Hey all, our June 17th meeing is set. We will be hosting White Rock editrix, writer, literary coach, communications consultant, blues-groover, cultural creative, and BC Federation of Writers President Sylvia Taylor, who will be presenting on the subject of memoir.

With everyone from Dave Eggers to James Frey to Socks the Cat jumping on the memoir bandwagon, it’s more important than ever to understand what makes a good story stand out. And of course, there’s always the thorny issue of literal versus subjective truth; when is it a novel and when is it autobiography?

Sylvia Taylor is an award-winning freelance writer, editor, instructor and literary coach in Metro Vancouver, with a passionate commitment to communication and the arts.

Through her business, Sylvia Taylor Communications, she writes articles and commissioned works, coaches authors of all levels and ilkes, consults with business and not-for-profits, and edits in all genres.

She is President of the Fed of BC Writers, and when not teaching in conferences and writing programs, she’s dancin’ up a storm somewhere.

What: The Shebeen Club: Blogging as Writer’s Practice

When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, June 26^th, 2007

Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown

Why: Learn the rewards blogging can bring to a writer’s daily practice

Who: Contact lorraine dot murphy at gmail dot com for more information

How(much)? $15 includes presentation and dinner

Blogging is the most powerful self-publishing tool ever invented; not only is it free and accessible, but it’s easy. Even the least technical can master it quickly. Learn the many powerful ways that blogging can reinforce and encourage your writing every day. Whether you’re working on a book, writing poetry, or working in multimedia, a blog can encourage your creative process and help you spread the word of your own genius!

This is a nontechnical introduction to blogging practices and benefits, not a how-to-blog course.

Your admission includes a dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta, plus one glass of pop, wine or beer, not to mention excellent company!

Bio: Lorraine Murphy is a Vancouver blogger, writer, and editor. She has been blogging for many years, both professionally and personally, and her flagship blog, www.raincoaster.com, is ranked in the top 18,000 blogs in the world. She also maintains The Shebeen Club Blog and running through rain, for students of her course Blogging to Personal Growth. Ms Murphy is the author of Terminal City: Vancouver’s Missing Women and a former Small Business Columnist at Business in Vancouver newspaper and Occupational Pursuit magazine.

Lorraine Murphy and Lori Dunn are the co-founders of the Shebeen Club.

7-7:30: meet and mingle

7:30-8: listen and learn

8-whenever: Blogger versus Wordpress GoogleJuice Splashdown.

Click to enlarge: if only the actual book were so easy to read!

Here, ladies and gentlemen, with the permission of the publisher Robert Chaplin, is the entire text of the smallest book ever produced, Teeny Ted from Turnip Town. The book was produced in association with nanotechnologists Dr. Li Yang and Dr. Karen L. Kavanagh from Simon Fraser University, and is so small that when you look at the plain sheet of polished silicon on which it is carved, you cannot see anything but the scratches laid down by the point of a diamond so that the electron microscope can navigate. That is the huge rut in the image above; the finest scratch visible to the naked eye. The eye does not register this thirty-page book, even as a tiny speck. It is an invisibook, unless, that is, one happens to be carrying in one’s book bag a scanning electron microscope, which possibility we at the ol’ raincoaster blog are not prepared to deny on a categorical or any other basis.  We know our readers are a tricksy bunch, yo.

Teeny Ted from Turnip Town is a tale of triumph, a story of success. Ted grows the biggest turnip; Ted wins the Biggest Turnip contest.

Ah, if only life were that simple.

Chaplin points out, rightly, that we do not know the mysterious Ted’s back story; we don’t know if he poisoned the other turnips, if he’s obsessed with size because he’s so short, or if winning the prize won him the heart of his true love. Back story be damned! Ted grows the biggest turnip, Ted wins the contest.

End of story.

The book is available from the publisher (contact him here) in a limited edition of one hundred copies, for $20,000. As it can be read only by those who can afford to have a spare scanning electron microscope lying around, price should be no object.

Suggested additional reading: Leaf by Niggle, by JRR Tolkien.

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From our April presenter, artist and publisher Robert Chaplin. You can read his blog at RChaplin.blogspot.com. This short film, based on his book 10 Counting Cat, is obviously the perfect present for your budding Goth.

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Just got confirmation that Robert Chaplin, publisher of the world’s smallest book, Teeny Ted from Turnip Town, will be our presenter for tomorrow night. Once again, here are the details AND the world’s smallest press release!

What: The Shebeen Club : Teeny Tome, Living Large!
When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, April 17 (3rd Tuesday of each month)
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown
Why: Celebrate Shebeen Alumnus Robert Chaplin’s publication of the World’s Smallest Book: Teeny Ted from Turnip Town!
Who: Contact lorraine.murphy at gmail.com for more information
How(much)? $15 includes dinner and a drink
 

This Month: Teeny tomes loom large lately. This week, the literary world welcomed its smallest member, as nanoscientists Li Yang and Karen Kavanagh from Simon Fraser University, together with independent Vancouver publisher Robert Chaplin and author Malcolm Douglas Chaplin, presented their minimasterpiece: Teeny Ted from Turnip Town. At 0.07 by 0.10 millimetres, it’s so small you’d need an electron microscope to read it; at thirty pages, it’s still pretty substantial for a dream book about a turnip tale. Small but perfectly formed, this book has made headlines around the world.

The Shebeen Club will celebrate this ironically monumental moment with readings, door prizes and a writing challenge, all specially miniturized for the occasion. Dinner, however, will be oversized as usual at the Shebeen.

Dress code: miniskirts or skinny ties, but please, no thongs.

The Procedure: Sink into a warm velvet banquette and enjoy our programme: your basic meet-and-mingle from 7-7:30, followed by a riveting, yet brief presentation, followed by Q&A and then breaking up into casual groups for wandering, boozy reminiscences of the time you snubbed Jay McInerney in the airport. A fine dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta from the kitchen of the Irish Heather, plus one glass of wine, beer or pop are included in the $15.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Murphy, raincoaster media ltd www.shebeenclub.com or  lorraine.murphy at gmail.com

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For immediate release:

What: The Shebeen Club : Creativity Tips for Writers
When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, October 17 (3rd Tuesday of each month)
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown
Why: Up your creativity with one of the world’s best creativity catalysts
Who: Contact lorraine.murphyatgmaildotcom for more information
How(much)? $15 includes dinner and a drink

Background: Each month The Shebeen Club gathers to catch up, gossip, eat, drink and learn about literature in all its many versions. We’ve featured Ann Vicente, maker of fine art books, actor and speech coach Jesse Jhames reading James Joyce, and many talented local authors including Robert Chaplin, James Sherrett, Sylvia Lim, comicbook empresario Sandford Tuey, and poet Lucan Charchuk, among many illustrious others.

Heir to the popular Stammtisch, created by Christoph Kapp of McGraw Hill, the Shebeen Club revives the warm camaraderie and vicious rivalry that has characterized all great literary meetings from the days of the Algonquin Round Table to last week at Gawker. The pen is mightier than the sword, so every third Tuesday of the month ditch the remote, stuff a messenger bag with manuscripts, adjust your berets, and head down to the Shebeen.

The Procedure: Sink into a warm velvet banquette and enjoy our programme: your basic meet-and-mingle from 7-7:30, followed by a riveting, yet brief presentation, followed by Q&A and then breaking up into casual groups for wandering, boozy reminiscences of the time you snubbed Jay McInerney in the airport.

A fine dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta from the kitchen of the Irish Heather, plus one glass of wine, beer or pop are included in the $15.

This Month: Our next Shebeen Club meeting is this Tuesday, October 17th from 7-9pm, and our featured speaker is Linda Naiman, internationally-known creativity instructor.

Linda Naiman will present strategies for cultivating creativity used by writers, artists, entrepreneurs and scientists, to help you keep your own creativity fresh and alive. Topics include: The distinction between creativity and problem-solving, the right-brain myth, the genius myth, and principles that encourage creativity.

This is an exercise-based workshop, so be ready to participate! Pencils and notebooks out, ladies and gentlemen!

Bio: Linda Naiman is founder of Creativity at Work.com , a Vancouver-based coaching, consulting and training group at the forefront of transformational change in organizations. She is co-author of Orchestrating Collaboration at Work, and is known internationally for pioneering arts-based learning and development in organizations. Her work has been documented in several books: Art-based Approaches: A Practical Handbook to Creativity at Work (Chemi 2006), Wake Me Up When the Data Is Over: How Organizations Use Stories to Drive Results (Silverman 2006), and Artful Creation: Learning Tales of Arts-in-Business (Darsø 2004). Her work has also been featured in The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, and Canadian Business Magazine. Linda is an associate business coach at the University of British Columbia, and an adjunct faculty member of the Banff Centre Leadership Lab. She holds a BFA from California College of the Arts, and a diploma in Graphic design from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.
For more information, contact: Lorraine Murphy, raincoaster media ltd www.shebeenclub.com or  lorraine.murphyatgmaildotcom 778-235-0592

A night in the cells gave me a different view of the cops
By Boris Johnson
(Filed: 10/11/2005)

I don’t know whether my old chum Matt D’Ancona has ever been incarcerated without charge. I do not suggest that he should be. I merely wonder whether I could briefly enter the woeful testimony of a man who has. There will be many loyal readers of this paper [the Telegraph] who will be appalled that any of its writers could have had their collars felt, no matter how fleetingly. I want to stress that it is a matter for shame. All I will say in my defence is that it was very late at night, I was about 19, in exceedingly high spirits, and apart from anything else, m’lud, I was plastered. Some events took place that might charitably be described as high jinks. I remember something to do with a bicycle, and dark deeds involving plastic cones. And letterboxes - though I wish to stress that nothing approaching criminal damage took place. It was all deeply pathetic.

At any rate the party ended up with a number of us crawling on all fours through the hedges of the botanical gardens, and trying to escape some police dogs. We were eventually rounded up and put in Oxford police station, about six to a cell. I didn’t so much mind the cells, with their slashed bunks and ominous smears. What got my goat was the trick the cops tried to pull. At about 4.30am, as the skies were starting to lighten through the bars, a couple of officers came in.
By this stage I am afraid that the Bullingdon Club was very far from the proud phalanx of tailcoated twits that had set out for dinner the night before. Some of us were beginning to whimper for our mothers. Others, half-asleep, groaned the names of their nannies. Some of us were brave enough to lie on the bemerded floor. Others stood up, streaked and dishevelled, and tried to sleep on their feet.
This was the scene when the coppers came in, grinning from ear to ear. All night long they had harangued us through the bars about some act of destruction they had found on their patrol; and though we were undoubtedly guilty of being drunk, disorderly and otherwise objectionable, we were fairly certain we were innocent of this particular crime.
But I got the impression that the police wanted to charge someone with something, and they needed a witness. Now, they announced triumphantly, they had found one. They had been talking to the six lads in the cell next door, and guess what.
“They said the blond fellow did it!” said the cop. I was stunned, outraged, and then a little fearful. To my dying day I will refuse to believe that any of my chums could have tried to fit me up, even after five hallucinatory hours in the cells. But I was suddenly conscious of the immense practical power of the state, and its ability to make my life hell. The police invited my cellmates to agree that I was the perp in question, and much to my relief they did not. Right, said the fuzz. They were going to keep us there until someone coughed. Then the officers vanished for a couple of hours, and I waited there with growing apprehension. Was I going to be charged? What had I done? Had someone really grassed me up? In the end, of course, they had to let us go.
Chastened and shaking, we all filed out, and I think back to that weird moment of shock - when I realised the cops were capable of making something up - and I rejoice that Tony Blair was defeated last night. I am glad that the Labour Government was thrashed in its attempt to extend detention without charge to 90 days.
I am glad because it was a bad measure, ill-thought-out, and had nothing to do with security, and everything to do with party politics.
We have already discussed the ludicrous provisions against “glorification” of terrorism, by which Cherie Blair should in theory be banged away for her apparent sympathy for Palestinian suicide bombers.
No one in his right mind could believe that Britain will be a safer country as a result of this erosion of free speech, and the same point can be made about the Labour plan to keep people in the clink for three months - the equivalent of a six-month jail sentence - without even charging them with an offence.
The entire objective of the measure was to outflank the Tories on terror, and to secure from distinguished conservative commentators such as Matt D’Ancona the kind of column that appeared here yesterday.
Mr Blair knows full well that there is a host of good people who are very frightened by the possibility of terrorist attack, and whose general view is that the security services should comb the mosques and detain, indefinitely, as many worrying-looking Muslims as they can. That is why the Sun and other papers report overwhelming support for his measure.
As it happens, neither the police nor the Government envisaged anything so draconian. The 90-day detention would have applied to only a handful of people, they say.
Indeed, the figures show that of the 357 people arrested under the latest Prevention of Terrorism Act, only 11 were held for the full 14 days, and of these all were charged. If the numbers are so tiny, why do we need this programme of incarceration?
No one could object to the minutest surveillance of such characters. Let us by all means bug them and watch them for 24 hours a day.
But if we have enough evidence to incarcerate someone for three months, then we should have enough evidence to put them on trial. That we have extended detention to 28 days is bad enough, but it was the best compromise available.
Blair’s only objective was to divide the Tories - now likely to make a resurgence under David Cameron - and make himself look tough. He failed. He may last another 90 days, but the charges against him are opportunism and incompetence, and the trial is coming up.
·  Boris Johnson is MP for Henley and editor of ‘The Spectator’

Boris Johnson has sent four articles on the topic of freedom of speech for our meeting on Tuesday. Copies of the articles will be available for attendees, and will be posted on our Website Tuesday for those who care to do their reading ahead, and there will be a reading that evening (sorry ladies, Boris will be staying home, but I have been assured I make an adequate substitute).

Here is the bio from his website:

About Boris Johnson

MP for Henley-on-Thames since June 2001
Editor of The Spectator (August 1999 to December 2005)
Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party (October 2003 - November 2004)
Shadow Minister for the Arts (April 2004 - November 2004)
Shadow Minister for Higher Education from December 2005

Mr Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 in New York, USA, educated at Eton, (King’s Scholar) and Balliol College, Oxford (Brackenbury Scholar in Classics). He worked for the Times and the Wolverhampton Express and Star before joining the Daily Telegraph, where he was successively a leader and feature writer, EU Correspondent, and Assistant Editor.

In 1997 he was voted “What the Papers Say” Political Commentator of the Year; in 1998 he was mystifyingly designated Pagan Federation of Great Britain National Journalist of the Year; in 2003 he was voted Editors’ Editor of the Year; in 2004 he was voted Columnist of the Year at the British Press Awards and in December 2005 “What the Papers Say“ Columnist of the Year. He was voted Channel 4 News Award for the person who made the biggest impression on the politics of 2004, 2005. He writes a weekly column for the Daily Telegraph, and has published four books: Friends, Voters, Countrymen; Lend Me Your Ears, Seventy Two Virgins and Dream of Rome.

Mr Johnson is married to Marina and they have two sons and two daughters.

More unmoderated information is available here:

Wikipedia: Boris Johnson

Well ladies and gentlemen, we have a confirmed speaker for Tuesday’s meeting, Banned Books, Freedom of Speech, and Mein Kampf.

Zahid Makhdoom, Vancouver JP and president of the World Sindi Institute, will be our featured speaker.

During the recent World Peace Forum, he moderated the panel discussion ROADBLOCKS TO PEACE IN SOUTH ASIA, and was for many years active in Aboriginal-Government negotiations across Canada.

Here is his biography from the WSI:

Mr. Zahid Makhdoom, President of the World Sindhi Institute’s Board of Directors from 2002 to present, was born in Sindh in 1954 and moved to Canada in 1984, where he continues to reside today.  During persistent struggles for human rights for the people of Sindh, Makhdoom was arrested and imprisoned for ten months in 1971-2.  He now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada with his wife and works as a Sitting Justice at the Provincial Court of British Columbia.  Mr. Makhdoom is an extremely engaging and dynamic speaker, with extensive knowledge of the politics and culture of Sindh, Pakistan, and the various political relations between and with both.  

Al Mader is a vocalist and washtub bassist for the (one-man) Minimalist Jug Band, and has scuffed around the country for many years.

If Lou Reed passed out on the grave of Johnny Cash and dreamt of Jack Kerouac the soundtrack to his dream might sound vaguely like Al.

He’s shared stages with the likes of Nick Cave, They Might Be Giants and The Cowboy Junkies.

Here’s a recent interview.