so last night managed to catch only one event, the ReLit
Awards, an initiative founded & carried out by Kenneth J. Harvey. when it
first began they had a small party in Newfoundland with a bonfire. for the past
few years, the Ottawa International Writers Festival has been its home. it is one
of three (four) awards that take place as part of the festival, including the
Bywords John Newlove Poetry Award, the City of Ottawa Book Award & Arc's
Archibald Lampan Award for Poetry.
the idea behind the ReLits is to celebrate independent
Canadian presses. this becomes more & more important as we watch our
Canadian publishing industry be gobbled up by monopolies, now that it looks
like the Penguin will be Random. just what we need another house penguin.
i go to this event almost purely to obtain free books,
that's what a book slut I am. I think my favourite time was a few years back
when John Lavery played music for the ReLits at the Barley Mow & Stuart
Ross won the short fiction category. the bar was packed, there were snacks.
this time around the ReLits took place in Under One Roof, a space
for NGOs & private businesses dedicated to social activism, including
Octopus Books, which has opened a second location there. you could feel the
good mojo in the room.
Congratulations to the winners : Monoceros, Suzette Mayr
(Coach House) - Novel; Jumping in the Asylum, Patrick Friesen (Quattro) - Poetry; Pretty,
Greg Kearney (Exile) - Short Fiction.
See the lovely photo taken by the even lovelier John W.
MacDonald. I sat between two shutterbugs at the event: my husband Charles & our dear friend John.
I was blown away by Kearney's fantastic reading from a short
story from Pretty in the voice of an aging torch singer. this is the other
reason I go to the reading, to discover new (to me ) writers.The winners get these cool rings which spell out four-letter words. the rings were designed by Christopher Kearney.
During the event Harvey gave the audience challenging
questions about the books (I hope you realize I'm kidding when I say challenging)
& gave the books to those who answered correctly.
with a few exceptions, I was in a room full of strangers. I'd
never seen most of the audience before. glad to see the event attracting new
blood, but missing all my literary cronies.
I was glad to pick up Straight Razor Days from Joel Thomas
Hynes (Pedlar Press) & Grunt of the Minotaur by Robin Richardson (Insomniac
Press). it's wonderful that the publishers make so many books available for
free.
[as an aside, I have a less than sweet, but probably still
old-fashioned crush on Joel Thomas Hynes thanks to his first novel Right Away
Monday, which had me sitting in bars alone, drinking Guinness in the afternoons,
alternately delighting & agonizing over the travails of the main character
Clayton Reid. & then there was the second book Down to the Dirt, which
became a movie with JTH as the main actor. what a great piece of twisted
fuckupery. & then there's the chapbook "God Help Thee: A Manifesto
with original engravings by Abigail Rorer from Newfoundland's Running the Goat).
gosh I have such a hard on for Newfoundlanders. I expect the same fuck you
attitude & edge from Straight Razor Days, which I hear JTH doesn't like to
call poetry. yes, it is…JTH, yes…it decidedly is.]
tonight I'm looking forward to the 8:30 fiction event with
my old writing pal, Spencer Gordon, not that he's old. I consider him a
dear friend, even if he's another one of those who abandoned us for Toronto;
Anton Piatigorsky (who came to the fest before to talk about playwright stuff
& mesmerized me &); Barry Webster, a voice new to me.
last day of the fest, peeps. hope to see you there. buy me
chocolate.
1 comment:
thanks for pointing out their blog. http://www.writersfestival.org/blog
I'd forgotten it was there. good to hear how things I missed went.
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