Memoir Writing Workshop

Enjoy the 2015 Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival

Celebrate words, imagery and books through the talents
of 16 award-winning regional authors 

at the Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival 

to be held October 2-4, 2015. 

Readings, author-audience discussions, workshops, writing contests, book signings, local musicians and more.

Invited authors represent genres from mysteries and memoirs to poetry, novels, short stories and non-fiction.

Amongst the line-up are Richard Wagamese (Indian Horse), Fred Stenson (The Trade and Who by Fire), Lorna Crozier (14 books of poetry and a Governor General award-winner), Naomi Beth Wakan (Nanaimo’s Poet Laureate), Steven Galloway (Cellist of Sarajevo and The Confabulist) and William Deverell (Arthur Beauchamp detective series).

Two free workshops at Sidney’s library too: memoir writing by Wakan and creative writing for kids ages 9-12 by children’s author Nikki Tate.

A separate series of workshops will be presented by three local authors at two schools near Sidney. “This is one way we like to give back to the community,” says Sharon Hope, president of the organizing society.

The three-day Festival will wind up Sunday with a “Breakfast with the Authors” at Haro’s Restaurant where each author shares a table with half a dozen participants.Weekend pass and individual event tickets are available online at http://sidneyliteraryfestival.ca/tickets/ or at Tanner’s Books in Sidney and Munro’s Books in Victoria. Support the literary arts!

Contact: Gillian at sidneyliteraryfestival@gmail.com

Website: http://sidneyliteraryfestival.ca

The Living Room

A free and open democratic reading where people read their own work and listen to others in a circle format.

Nanaimo North Branch of  the VIRL

Location: 6250 Hammond Bay Road

Second Thursday of the Month

September 10, 2015

4:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Other Dates: Sept. 10th, Oct. 15th, 

Nov. 12th

Bring 3 or 4 poems to read.

The Living Room is designed for new, emerging, and established poets to come together in a sense of poetic community to share their work. Each poet will have opportunities to read original work of a maximum of 3 minutes. We will go around the circle without critique in the celebration of sharing. Each reading will have a host who will keep the group within these guidelines. Listeners are welcome.

The Living Room was initially conceived at the Taos Poetry Circus by Amalio Madueno  and established as a regular event in Seattle by Paul Nelson of SPLAB, The Seattle Poetry Lab. The Living Room was a part of the Cascadia Poetry Festival in Nanaimo April 30 to May 3, 2015 where participation was 31, 42 and 52 poets at the Living Room circle held at the Nanaimo Museum as a special event of the festival. Come out to the Vancouver Regional Library North Branch and continue the tradition.

Malahat Open Season Awards

I Want by Joseph A. Dandurand September 10,2015

Memoir Writing Workshop September 21

15 minutes of Infamy!!!

Wordstorm has a new venue

Random Writings in the Garden

Hazelwood Herb Farm in conjunction with Economusee B.C.   (http://bc.economusee.com/en/), is putting on a guided garden tour on Aug 28-29. 

As part of the event they are issuing a call for submissions for “random writings in the garden”: these can be poems, phrases, or excerpts from other works. Must be no more than 57 words, or 10 lines. 

Selected entries will be mounted on 8 ½” x 5 ½” sheet and displayed in the garden. Deadline August 24. 

Hazelwood Farm, 13576 Adshead Road, Ladysmith, B.C., Canada V9G 1H6 Phone: (250) 245-8007 info@hazelwoodherbfarm.com

Naomi Beth Wakan - A Gabriola Notebook

Available at Page's Resort for $20

In Gabriola Notebook, Naomi Beth Wakan offers clear-eyed observations of her chosen home of Gabriola Island. The book is wise and cynical, yet also rich, respectful and amusing. Naomi wryly contemplates the big questions—mortality, spirituality, love, enlightenment—while honouring the daily interactions and local heroes that form our community. Delightful and imaginative, funny and fearless, this is the guidebook to life on Gabriola that you won’t find at the tourism office.

Michelle Benjamin, Executive Director, Gabriola Arts Council

Written in a warm and playful tone, A Gabriola Notebook includes a series of elegant tanka poems that are introduced in lucid prose. Subjects ranging from politics to fashion are tackled with enthusiasm, honesty, and the occasional well aimed nudge by a highly sharpened literary elbow.

Jesse Birch, Curator, Nanaimo Art Gallery

Naomi Beth Wakan’s new book, A Gabriola Notebook, is a homage to Gabriola residents. Her writing is humorous, ironical, sometimes satirical, but very warm. The photos by her husband, Elias Wakan are also very enjoyable.

Kozue Uzawa, editor of GUSTS: Contemporary Tanka

When I sat down to read Naomi's notes about her island I quickly become lost; lost in the stories of the people, their newspapers, their singing and their politics. I whiled away an afternoon seeing the island world and its people through her unerring critical eye. Sipping tea, wearing a wry smile, and all the time thinking, with delight, how well Naomi has caught her islanders.

Diane Brennan, Nanaimo city councillor

     I like Gabriola Notebook, as I like Naomi Wakan’s Gabriola Island, where “new kale is sprouting from the compost.” Her own Gabriola world, her own curiosity: “I’ve always wanted to know what happens next” she writes. So do we.

Wendy Morton, roving prize-winning poet, maker of wonderful soup and a raven-watcher. She lives west of Sooke where kale also sprouts from the compost.

Pacific-Rim Publishers                                                                                                                     ISBN 978-0-921358-40-4

www.naomiwakan.com                                                                                     

A Call to All Poets from Vancouver Island Regional Library