Intro: Jay Diaz

George Elliot Clarke got me into this mess. He’s not at this year’s writer’s festival, but if he was you can bet I would be doing some fist shaking in his general direction.

Until I heard George read at the festival, I wanted to be a teacher. Wouldn’t that have been the life? Good pay. Summers off. Good pension. Benefits.

And then he had to go and read that poem about his mother’s kitchen and all hell broke loose. Somewhere in that kitchen (probably near the stove, I think there might have been a bready smell), I got this ridiculous notion I wanted to be a writer.

And where has this got me?

8.75 an hour is not good pay.

4% per check is not a vacation.

Smoking more does not reduce the need for a pension.

And I need a root canal.

Damn you George Elliot Clarke.

But, wait a minute...if the organizers hadn’t brought him here in the first place, none of this would have ever happened. All these years my fist shaking has been misplaced.

It’s not George’s fault (how could poetry really make that big a difference in someone’s life), it’s the festival’s. How could I have been so blind? The cause of my misfortune has been staring me in the face every September and I have done nothing.

But that ends today. No longer will I allow my fist to tremble with flaccid impotence. No longer will the guilty escape my wrath. I will find the culprits responsible for George’s appearance and...

Well, I’m not really sure what will happen, but you can bet there will be some heavy duty fist shaking involved.

* * *

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.

Intro: Emma Hill Kepron

Aah, autumn in Winnipeg. Gentle readers, we all know what this means: back-to-school, sticky bands on tree trunks and, best of all, the Writer’s Festival.

Once again, I am blown away, humbled, and awestruck by the sheer number of events planned and the enormous level of talent represented.

You may see me, my fellow fans of fiction, (and other genres, naturally) furiously taking notes, as I strive to bring you the freshest festival observations I can manage; straight from my brain to the internet, piping hot.

Sadly, the job that supplies the bacon to my home will keep me from some daytime events. However, this intrepid blogger will not shirk from evening proceedings, even if they do keep me up past my usual bed-time. I am that committed!

With a line up like this year’s, though, I would gladly stay up for days. Can you believe how lucky we are to have the likes of Joseph Boyden, Paul Quarrington, Austen Clarke, David Bergen and so many other talented creators in our midst? And for free or for cheap to boot!

I know I will be gorging myself on this literary feast, but there’s plenty to go around and I’m happy to share.

See you there!

* * *

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.

Behind the Scenes #1: Perry Grosshans, GM

It's the day before. Loading Day. We pack up what we need from the office, and get the Hospitality Suite ready for the hordes of volunteers and writers to start taking over the space.

Everything seems in order. Everything seems in place. And this is when the momentary panic sets in...

"Did we dot the i's and cross the t's? Or did we dot the t's and cross the i's!?!"

(Perry and Charlene Diehl at the THIN AIR press conference Sept. 3.)

That, I guess, is also the the "fun" part of the job: waiting for those little bumps, those hidden crevices, those sudden disasters that you have absolutely no way to prepare for. But that's why you make sure everything else is working, so that when something unknown does pop up, you can totally devote your time to fixing it, and fixing it quickly.

The first couple of days of Festival Week is usually like that for me. I try to enjoy as much as I can, but I'm never settled in until about day 3. By then, the whole thing has it's own momentum, and really, any little bumps that crop up will be washed away by the flood of preparations.

Charlene Diehl compares our festival to a swan - it's graceful and beautiful to the eye, gliding across the water effortlessly, while underneathe the legs are paddling like crap to keep the whole thing up and going!

Yup. We're the legs. And I'll be running like crap for the first couple of days to make sure it all looks graceful and beautiful.

Flickr-ing: four of five

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Blogger's meeting...
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Flickr-ing: office visit 4

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Perry, on his knees in the service of dame literature.
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Flickr-ing: office visit 3

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Perry and tavia with the cheese curds of plenty...
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Flickr-ing: office visit 2

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Window scrapers, dug out storage, destined for festival volunteers.
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Flickr-ing: office visit 1

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Cheese curds destined for festival authors...oh the curds!
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Pre-view: living the festival

So, the festival. Those eight days of writers at the end of September. I suppose I should write about the goings on, huh?

I've attended the festival for many years, both as a civilian and as a volunteer. This year, I've added a third hat and will be commenting on the festival from this blog.

Every year, I sit down with the festival program and try to come up with a bit of a schedule for myself. I dog-ear certain pages, daub others with highlighter, and transfer bits of information to my day-timer, even knowing that the day-timer will be abandoned mid-week and I will return to the program, trying to recall what seemed like a must-see a few weeks before.

Fatigue is inevitable with a festival that runs over eight days, probably even more so when your real life runs in a parallel stream.

(This is me at last year's festival, feeling - and looking - knackered, not surprising given my day-job and my small child. Plus, my shoes were ugly.)

Some festivals - the folk fest springs to mind - are a short-lived way of life, in that while it lasts, you spend your time living the festival.

THIN AIR doesn't work like that. While some people take the week off or even clear their evening social calendars to attend as many of the Mainstage events as possible, no one pitches a tent at the Forks and there is nary a whales' tail being peddled outside MTYP.

Also, the various series that run during the day are targeted to different audiences. The university events are for, well, university students and other interested people on campus. The noon event at the Millennium Library downtown is for office types who like a little lit with their lunches. The afternoon book chats are for ladies who lunch and various freelance-types (i.e. those with afternoons to themselves).

Over the past couple of years, I've made a point of attending some of the uni events, some of the afternoon book chats, a couple of Mainstages, and even the After Words series in its various incarnations.

Partially, that's because I live downtown, where many of the daytime events occur, and partially, that's because the festival has become an essential part of the fall for me.

I commit to being there as much as possible.

(Which is an elaborate way of saying that I always intend to attend about a third more events than I actually get to.)

More later on ACTUAL EVENTS I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO.

* * *

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: custom 2

IMG00286.jpg, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

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* * *
This is MY program, post re-customization. Much less poky now...

Now to digest the contents, to decide what I MUST attend and what I can safely miss (or assign to another blogger...).

(Did I mention there are other bloggers? Five of them, potentially?)

(At this point, it looks as though there will be three girls and two boys, all of which were recc'ed to me, because I know NO ONE in this town...)

Flickr-ing: custom

IMG00284.jpg, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

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* * *
This is MY program, as you can see from the cover and body modification, achieved one evening after I'd spent some time with the thing, marked it up and made notes, and then had to flip through another copy that was floating around the house.

I wanted to be able to find my copy right away.

(Did I mention I'm also testing sending pics from my phone? Well, I am. Pfft!)

from pre-pre-view to pre-view

Hey all,

I know I just started posting content willy-nilly but I should back up and explain what's going on here...

My name is Ariel Gordon. I'm blogger-in-chief of HOT AIR.

The content I've posted so far is what I'm deeming a pre-pre-view of THIN AIR, which doesn't start until September 21. It was timed to coincide with the Sept. 3 press conference announcing the festival line-up.

I've got a few more odds and sods to post before I'm done with this pre-pre-view, but don't expect much more until we move into pre-view mode the week before the festival.

As with last year, you can expect lots of multimedia content, which includes video, audio, pictures, and text. You can also expect lots of interviews with authors, thoughts on readings, reading, and literature and more than a small soupcon of sillyness.

You also (reasonably, I think...) expect to see people other-than-me writing and commenting for HOT AIR.

Like the army, we're still (always!) recruiting, so if you're at all interested, here's the wherefore:

HOT AIR, the official blog of THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival, is looking for a few good (volunteer) bloggers. On offer to the lucky handful are free tickets to Mainstage events, festival paraphernalia, and the opportunity to rub shoulders, elbows, and ankles with book-ish folk. For more information, contact Ariel Gordon at janeday@mts.net.

Thanks to the THIN AIR staff for bringing me back for a second year of airing my opinions and tech savvy. Thanks too to Pasha Malla for being the inaugural featured author...

A.

Pre-pre-view: press conference doings

pre-pre-view: press conference essentials

The item of witty black clothing. This shirt, as worn by poet and translator Charles Leblanc, also speaks to living in a kinda-sorta bilingual province.

Apt, as Charles was at the presser to talk about the THIN AIR French events. Apt, as THIN AIR is one of two venues where the usually distinct French and English literary communities co-mingle (the other being the Manitoba Book Awards).

(This pic is sort of cheating, as I posted an image of Charles wearing the shirt in the hospitality suite last year. But, but...it is still compelling shirt. Which is why he wore it again and why I photographed it again.)

The books. Unlike sequins and feathers, books are weighty buggers & have a presence aside from their role as a square-shaped container for words.

These, of course, were meant to be a representative sample of books whose authors would be appearing at the festival. But they were really only books that McNally's currently has of authors that will be appearing at the festival, because some of those books aren't out yet.

And, given that McNally's likes their displays to be pretty, there was probably a few display-type-decisions that had more to do with contrast-y colours than literary heft.

(Here's a game for you. How many of the books in the pic can you pic-out?)

The free nibblies. Though I twittered that I was disdaining the mini-muffins (bah! mini-muffins!), there were other things on offer at this presser.

Small candied cinnamon buns. Squares that were actually triangles. Five carafes of hot beverages.

I made Michael Van Rooy, there as a representative author/giant, eat slowly for me. It was worth attending the presser just to boss him around.

Line of Inquiry: Pasha Malla

Pasha Malla has had multiple stories nominated for the Pushcart and Journey prizes, and has contributed to McSweeney’s, The Globe and Mail, Esquire, The Walrus, and CBC Radio’s Definitely Not the Opera.

His debut collection of short fiction, The Withdrawal Method (Anansi), has already generated critical attention. The Vancouver Sun calls his work “splendidly creative.” Matrix magazine calls it “disturbingly credible” and praises him for confronting “complex, irresolvable moral problems.”

Pasha Malla was born in St John’s NL, grew up in London ON, and until recently lived in Toronto.

* * *

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 have to say that I'd much rather just chat with people than read at them from my book. The best thing about festivals and readings is the chance to engage with folks -
whether they like my writing or not. A guy at a reading I did in June got up and attacked me for "writing about nothing" and I thought that was great. Now we email and I'm learning a lot from him - he's a Dachau survivor and war orphan, a really fascinating, inspiring guy. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to meet someone like that hiding in my apartment with my laptop.

2) What do you want people to know about The Withdrawal Method?

Well, it's been compared to stuff by Haruki Murakami, Barbara Gowdy, Neil Smith, Alice Munro, George Saunders, Jim Shepard, David Foster Wallace, and Rick Moody. So I guess if you like those writers, have a look at my book.

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

Yep, first time. I've heard great things. A good friend of mine has lived all over the country and he's settled down in Winnipeg - he says it's his favourite place in Canada. I'm excited to visit. I'm coming early to spend some time exploring the city.

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

I just read two books by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Monsieur and Television, and they both blew my mind. Dalkey Archive is reissuing his first two novels (in English translations) in November and I can't wait. I'm also reading Brenda Shaughnessy's excellent new collection of poetry, Human Dark with Sugar, and, slowly, The Brothers Karamazov; my bedtime reading right now is Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist who spent a lot of time with gangs and crack dealers on the southside of Chicago. Next up: Elfriede Jelinek's The Piano Teacher and Voices from the Storm, a collection of first-person essays by Hurricane Katrina survivors.

I'm writing two novels (one is YA), a bunch of freelance stuff, and, in fits and starts, a humour book about Spider Solitaire with my friend Kevin. And emails! Always, always, lots of emails.

5) Tell me what it feels like to have your first book out in the world.

Good. Weird, also. I wrote so many of those stories 5 and 6 years ago it's hard to think of them as my own at this point. Ultimately, I'm proud of the book, but I guess part of the thing about being a writer is that you're always onto the next thing. And that's exciting. I've got a lot of energy for the things I'm working on now, and for projects beyond these ones, and hopefully that'll continue for a long time.

* * *

Pasha Malla will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 24 - Afternoon Book Chat, with Rebecca Rosenblum.
September 24 - Mainstage, with David Bergen, Nicole Markotic, Daria Salamon.

Pre-pre-view: the loading dock

This is what you have to do if your office is on the sixth floor and you need 10,000 programs for your festival.

This is the before. Tomorrow is the after.

Pre-pre-view: Charlene Diehl

This is Charlene Diehl (THIN AIR Director) who sensibly wasn't in the office today, glimmering from the press materials.

Pre-pre-view: Perry's office

This is Perry Grosshans, THIN AIR General Manager. Though it doesn't look dark and momentous, what Perry is carrying in his arms is a box of THIN AIR programs. At the time this picture was taken, the programs were still TOP SECRET. Sneak-out-a-copy-in-yer-pants top secret.

But now, when I'm posting the pics, the programs (and the schedule of events it contains) is as common as mud.

That's because the programss were made available for the literati at Miriam Toews' McNally Robinson launch tonight.

Theoretically, the sched isn't actually launched until tomorrow morning, when there'll be a spiffy press conference, also at McNally's...

This is the view from Perry's window. Yes, Perry's Winnipeg includes derelict banks, downtown elm canopies AND Spiderman. And that's because he's a super-geek.

(I can only say that because years ago, Perry and I were in the same writing group. Where we shouted at each other. Okay, I did most of the shouting. But Perry was in the room at the time. And he giggled a lot. So now we trust each other and I can say true things like, "he's a super-geek" in public and he can't fire me.)

(Did I mention that I only got this gig because Perry trusts me? Also, because I've maintained a blog of my own for years. Also, because I can take photos and write and even make various devices do things. Also, because I'm usually at the writers fest anyways...)

This is the view from behind Perry's desk. Note the new-to-him computer (WIWF staff had rock-readers until last year. I'm not kidding.) and the classy bathroom sign.

Heh.

Perry was at the Miriam Toews launch tonight, talking with authors (and perhaps even some civilians) and watching people crack open his beloved program.

Then tomorrow he will talk to media-type-folk about his program.

After that, there's only the rest of the festival to plan and execute in the 18 days before whirring machine that is the festival starts, well, to whir.

I can promise you this: I'll be at that press conference tomorrow, eating THIN AIR's cookies and drinking their beverages. Because that's what an enterprising blogger does, see?