Bread 'n Molasses Magazine at Words on Water

The Words on Water arts series and Saltwater Sounds invite you to the official launch of Bread 'n Molasses magazine Volume 3, Issue 3, featuring ECMA nominees The Terry Whalen Band.

Join us for an evening of the blues with Miramichi's own Terry Whalen Band as featured on the cover of Bread 'n Molasses magazine. With special guests The Heritage Players theatre group, who will give a special sneak peek performance from their upcoming production, Grammy Grace: A Midwife's Tale.

Following the main event, the mic will open up to anyone who wishes to perform through music and words on the theme of "the blues." Share your blues through music, poetry, short stories, etc. in five minutes or less, and you might even find yourself featured in an online video or published in an upcoming edition of Bread 'n Molasses magazine.

Everyone welcome! Come enjoy a good old fashioned night of Miramichi entertainment with Bread 'n Molasses magazine at Saltwater Sounds for Words on Water.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
6:30pm - 9:00pm
Saltwater Sounds
1738 Water Street
Miramichi, NB

For more information contact Kellie at (506) 773-7668 or email editor@breadnmolasses.com

Please feel free to forward this invitation to all of your contacts who might be interested in attending.

Frye Festival Celebrates 10th Anniversary in Style

The Frye Festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary! The Festival will begin its celebrations today by unveiling the line-up for the 2009 edition, which will be held from April 17 to 26 in Moncton, NB. Canada’s only, bilingual, international literary festival will bring together world renowned authors with audiences of all ages in a bilingual celebration of words.

Founded in honour of the famous literary critic Northrop Frye, the Frye Festival attracted over 16,000 attendees in 2008 and over 80,000 since its inception. This event receives its financing from all levels of government, generous corporate sponsors and individuals. The Frye Festival is managed by two employees who are supported by over a hundred volunteers.

“Ten days of festivities, ten days of wonderful discoveries, ten days to celebrate words and literature. What better way to celebrate the tenth year,” said Stéfanie Wheaton, Executive Director of the Festival. “We want to thank all those who have supported us from the very beginning and those who join us each year. Thanks to the public and our generous sponsors, the Frye can create these unforgettable moments between authors and readers.”

There is truly something for everyone at this year’s Festival. Heading the tenth anniversary celebration is Jane Urquhart, author of five award-winning books: The Whirlpool, Changing Heaven, Away, The Underpainter, The Stone Carvers, and A Map of Glass. Urquhart will be joined on stage by Wayne Johnston and Miriam Toews for an evening featuring the best of Canadian literature, hosted by the Globe and Mail’s Martin Levin. Wayne Johnston is best known for The Custodian of Paradise, his fictional account of former Newfoundland Premier Joey Smallwood and Miriam Toews is the celebrated author of A Complicated Kindness (winner of the Governor General’s Award) and The Flying Troutmans.

On the francophone side, the famous French novelist Alexandre Jardin, well known for his successful Roman des Jardins and who just released Chaque femme est un roman in 2008 will be attending. Also attending is journalist, writer, columnist, and television director, Jean Barbe, creator of the weekly publication Voir and of the Montreal cultural newspaper Ici. His most recent novel, Le travail de l’huître, was published in October 2008.

The Frye Festival is Canada’s only officially bilingual literary festival. Every year thousands of New Brunswickers meet face-to-face with some of the brightest literary minds of our times. The Frye Festival has hosted winners of all the major international literary prizes bringing globally renowned literary talent to New Brunswick communities. Tickets for the 2009 edition of the Frye Festival can be purchased from the Greater Moncton ticketing network. For more information on the Frye Festival and its program, go to www.frye.ca.

Must-see events

The Frye Festival will celebrate its 10th anniversary in style with John Ralston Saul and Antonine Maillet, in an evening extravaganza on Friday, April 17. The Festival is planning another special evening with Alexandre Jardin, an excellent and intriguing French author. In addition, the public will be able to discover some of the best young writers in the province, hosted by Governor General’s Award winning poet Serge Patrice Thibodeau and Gerard Beirne, UNB’s Writer in Residence.

This year, the Antonine Maillet–Northrop Frye Lecture will be given by Monique LaRue, a novelist and literature professor at Collège Édouard-Montpetit. The title of the talk is “Between Two Books: the Writer’s Time.” She has published numerous novels, articles, and essays, such as La Démarche du crabe, for which she received the Grand Prix du Journal de Montréal in 1996, and La Gloire de Cassiodore, for which she received the Governor General’s Award in 2002. The lecture will take place at noon on Saturday, April 25, at Moncton City Hall.

The film-writing workshop, a very popular annual event, will be hosted this year by the New Brunswick scriptwriter Tony Sekulich. Let’s not forget, the traditional Soirée Frye, the many workshops, the Night Howls hosted by Paul Bossé at the Caveau, and the Frye Jam back by popular demand with Les Païens and their guests. The official opening of the Frye Festival will take place at 11 a.m. on Friday April 17, at Moncton City Hall.

The importance of promoting literature among young people

The School Youth Program is a vital component of the Frye Festival that seeks to encourage students to discover the magic of reading and the written word. From April 17 to 26, the Festival will offer youth from schools all over New Brunswick the opportunity to interact with authors in their classrooms. Last year, more than 10,000 pupils met authors face to face, totalling 180 school visits. Over $6,000 was donated in new books to participating schools and the Festival gave $4,200 in prizes to writing contest winners and their schools. The traditional KidsFest – with its games, contests, author readings, and writing workshops – will take place on Saturday, April 25, at the Moncton Public Library.

Among the list of children’s authors, the Festival will feature Sheree Fitch, one of Moncton’s most loved authors. Sheree will do it all – from school visits, to workshops, and even an appearance at KidsFest! Other authors on the children’s roster are Lesley Livingston, a trained thespian whose spoken word performer, broadcast journalist and musician Nova Scotia and Alain M. Bergeron, author of more than 100 children’s books.

BILINGUAL POETRY READING AND BOOK LAUNCH -NELA RIO

The public is invited to the launch of the latest collection of poetry by Argentine-Canadian poet and artist Nela Rio, a long-time resident of Fredericton.

The latest book is called Aquella luz, la que estremece / The Light that Makes Us Tremble and has been translated by Hugh Hazelton (winner of a Governor General’s Medal for translation in 2006) and copublished by the following publishing houses: Broken Jaw Press Inc. (Fredericton) and Enana Blanca (Montréal). The original Spanish collection was a finalist for a prestigious poetry prize in Spain in
1991 and subsequently published in Spain. Nela Rio has published multiple collections of poetry and is an established internationally recognized poet, artist and literary critic who taught at St. Thomas University for many years. The poems in this collection can be characterized as explicitly erotic in their language and message.

Literary critics have already lauded the collection, comparing Nela Rio’s work to that of other Nobel winning Latin-American poets such as Pablo Neruda. This bilingual collection has already been launched in Montreal last November as well as in Toronto and in the United States.

Several of Nela Rio’s books have been published in bilingual and trilingual editions by Fredericton’s Broken Jaw Press, including Sustaining the Gaze: When Images Tremble / Sosteniendo la mirada: cuando las imágenes tiemblan / Soutenant le regard: quand les images tremblent (2004, with Brian Atkinson) and En las noches que desvisten otras noches / During Nights that Undress Other Nights (2003), among others.

The reading will be bilingual, Spanish and English.
Date: Wednesday February 18th
Time: 7 pm
Place: Tilley Hall, Room 104, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton Campus (9 MacAulay Lane)

This reading is free, open to all, and co-sponsored by the Department of Culture and Language Studies (UNB Fredericton), NB Latino Association and Broken Jaw Press. Books will be on sale (cash or cheque only) at the reading.

More information on Nela Rio’s new book:
http://www.brokenjaw.com/catalog/pg118.htm
For more information contact: Dr. Sophie M. Lavoie, (506) 458-7469 or lavoie@unb.ca.

Author Appearances - Captured Hearts: New Brunswick's War Brides

Click to Enlarge

Two NBers Nominated for GGs

David Adams Richards

The Canada Council for the Arts announced the finalists for the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Awards yesterday and two New Brunswickers are among the nominees.

Miramichi’s David Adams Richards is nominated in the fiction category for The Lost Highway. The Canada Council for the Arts statement said, “The Lost Highway is an intimate and compelling psychological portrait of a lost soul. David Adams Richards writes with an overarching humanity that points to our foibles with sympathy and humour. His open, honest and supple prose creates a world we at once recognize and see anew.”

Richards is one of only three writers to have won both the fiction and non-fiction awards for Nights Below Station Street in 1988 and Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi in 1998, respectively.

Jo-Anne Elder of Fredericton received her second nomination for her English translation of Béatitudes, a book of poetry written by Herménégilde Chiasson, Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick. Elder received her first nomination in 2003 for her translation of the novel Tales from Dog Island by Françoise Enguehard.

Photo by Herménégilde Chiasson
The Canada Council for the Arts statement said, “In translating Herménégilde Chiasson’s Béatitudes, Jo-Anne Elder has met the challenges of both the emotionally-charged content of the original, and its specific literary form, the litany. She has movingly rendered the complexity expressed in this contemporary ‘sermon on the mount,’ while providing an English text rich with sensuality, rhythm and a sense of communion.”

The finalists include authors from ages 28 to 77, several previous finalists and three first-time finalists who are journalists. The awards are in the categories of fiction, non fiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature (text and illustration) and translation.

A total of 1,469 books were nominated for this year’s awards. Thirty-two of the 73 finalists are nominated for the first time. At least nine of the finalists are under the age of 35. The themes of mortality, war and place figure prominently in several of the books.

Canada Council for the Arts funds, administers and promotes the Governor General’s Literary Awards. Each winner will receive $25,000 and a specially-bound copy of the winning book. The publisher of each winning book will receive $3,000 to support promotional activities.

Non-winning finalists will each receive $1,000 in recognition of their selection as finalists, bringing the total value of the Awards to approximately $450,000.

The winners will be announced on Tuesday, Nov. 18 at 10 a.m. EST at the McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montreal.

Banff Centre 2009 Writing Studio

The Banff Centre is now accepting applications for:
2009 Writing Studio
April 27 – May 30, 2009

Application deadline: October 31, 2008

Literary Arts director: Steven Ross Smith
Program director: Greg Hollingshead
Faculty:
Fiction and other narrative prose: Edna Alford, Marilyn Bowering, Steven Galloway, Jack Hodgins, Isabel Huggan
Poetry: Dionne Brand, Don McKay, Karen Solie

The Writing Studio is a five-week program offering poets and writers of fiction and other narrative prose the time, space, and support they need to pursue a writing project.

Financial assistance is available.

For more information and to apply:
The Banff Centre, Office of the Registrar
107 Tunnel Mountain Drive, Box 1020
Banff, Alberta T1L 1H5, CANADA
1-800-565-9989 or 1-403-762-6180
arts_info@banffcentre.ca
www.banffcentre.ca

Kathy Reichs Reading in Moncton

Best-selling author, forensic anthropologist and inspiration for the hit Fox TV show Bones, Kathy Reichs is coming to Moncton! Get your copy of Bones to Ashes, set right here in New Brunswick, and get ready for the Frye Festival's 2nd Community Read event on Sunday, October 26th at 2pm in the Moncton High School Auditorium.

Reichs is one of only 56 professionals certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She testified at the UN Tribunal on genocide in Rwanda, identified people from mass graves in Guatemala and did forensic work at Ground Zero in New York City. She has written 10 best-selling novels inspired by her work. Reichs' most recent novel Bones to Ashes, which will be published in French this fall, takes place in New Brunswick. Reichs is fluently bilingual and splits her time between Charlotte, North Carolina and Montreal.

Don't miss this unique event, which will feature Greater Moncton "book-clubbers" on stage with the best-selling author! Tickets are on sale at www.tickets.moncton.ca or by calling (506) 857- 4100. Limited tickets will be also be available at the door. Adults $20 / Students $12.

Frye Festival Youth Writing Contest

FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, the Great- West Life / London Life Writing Contest is open to high school students province-wide! Check out the new themes and write to win $100, $300 or $500! This year, there will be two distinct categories for creative writing and essays, so express yourself in your own style. The deadline for entries is December 12th.

The Great-West Life – London Life Writing Contest provides student authors the opportunity to demonstrate their writing skills.

Prizes are $500 first place, $300 second place, and $100 third place. Participating schools will also receive one ballot per submission (max. 15) to be placed in a draw for a prize of $500 toward the purchase of books.

Download PDF for full details.

National Novel Writing Month Turns 10

There are some who say writing a novel takes awesome talent, strong language skills, academic training, and years of dedication. Not true. All it really takes is a deadline – a very, very tight deadline – and a whole lot of coffee.

Welcome to National Novel Writing Month: a nonprofit literary crusade that encourages aspiring novelists all over the world to write a 50,000-word novel in a month. At midnight on Nov. 1, more than 100,000 writers from over 80 countries – poised over laptops and pads of paper, fingers itching and minds racing with plots and characters – will begin a furious adventure in fiction. By 11:59 PM on Nov.
30, tens of thousands of them will be novelists.

2008 is the ten-year anniversary of NaNoWriMo, founded in 1999 by freelance writer Chris Baty. In its first year, NaNoWriMo had just 21 participants. In 2007, over 100,000 people took part in the free challenge, making it the largest writing contest in the world. And while the event stresses fun and creative exploration over publication, 24 NaNoWriMo novelists have had their NaNo-novels published, including
Sarah Gruen, whose New York Times #1 Best Seller, Water for Elephants began as a NaNoWriMo
novel.

Around 18% of NaNoWriMo participants "win" every year by writing 50,000 words and validating their novels on the organization's website before midnight on Nov 30. Winners receive no prizes, and no one at NaNoWriMo ever reads the manuscripts submitted.

So if not for fame or fortune, why do people do it?

"The 50,000-word challenge has a wonderful way of opening up your imagination and unleashing creative potential like nothing else," says NaNoWriMo Director (and nine-time NaNoWriMo winner) Chris Baty. "When you write for quantity instead of quality, you end up getting both. Also, it's a great excuse for not doing any dishes for a month."

There will be a "Meet and Greet" Event held 2:00 pm Sunday, October 26 at Chapters (Regent Mall), 1381 Regent Street, Fredericton, NB, E3C 1A2. Come and find out what the buzz is all about.

If you would like more information about National Novel Writing Month, or would like to talk to participants from NaNoWriMo chapters in your area, please visit our website at www.NaNoWriMo.org, or contact Fredericton Municipal Liaison Susan Douglas (506-451-2955) OR press@nanowrimo.org.