Author bag

I've been wanting to peek inside one of the THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival author bags for a long time...

For more thoughts, see the (goddamn lovely) HOT AIR blog.

HOT AIR 2009

This portrait of Bonnie Burnard's hands constitutes my first post to HOT AIR, which is, for those of you not keeping track, the official blog of the 2009 edition of THIN AIR, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival.

I'm not approaching HOT AIR with as much gusto as in years past. Besides being in the middle of editing Hump, my partner and I are also officially house-hunting...but fortunately, there are three other bloggers to share the bloggy load. And they're all magnificent.

It should go without saying that I'm looking forward to shooting more hands and having more haphazard thoughts about writing and books and festivals centered around books...and to spend the better part of a week celebrating writing.

See you there! (Or, if not in person, at HOT AIR!)

singe

This from our walk last week, in which there were many bugs and not many good pictures.

I've only ever seen this particular bit of flora once or twice before but given this year's this-year-ness, they're everywhere. They're also much easier to photograph now that they've gotten a bit...crispy, white-on-white not being my camera's favorite thing to shoot.

It is no coincidence that I'm also feeling a bit...crispy these days. Stupid first-cold-of-the-fall.

In other news, the HOT AIR blog will soon be whirling away in service of THIN AIR, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival. I've got a shiny new template, a fresh URL, and 3/5ths of last year's blogging crew.

I won't be quite as involved in the blog as in years past but couldn't quite give it up for lent.

So far, I'm planning to take more portraits of writers' hands, primarily because I'm fascinated by the role that our flesh and bones plays in getting a story onto the page but also because it's easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy.

I'm also interested in find out how a Wednesday Poetry Bash differs from a Saturday Poetry Bash.

A part of me wants to shout: Heresy! Treason! And a part of me says...why not? It'll give me more time to secure that nifty Bliss Carman ring, that's for sure...but it seems as though its winner, Linda Frank, has slender hands, which is no good for me.

Maybe next year's winner will have man-hands, like me, or, better yet, be a ring-hating man.

Heh.

Wednesday realization

It's a Wednesday and I don't have to trawl the internet for material for my column!

Not to sound ungrateful for the 29 other Wednesdays where I trawled the internet for material for my column, but: yay!

I am, however, blogging up a storm over at the HOT AIR blog. No, not that one. The new one...

Okay, it's not really storming over there, but I am doing infrastructure-y things. Installing statcounter code. Formulating a new question for the sidebar. Meeting with bloggers.

Fun!

My final column

Well, it's official. This weekend's Paperchase column, the 29th that I'd written since taking it on at the end of February, was my final column.

When the column was offered to me, I was thrilled. The extra income was (theoretically) a good thing, the chance to add 'columnist' to my resume was (theoretically) a good thing, and the opportunity to make space for the local writing and publishing community to share its news, its wheels and deals, was (definitely) a good thing.

I've since learned that I have to start saying no, or, at the very least, begin questioning opportunity closely.

As painful as writing the column after a full day's work at Aqua Books (my two-days-a-week day job) was, towards the end (can you say 3 am?), leaving it behind was painless.

Winnipeg phenom Andrew Davidson will appear as a part of the fall season of Authors at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto alongside Toronto's Terry Fallis and Calgary's Fred Stenson.

Former Winnipeggers Randy and Tal Bachman have contributed stories to a new anthology on hitchhiking from Fredericton's Goose Lane Editions.

Jamis Paulson, who until recently was programming and outreach director for the Manitoba Writers' Guild, has joined Turnstone Press as associate publisher.

Toronto writer Elyse Friedman - who will appear at Thin Air Sept. 22 - is a finalist for the Toronto Book Award, announced this last week.

The short lists for the Canadian Culinary Book Awards were announced this past week.

Partly that was because I found someone worthy, that also believes in community, to take on the beast and partly that was because my editor, Morley Walker, was completely gracious in his/my defeat.

And while NOT doing the column for very little money means that I could possibly start reviewing books again for very little money, I think I'm going to hold off for a while.

I've got a respectable little heap of Edisonia to pore over, including an on-line cache of Marion Edison Oser's letters, two diaries of Thomas Alva Edison, and a couple of crusty biographies of same.

Nevermind that, I've got bloggers to recruit and content to write for HOT AIR! (The festival is a week away! Eek!)

And, lest I forget, a lesson plan to construct for my first Seniors Writer's Poetry Workshop (offered through Creative Retirement Manitoba), Sept. 21!

And then there's the tour to launch my Palimpsest Press chapbook, The navel gaze, put together by the excellent (and, recently, long-suffering) Dawn Kresan. The tour is Oct. 5-12 and, of course, there are still scads of details to pin/nail/staple down.

(See here for the briefs behind the headlines...)

reading/readings

Recent goodness, some of which came from Aqua, some of which was purchased via Abe, some of which was given to me. You'll note that the just-released THIN AIR program is on top, asserting its priority...

Though the books do pile up, I'm happy to announce that I've officially divested myself of a couple of gigs. As an professionally busy person, it was VERY hard to get rid of one and say no to the other, but I need room in my life for some thinking and dreaming and good time with my girl.

So here's to the fall and winter, where I have next to nothing going on!

(Okay, next to nothing mid-October onwards, after I've blogged THIN AIR and done the Nightowls & Newborns Western Tour with Kerry Ryan to launch my new chapbook)

blogger-in-chief

Hey all,

It's official. I will be blogger-in-chief for the 2008 edition of THIN AIR, the Winnipeg International Writers' Festival (Sept. 21-28).

For last year's blog, I composed 25 multimedia posts while also showing up at my admittedly-part-time day-job. This year, given that's a PAID gig, I can justify spending more/all of my time at the festival.

Now I just need to find me some (volunteer) bloggers for the next incarnation of the I-think-aptly-named HOT AIR.

The bloggy job description is as follows (and here I'm quoting from my proposal to the WIWF):

The HOT AIR crew will consist of three volunteers approached by me in consultation with the WIWF. The crew will provide a minimum of 3-4 text-based posts each over the seven days of the festival. There is no maximum contribution, however, and crew can contribute as much text, photos, and multimedia content they feel comfortable producing.

Unlike most arts reporting, the goal of HOT AIR blogging is to create personalities that audience members are interested in following. Though blog posts will function as in-house previews (and documentation) of many THIN AIR events, they will also work to create a dialogue around the festival.

On offer to the lucky handful are free tickets to Mainstage events, festival paraphenalia (t-shirt, mug), and the opportunity to rub shoulders, elbows, and ankles with book-ish folk.

In particular, I'm looking for people interested in the following...

1) Social Columnist. I’d like to expand on the kind of coverage that the lovely/talented/book-launching Daria Salamon provided last year, doing 2-3 social/gossip/fashion columns. Ideally, I’d like to assign this to one blogger, but we’ll see who I recruit and what their interests are…

2) People of the Fest. I’d like to have one photo a day that contains a mini-profile of an audience member or volunteer, a sort of 10-seconds-with-X combined with what-are-you-wearing.

I'm also looking for 'list-y' bloggers. Not in the haunt-the-hospitality-suite sort of way. More of the making-a-list-checking-it-thrice kind.

Possibilities are endless, but include top ten must-see events, top ten writers you discovered at the festival, books you purchased at the WIWF. Each blogger could come up with 2-3 lists over the course of the week, which would be posted in the sidebar, which is currently dead space, as we don’t have extensive links lists or other sidebar-y content. Lists could be shared via social networking sites like List of Bests, which would allow readers to ‘adopt’ those lists and complete them, either by attending the listed events or by reading the listed books.

So if you're at all interested or know anyone that would be at all interested, please contact me...

Fun!

Now all I have to do is set up a new blog, contact authors for the preview posts I've sworn to do, and attend the Sept. 3 press conference announcing this year's list.

HOT AIR...and Anita

Hey all,

Sometime after my reading with George Murray at Aqua Books and sometime before I chased down the King's Head's chickpea curry with a G&T (liquor!), I asked Anita Daher to HOT AIR with me.

This may sound like an innuendo, but really it's a blog. An official blog.

Fun!

(I'll be posting pics from the reading soon, I swear!)

HOT AIR content posted!

Hey all,

The first of the interviews I'm conducting with non-Peggers (i.e. out-of-town authors) appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival is live over at HOT AIR.

Fun!

* * *

Line of Inquiry: Brendan McLeod

Brendan McLeod has been the Vancouver poetry SLAM champion, the Canadian SLAM champion, and finished second at the 2005 World SLAM championships, held in Holland. Last year, his novel The Convictions of Leonard McKinley beat out over 500 original entries to win the International 3 Day Novel Contest. [...]