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August, 2010 Saturday & Sunday, August 28 & 29 If you have an idea for a TV movie or series you won’t want to miss this. You’ll learn what you need to know to write a script for television and how to develop a series proposal. Participants may bring a synopsis of their idea for discussion. Fee: $295 (register by July 10 and get a 10% discount).For more information, visit the Screenwriting with Sharon Buckingham Facebook page. To register, contact Sharon Buckingham at tsbprod@rogers.com. Sharon Buckingham is a well-known screenwriter and producer with both feature and television production credits. She was the writer and a producer of the award winning STICKS & STONES, a movie for television for the CTV network; worked as a story editor and writer on the long-running television show BEASTMASTER; and wrote the Genie Award nominated feature film TO WALK WITH LIONS. She is presently working on two drama series, a game show, and a feature comedy with funding from Telefilm Canada. Sharon has headed up workshops for both the Summer Institute of Film and the Canadian Screen Training Centre. September, 2010 Thursday, September 9 Join author Tom Henighan as he marks the official release of his debut Sam Montcalm mystery, Nightshade. To celebrate this addition to Tom's extensive catalogue of titles, Tom will be reading from and signing copies of his novel, which is entirely set in Ottawa and surrounding area. Stop by to get an exclusive perspective of what's sure to be a popular Dundurn mystery series! Deadly nightshade - the poison plant par excellence - and in historic Quebec City at an important scientific conference concerning the genetic manipulation of trees, it means murder! Police, RCMP, and a mysterious FBI agent from Washington converge on the scene. But the sharpest eye belongs to Sam Montcalm, a despised "bedroom snooper" from Ottawa whose primary concern is to clear a First Nations activist of the crime. Tom Henighan's numerous works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry include The Maclean's Companion to Canadian Arts and Culture, The Well of Time, and the YA novel Viking Quest. He lives in Ottawa, and teaches at Carleton University. Sunday, September 19 A powerful tale of the burdens and blessings of history, the divided self, and the quest to be whole, Girl Unwrapped is a coming-of-age story set in 1960s Montreal. Toni Goldblatt's awakening to taboo desire conflicts with the expectations of her Holocaust-scarred parents and with the conservative mores of her times. Yearning to re-invent herself, she flees to Israel in the wake of the 1967 war, but the Zionist dream doesn't save her; instead, she finds the realities of life in the Middle East more complex than she imagined, and that her quest for normalcy has been thwarted. Only on her return to Montreal, when she discovers kindred spirits in the underground lesbian bar scene, does Toni begin to accept herself and find her own path. Gabriella Goliger's first book, Song of Ascent, won the 2001 Upper Canada Writer's Craft Award. She was co-winner of the 1997 Journey Prize for short fiction, a finalist for this prize in 1995, and won the Prism international Award in 1993. Her work has been published in a number of journals and anthologies including Best New American Voices 2000 and Contemporary Jewish Writing in Canada. Shanghai Restaurant is located at 651 Somerset Street West.
Thursday, September 16 The book club discusses The Wife's Tale by Lori Lansens, led by Angela. Meetings are open and new members are welcome at any time. If you have any questions about Wellington Street Readers activities, please visit wsreaders.wordpress.com. Thursday, September 23 In Elisabeth Harvor's poetry collection An Open Door in the Landscape, the real and the surreal exist side by side. Doors open on snow, war, influenza, summer and winter oceans, the efficiency of obsession, and men who can dance. In yet another world, on a hot city morning in our most recent century, the tiny industrial screech of insects in August gardens becomes a backdrop for a lovesick woman waiting on a veranda for the postman to bring her relief "in the last era before e-mail, in the last era before high tech gives short shrift to longing." Other poems shine out of more fleeting events, each poem radiating with the emotional intensity of its moment. Elisabeth Harvor's fiction and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, The Hudson Review, PRISM international, The New Quarterly, The Ontario Review (Princeton), The Malahat Review, Our Generation Against Nuclear War, and many other publications. Her stories have been anthologized in Canada, the US, Europe and Mexico, and she has won a number of awards for her work, among them the Alden Nowlan Award and the Marian Engel Award. In 1993 her first poetry book, Fortress of Chairs, won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award in 1992, and her second poetry book, The Long Cold Green Evenings of Spring, was a 1998 finalist for the Lowther Award. Excessive Joy Injures the Heart, her first novel, was named one of the ten best books of the year by the Toronto Star in 2000. Let Me Be The One, her third story collection, was a 1996 finalist for the Governor General's Award. October, 2010 Friday, October 1 Ann reads from her third novel, Falling from Grace (Brindle & Glass), set in the canopy of BC's Old Growth forest and involving a standoff between loggers and environmentalists. Ann's previous bestselling books are Decomposing Maggie and In the Hands of Anubis. Gary will read from a new book of poems called Swimming Ginger, and a reprint of The Terracotta Army, both from Goose Lane Editions. Swimming Ginger is based on a 12th-century Chinese scroll painting, which is a rare example of urban realism in a tradition mostly dominated by misty landscapes and distant mountain peaks. Terracotta is being re-issued because an exhibition of the Chinese warriors will cross Canada, appearing at ROM, the Glenbow Museum, Musée des Beaux Arts and the Royal BC Museum. Sunday, October 3 Poet Lorri Neilsen Glenn's new collection confronts the deaths of dear friends and family members, returns to her prairie childhood and youth, and engages hard, hard questions of mortality, and of existence in a world fraught with suffering and violence (both global and domestic). Central is the poetic sequence "A Song for Simone"-- a conversation between the poet and French mystical philosopher Simone Weil. Originally from Western Canada, Lorri Neilsen Glenn now lives in Halifax and spends her summers in Saskatchewan. The author of many academic books and two previous books of poetry (all the perfect disguises, 2003, and Combustion, 2007), she served as Poet Laureate for Halifax from 2005-2009. Information on Terry Ann Carter and Frances Boyle to come. Sunday, October 10 Winnipeg 1963. Eighteen-year-old psychology student Ruthie J. is the bane of her traditional Jewish family. Briefly married, she drinks, swears, has casual sex and mixes with questionable characters. She also argues incessantly with her father. When a bizarre car accident lands her in court, the confused teen is sent for testing and diagnosed with epilepsy - then considered a mental illness. Against her wishes, Ruthie's family admits her to a posh Maryland mental hospital, Chestnut Lodge, of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden notoriety. Put in the care of a sadistic psychiatrist who threatens to have her committed for life, the spunky adolescent finds herself at the mercy of an insane institution. Through the friendship and love of her fellow patients and the subsequent help of a remarkable therapist, Ruthie J. frees herself, discovers her true sexual orientation and perseveres in her dream to become a physician. Told with humour and drama, Dr. Ruth Simkin's memoir The Jagged Years of Ruthie J. is a powerful reading experience that will inspire all who struggle with illness, adversity or sexual identity. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Dr. Ruth Simkin practiced family medicine for several decades and subsequently became a specialist in palliative care. She has studied in Canada, the U.S., Israel, China, England and Russia. She is the author of medical articles on women’s health as well as Like an Orange on a Seder Plate, a feminist Passover Haggadah. Retired from medicine, she now lives and writes in Victoria, B.C. where she shares a home with her animal companion Reenie. For more about Ruth, please visit www.ruthsimkin.ca. Thursday, October 21 The book club discusses blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris. Meetings are open and new members are welcome at any time. If you have any questions about Wellington Street Readers activities, please visit wsreaders.wordpress.com. November, 2010 Saturday, November 3 Christian McPherson’s debut novel pokes fun at government cubicle culture through the life and times of a struggling computer programmer/novelist wannabe. McPherson surrounds his protagonist, Colin MacDonald, with a cast of screwball characters while he toils away at his government job, struggles with fertility and dreams of becoming a published writer. Recycled air, bad lighting and bizarre environmental office policies by day; scheduled love-making sessions and rejection letters by night, push MacDonald to try to write his way out of his cyclical life story. Part tragedy, part comedy—with a bit of horror thrown in for fun—McPherson cooks up a boiling plot and a memorable anti-hero. Christian McPherson’s work has been published in Kiss Machine, Queen’s Quarterly, The New Quarterly and dANDdelion, and in the anthologies Open Window III and Seeds 3. His stories and poems have won several awards and honourable mentions, including the John Spencer Hill Award, the Ottawa Public Library Short Story Award, and the Canadian Poetry Association’s Poetry Competition. McPherson lives in Ottawa. He has a degree in philosophy from Carleton University and a computer programming diploma from Algonquin College. |
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