FAA Political Forum

A Message from the Fredericton Arts Alliance

The Fredericton Arts Alliance is a not-for profit arts advocacy and lobbying association founded in 1999 to present a collective voice for the development of all artistic disciplines. Part of the mandate of the Fredericton Arts Alliance is to mobilize the arts community to encourage artists, arts organizations, arts workers and friends of the arts to vote, and engage in meaningful political dialogue with the candidates.

The Fredericton Arts Alliance Candidates’ Forum on the Arts, 2006 is a initiative of the Fredericton Arts Alliance designed to encourage individuals interested in the Arts to vote in the upcoming Federal election and to be informed on relevant election issues. The Fredericton Arts Alliance is inviting all four electoral candidates to participate in an arts and culture community forum to be held at the auditorium in Charlotte Street Arts Centre on Charlotte Street, January 4th, 2006 from 7pm-9pm. This forum is open to the general public. All are welcome.

If you are an artist, or arts organization, and would like to ask a question appropriate for all the candidates to answer, please submit your question in writing to frederictonartsalliance@yahoo.ca by Friday, December the 23rd by noon. Unfortunately, questions after the 23rd can not be accepted. There will be an approval process to ensure that questions fit within the scope of a Federal election, that there are not duplicates, and so forth. It is a requirement that you or your representative must be present at the Forum to ask your question directly to the candidates.

This a great opportunity to make your views known, and to hear what candidates have to offer.

Griffin Poetry Prize deadline

A quick reminder that the deadline for the C$100,000 Griffin Poetry Prize is approaching. Books must be submitted postmarked no later than December 31, 2005 for books published between January 1 and December 31, 2005. Please remember to complete all necessary customs/duties paperwork when shipping your entries to ensure delays are avoided. For questions regarding the rules or to download an entry form, visit the website at www.griffinpoetryprize.com.


Griffin Poetry Reading Podcasts

The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry is pleased to provide poetry lovers with unique Griffin Poetry Prize content via a new medium - podcasting. Podcasting enables you to download and listen to audio content on your computer or on any device that plays MP3 files, such as iPods - whenever you want.

Visit the exciting selection of poetry podcasts at: www.griffinpoetryprize.com/podcast

Contest of the Day -- Danuta Gleed Literary Award

The Writers' Union of Canada invites entries for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. A $10,000 prize will be awarded to a Canadian writer for the best first collection of published short fiction in the English language; second and third prizes: $500 each. The award recognizes the best first English-Language collection of short fiction by a Canadian author. The award was created in 1997 by John Gleed of Ottawa, husband of the late Danuta Gleed, in celebration of her life and career as a writer of short fiction. Deadline: January 31, 2006. Full details...

Contest of the Day -- Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Contest

The Writers' Circle of Durham Region is accepting entries for the Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Contest. First prizes: Adult - $300, Child/youth - $25. Entry fees: Adults - $15. Child/Youth - free. Deadline: February 15, 2006. Poems on any subject matter, type or style. 30 lines max. Online entries only. Send poems, as WORD attachment, to: dansullivan@wcdr.org Payment online via PayPal, or by cheque to:
Dan Sullivan Memorial Poetry Contest, Category: Adult, c/o WCDR, P.O. Box 14558, 75 Bayly Street West, Ajax, ON L1S 7K7. More details...

Contest of the Day -- Ramble Underground 50-50 Fiction Contest

First place receives 50% of the collected entry fees (running total available on website). Top three winners will be published online in Ramble Underground quarterly. Entry fee: $6(US) per story. Deadline: February 15, 2006. More details...

Contest of the Day -- Gather.com's Fiction Contest

Gather.com, THE place for authors & publishers to share work with engaged audiences, announces its first short fiction competition. Entries of 3000 words or less are due by 1/15/06. The winner receives a cash prize. The winning story will be reviewed by a
Houghton Mifflin Sr. Editor & featured on Gather.com & VoidMagazine. Details ...

Open Poetry Reading

There will be an Open Poetry Reading taking place at Sessions Cafe, Rothesay, 7pm Tuesday Dec. 20. This is open to all poets who wish to share their latest and/or festive work(s). For more information, contact Heidi Bundschuh. heidi@nbnet.nb.ca or 849-1383.

Contest of the Day -- Lichen's 3rd annual Tracking a Serial Poet contest

LICHEN Arts & Letters Preview invites writers to submit three strong poems that work separately but rely on the series for the full meaning. Deadline: January 31, 2006. First prize: $500 + publication. Entry fee: $20 (includes one-year subscription); $5 additional entries. Details . . .

Yvonne Trainer Workshop This Weekend in Sackville

Award-winning poet, Yvonne Trainer, will be in Sackville this Saturday December 10th to give a writing workshop at the Struts Gallery Artist-Run Centre, 7 Lorne Street, from 1-4 pm.

The poetry workshop will explore six or more aspects of the craft of writing and create rough drafts of six poems that participants can take away and continue to work on. The workshop will include an introductory Q&A and cover topics such as from abstract to concrete, writing from the inside out, finding your voice, forms your teachers never taught you, entering the mysteries of the meta-forest, Ghost poems, and things you always wanted to know about poetry and were afraid to ask.

Registration fees for the workshop are $25 for WFNB members and $30 for non-members. Everyone is welcome. Interested participants should contact Underhill at 536-0461 or email kvu@nb.sympatico.ca or Mary Hutchman at 459-7228 / wfnb@nb.aibn.com.

Yvonne Trainer holds a BA from the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, an MA in English with a Creative Writing thesis from the University of New Brunswick, and a PhD (completed October 2004) in 20th Century Literature with a special topics area and thesis in Medicine in Canadian Literature, from the University of Manitoba.

She has published one chapbook and four books of poems. Frontenac House in Calgary, Alberta published the latest collection, Tom Three Persons, in 2002. Yvonne was also the recipient of the Edmonton Arts Trust Fund Award for Writing in 2002. In 2003 she was a guest poet at the Alden Nowlan Literary Festival in Fredericton. Recent publications of several individual poems appear, or will appear, in various literary anthologies such as Writing the Terrain, U of C Press (2005), Listening With the Ear of the Heart, St. Peter’s Press (2004), and A Portrait of [b]ill [b]issett, Nightwoods Edition forthcoming 2006.

Recent interviews, in which Yvonne discusses meetings with poet Alden Nowlan, occur in Patrick Toner’s Alden Nowlan: If I Could Turn and See Myself, Gooselane Editions, and Gregory Cook’s One Heart, One Way: Alden Nowlan: A Writer’s Life, Pottersfield Press. Recent interviews dealing with the making of Tom Three Persons appear in Prairie Journal Literature (Calgary) and Filling Station (U of C). A long interview centering on Yvonne’s writing life, including her early years on the prairie, is available in Rags (The Mud Larks Writing Group) 2005.

Yvonne presently teaches English Literature part-time at the University of Alberta (Augustana campus). She is also researching and creating a pictorial, poetic, and historical long poem sequence on the life of Dr. Brett, an early physician in Alberta, plus writing Ghost poems.