Grapevine -- Member News Fall 2005

Joe Blades was a participating artist in the Fredericton Arts Alliance’s Artists In Residence 2005 Summer Series in the Soldiers’ Barracks Casemates, Fredericton, from 10-23 September. He wrote poetry on a manual typewriter and also posted the poems on his brokenjoe.blogspot.com. In October, he launched the Serbian-translated editions of two poetry books River Suite and Casemate Poems with publishers in Nis and Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro. Recently he has given readings at Mother Tongue Books in Ottawa, at the Canadian Poetry Association 20th Anniversary PoetryFest in Moncton, and in Side by Side Festival Côte à Côte in Fredericton and Moncton.

Sharon Bird Anderson - After several small articles in The Reader of the Telegraph Journal, a local history cover story in March has led to requests from readers for a book. During the Maritime Writer’s Workshop, non-fiction instructor Harry Thurston encouraged her to do the book, which he feels has a wider audience than local historians. In June, Sharon was invited by the Laubach Adult Literacy Program to speak at the Keswick Valley School during an afternoon tea which celebrated Adults Learning to read. His Honour Herménégilde Chiasson was also present. Non-fiction seems to be Sharon’s genre as an article was published in Facts & Arguments in September and she’s awaiting response of an article that was requested by History Scotland.

Véhicule Press is pleased to congratulate Judith Cowan for being short-listed for the ALTA National Translation Award for Mirabel, her translation of Pierre Nepveu’s Lignes aériennes. Mirabel is a Signal Edition edited by Carmine Starnino.

The handsome new trade paperback edition of Raymond Fraser’s book The Fighting Fisherman: The Life of Yvon Durelle (Formac Publishing) has been released and is now available at the world’s finest book stores (and online at Formac, Amazon, Chapters, etc).

PublishAmerica is publishing Bob Greene’s novella - Dream Lover — Until Then in the spring of 2006.

Mark Jarman gave a reading from his book Ireland’s Eye in Maynooth, Ireland, and he has an essay on old-timer’s hockey in The New Quarterly’s special issue on Hockey Writing in Canada.

Gretchen Kelbaugh’s first feature film, a drama called Margaret and Deirdre, has been accepted at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax (September) and the Silver Wave Film Festival in Fredericton (November). The screenplay won the CBC Producers’ Showcase for new screenwriters in 1999.

Marilyn Lerch gave readings at the Canadian Poetry Association’s AGM in Moncton in August.

Poet and 3M Teaching Fellow, Roger Moore’s book, At the Edge of Obsidian, is due out any time and Granite Ship, from his summer in Avila has been published. The poems in Granite Ship will be published in Avila, as well, with a Spanish translation.

Jim Morrison has had a tanka published in the first edition of a new poetry magazine, Gusts. Those interested in submitting to the magazine can reach the co-editor, Angela Leuck, at acleuck@look.ca. Miss Leuck is also the Quebec co-ordinator for Haiku Canada.

Arthur Motyer’s literary gay novel What’s Remembered was nominated for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award given annually to the best first novel in English published the previous year by a citizen or resident of Canada. Awarded since 1977, the prize has helped to launch the careers of such internationally known novelists as Michael Ondaatje, Joy Kogawa, W.P. Kinsella, Rohinton Mistry, Anne Michaels, and André Alexis. Published by Cormorant Books of Toronto in September, 2004, Michael Ondaatje calls What’s Remembered “a truthful and important story” with many “haunting moments and episodes.”

Michael O. Nowlan has three reasons to celebrate this fall. He submitted his monthly columns from Canadian Stamps News to the philatelic literature exhibition at the American Philatelic Society’s Stampshow 2005 held in Grand Rapids, Michigan in August. The jury awarded him a Vermeil Medal and certificate. In stamp collecting, a vermeil (vermillion) medal is a category between silver and gold which is usually granted to full-fledged books or catalogues and is not often awarded for columns. He also had an article published in the September-October issue of The Canadian Philatelist. Lastly, he expects his next book of poetry from the publisher in early October. He will have more to say about that in the next issue of NB Ink.

Moncton’s Lee D. Thompson was awarded a Creation Grant from the NB Arts Board to complete his short story collection entitled The Dreaming Sea.