FYI:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
5/31/2007
CALL FOR SPOKEN WORD
POETRY SUBMISSIONS

The Word On the Street Festival invites poets to read their work at The
Poet’s Corner, Library Square, on Sunday, September 30, 2007. Poets will be
given a 7minute spot to perform in, between the hours of 12:00pm and
5:00pm. Submissions should include a SASE if you wish your material to be
returned and artists are also strongly encouraged to send an audio tape or CD of
their performance.
Sorry, no email submissions!

Please send submissions to

Poet’s Corner
c/o
442 Cardiff Way
Port Moody V3H 3T1

Deadline for entry is July 15, 2007*

* See us at the Wax Poetic/Coop Radio table at Summer Dreams (We’ll take submissions there too!)

Help us promote literacy and celebrate Canadian literary arts at Library
Square, downtown Vancouver.

The Word On The Street is an annual one-day festival celebrating literacy
and the written arts. Held in five cities across Canada simultaneously -
Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax - The Word On The Street
celebrates reading and writing with free exhibits, performances, readings
and hands-on activities every September.

Last year, Vancouver’s The Word On The Street attracted over 40,000
visitors, and hundreds of participating exhibitors, authors, and performers
to Library Square for literary readings, cookbook demonstrations, music,
contests, panel discussions and much more.

We invite you to join us and become part of Vancouver’s favorite annual
celebration of words and reading.
For more information, call us at (604) 788-8340 or email srduncan  at shaw dot ca
http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/vancouver.php

cross-posted from raincoaster

What: The Shebeen Club: Perspectives on Storytelling

When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, May 22^nd, 2007

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

Why: Herald the arrival of Spring with Canada’s top storyteller, Nan Gregory

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

How(much)? $15 includes presentation and dinner

Once upon a time…it was a dark and stormy night…let me tell you a story…it all began…

with Nan Gregory.

One of the original Shebeeners from back in the Jurassic period, Nan is not just one of Canada’s best storytellers, she’s also the woman who gave the Shebeen Club its name. We are delighted to welcome her back as our featured presenter in a very special evening of stories and conversation about writing, hypertext, the colonization of the imagination, and the importance (or not) of plot.

Your admission includes a dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta, plus one glass of pop, wine or beer.

Bio: Nan Gregory has been a professional storyteller for over 20 years. She tells myths and legends, folk tales and fairy tales, tales from history and tales from her own life for audiences of all ages. She tells in libraries, schools, theatres, conferences-and, one winter, from the back of a horse drawn sleigh. She has been a featured teller at storytelling festivals including Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Seattle, Nagoya, Japan, and Palmerston, New Zealand.

She is the author of three picture books. How Smudge Came won the Sheila Egoff Award for best children’s book for 1996 in British Columbia and the 1996 Mr. Christie’s Award for best Canadian children’s book for seven years and under. Wild Girl and Gran was given the 2000 Canadian Library Association Book of the Year Award for text. Amber Waiting (2002) was named to the ALA’s Booklist Best for 2003. Her first novel, for ages 8 to 12, entitled I’ll Sing You One-O was published in August, 2006.

7-7:30: meet and mingle
7:30-8: listen and learn
8-whenever: a cage match between Jack from the Beanstalk and Jack Sprat. 

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

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.

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Vancouver Writes on February 23rd

(Vancouver, January 15, 2007) The Vancouver International Writers Festival presents Vancouver Writes—an evening of competitive wordplay that will bring together people interested in writing with established authors to produce “instant literature”. Join host Billeh Nickerson, authors Caroline Adderson, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Kevin Chong, Steven Galloway, Zsuzsi Gartner, Genni Gunn, C.C. Humphreys, Nancy Lee, Billie Livingston, Miranda Pearson, Bill Richardson, Timothy Taylor and many more of Vancouver’s finest for the first edition of Vancouver Writes.

Teams of eight participants will collaborate with one well-known Vancouver writer acting as coach and editor to come up with a piece of prizewinning fiction or poetry. There will be three contests during the evening, and writers will switch teams after each contest, giving participants the opportunity to work with a variety of writers. Vancouver jazz ensemble Mother of Pearl will help the participants get into the groove.

The Vancouver Writes judges will choose a winner for each contest and prizes will be awarded to the team. After the three sessions a grand winner will be announced, which will be published in The Tyee, BC’s on-line newspaper. Then the real fun will begin—live music, drinks, and a chance for the contestants and published writers to mingle and talk. For more information or to register go to www.writersfest.bc.ca.

Vancouver Writes is part of the Winterruption Festival, a showcase of food, arts and culture on Granville Island (February 23–25).

Vancouver Writes

February 23 @ 7:30 PM

Performance Works

Tickets: $20/18 students & seniors

Tickets are limited

Call 604-681-6330 or log onto http://www.writersfest.bc.ca

Winterruption 2007

February 23–25, 2007 on Granville Island

www.winterruption.com

-30-

For downloadable photos go to http://www.writersfest.bc.ca/media/author-photos.php

For more information contact Ann McDonell 604 681 6330 ext 104

Development & Marketing Manager

Vancouver International Writers Festival

dmm at writersfest.bc.ca

Stole this from Curtis at Can’t See the Forest. Someone alert Gawker: How did my biography get on the web already? Must be a leak somewhere; when in doubt, blame Judith Regan.

For all those writers, publishers, editors, bloggers, and journalists out there. Forget the office party and come drink with The Shebeen Club tomorrow night at the Irish Heather!

We’ll be upstairs in the Reading Room this time, at the Irish Heather in Gastown, 217 Carrall Street in Gastown, from 7-9pm. No cover, order off the menu and enjoy the best damn gastropub in the West!

Twas the day before Tuesday, when all through downtown
The email went out inviting Shebeeners down
To the Heather on Tuesday the 19th: tomoz!
For a drink and a nosh and tales of Santa Claus.

We’ll have a fun evening, no lectures to hear,
From seven ’til nine, just a-drinking our beer!
With Lorraine with Grinch earrings and a Santa hat,
You can come as you are, or all dressed up in spats.

And down in the kitchen arises a bashing
The chef is meat grilling and potato mashing.
Order straight off the menu and pay what you nosh
Tear into the butter, and the whiskies quite posh.

“Now Writers! Now Students!
Now, Publishers many!
Come, Poets! Come, Bloggers!
Come, Booksellers, merry!
To the Reading Room of the Heather
At the top of the stairs!
Now party on! Party on!
Don’t put on airs!

We’ll read Chrismas stories, and tell our tall tales
So drop in for a bevvy; I’ll tell about the old jail.
The Heather was lockup in decades gone by
So come down, serve your time drinking Guinness and rye.

Cross-posted from raincoaster, just in time for our Christmas Party at the Heather, December 19th.

This is simply the finest, most moving and most remarkable Christmas story I have ever encountered, and I have, as I happened to have remarked recently, well over two dozen books of Christmas stories. Moving as it does from England to Saudi Arabia to the far eastern tip of Russia, it qualifies as multiculti, too! It is a unique jewel by an author who emerged from nowhere, left this for us, and vanished again into a swirling blizzard of obscurity. I’ll post it using the MORE tag, so that if you enjoy it you can read the rest. If you don’t enjoy it, I suggest you seek medical assistance promptly, for your brain matter must be leaking out your ears or something. Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Story
By Sarban (John W. Wall)

I will tell you a Christmas story. I will tell it as Alexander Andreievitch Masseyev told it me in his little house outside the walls of Jedda years ago one hot, damp Christmas Eve.

It was the custom among the few English people in Jedda in those days to make up a carol-singing party on Christmas Eve. For a week before, the three or four of us who had voices they were not ashamed of, and the one or two who had neither voice nor shame, practiced to the accompaniment of an old piano in the one British mercantile house in the place: an instrument whose vocal cords had not stood the excessive humidity of that climate any better than those of some of the singers. Then, on Christmas Even, the party gathered at our house where we dined and, with a lingering memory of Yuletide mummers in England, arrayed ourselves in such bits of fancy dress or comic finery as we could lay our hands on; made false whiskers out of cotton-wool or a wisp of tow, blackened our faces, reddened our noses with lip-stick supplied by the Vice-Consul’s wife, put our jackets on inside-out and sprinkled over our shoulders ‘frost’ out of a little packet bought by someone ages ago at home and kept by some miracle of sentimental pertinacity through years of exile on that desert shore.

I am no singer, but I always had a part in those proceedings. It was to carry the lantern.

(more…)