity to whatever. Lovely, wonderful. But writers write. Even (albeit unwillingly and occasionally interrupted by weeping) the lazy ones like me.

BH: Thanks Chandra!

* * *

Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.

Hands on: Nicole Markotic

2008-09-26T10:25:00.000-05:00

Hands on: Joseph Boyden

2008-09-26T10:22:00.002-05:00

Hands on: Marilyn Dumont

2008-09-26T10:10:00.007-05:00

* * *

It has occurred to me, lo the last few days, that although writing is an intellectual & imaginative act, writing it down is utterly reliant on the writer's hands.

If you're a writer and your hands don't work, you have to employ the services of all manner of dictation machines, stenographers, and helpmates.

While I would greatly like a helpmate/wife, I would also like to retain the use of my hands.

These hands have been responsible for several books between them. Makes your own hands cramp a little, eh?

So, for your contemplative viewing pleasure, here are the hands of Marilyn Dumont, Joseph Boyden, and Nicole Markotic.

(What you're not seeing is that Marilyn is missing the last joint of her background hand, that Joseph has the word 'jacob' home-tattooed over the lifeline of his foreground hand, and that Nicole attempted to apologize for the veins in her hands.)

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

Video: After Words #1

2008-09-26T09:51:00.003-05:00

Here's a video that introduces you to After Words, the post-Mainstage spoken word series, hosted by Aqua Books.

(A disclaimer: I happen to work at Aqua Books as Events Coordinator, which is why I'm frightfully familiar with Kelly Hughes, proprieTOR, in the video.)

(A disclaimer: I'm frightfully familiar with most everyone. Which has nothing to do with my virtue. I just say outrageous things to people I hardly know and expect them to take it.)

As luck would have it, the video also serves as an introduction to Aqua Books' second floor space, which also includes three (unseen in this video) writers' studios.

There are two more nights of After Words, one with Shane Koyczan and one with the Winnipeg Slam Poetry Team.

There is also an afternoon mystery event on Saturday afternoon with (Aqua Books' new Writer in Residence) Michael Van Rooy and Phyllis Smallman.

(The tally: Michael's second book, Phyllis' first.)

So, if you make an appearance, I'll be there, taking pics and selling books and making wise.

Also, speaking from the bookseller side of my mouth, I should let you know that Aqua is selling Paul's new Giller-longlisted The Ravine for $25, several bucks below its listed sticker price.

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

Line of Inquiry: Charles Wilkins

2008-09-26T07:57:00.002-05:00

For writer and magazine journalist Charles Wilkins, research has no limits.

Among his dozen books are Walk to New York, which chronicles his 2,200 km journey—on foot—from Thunder Bay to Manhattan, and A Wilderness Called Home, which features Canadians coast to coast whose lives connect with the wild.

In The Circus at the Edge of the Earth, shortlisted for the Rogers/Viacom Non-Fiction Prize, he travels with the Great Wallenda Circus. His new book, In the Land of Long Fingernails (Penguin), is a hilarious memoir of his stint as a grave-digger.

Charles Wilkins lives in Thunder Bay with his wife and three children.

* * *

1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

I approach performance with the attitude that I’m going to give the listener the most theatrical and memorable time that I can (by which I mean the most laughs, the shrillest screams, the deepest heart palpitations, the reddest sunsets, the most despicable politicians, the bloodiest revolutions, the scariest basements, the sweetest summers, the sharpest pointy things, the sexiest writers, and of course the bounciest mattresses).

What I get out of it is the somewhat ambivalent thrill of watching the audience howl with laughter, weep with rage, etc.

2) What do you want people to know about In the Land of Long Fingernails?

I want them to know that it’s a memoir about a summer I spent working in a big corporate cemetery in the east end of Toronto when I was 19 years old. And that parts of it are seditious to the point that, for fear of getting sued, or worse, I had to change the names of the people and cemetery, etc.

I want them to know, too, that there really was a guy who stole the watches off dead orthodontists, and that on occasion the management really did dig up untended graves, throw the bones into a common pit, and resell the plots.

I should add that the book is also about mortality, longing, and so on… and about some pretty strange people, as well as personal and literary matters too complicated to get into at this moment.

I’ve been told it’s all quite funny, although it would be presumptuous for me to mention it in the context of this interview.

3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

I lived in Winnipeg for ten years (mid-70s to mid-80s), started my writing career in the city, and still tend to think of it as a kind of crucible for my imagination at that time. I love the place to this day but don’t want to die there.

4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

I have just finished reading (for the second time) James Elroy’s memoir, My Dark Places, about the unsolved murder of Elroy’s mother in Los Angeles in the 1950s and Elroy’s attempts forty years after the fact to find the killer...and am half way through Luc Sante’s Low Life, a detailed, dream-like book about New York City in the 19th century.

As for writing, I am finishing a book of essays on my adventures in the Canadian north, entitled High on the Big Stone Heart, and am revising In the Land of Long Fingernails for publication in the U.S. next spring.

5) You joined the circus for a book. You walked half-way across the continent for a book. Is there anything you wouldn't do for a book?

I joined the circus and walked across half a continent not just to write about the experiences but because I believed such travels would be worthy and distinctive explorations both of the world around me and of myself...and would stimulating both to the senses and imagination. Which they were. For purposes of writing, I wouldn’t do anything that didn’t interest me in some profound personal way (and might add that I have turned down some invitations to adventure that would undoubtedly have been somebody’s idea of the makings of a good book… e.g. the exploration of the Titanic some 20 years ago, which struck me as somebody else’s story, but not mine...at least not at that time).

* * *

Charles Wilkins will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 26 - The Nooner, Millennium Library.
September 26 - Mainstage, with Andre Alexis, Austin Clarke, and Maggie Helwig.

Flickr-ing: the rules

2008-09-25T23:16:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the rules, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The after words rules, according to Aqua books owner Kelly Hughes.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Flickr-ing: ancestor worship

2008-09-25T23:11:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: ancestor worship, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The after words authors in aqua's inherited ancestor shine.
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Flickr-ing: after words

2008-09-25T22:57:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: after words, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The 'rec room' at aqua books' where the food, drink, and books live.
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Flickr-ing: the ladies

2008-09-25T22:53:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the ladies, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Paul Quarrington presses the flesh.
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CAMPUS PROGRAM: Austin Clarke

2008-09-25T19:41:00.004-05:00

As I found a seat near the back of the classroom where Austin Clarke's reading was to take place, a women standing next to me asked, "Would you like me to take your assignment up to the front for you?" I hesitated, looked around at all the unfamiliar faces in the cramped, sunlit room, the empty desk in front of me, and thought, I've had this dream before.

She then said, "Never mind, you're not one of us." And I thought, I've had this dream, too.

As it happens, the classroom where the reading took place was near full with students studying Austin Clarke. I hadn't read much of Austin's work, only a short story from the Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories, so I am not that familiar with his work.

But after he began speaking, introducing his new book, More, I quickly began to realize what a fascinating man he is, and how much is embedded in the pages of his fiction.

He began by giving a bit of background on his main character, Idora, who is a female from Barbados living in Toronto. He spoke about the experience of Barbadian women moving to Toronto, and how Idora is modeled after these women.

He then read a section, his voice assuming Idora's slight accent. When finished, he went on to introduce the next bit he was to read, and he spoke about some of the images used in the section and what they conveyed.

Idora lives in a basement apartment and the only window is above her head. As she looks out the window, everything she sees is skewed, disjoined. The basement apartment, Austin noted, is meant to suggest she is down on her luck, and the skewed view she has of the street outside her apartment is just as skewed as her view of the world she lives in.

After his second reading, after he looked up at a room spellbound by his voice, he had to remind everyone to breathe. We laughed, and so did he.

After fielding a few questions, a woman near the front asked him about race and poverty and violence in Toronto and whether or not he sees any improvements. He said no. She asked if him if he has an solutions. He said not really, but then he offered a wonderful story of his trip to Winnipeg.

He flew, and seated behind him on the plane was a baby that cried the whole time. People were noticeably frustrated. After a while, he began to wonder if the pin holding the baby's diaper had slipped and was poking the child in the side (he joked that, of course, diapers don't have pins anymore, but that's not the point). He added that, when he was a young father, he was home one day with his child and the child cried and cried all day. He couldn't figure out why and was feeling very frustrated. He then realized, some time later, that the bottle his child was holding had a piece of plastic blocking the liquid from getting out and the child couldn't drink it. It was the child who was frustrated, because of a mistake he had made.

Whether you are looking to read some well-crafted fiction or you are looking to learn something, to experience something, Austin Clarke's More seems to have a great deal to offer. I can't wait to read it.

* * *

Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.

Twittering

2008-09-25T19:25:00.009-05:00

My email, earlier today, to the handy-dandy handful of bloggers under my command:

How's this? I'll give you a shiny nickel if you'll twitter. I'll give you a whole quarter if you'll flickr.

(That is, if you have the tech. If you don't, that's fine. If you do, and you're just...scared, well, shame on you!) Do it!

Yours, Ariel

Now, I have smart-asses on my crew, so I got back smart-assery...

To wit, here's Emma's 'whimsical' response, which arrived a few minutes after my email went out:

OK, I'll try and Twitter. I don't know if my phone is capable, but what's the worst thing that can happen right?

Is there, like, some sort of dead letter depot for undeliverable twitters? That would be so sad.

Those poor lost updates, forever on a journey for which there is no destination. Hopefully they can make friends, and be of comfort to one another.

Jay by-passed the back-channel smart remarks and twittered this:

jay doesn't know if he's making twitters right.

And this:

Jay is making twitter's right, excepted for the lack of capital letters.

And Brad? Well, he looks like the straight man, like the reliable one, but then...he's not. That is not to say that he can't be counted upon for bloggy goodness (RIGHT, Brad?) but that he is actually human like the rest of us...

For instance, he sent me this business-like email as I was leaving the house:

Hi Ariel,

I'm going to sneak out of work early and go to the Austin Clarke reading. I'm not sure if anyone else is covering it, but I'll be there. Can you forward me the twitter link so that I can upload while I'm there?

Thanks,
Brad

But did he twitter, I ask you? No. He just sat there and drank in the Austin Clarke, which was especially galling, as I came late and had to sit in the hall. Like a child.

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

A Picture/Video Message!

2008-09-25T17:46:00.005-05:00

A Picture/Video Message!, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Writers + fashion

2008-09-25T16:47:00.003-05:00

I don't consider myself stylish. I make rather boring fashion choices, and over the past couple years have taken to trying to look like a boring grown-up. My most recent favourite purchase is a secretary top: a blouse with a high collar secured with a big bow, originally conceived to keep cleavage out of the workplace. I think modesty is making a comeback, and who but the reclusive writer most embodies modest style?

Matches & Misses was the fashion event of Thin Air. Charlene Diehl set it off when she explained her outfit choice for the night; the theme was love, so she went with her "date clothes." Also taking into consideration the pink-patterned Loud Chair from EQ3 that none of the readers ever sit on, Charlene wore a tangerine cowl-neck sweater and a pleather skirt—with slits up both sides. I'd say it was a date outfit: cute, and a little saucy.

Each of the night's readers was sporting a signature look. David Bergen looked the most writerly of the bunch: black blazer over black t-shirt and dark jeans. All it took was the jacket to take him from writing in his den to headlining The Mainstage. The adorable Rebecca Rosenblum donned a cotton dress and cardigan. She became the sweetheart of Thin Air when in the middle of introducing her new book Once, she stopped, shrugged her shoulders and smiled. Cute!

Then there's the woman who breathes fresh air into writer fashion, Daria Salamon. I met Daria back in 2003 when I was interning at her husband Rob's record label , so I know that she's always had style. In fact, I remember thinking that her wedding dress was very similar to Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's Vera Wang gown. In a nutshell: Daria has great taste.

Last night she wore a fitted grey/pink/white cocktail dress from Swank. She said it was a toss up between heels and boots, and she ended up going with black motorcycle boots. I was into the combination, it reminded me of Rihanna: though with girly. Daria expressed concern about a potential wardrobe malfunction; she told me at Bloodlines that the dress showed more cleavage than when she tried it on at the store. The solution: a camisole.

So how does Daria pick out her outfits?

"I wear whatever Oskar (her almost-two-year-old son) rips down from the closet."

Rob has his say too. Don't be fooled by the band t-shirts, Daria says her husband has "great fashion sense." Your consultants do good work, Daria! Pasha Malla called you "a dynamite."

Pasha Malla held his own, too. He looked like a New Yorker, in impeccable jeans and a heavy ivy cap. He confessed to having style by default:

"I own one button-up shirt. And my girlfriend told me that I should wear a button-up shirt at a reading."

What about the hat?

"My hair's thinning, and it's hot under the lights."

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

Flickr-ing: exiles

2008-09-25T16:35:00.002-05:00

Flickr-ing: exiles, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Tavia, festival employee, also works the hallway at the U of W during the Clarke reading.
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Flickr-ing: the stairwell

2008-09-25T16:10:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the stairwell, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Thin air in the cavernous U of W stairwell.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

I’ve been hacked!!!!!!!!

2008-09-25T16:02:00.003-05:00

I know the internet is a dangerous place, but it seems to me that the timing of this attack is awfully suspicious. I just let the festival’s dirty little secret out of the bag and the next thing you know, I can’t publish to the web. Hmmm, I wonder who could be responsible? Could it be.....the writer’s festival? You bet it is.

You see, yesterday afternoon I took in the 2:30 book chat at McNally Robinson. Well, “took in” makes it sound like I had a choice. I assure you I didn’t. The drugs made me do it. The need to be at the festival has gotten worse. I actually risked getting fired just to hear Pasha Malla and Rebecca Rosenblum read. This festival has turned a hard working, dedicated family man into just another junkie looking for a fix.

Instead of doing my job, shelving books, answering questions, avoiding management, I found myself doing everything I could to get to that events alcove. First I begged them to let me set up chairs for the reading, hoping they might let me stay and watch.

They said I could setup the chairs.

Then I pleaded with poor little Rebecca to relieve me at cash a little early so I could sneak over and watch. And like the enabler I knew she could be, she did. Even though that meant a 4 hour cash shift for her, God bless her.

But I digress; the point is I was there.

As I entered the alcove, I was struck by the most startling image. There, between Pasha Malla and Rebecca Rosenbloom was the perpetrator of my drug-induced madness, Charlene Diehl.

While seeing Charlene at a festival event is by no means shocking, what was, was the way she seemed to tower over the other two writers. It was as if she was lording over her minions. It was as if her stool was just a little bit taller. But I knew that was impossible. I set them up. The only explanation was that she switched stools before the event. It was narcissism at its worst.

I shook my head and quickly moved to the position of security I had scouted out earlier. There between mythology and maps, I could see and hear everything, without limiting my ability to escape unnoticed. You see, I have come to believe that this festival would not be above using thuggery to silence a whistleblower such as myself. I have to take precautions now. So, with my three exits in place, I listened.

Now I’ll have to say the reading was a delightful affair. Each writer read a story from their respective books and then answered questions from the audience. This led to a very interesting discussion about the writing process. I found it informative both as a writer and as a fan. I also enjoyed...wait a minute...I...sorry, that was the drugs talking. Overall, the chat was fine. The real moment of interest came after the event was over.

As the place cleared out, I saw Ariel over by a table near the front. Being a suck up, I made a bee line straight for her. We chatted for a bit and everything seemed fine, until Ariel looked at me with this wicked look and said “Have you met Charlene yet?

And then out of nowhere, as if by some dark magic, She was there. I couldn’t speak. Charlene could see my fear and smiled, “oh hello. Yes, we met on Sunday.” I might have nodded.

This was not good. I was face to face with the mastermind of this whole operation and I was trapped. They were on both sides of me and home field advantage meant nothing. Suddenly, things got worse.

“Jay thinks the festival is like an infection.” If I hadn’t known better I would have thought it was my sister ratting me out.

“Oh really.”

I don’t really know where my resolve came from, but just like all righteous men before me, I made a decision to speak the truth, no matter what the cost.

“Actually, I said you guys were using addictive psychotropic drugs to make people keep coming back.”

“Yeah, so. Is there something wrong with that?”

“No...I...umm...I guess not.”

And they both laughed. They thought they had won. They thought they had shut me up. But they didn’t.

You see, I’m really just a fantastic actor who possesses the ability to stammer on command. Just like crying on command, it can get you out of many sticky situations. By stammering uncontrollably, I made them think I was not a threat. I made them believe their strong arm tactics were working. Never! It was clearly a strategic withdrawal.

I swear to you dear readers, I will never bend to their will. I will never stop seeking the truth. And no matter what obstacles this festival throws in my way, be it limited connectivity or other, I will get that truth to you. I am a writer, I will write.

* * *

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.

Lucky, Lucky Students. They’ve Never Had it So Good.

2008-09-25T15:22:00.003-05:00

I hope the members of the English class that was in attendance at this afternoon’s reading at the U of M appreciate how unusual and exciting it is to have actual Real Life Writers read their stuff to them in class. Why is that so rare? It’s just not right that so many of us got through our English degrees without hearing a single author’s voice. (Obviously some voices are kind of out of the question. If you ever hear Yeats’ voice at this point in time, you might want to check yourself in some place where they give you green Jell-O with every meal.) Given that Winnipeg, and the U of M, has so much readily available talent, it’s a shame that more students (so gloriously impressionable!) don’t get to hear and talk to practicing writers. Anyway, I digress…

Is it really a digression if I haven’t actually started in on what I came here to say yet? Anyway, again...

I must confess that I haven’t yet obtained The Cellist of Sarajevo, despite my fascination at the story of the siege of that city. What I’ve always found so compelling and frightening about the record of those events is just how terrifyingly quickly Sarajevo went from being a cultural and economic success story to being a city where nearly every single building was damaged, tens of thousands of people were dead or injured, where mortar shells were dropping out of the sky multiple times a day and where going outside to do something as basic as getting water became life threatening.

Even the fact that it so quickly turned into the sort of place where you had to go out to get water is kind of horrifying. It also gives me pause to think about how, once everything is stripped away, we so rapidly turn on people who didn’t bother us much one way or another before.

OK, now I’m getting dour. Thank the gods for Gerald Hill’s poetry. Not that his work doesn’t cover some serious subjects also, but he chose to lighten us up a bit with some Roughrider/Blue Bomber rivalry (yeah, I don’t know what he was referring to either) and poems about increasingly hostile and militant English students; progressing from reading the poet’s material on his office door to outright military style abduction, complete with individuals rappelling from helicopters, multiple ropes and vigorous, loud demands for explanations.

Oh wait, maybe that’s why writers don’t read their stuff directly to students...

* * *

Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.

Flickr-ing: lunch

2008-09-25T14:14:00.002-05:00

Flickr-ing: lunch, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Butternut squash soup and Marilyn Dumont at McNally Polo Park.
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Flickr-ing: those books

2008-09-25T14:11:00.002-05:00

Flickr-ing: those books, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The book bags of Marj Poor, editor. Marj specializes in book bags.
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Reading: Rebecca Rosenblum

2008-09-25T12:28:00.007-05:00

Rebecca Rosenblum is one of those tricky women. Shy-looking, self-deprecating-ish, but clever and confident underneath.

Her book is only a week old. She's only ever done five or six readings in her live-long life.

But with the exception of a couple of errant throat clearings - or, perhaps, the microphone up her nose - you couldn't tell.

That's what's wonderful and terrible about writing/writers.

Thankfully, given my bugaboo about writers doing the SAME reading at afternoon and evening events, she read something different that night, appearing before Pasha Malla and David Bergen in the second half of the evening.

She wore a pink dress, I think...

I don't hold that against her.

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

20 minute survival plan

2008-09-25T12:01:00.005-05:00

You can survive anything for 20 minutes (except holding your breath underwater).

This is one of the many things Miriam Toews’ characters shared with the audience yesterday afternoon, over lunch. Reading from her new book The Flying Troutmans we learned that the best way to cope with life is to pretend everyone is stoned; there is a difference between graffiti by bored kinds wandering around vs. hate crime; there is nothing quite like a high quality pen museum; and when in doubt, follow the 20 minutes survival plan.

(My list of) things you can survive for 20 minutes:

uncomfortable conversations
anxiously awaiting a phone call from your partner when you know you have to have a ‘talk’ (you know the kind I mean)
standing at the bus stop in the middle of a Winnipeg winter day
your best friend being mad at you
listening to your mom cry at your dad’s funeral
your dad’s funeral
dental work

20 minutes, and then you need to switch. You can come back to it in a while. Because you know you can do it for another 20 minutes if you have to. And usually you do.

Ms. Toews seems to be able to capture unsettlingly honest experiences, in words that are light and humorous enough to speak truth, without preaching it. It makes it so that these truths - like the unbearable moments that feel endless but can and are survived - for at least 20 minutes at a time-reach a space in you that connects without resistance.

And to hear her read her own work brought a whole new level of life to her characters. I could have listened to her read forever.

There is a pelican on the cover of her latest book. When asked why she chose the pelican, she explained (after mentioning that once the publisher rejected her working title “Who Do You Have?” she suggested the title be “Pelican”, which was also rejected), that when a pelican’s young are starving, the pelican will actually peck its own chest until it bleeds, and then feed the young its own blood.

You can survive anything for 20 minutes.

* * *

Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”

She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).

By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.

Line of Inquiry: Steven Galloway

2008-09-25T09:09:00.006-05:00

Steven Galloway is the author of three novels. His first, Finnie Walsh, was nominated for the 2000 Amazon.com/Books in Canada First Novel Award. His second, Ascension, confirmed Galloway’s promise as a writer. His most recent book, The Cellist of Sarajevo (Knopf, 2008) is an international best-seller, praised widely for its clarity and courage.

His work has been translated into over twenty languages and optioned for film. He is currently the Cliff Writer-in-Residence at the UBC Creative Writing Program, and the fiction mentor at the Writer’s Studio at SFU.

Galloway lives with his wife and two young daughters in New Westminster, British Columbia.

* * *

1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

There’s two ways to approach it. One is to be grumpy about having to find a way to take what is essentially a solitary act and turn it into a public act, and the other is to view it as an opportunity to bring a text alive for a group of people who may not be familiar with it. My natural inclinations are typically grumpy, but in this case I’m very pleased that people are willing to sit and listen to a bit of the story. If you can do a reading properly you can create an experience that is similar to that of reading the story. It’s a skill, and I’m still working on it.

2) What do you want people to know about The Cellist of Sarajevo?

That it’s not really about a cellist, or even Sarajevo. The book follows the lives of three ordinary people who are trying to survive a war, and looks at how they’re tested and inspired by a cellist who plays in the street after a massacre. Though the book is set in Sarajevo, I think that what happens applies to any number of places, from Iraq to Palestine to Georgia.

3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

This will indeed be my first time to Winnipeg. I’ve heard there are mosquitoes the size of houses, that the winter is colder than Jupiter, and real estate is reasonably priced. Much of this book was written while listening to The Weakerthans, who are quite possibly my favourite band, and I’m a huge fan of Miriam Toews and Daria Salamon. I was sad when the Jets left, but I follow the Manitoba Moose closely as they’re the Canucks’ farm team. I’m looking forward to the trip.

4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

I’m currently reading Tim Winton’s Breath and Lee Henderson’s The Man Game. Both are excellent. I’m not writing much right now, but I’m trying to sit quietly and think about what I might write someday. Thinking is underrated, I believe.

5) In three novels, you covered small town hockey, circus life, and the war in the Balkans. What's your process when it comes to researching a topic for fictional use?

I do a lot of quiet thinking and planning. I’ll read and watch whatever material I can find on the subject, think and plan some more, talk to people who know the subject better than I do, think and plan some more, and then write a draft, throw it out because it’s bad, start again. It’s probably not the best way to do things, but it seems to work for me, more or less.

* * *

Steven Galloway will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 25 - Campus Program, University of Manitoba, with Gerald Hill.
September 26 - Mainstage, with Andre Alexis, Austin Clarke, and Maggie Helwig.

Reading Copy: Duncan Thornton

2008-09-25T02:00:00.002-05:00

Duncan Thornton established his reputation as a compelling young adult fantasy writer with Kalifax, which was short-listed for many awards, including the 2000 Governor General’s Award, the Mr. Christie’s award, the Manitoba Best First Novel and Best Children’s Book awards, and the Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award. That first book has been followed by two highly successful sequels, Captain Jenny and the Sea of Wonders, and The Star-Glass.

His new novel, Shadow-Town (Annick), is the first of a four-book series which introduces readers to cousins Jack and Rose — and the ghostly Whisperers. Duncan Thornton also writes non-fiction and drama, and he lives in Winnipeg.

* * *

* * *

So this one nearly killed me. Various tech nightmares, from dead batteries to weeping babies. And, dolt that I am, I called Duncan 'Kenneth,' as in Kenneth Oppel, while all the tech nightmares reared their girl-horse-that-has-had-babies heads.

(Duncan, if you're reading this, I know who you are and I picked you, not Kenneth! Did I mention that I'm a dolt?)

All that aside, I'm glad to present my first 2008 Reading Copy. It should go without saying that I hope to do several MORE of these Reading Copies before fest-end...

Out-take: separated at birth?

2008-09-25T01:31:00.006-05:00

There were murmurs around the book signing table Tuesday night about how Andrew Hood didn't look anything like his author photos. Also, that they MUCH preferred the in-person Andrew.

So I thought I'd compare and contrast here on HOT AIR...and Andrew obliged me.

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

Flickr-ing: the elevator

2008-09-25T01:21:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the elevator, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Joseph boyden in the elevator, on the way out to find wireless internet.
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Flickr-ing: the hosp suite

2008-09-25T00:51:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the hosp suite, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Daria salamon and her friend (and former sage hill instructor) Steven galloway.
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How Was It For You?

2008-09-24T23:51:00.000-05:00

OK, faithful readers, if you were not at Wednesday evening’s Main Stage event you missed quite a treat. Not only did we get Matches and Misses, we got quite a bit of sex. By the end of the evening I needed a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke.

Well, that’s not quite true as most of the sex discussed was unsatisfying and generally quite unpleasant. If it’s true that bad sex is better than no sex then what can we say about great writing about bad sex?

Well, my keen observations of my fellow audience members tells me that we love to hear all the excruciating, squirm-inducing, horrifying details. Is that because it makes our own relationships seem not too bad, or because it feels all too true?

If you don’t believe me about the amount of sex we had going on Wednesday night you should have a look at The Prairie Bridesmaid for bare butts stuck to frozen lakes, and Nicole Martokic’s Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot for descriptions of intercourse without intimacy and almost entirely without touching. Sad encounters, for sure, but touching and funny too.

Gerald Hill finished off the first half of the evening reading his poems of absent or imagined lovers, and did anyone else notice that the one called “My Cock” was the longest?

The first sex filled half of the evening was balanced, fellow fans of fiction, with a second half of missed connections, monsters of varying stripes and characters seeking those who may not want to be found.

But if there’s one thing you should take from this blog post, savvy readers, it’s that you must immediately seek out Rebecca Rosenblum and Pasha Malla. Both authors were new to my consciousness and you can trust that I will be following their careers.

* * *

Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.

Flickr-ing: the poets

2008-09-24T21:25:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the poets, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Colin Smith and Gerry hill chat at intermission.
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Flickr-ing: she lives!

2008-09-24T21:21:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: she lives!, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Young adult writer Anita Daher, still alive after a greyhound stabbing.
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Fear Not: the fan letter

2008-09-24T19:27:00.002-05:00

I got a late start to the festivities due to a sudden cold, so I didn't make it to my first event until last night. I went to Bloodlines at The Mainstage, where my poet crush, Maurice Mierau read from new book Fear Not.

I didn't have my volunteer schwag yet, so I swung by the hospitality suite in a vain attempt to pick up my golden ticket (i.e. name tag) in time for Bloodlines. Of course, no one was there except for the volunteer host, Adrian Michael Kelly. Adrian and I chatted for a bit over cheese and crackers, and I learned that he just moved to Winnipeg from Calgary. It turns out, the one Calgary writer I've talked to, Adrian knows as well. Or maybe just met him. Once. At some point.

Adrian convinced me to try to talk my way into Bloodlines. "I'm blogging about this event," I said at the door.

Too easy.

By the time I got in, Joan Thomas had just finished. But like I said, I was there for Mr. Mierau. I fell into literary lust when I first saw him read a few months back at the launch of Prairie Fire's Home Place 2. One of the poems he read at Bloodlines was "How to be a man," which there's actually a clip of him reading at a different event on youtube:

He cemented my adoration last night with "Friends Fail," a poem about my favourite reality TV show, America's Next Top Model. Mr. Mierau provided footnotes for the audience, but I'm actually so obsessed with this show that I would have been able to pin-point which season he had been watching. I liked that he assumed the audience was too cultured to know anything about this show, and suggested that they may even be too cultured to know who Tyra Banks is.

An index is provided in the back of Fear Not, because "poetry should be more friendly." So how many poems about ANTM are there in this book?

I'm still swooning, but unfortunately Bloodlines was Mr. Mierau's only reading at Thin Air. So until his official book launch on October 16, I'll get to work on a crafting perfect fan letter (or e-letter). Something sweet, but not aggressive—and genuine!

Mr. Mierau, if you're reading this, the current season of ANTM features a contestant that was born biologically male in the absence of Janice Dickinson's fake tits. Surely, some discourse in that...

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

Flickr-ing: the books

2008-09-24T15:27:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the books, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Heidi grips her copies of this afternoon's books.
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Flickr-ing: head on

2008-09-24T14:40:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: head on, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Pasha malla and Rebecca rosenblum.
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Flickr-ing: lunch

2008-09-24T14:17:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: lunch, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

A roasted chicken club and Austin Clarke at McNally Robinson pp.
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Out-take: owning the blur

2008-09-24T13:21:00.005-05:00

* * *

I hate using the flash on my camera when shooting indoors. The light in the pics is usually stark and ugly while ambient light is usually warm and orange-y.

But if I ONLY shoot without the flash, sometimes I don't get a SINGLE sharp image. And that makes me mutter to myself...so when shooting events, I usually shoot lots of pics, some with the flash, some without.

And then I see what I get.

Shooting without the flash means standing really still or finding something to rest the camera against, because I do not, repeat not, have a tripod.

I mean, there are tripods at home, knocking about (did I mention my partner, M, is a Winnipeg Free Press photographer?), but who wants to try to fit one in my bag? Plus, M is leery about equipping me with anything that I could then use to hit him with.

So, here are a few of the photos I 'got' from last night's Bloodlines edition of Mainstage.

Leave a comment if you know who any of the people are. It'll be like a game, see...

(Psst. Tonight's mainstage should also be a cracker.)

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

Words for Lunch

2008-09-24T11:44:00.004-05:00

Ok, I’m a little late. (It’s in my nature, it’s how I roll, I can’t help it. Would you like any other, really bad, excuses?)

Furthermore, I am also totally busted for taking so long, because Ariel saw me there and has likely been waiting for this blog entry. (Call it intuition. It has nothing to do with the fact that it is her current Twitter status….)

Yesterday for lunch I decided to eat words.

And they were delicious. (I also had a fake turkey sandwich and a bowl of soup.)

I attended the nooner with Joan Thomas reading from her new novel Reading by Lightning.

I have been having trouble deciding what aspect about this event to write about. So perhaps I will just give brief, point form feelings and observations.

- Joan Thomas made the most perfect comment before she began reading, conjuring memories of being read to in grade school after lunch time. Head on your desk, being able to sit back and listen to the teacher read. This is exactly what attending this reading over my lunch hour felt like. A little break from the expected Monday-Friday work routine. A little dose of imagination and play. Like recess for grownups.

- Ms. Thomas' novel is, in part, about the experiences of British immigrants to Canada. This brings up very interesting political issues, around the notion of what it means to look at the experiences of a group of people who have white privilege, but were also subjected to the occurrence of recreating a notion of home in a new and unfamiliar land. It is interesting the think about how issues of choice around immigration, as well as white privilege, play into and shape the feelings of displacement that come with re-establishing home in a new country. This brings up more issues then I care to get into here, but it was certainly something that got me thinking.

- The excerpt she read was about one of the characters, a young girl, finding her grandmother in her bed during the last moments of her life, and the process of grief surrounding that experience. It is difficult to write about grief, partly because in western culture we are not really provided a language with which to speak of the realities of grief/grieving. Ms. Thomas’ portrayal of this young girl's physical sensations - from running to get help, to the feelings in her body at the time of the funeral, all manage to convey elements of one of the most difficult emotional processes to articulate in words.

(I told you I love theory. Sorry if that was a little too much theory for a lunch hour reading break. I just can’t help it sometimes)

And today, I will be off to the nooner with Miriam Toews. Which I will report back on much more promptly. I promise.

As for my first festival experience, these lunch time breaks are finding themselves to be quite popular with me.

* * *

Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”

She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).

By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.

Recap: day two

2008-09-24T11:11:00.010-05:00

There is something so decadent about a room full of people listening to authors talk about process, and work habits, and other authors during the middle of the day.

There is something so decadent about a room full of people listening to authors talk on a beautiful fall day.

What do you do with such privilege? The ability to ignore the (fleeting) sun, the need to earn money under the sun.

What do you do with such privilege? You enjoy it, because it's yours and things could be MUCH worse.

You enjoy that art and story is available, that you are one of many gathered in the interest of art and story, and you watch the closed and open faces of the others.

It strikes me that the few truly communal experiences we have left are all in the interest of art and story, as we've lost interest (for better or for worse) in more solemn gatherings.

Though the afternoon book chats are meant to be intimate spaces, with room for conversation and interaction with the writers, this felt thronged, in perhaps the best way.

It's my belief that we need to spend time in the dark with a room full of other human beings to be right in the head.

We need to rise to our feet as a group, to feel strong and full-throated, to hurt our hands and to yell yell yell. We need to laugh and hear other people laugh.

And David Bergen and Mary Swan were up to the challenge of a full-to-the-brim afternoon book chat. They were different enough, in terms of process, in terms of writing styles, to spark off each other.

The Q & A portion of the chat was good too, though the majority of the questions were addressed to David. Mary will have to forgive Winnipeg audiences for being so interested in David's brand new book, especially in light of his recent Giller long-listing.

(Mmm. Mary was also long-listed, wasn't she...but you know what I mean.)(Imagine Winnipeg actually being proud of it's successes! But that seems to be where we find ourselves, with two major novelists living in town.)

* * *

Though I was intrigued by Mary's answers to the questions posed her, I wasn't compelled to buy her book until after her Mainstage reading later that night.

She read a selection from her novel? book of linked short stories? that featured a character looking back on his life. A familiar pose that almost caused me to drift off but then, but then. Something about Mary's deep-ish voice, something about this character, this series of recollections.

Part of it was that the character - and the writing - weren't sentimental or precious about their recollections.

Quietly, solidly, Mary caught me. And I wasn't the only one. I watched Miriam Toews, sitting on stage, and she seemed to be getting caught too.

But I'm being unfair only mentioning Mary. Shockingly, I enjoyed EVERY SINGLE READING.

Usually, I usually like 2 of 6 readings. I admire one or two more, for the craft of the story if not the content, and I appreciate the performance of the piece, the performance of the author's personality, in maybe one more.

But to enjoy all the readings? Unprecedented. (Really. I mean it.)

And I wasn't alone, if the masses of people at the book table at the break and after it was all over (also, the attendant flushed exclamations: "Wasn't that GOOD?") was an indication.

Beyond the opportunity to spend some time in the dark with other people, I also appreciated being able to bring my love with me and hold his hand while listening to some very good writing.

I also was very happy, personally, to see two people. Gisela Roger, the administrator of Creative Retirement Manitoba's Senior Writers' Workshop, and Margaret Keller, a friend of my childhood who gets all worked up, and all worked up by reading.

As I walked out into the dark and rain, I was satisfied. By the chat, by the lit, by the writing life.

One final note: Maurice Mierau's poetry and his manner MORE than stood up to the fiction on offer. He came off wry and sad and smart, all very acceptable take-aways for a reading.

I'm very glad that poetry has snuck back onto the main stage besides just (just?) the Saturday Poetry Bash.

* * *

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.

Line of Inquiry: Saleema Nawaz

2008-09-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

Saleema Nawaz has published fiction in Prairie Fire, Grain, The New Quarterly, and PRISM International, and she is an alumnus of the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

She studied creative writing at the University of Manitoba, where her M.A. thesis received the inaugural Robert Kroetsch Award for Best Creative Thesis. Some of that work appears in her new debut collection of short fiction, Mother Superior (Freehand). Warren Cariou writes that “her observations are pitch-perfect, and her prose scintillates.”

Saleema Nawaz was born in Ottawa and lives now in Montreal where she is at work on her first novel.

* * *

1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

To be honest, I haven't done much performance as a writer. As of right now, I've only read for an audience four times, though that number will have doubled by the time I get to Winnipeg. By then, I might have more of a handle on what I can get out of it — and, with any luck, what I can bring to it! In general, though, I find it helpful to read my writing aloud: I can often be found muttering sentences in front of my computer to see if they have the right rhythm.

2) What do you want people to know about Mother Superior?

Well, without getting into the stories, I can say with great enthusiasm and complete modesty that, regardless of the contents, it's a beautiful object. Gorgeous cover, lovely fonts, guaranteed to attract notice on your bookshelves and earn the envy and esteem of your peers. Something in the fullness of its golden hue will even enhance the appearance of your other books, bringing them into an attractive harmony. (From below: See? Pretty!) Frankly speaking, it'll tie your whole bookcase together. Or maybe even the whole room — it's just that nice.

But the contents, too, I think are pretty good.

3) Will this be your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

I lived in Winnipeg for three years from 2002-2004, and about half of the stories in the book were written or started there. I moved to Winnipeg sight unseen, knowing almost nothing about it, and since then, I've developed rabid antennae for anyone uttering its name within a hundred yards. (More often, though, it seems like I'm the one talking about it.) It's a unique city. There's nothing like a Winnipeg winter — or spring! Or summer for that matter. And I miss my Winnipeg friends.

This will be my third time back since I moved to Montreal, and like the last trip, it will be much too short. I'm entertaining wildly unrealistic notions of what I can manage to squeeze into about a day and a half.

4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

I'm just finishing Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a book most people I know read years and years ago and which is just as hilarious as I've been led to believe. I'm also reading Horse Latitudes by Paul Muldoon because I'm trying to become civilized and read more poetry. The last book I read and loved was The Darren Effect by Libby Creelman.

Right now I'm working on a novel based on the characters in "Bloodlines," one of the stories in Mother Superior, only picking up with them eighteen years later. I'm finding it exciting to work on something with such a sense of freedom as to length. (If you call 'sitting in front of the computer for hours on end' exciting ... as I do.)

5) Do you have any advice on writing good sex? (Or even bad sex?)

The Guardian book blog tackled this subject recently. And the novel excerpts on the shortlist for the Bad Sex Awards (discussed and available here) are also hilarious and instructive. The award was set up to discourage "unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels."

I'm no expert (sexpert?), but I think the old adage about writing holds true for writing sex: less is more. (Unlike sex itself, I might add.)

* * *

Saleema Nawaz will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 24 - Mainstage, with Mary Swan, Joan Thomas, and Miriam Toews.
September 24 - Campus Program, University of Manitoba

Intro: Ashley Sy

2008-09-23T23:13:00.000-05:00

This past summer, I became an "emerging writer."

I decided that it was time to start the process of getting published. I had a few stories that upon re-reading them several months later didn't mortify me, so I started sending them out (after a few more edits, of course). Those three semesters I had spent in creative writing courses at the U of M had prepped me for what to expect—rejection.

But I was used to being published! I started writing as a wannabe music critic, using student papers as the forum where my opinion mattered. I hadn't taken any formal writing classes, so my foray into journalism was one of trial-and-error. All my stylistic mistakes are on record, but likewise, as I continued to improve, my flashes of insight were printed, too.

So how unusual it is to receive rejection letters, when my writing has been getting the OK from editors hungry from content. This is a different scene, I had to remind myself, time to pay your dues all over again.

When I was writing about music, I knew how to pull strings to get onto guest lists. In the Winnipeg literary world, I have no pull. My involvement with this blog is entirely selfish—I want to schmooze. I need professional help—as a writer, I mean.

Keep reading: to see who I meet, what I learn, and how I attempt to use this blog for career advancement.

As of today, I'm still emerging.

* * *

Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.

Flickr-ing: bloodlines

2008-09-23T20:06:00.002-05:00

Flickr-ing: bloodlines, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Gisela Roger, poet, at mainstage.
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Reading: Joan Thomas

2008-09-23T18:14:00.004-05:00

This was my second time seeing Joan Thomas read. Having added her book, Reading by Lightning, to my ever-growing pile of new books but not having had the chance to dip into it, I was re-intrigued by her reading.

I also wanted to note how very gracious and intelligent her introductions are.

It makes me hate her a bit, actually. I'm not good at thanking people in private, never mind in public, and sounding intelligent? Well...

In any event, I'm happy to share a longish chunk of today's reading...

I take full responsibility for the crappy sound and none whatsoever for the literary goodness on offer.

(It was a longer longish chunk, which I edited down...you missed camera shake and also a rather loud giggle.)

Flickr-ing: throng 2

2008-09-23T14:58:00.002-05:00

Flickr-ing: thronged 2, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

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Flickr-ing: throng!

2008-09-23T14:54:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: throng!, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The events alcove filled to the brim at the afternoon book chat.
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Flickr-ing: lunch!

2008-09-23T13:36:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: lunch!, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

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Flickr-ing: high noon 3

2008-09-23T13:03:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: high noon 3, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Janine and bev, writing and publishing types, at Joan's reading.
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Flickr-ing: high noon 2

2008-09-23T12:32:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: high noon 2, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The ever-loving audience...
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Flickr-ing: high noon!

2008-09-23T12:13:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: high noon!, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Joan Thomas greets people at her nooner event.
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Behind the Scenes #3: Perry Grosshans, GM

2008-09-23T09:53:00.004-05:00

Or, More More More Behind the Scenes at THIN AIR Day 2

Well, we've had Lift Off and now we're in orbit!

Up early this morning to get to MTYP. The next three hours are rush, rush, rush, pray, pray, pray, as I wait for furniture, water, glasses, linens, wine and a fridge to arrive. We hang banners, and drap cloths, and pin skirts for tables, and arrange, arrange, arrange.

It's school event, very entertaining and fun, except that every now and then Ken's lapel mic sounds like a horde of bats is flying over him (really, no fooling...squealing little bats...weird but somewhat fitting).

But that's Day One - little bugs. Eventually Chris C the Tech Guy figures it out: the cordless mic is sharing the same frequency as the cordless mics in another rehearsal room. Fixed.

At the Mainstage tonight, a bunch of little blips and blurps: no quarters for change at the bar (begging people for change); No books for the draw (borrowed them from McNally); Charlene forgetting to mention the surveys and to direct people where to put the finished ones...and really, no designated place FOR them! We still managed to gather a bunch (thanks to all who filled them out), and tomorrow we'll designate a place for finished ones.

All in all, nothing to destroy the Festival, but all those little first night bumps you try to plan for...but can't.

Oh, and Tavia parking in the wrong spot and getting towed, and I had to go and rescue her and Genni Gunn from the U of Wpg and go get her car from the impound lot. Really - hard to plan for that.

Flickr-ing: the writer, the volunteer

2008-09-23T09:19:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the writer, the volunteer, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Madeline coopsammy, poet, personing the hosp suite.
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Flickr-ing: the view

2008-09-23T09:16:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the view, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

The view from the hosp suite.
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Consider yourself warned

2008-09-23T08:07:00.000-05:00

I have made a horrible discovery. The Winnipeg International Writer’s Festival uses addictive psychotropic drugs to lure people into a life of literacy. I know this because I can feel them working their heinous magic this very second. I would have told you sooner, but I showed no signs of infection until today.

I suspect I’m feeling their effects faster than you because they got to me early (I knew I shouldn’t have taken Ariel’s lunch recommendation at that blogger meeting. The drugs were in the chicken).

I first noticed something was wrong around 8:00 pm last night. I was minding my own business, enjoying a quite a family gathering that had taken me away from the festival, when all of a sudden I started to get this funny feeling in my stomach. It was like there was a 5lb rock playing trampoline on my diaphragm. Within a few minutes I was having heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. I considered calling an ambulance, but it was too late, I was chasing the dragon.

Before I knew what was happening I was lost in a wash of memories. Soon the rock in my stomach and the flutter in my chest seemed familiar. In one brief moment I saw every party I wasn’t invited to and every school dance I couldn’t attend. I was feeling the regret of missing something that could be special. I was feeling it like I was sixteen. I was feeling it about the festival.

Luckily, I had enough of a grasp on reality left to remember that special moments at the writer’s festival only happen once in a life time. And since I had already seen one of those moments in my lifetime (my good friend George’s reading way back when), I knew that there was no way one could’ve happened tonight. I knew I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I knew it was impossible. I knew I must have been drugged. It was the only possible explanation.

At first I was frantic. Should I go to the hospital, should I try to vomit, should I call Chandra and yell at her for getting me into this mess? What should I do?
And then it came to me...warn as many people as you can.

So here it is:

They’ve got the drugs, they’ve got the writers and eventually, if you keep coming around, they’ll get you too.

Consider yourself warned.

* * *

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.

Line of Inquiry: Andrew Hood

2008-09-23T07:00:00.001-05:00

Andrew Hood studied in the creative writing program at Concordia in Montreal and won the Irving Layton Award for Undergraduate Fiction there.

His first collection of stories, Pardon Our Monsters (Vehicule Press), won the 2007 Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in English. The Montreal Review of Books called it “a powerhouse of artistry” and the Globe and Mail calls it “uncannily, magnificently good.”

After graduating from Concordia, Hood filtered beer at the McAuslan Brewery, and then returned to his home town of Guelph where he now lives and writes.

* * *

1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

The last step of editing I take - before I consider a final draft "done" - is reading the story out loud, refining the rhythm and diction that way, so I think my prose is generally conducive to performance. And performing a story is certainly more immediately gratifying and constructive, what with your being able to gauge a listening audience's reaction in a way you'll never be able to with a reading audience. When I'm alone and plugging away, I really relish the thought of eventually taking that piece out of that shut off place and into the fresh air. Over the two or so years that I was working on the stories in Pardon Our Monsters I had a lot of chances to perform the work, usually in a rough form, and I think that really helped shape them. At that time in Montreal (and probably still) poetry was fairly ubiquitous and I was often the only story writer on those bills.

The thing with poetry is that there's always something lost in either direction from page to the stage - I find that poetry which works really well on the page often falls flat when done live, and poetry that works well live just doesn't work in a book. Prose yarns, on the other hand, tend to be gangbusters in either medium. So much of reading poetry has to do with rumination over time, whereas fiction relies much more heavily on reaction in time. I find that nothing susses the proof out the pudding better that reading a story for a live audience; it either works or it doesn't, and your listeners will let you know.

2) What do you want people to know about Pardon Our Monsters?

Trying to work out a brief synopsis for the back of the book was all kinds of painful. The thing should speak for itself, hopefully. But if I had to speak on behalf of the book, then I'd probably assure people that, for the most part, the stories in there are all about love. There is plenty of violence, ugliness, confusion, rancor, and cruelty in the stories, sure, and it's easy to dwell and focus on those elements, but maybe more difficult is seeing that all of that bad business comes from want of love, or loss of love, or the stress of love. There's a line in the first story that, for me, sums up those that follow. It goes something like: "It's the hardest fucking thing in the world to love someone who hates themselves so much." The "fucking" might have been edited out, but that's the way it was originally written, and that sentiment is at "the heart" of the book. Probably.

3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

I drove from BC to Montreal this summer. A friend was supposed to join me, though he bowed out on the trip a day or so before. I had planned the trip to get him to Toronto in time for a wedding in Toronto, and I just went ahead and kept that schedule anyway, so instead of taking my time, I blew through the country in five days, driving for as long as I had sun. So I passed through Winnipeg, but was then fairly delirious and pushing for Kenora.

That's the only time I've been to Winnipeg and I haven't heard much about Winnipeg except for that Weakerthans song that goes "I hate Winnipeg." And the people I have known from Manitoba have expressed the same sort of attitude. (On the other side of dour, I've also heard a great deal of good things about the tight, but crazy active art scene there.) But, like any real hate, there has to be a fundament of love. I think you can't help but hate the place you're from. I've moved back to my hometown, Guelph - which is the Corbet in the book - to do some research and some work, and I say every day that I hate it. But nowhere else feels like this place. I don't think you can have any sort of full, round love without a stain of hate somewhere in there. I suspect that we resent most those things that mean the most to us. So I'm sure Winnipeg is lovely.

4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge blows my hair back; I read it at the beginning of summer and have been coming back over and over again. Just recently I've read Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms along with his Collected Stories. Those two - maybe by dint of their both being Southern - create these amazing children - children characters I mean - kids that are as smart as the Glass kids, but without the intelligence. Besides those, I've been reading a lot about the Russian Mennonites that settled in the prairies, so a lot of Rudy Wiebe and this guy Frank Epp. I just finished Lee Henderson's The Man Game. I enjoyed that.

As for writing, I've been about as distractable as a cat in an aviary this summer, so it's been all over the place--I can't seem to sit still with a story these days. I've been working away at some short stories that I've mentally collected as "Traps and Attractions", the title coming from a novella-in-progress about the vortexes in Sedona, the recreationists in Tombstone, and the notion of "sexual tourism." Alongside those stories, I've been working on some connected historical yarns that I see as, if not a sort of history of Canada, then at least one of Ontario, ranging from the Scots failed attempt to create a colony in Panama, the founding of Guelph by the novelist John Galt, the Great Toronto Fire of 1904, the Mennonite Selbstshutz during the Bolshevik Revolution, and the moon landing, with some diving horses, two headed colts, and decapitated cats thrown in there somewhere. (If it never gets around to being written, then I figure I'll at least have this description of it to remember it by.)

5) How is filtering beer like/unlike writing?

I'm glad you asked. Filtering and editing share many similar qualities, I've found. During the time I was editing the manuscript of POM and finishing up a few final stories for it I was working the 10pm to 6am shift filtering beer, so I had a lot of time to think about the correlations - it's called the graveyard shift because you're basically dead to the world. What it comes down to (or distills to, ha!) is patience. Brewing, filtering, and bottling beer on a rather strict weekly schedule is no easy feat, as you can't do squat with the brew until it decides it's ready. The beer calls the shots. Fermentation time can be predicted and controlled fairly well, but each batch will behave uniquely. Sometimes the beer will ferment quickly, and sometimes the yeast will be sluggish and take forever. When the time comes to filter the beer, the objective is to get all the shit out of there - the yeast is gotten out with a centrifuge, and the proteins with diatomaceous earth. Beer needs time to sit before it's filtered, the yeast that is suspended during fermentation needs to settle, otherwise your filtration will be hell.

Given time to sit, I find that a story sort of edits itself - all the redundant and cockamamie elements fall to the bottom, will separate themselves in time. For me, the best thing I can do from a story is walk away from it for a while, so I can come back to it with a perspective that's a little bit more on the outside, somewhat closer to a reader's perspective. And oftentimes, for me, it is those initial elements of the story, those impetuses and self-prompts, that are necessary to the writing of the story, that are the first to go in editing. The story has used up those activating ingredients, like the yeast eats up the sugar to make the alcohol, and when you've got your story just boozy enough, you need to get out the yeast.

Granted, all that's a bit of a stretch, but it made perfect, clear, sterling sense at the time.

* * *

Andrew Hood will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 23 - Mainstage, with Maurice Mierau, Mary Swan, and Saleema Nawaz.
September 24 - Campus Program, Red River College, with Rosanna Deerchild.

Flickr-ing: the signing

2008-09-22T22:23:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: the signing, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

On stage after tonight's mainstage.
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Flickr-ing: audience reaction

2008-09-22T22:13:00.003-05:00

Flickr-ing: audience reaction, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Morley Walker, Winnipeg Free Press Books Section editor, and Carol Dahlstrom, publishing woman-about-town, chat, post-mainstage.
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Flickr-ing: ready for company

2008-09-22T21:52:00.001-05:00

Flickr-ing: ready for company, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Karen makes the hosp suite pretty...
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AFTERNOON BOOK CHAT: Davidson & Friedman

2008-09-22T19:14:00.004-05:00

Andrew Davidson and Elyse Friedman both have a flare for eccentric characters. Whether it's a burn victim who is convinced there is a snake crawling up his spine or a grown man who gets sexual gratification from being treated like a baby, complete with soother and diaper and smoochie-gootchie speaking, these writers have an amazing ability to stick themselves into some twisted, twisted shoes.

This afternoon, at McNally Polo Park, they spoke about their writing, how they accomplish such leaps of imagination, how they edit and how they become inspired.

What was interesting was how different their approach to writing was. When asked about where their stories and their characters originate, Andrew said that "I don't find my characters, my characters find me." Elyse, on the other hand, finds that by taking common pop-culture characters and flipping them on their heads (her example was, instead of a celebrity stalker, a celebrity that stalks his fans), she can create some interesting people to write about.

When it comes to the editing process, they also had completely different methods.

Elyse prefers to edit as she goes, writing small amounts daily and then going over it before she moves on. Andrew, on the other hand, says that he throws out 85% of what he writes, preferring to get his ideas onto the page and giving himself complete freedom to throw away anything and everything.

He also had a piece of editing advice that I thought was really good, saying that, while he needs to write in absolute silence, he prefers to do his editing in coffee shops. His reasoning was that he needs the little distractions public places provide, because without them he would over-think every word.

There was plenty of good advice aside from the stuff I've posted here today, and I understand that there will be a video posted of the conversation later on the WIWF website. I encourage everyone to check it out.

* * *

Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.

Thoughts from Oodena

2008-09-22T16:01:00.002-05:00

"How long will $100 last in a crack pipe?"

"Not long."

"If you smoke the memories of your son, will they last longer?"

"Yeah."

The words above are from a poem Jordan Wheeler read at the opening night of the Writers Festival (and forgive me if they are not Jordan's exact words, I'm quoting from memory). Before last night, I had never heard of Jordan Wheeler. When he took the stage, the small cobblestone circle at the bottom of an amphitheatre near the point where the Assiniboine River flows into the Red, a place called Oodena, he told us how he was asked to write something about Winnipeg, something that speaks to his relationship with the city.

Before beginning, he apologized to the City Councilor standing behind him for what he was about to say. He laughed a little, and so did the 100 or so people seated and standing around him. He then went on to read three of the most honest and unflinching pieces about the lives of aboriginal people in Winnipeg that I have ever heard. He spoke about disease, about addiction, about tasers, about poverty, about "Sweet Honey Brown" women found in the river downstream from where we sat, and about fathers who have lost their sons. He spoke of the cycles that keep people living these lives, and he did so in a way that could shock the complacency from anyone.

I had intended for my contributions to this blog to be about the craft of writing, and I went to last nights readings hoping to glean some insight into this topic. But Jordan's poems really grabbed me, as they probably did to so many of the people there, and they haven't let go.

I spent the next while trying to figure out why. Was it the fact that there was a City Councilor seated behind him, that he was speaking truth to power? Was it the immediacy of the images he conveyed? Was it the tone he spoke in? The experience he spoke of? I couldn't pinpoint it. I still can't.

As he finished, as people began clapping, I noticed a few gulls swooping through the sky above. As they flew, some turned their stark white stomachs towards the last glint of sun still showing, warming themselves in that warm dusk-light. I thought of how they have always flown over this spot and how I hope they always will. I thought of how, for thousands of years, people have sat where I was sitting and have listened to others tell stories, and how I hope people always will.

I then thought of the stories Jordan told. I hope he will continue to tell them, but I do not hope that he will always have to. I thought of how, with writers like Jordan telling their stories, there are good reasons to hope.

Thank you Jordan.

* * *

Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.

Line of Inquiry: Genni Gunn

2008-09-22T11:03:00.002-05:00

Genni Gunn is a writer, musician and translator who has published two novels, two short story collections, two poetry collections, and two translations from the Italian of Dacia Maraini’s poetry. Her work has been recognized with nominations for a host of prizes, including the Commonwealth Prize, the Gerald Lampert Poetry Award, the Journey Prize, the John Glassco Translation Award, and the Premio Internazionale Diego Valeri.

Her most recent projects are the 2007 poetry collection, Faceless (Signature Editions), and an opera libretto, Alternate Visions, produced in Montreal in 2007.

Genni Gunn has a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver.

* * *

1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

Performance, for me, is a natural extension of creation. I say this, because I spent many years as a musician, and in that genre, although the practice and creation of new work took place in solitary confinement so-to-speak, it would have been useless without performance. Does music exist if there’s no one to hear it? When it comes to writing, sometimes in fiction, the performance takes place between the reader and the page. But poetry – a language of rhythms and sounds – begs be read aloud, so that its music can be heard.

2) What do you want people to know about Faceless?

In Faceless, I’m exploring the impulse for the edge, that intriguing attractive place between safety and disaster, and the faces and masks we don while journeying through our lives. I began the title poem when I heard that odd, interesting, ironic story about the woman whose dog clawed her face off, and her subsequent facial transplant. It naturally set me thinking about faces and identity, and the multiple facades and personas we adopt in our dealings with others.

3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

I’ve been to Winnipeg several times – once earlier this year for a day – and during my musician days on various occasions. I hear it’s a hotbed of art. Many of our finest writers come from Winnipeg, so there must be something in the water or the air. Oh yes, I hear it’s windy too.

4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

I read constantly, so this answer will be out of date within days. However, two books I’ve really loved recently are Damon Galgut’s The Impostor and Daphne Marlatt’s The Given. In terms of my own writing, I’ve just completed a new novel, and I’m working on a collection of stories.

5) You've written both fiction and poetry. Do ideas come pre-packaged as fiction or poetry or do you have to live with them for a while before a form suggests itself?

I keep a journal of ideas, and don’t think about form until those ideas insinuate themselves into my consciousness. Sometimes two disparate ideas come together to suggest a story or a poem. Sometimes an image surfaces. Or a scrap of conversation. There’s no set rule. Whatever sets me off in whatever direction.

* * *

Genni Gunn will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 22 - Campus Program, University of Winnipeg.
September 22 - Mainstage, with Duncan Thornton, Andrew Davidson and Elyse Friedman.

The big confrontation

2008-09-22T10:31:00.004-05:00

I’ll have to be honest with you; I thought it’d take me longer to figure out who ruined my life. I thought I could stretch it out all week long and have a really cool detective-type thing going on, but unfortunately the festival screwed me again.

Turns out the person in charge of booking the festival is also in charge of introducing everyone on opening night. So that’s it. I’ve already solved the mystery. All the festival has left me with is “the big confrontation”.

And let me tell you, if this Charlene woman keeps wearing pant suits like she did tonight, that’s definitely not going to happen. It was a very powerful pant suit. She topped it with a shiny blazer. It had a nice line.

But enough about her smart outfit. What it all boils down to is that because of this festival, my big shot at being a real writer is in the toilet. I don’t have an angle. Without an angle I’m a reporter and who wants to be that?

Anyway, what am I going to write about now? I guess I could write about the authors, but why would anyone want to hear about them. In my experience, they’re kind of boring. Mostly they just sit around and write. Sometimes they throw things, but that’s about it. I figure most of them live their lives in the twenty foot radius around their desks and that’s not exactly the stuff that’s going to keep people glued to their computer screens. As of opening night, this gig sucks.

Ah whatever, I have to write something so here is a rundown on opening night.
The thing starts up with this Charlene women saying hi. It was pleasant enough. She thanked some people and tried to hock some raffle tickets. I was not thanked, nor did I buy a raffle ticket. If I had an expense account I probably would have bought one, but I don’t. Once she was done, we move onto the politicians.

Normally politicians annoy me, but I’ll have to say, today they didn’t. I think it had to do with two things. First, without the government the arts don’t happen. They give us creative types the money necessary to do what we do. But more importantly, they didn’t “eat the microphone,” so you couldn’t really hear them.

Next, one of the festival’s board of directors spoke. I can’t really tell you what she said either cause I wasn’t really listening, but she seemed like a cool lady. I caught her bobbing her head, slapping her lap and grooving to the rhythm of the spoken word guy. That lady’s got beat.

When she finished, the formalities came to an end and the writers finally started reading.

They were all commissioned to write something about Winnipeg. All of them did except one guy, but he was from St. Boniface. You know about them.

The first guy, Wheeler I think his name was, he was great. He took a risk and led off with the tough side of this city. He painted the picture we don’t like to share. I liked it. You have to be tough to live here. Al Purdy tough.

I think Carol Matas was next. She talked about how no matter how hard you try, this city always pulls you back. To that I say, sing it sister. The place is a black hole, not even light can escape.

After Carol came a guy with a jaunty hat. Him I liked a lot. Not only was he dressed to kill, but he almost sold a painting and had the best gimmick ever. He wrote his piece about Winnipeg on what was presumably a map of Winnipeg. I need to start thinking like him. I need a better gimmick. Cranky just doesn’t sell anymore. Oh yeah, his poem was good too.

Chandra Mayor was up next. She looked fabulous. She got caught on her chair, but she looked great doing it. She read about places in this city that no longer exist. It was kind of sad.

Actually, come to think of it, everybody was making me feel sad. Is there anything about this place that doesn’t involve loss, heartache and the desire to run?
Oh yeah, there was the guy with the hat.

The last person to read was the guy from St. Boniface. Like I said, he didn’t really write about Winnipeg, but what he did write was a lot like here. He talked about the kiss to end all kisses. How it is the best and the worst, the up and the down, the everything and the nothing. To me that’s a pretty good description of here. It’s everything I wanted, but not.

Well, I guess that’s all I really saw tonight. I’m sure it wasn’t as exciting or riveting as a detective story, but what can you do when you’re being persecuted by an entire festival. Bye for now.

* * *

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.

Slideshow: Voices from Oodena

2008-09-22T00:17:00.002-05:00

oh winnipeg

2008-09-21T23:45:00.002-05:00

If only a city could be a lover, I would pick you.

Curled in on the cement steps of Oodena, the ironic backdrop of the Asper institute shining in the distance, I am left feeling settled, disturbed and at home within the atmosphere of opening night.

And that is just it. This city, full of painful irony and beautiful repulsiveness somehow gives way to [for lack of a better word] magic. Almost addictive in its elusiveness.

I keep trying to grab at it/whatever it is/ this obsession I have with this ridiculously imperfect city. And just like the authors tonight, I am often left struggling with just what words and stories to use to convey these intimate, deeply rooted feelings.

What I loved so much about these five, very diverse writers, was their honest commitment to trying to find something, at least one thing, to name and hold onto as a way to frame what it means to be here/to exist in this “one great city”.

And whether it was the work of Jordan Wheeler, Chandra Mayor and nereO Eugenio; passionate dialogue infused with a politically critical lens, or the work of Carol Matas and Marc Prescott which carried a lighter but equally as intimate tone, opening night was made up of writers being asked to pull out pieces of themselves that felt something, anything, towards this little prairie town.

And nothing makes me happier then people sitting around, talking about Winnipeg.

* * *

Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”

She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).

By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.

Video: Voices from Oodena

2008-09-21T23:27:00.011-05:00

Tonight was opening night of THIN AIR 2008.

Unlike last year, and, according to Tanya, spouse of Perry, the year before, this year's Voices from Oodena actually was IN the Oodena.

I'm not sure precisely what an Oodena is, but I like saying it. Oodena. Oodena.

The night was lovely.

My favorite things about the evening, aside from the readings (amply covered by Courtney and, I think, Jay) were the swarms.

The children who moved over the stony bony ribs and shoulders that surrounded the amphitheatre. The late summer mosquitoes immediately over our heads, interspersed with midges, and the gulls in the airspace over that.

The children who rolled bony bonelessly down the hill while Marc Prescott talked about a kiss that would sum up a lifetime of kisses, one lover to another. The rabbit that quivered in the orange light while Chandra Mayor read of Ms. Purdy's and gin and then started nosing the late summer grass immediately next to Opening Night spectators.

The air, both warm and cool. The words, rising from the grass, from the centre of the amphitheatre.

THIN AIR.

Behind the Scenes #2: Perry Grosshans, GM

2008-09-21T21:41:00.004-05:00

Or, More Musing from Behind the Scenes of Opening Night.

Opening Night is not that stressful, really. It's only the weather which is the crap shoot. And tonight we rolled sevens!

Beautiful clear night, with a bit of breeze to keep most of the mosquitoes away, and warm, warm, warm like early Fall should be.

So, outside event at the Oodena Ceremonial Circle. Cool. Chairs for the audience will be the surrounding hillside and stairs. All we need is a sound system, a few chairs for the readers and greeters, and an extension of the lamp I brought for the podium. No problem.

The Forks maintenance guys arrive at 5:40 and proceed to tell me they've never set up the sound system before.

Heart does a little skip.

But then one says, "Wait, I think I remember Andrew showing me these cords here," and they proceed to plug and play. Thankfully, they get it working. Yay!

We string cords across and around the sacred central circle, set up the wobbly podium ("Yeah," the other says, "We're waiting for it to break to build a new one." Nice.) But it all looks great. The Forks guys pull through! Yay!

Bert Johnson, a friend of Charlene's, is a sound whiz and somehow turns some dials and makes the whole damn thing sound quite amazing and loud enough. Really great sound this year, thanks to Bert, and thanks to the five readers who literally ate the mic to talk into it.

After its over, everyone scatters, but I gotta stay to guard the system before the Forks guys can come back to clean up. It's over, but Lift Off has been achieved.

Tomorrow, I set up the Mainstage...I love it.

Flickr-ing: opening night 5

2008-09-21T19:39:00.003-05:00

IMG00308.jpg, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

A photo of the video of the festival.
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Flickr-ing: opening night 4

2008-09-21T18:52:00.002-05:00

IMG00305.jpg, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Our set up at the oodena...
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device