Victoria Arts Connection, Where the ARTS Come Together About the Presenters

Carla Funk, Victoria's Poet Laureate

Carla Funk Pic PFBis honoured to have Carla Funk attend and participate in our first festival. Carla is a central figure in the Victoria arts community and establishing her role as Victoria's first Poet Laureate is a significant achievement for all. Carla grew up in Vanderhoof - in the centre of British Columbia. Her poems are rich with personal imagery and history of growing up in world of logging trucks, mennonites and BC rurality. Carla will be opening the festival as well as reading poetry with special guests.

Session Time: 11am-11:30am.

Other web reference links: ABC Bookworld BC Author Bank, Nightwood Editions, UVIC Dept of Writiing, Poetry Spoken Here, Poetry Daily, The Malahat Review; www.carlafunk.com

Claire Paulette Turcotte, Author
Claire Paulette Turcotte is a visual artist and dreamworker. She founded the Corinne Centre in Peterborough where she organized children’s programs and apprenticeships and taught courses in dreamwork and creativity. More recently, she has opened The Centre for Dream Research and Imaginal Studies to the community www.cdris.org.

Her work has a Jungian foundation and her courses are based on her life and experiential learning; her work with reclaiming the Feminine; her natural familiarity with shamanic and tribal knowledge and practice; her experience in Buddhist and Christian meditation and mysticism. She has been involved in the arts as a painter and writer for more than 36 years and her work is in collections in Germany, UK, Canada and USA . She is published in various periodicals and magazines in North America. In 2006 she launched her book, The Woman Who Could See In All Directions At The Same Time with an exhibition of her art at Victoria Arts Connection. She is presently working on a companion reader/workbook and a book of poetry.

Session Description: " Drawing the Words Out: re-animating our natural connection to words."

In a sensuous connection to mediums we will follow the body’s map to a landscape of language. Listening with the senses engaged, we will attend to the art of words, text as image, the touch and forms of the raw materials—the charcoal/crayons and the movement of charcoal on paper as we come into touch with the physicality of writing. In this mini workshop we will attend to the basic call to write and the creative process inherent in the art of writing—words drawn out. Materials included.

weblink: The Centre for Dream Research and Imaginal Studies .

Session Time: 11:30am-12:30pm.
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Robert J. Wiersema, Novelist

Robert J. Wiersema is an author, bookseller and reviewer, Robert Wiersema

who contributes regularly to the Vancouver Sun, Quill & Quire, The Globe and Mail, National Post, Ottawa Citizen and other newspapers. Currently the president of the British Columbia Booksellers Association, Wiersema is the event co-ordinator for Bolen Books. He’s a graduate of UVic and lives in Victoria with his family.

Robert's first novel "Before I Wake" is published by Random House has been critically acclaimed. CBC's Rise and Shine refers to it as "page-turning debut, .....with a serious promotional push by his publisher Random House and a larger-than-usual print run. The book has received rave reviews across the country and has already been sold in the U.S. and the U.K. It is currently being shopped around for a film adaptation."
Robert's interest in writing started at a young age. He says " I always wanted to be a writer. From that moment in grade two or three when I realized I was spending more time explaining what my crayon drawings were supposed to be than actually drawing them, I fancied myself a storyteller. At first, this was synonymous with 'liar', (and rightly so), but I quickly realized that I could use my powers for good. Or at least for something other than avoiding catching hell." Robert will be doing a reading from his work at the festival and engaging the audience in answering questions and discussing his work and creative process.
Other web reference links:Randomhouse Canada, CBC, The Globe and Mail, www.robertjwiersema.com
Session Time: 2-2:30pm. Top

Children's Author
Tiffany Stone
We are very excited that Tradewind Books is sponsoring Tiffany Stone to present a children's storytelling and interactive session on Saturday March 24th from 10-11am. Tiffany Stone is a children’s poet from Coquitlam, BC. Her first collection of humorous verse, Floyd the Flamingo and his flock of friends (Tradewind Books, 2004), received critical acclaim from, among others, Helen Norrie of the Winnipeg Free Press who declared “…Stone has a delightful sense of the ridiculous….” Tiffany’s new book of poetry, Baad Animals, is full of rhymes about sheep that steal, sneaky slugs and other naughty creatures. When she isn’t busy playing with words, editing picture books or visiting schools and libraries, Tiffany can be found hanging out with her three kids and sometimes even her husband. For more information about Tiffany visit www.tiffanystone.ca.

Session Time: 10-11am. Top

"Late Bloomer- On Writing in Later Life"
Naomi Beth Wakan

PFB welcomes Naomi Beth Wakan who will present a lively and fascinating session on Writing in Later Life. Wakan did not find her own writing voice until well into her 60's and her tips and advice -on everything from where and when to write through to rejection letters and publication -
are rooted in personal experience and colourful insights into her identity as an older writer. “My publisher said that I would wow any audience that didn't have body piercings and I have settled for that limitation” says Wakan. "We Late Bloomers have a certain urgency when it comes to communication, I think, and perhaps a certain obligation to fully show ourselves before it is too late” writes Naomi Beth Wakan in her new book, published by Wolsak & Wynn. In this unique writer's journey, Wakan is a best friend, coach, mentor,teacher, and cheerleader to any individual embarking on a "second life" as a writer after the age of fifty. For more on Naomi visit www.naomiwakan.com

Session Time: 3:00-4:00pm Top

Festival Stalked by Crime Writers of Canada - but no charges are laid!
Chris Bullock and Kay Stewart, Mystery Writers

The Crime Writers of Canada are coming to the Pacific Festival of the Book in full force so wear dark glasses if necessary! Chris Bullock and Kay Stewart are co-authors of the mystery novel A Deadly Little List (NeWest Press, 2006), which is set on Salt Spring Island and in Victoria. In addition to the local settings, the book has many other intriguing elements such as a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, conflict over land development on Salt Spring, and links with the internment of Japanese-Canadians during the Second World War. The main characters are a female RCMP constable and an ex-Brit drama critic...hmmmm sounds juicy! The book has been well reviewed in the Globe and Mail, among other places.

Kay and Chris will also be appearing on the television improv writing contest A Total Write Off in the spring. Other Crime Writers attending the festival include C.J. Papoutsis, Lou Allin, J.C. Szasz, Deni Dietz, Gordon Alborg,Stan Evans, Ron Chudley and a few more will be sneeking around....you never know!We hear CWC even have their own line of fine bonewear "China to die for"

Kay and Chris will present a talk on their work as co-authors in this genre.
Session Time: 10:30-11am. Top

The Body’s Muse - Using FAME Cards to Get Writing
Connie Frey

Connie Frey pic What difference does movement make to writing? Come play with the FAME Cards and find out. Expect to spark themes, images and characters to produce fresh starts or enliven current writing. Bring pen and paper.

Fame Cards pic Connie Frey, PhD and creativity coach, is creator of the FAME Cards, forty interactive creativity prompts. In 1996 she was invited by founder Margaret Dyment to be the interdisciplinary presenter at the First Victoria School of Writing. Connie launched her “Motion as a Way to Meet the Muse” programs there. She created the FAME Cards to help artists bring together their analytical, sensory and imaginative capacities to activate fresh, innovative responses. Her coaching clients, who include novelists, non-fiction writers and PhD candidates, have variously called her a “creativity midwife,” “flow facilitator” and, from those who use her services by phone, “the telemuse.

Web links:

www.DissertationCoaching.com

www.CreativityCoaching.ca

www.FameCards.ca

Session Time: 3:30-4:00pm Top

Inspiration for Young Writers - A Wild Life!
Lyn Hancock, Youth Genre

Aspiring young writers and book lovers will be on the edge of their seat when Lyn Hancock details her inspirational stories about life in the wilderness and at home with animals. Lyn has really experienced the wild kingdom and turned it into fascinating and entertaining stories. Lyn was raised in Western Australia, hitch-hiked through Africa, taught school in Australia, England and Canada (grade 4 to university level) and spent a decade raising seals, raccoons, cougars, bears, apes and other creatures which eventually populated pages in her 18 books such as the classic There’s a Seal in My Sleeping Bag and There’s a Raccoon in my Parka and the popular Love Affair with a Cougar. She wrote one book of history with the family of one of her students, the unique Tell me, Grandmother, the story of Sam and Jane Livingston, the first settlers in Calgary.

For almost thirty years, award-winning author and adventurer Lyn Hancock kept a special story close to her heart. At last, she is ready to tell it: the remarkable tale of an animal whose saucy personality enlivened Lyn’s days and brought joy and wonder to the lives of countless people. Her search for a new wild home for her beloved companion will melt your heart.

Lyn Hancock 'Winging it in the North' For three decades Lyn wandered alone with camera, notebook and backpack throughout Northern British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. From these experiences have come thousands of newspaper and magazine articles and books for all ages such as Nunavut, Yukon, Northwest Territories, Winging it in the North, Western Canada Travel Smart. Lyn Hancock's latest book "Tabasco the Saucy Racoon" is published by Sono Nis Press.

Session Time: 2:30-3:30pm Top

"Writing Mythic History"
Rex Weyler, Writer & Activist

Rex Weyler pic

REX WEYLER is a journalist, writer, and ecologist. He was a cofounder of Greenpeace International, and his book, Greenpeace: The Inside Story (Raincoast Books and Rodale Press, 2004) is the definitive history of the founding of Greenpeace from the history of the founding of Greenpeace from the mid-1960s to 1980. The book tells the story of a small group of journalists and activists in Vancouver, Canada, who envisioned and created a global environmental movement. The book was honoured as a finalist for Shaughnessy-Cohen Award for Political Writing, the Hubert Evans Award for Non-Fiction at the BC Book Awards, and was listed by Publishers Weekly among the "Best Books of 2004."

Through journalism, Weyler expressed his passion for wilderness and ecology. In 1975, he sailed on the first Greenpeace anti-whaling voyage, and served on subsequent campaigns as photographer and writer. He served as a director of the Greenpeace Foundation from 1974-1982, edited the monthly Greenpeace Chronicles, and co-founded Greenpeace International in Amsterdam in 1979.

He published a book of Greenpeace campaign photographs, To Save a Whale (1979). His book Blood of the Land, a history of the American Indian Movement, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1982. He is the author of The Story of Harmony (1996) and coauthor of Chop Wood, Carry Water: a Guide to Finding Spiritual Fulfillment in Everyday Life (1984).

Session Time: 1:30-2:30pm Top

Janet Rogers, Spoken Word

Janet Rogers Pic

A Mohawk writer from the Six Nations territory in southern Ontario, Janet Rogers was born in Vancouver British Columbia January 29th 1963. She began her creative career as a visual artist, and then began writing in 1996. Since then, she continues to stretch her abilities as a writer working and studying in the genres of poetry, short fiction, science fiction, play writing and spoken word performance poetry.

Janet's literary passions are her native heritage, feminism, historical territories, human love, sexuality and spirit. Janet has many anthology credits as a writer and receives many invitations to share her performance poetry all over North America. She began recording her poetry with music during a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts and continues to create successful recorded collections of her work. Janet has begun collaborating with musicians, contributing lyrics. Janet sees this as a step towards, one day, singing her words. See www.janetmarierogers.com

Session Time: 1:30pm Top

Alejandro Raúl Mujica-Olea, Poet
Alejandro Raul Jujica-Olea

Alejandro Raúl Mujica-Olea was born in Santiago, Chile on August 8, 1947. At the age of 14, he started to write articles and poetry in the Catholic newspaper Called "The Valiant Hearts". He read publicly in church events of this time. One year later, his literary work was converted to an element of justice for the disadvantaged which continued until 1973.

From 1973 to 1975, in the prison of the dictator Pinochet, Alejandro wrote two books which were destroyed by the guards but was able to write a daily diary which was smuggled out of the prison. This book was published in 2003 after 28 years living in Canada and 30 years since the military bloodbath. Alejandro was tortured in prison and still bears the effects and trauma of this experience.

In Chile, in 1975, with the help of the Canadian Government, The Red Cross, Amnesty International and the people of Quebec, Alejandro along with 99 others were traded to Canada for wheat and technology. He was taken from prison and put on a plane along with his family for Canada. In Canada Alejandro had to deal with PTSD, culture shock and heath problems. In spite of these challenges Alejandro continued writing and perusing his dream of becoming a published writer.

From 1985 to 1996 Alejandro continued to read his poetry on many radio programs in the United States and Canada and in 1998, along with Ariadne Sawyer, he formed the World Poetry Café at the café Miles of Beans in Burnaby. The following year Alejandro and Ariadne created The World Poetry Radio Show at Co-op Radio 102.7 FM. In 2001, Alejandro and Ariadne created the World Poetry Reading Series at the Vancouver Public Library, central branch. There are over 300 poets from 58 countries. In 2003 Alejandro was awarded Poet of the Year, Medallion of Silver (Gonzalo Canton Santelices). He has published 6 books of poetry.

Session time: 10:30am Top

A Broken Mirror, Fallen Leaf
Yvonne Blomer, Poet

Yvonne Blomer, Broken Mirror,Fallen Leaf Yvonne Blomer was born in Bindura, Zimbabwe and has lived in Japan and most recently in the United Kingdom. She returned home from the UK after completing an MA in Creative Writing: Poetry with Distinction at the University of East Anglia.

In this first poetry collection, Yvonne Blomer explores the experience of being a foreigner in Japan. In lyrical, imagist poems Blomer vividly recreates moments in time and place, while reflecting on the nature of strangeness and familiarity — how that strangeness can itself be familiar, and the way we carry the places we love with us wherever we go.

Yvonne Blomer’s poetry has been published internationally and is included in the anthologies In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry (Polestar), The Fed Anthology (Anvil Press) and Mocambo Nights (Ekstasis). She has won literary awards and has been heard on BBC Radio. The poems in a broken mirror, fallen leaf spring from her imagination and from her experiences when living for two years on the Japanese island of Kyushu. She currently resides in Victoria, BC. Web link: www.ekstasiseditions.com
Session time: 2:30-3:00pm

The Short Story - Panel Discussion with Rachel Wyatt & Eliza Hemingway, Moderated by Carol Sokoloff of Ekstasis Editions

Rachel Wyatt, Author
Rachel Wyatt, Cover for The Magician's Beautiful Assistant

Rachel Wyatt, Cover for The Magician's Beautiful Assistant

Rachel Wyatt was born in Bradford, England in 1929; she immigrated to Canada with her family in 1957. From 1986 she taught in the Writing Programme at the Banff Centre for the Arts and was Director of the Programme from 1992 to 2001. For eight years she led a series of writing workshops at Arctic College, Iqaluit, Baffin Island.

A prolific writer of radio drama (over one hundred plays produced by the BBC and CBC), she also writes for live theatre, with plays staged across Canada, in the United States and in Britain.

Wyatt has published six novels and two previous volumes of stories: her collection The Day Marlene Dietrich Died (1996) was brought out in Italian by Voland Edizione, Rome. She is also the author of a biography of Agnes Macphail, first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons.

Rachel Wyatt is a member of the Order of Canada and recipient of the Queen’s Jubilee Medal.
Web Link: www.hedgerowpress.com
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Eliza Hemingway, Author

Eliza Hemingway Pic Eliza has worked with CBC Radio and acted in films and theatre. She has designed stage sets and costumes, written for newspapers and magazines and taught creative writing at Malaspina University College. She has guest lectured at Thornes Park, England and The British Columbia Institute of Technology. Her short stories have appeared in several literary magazines in England and Canada and she has won several awards for her paintings and writing, the most recent being as a winning finalist in the USA Best Book Awards with her book of short stories, Nude on a Fence.
She was the invited writer at the Rotherham Arts Festival, England 2004. Eliza received an Honorary Citizen of Victoria award for her work. Eliza currently lives in Chemainus on Vancouver Island. Web link: www.elizahemingway.com
Session Time: 10:00-10:30am Top

The Mouth of the River - The Art of Translation , Panel Discussion with Trevor Carolan and Marie Vautier

Trevor Carolan

Trevor Carolan was born in Yorkshire. His family emigrated to British Columbia in 1957 and he began writing at 17 filing dispatches from San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury music scene. For three years he travelled Britain, Europe and India before mastering in English at Humboldt State University in 1978. He studied with Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder, served as literary coordinator for the XV Olympic Winter Games, and has published works of fiction, memoir, poetry, translation, and anthologies.

A contributor to Shambhala Sun, The Bloomsbury Review, Choice, Nguoi Viet, and Kyoto Journal, he travels widely in Asia and is research associate with the David See-Chai Lam Center for International Communications at Simon Fraser University. Active in Pacific coast watershed issues, he lives in North Vancouver where he served for three years as elected municipal councillor.

Currently, he writes as civic affairs columnist for the North Shore News and teaches English at University College of the Fraser Valley near Vancouver. He is also affiliated with the Department of International Relations at Bond University, Queensland, Australia.

His travel novel The Pillow Book of Dr. Jazz is published by Anchor. Giving Up Poetry: With Allen Ginsberg At Hollyhock, a memoir of his acquaintance with the beloved late poet is published by the Banff Centre Press. Celtic Highway, a collection of poetry is published by Ekstasis. His current title, Return to Stillness: Twenty Years With a Tai Chi Master (Marlowe & Co., New York), is an account of his twenty years as a student of this traditional Chinese wisdom path with Tai Chi Master Ng Ching-Por in Vancouver's Chinatown. Web link: www.trevorcarolan.com

Marie Vautier

Marie Vautier, Paris Quebec Cover Vautier's field is comparative Canadian literature. She received her PhD from the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto and is Director of UVic's combined major program in English and French (Canadian literature).

Translated by Stephen Scobie and Marie Vautier. Photos by Miles Lowry. Ed. Claudine Bertrand. Victoria: Ekstasis Editions, 2003.

Paris, the City of Light, inspires the whole world - not least the poets of Québec. In this anthology, some of the finest contemporary Québécois poets explore the splendours and miseries, mysteries and secrets of Paris - a city which is for them both a distant source of their linguistic culture and a privileged site for post-colonial explorations. A further dimension is added by the translation of these poems into English, by Québécois scholar Marie Vautier and prize-winning English-Canadian poet Stephen Scobie: doubling Paris-Québec with Paris-Victoria!
Paris Québec

For the English speaking reader, these poems provide an eye-opening introduction to the forms and concerns of current Québécois poetry, while at the same time offering a fresh and unexpected perspective on Paris itself. From the Cathedral of Notre Dame to the Luxembourg Gardens, from the Bastille to Saint-Sulpice, the reader is offered a tour of paris unlike any other, along the paths of memory and the curves of the Seine. The poems, originally commissioned by Claudine Bertrand, and here superbly translated by Scobie and Vautier, are supplemented by the evocative photography of Miles Lowry. Together, they offer a poetic introduction, from a unique point of view, to the endlessly fascinating and compelling city of Paris.
Web link:http://web.uvic.ca/french/faculty/vautier_publications.html#p3

Session Time: 4:30-5:00pm Top

Anna Jean Mallinson - Terra Infirma – A Life Unbalanced

A Life Unbalanced Pic Terra Infirma - A Life Unbalanced tells the story of a summer that became a season of change through a toxic response to gentamicin and the author’s struggle to reclaim a life in a body disabled by this modern elixir.

Jean Mallinson is the author of a book of short stories, I Will Bring You Berries, a book of poems, Between Cup and Lip , and, with four other writers, a book of poems, Quintet: Themes & Variations. She is also the author of essays and articles, most recently in Vocabula Review.

She lives in West Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

“Jean Mallinson, in her wrenching, compelling account of her own disability, reminds us that we, all of us -- wherever our station, whatever our circumstances -- live an uncertain, a wobbly life. A lovely mix of personal thought and literary quotation, A Life Unbalanced is full of honest feeling and whirling reflection.“
Robert Hartwell Fiske, Editor, Vocabula Review
Session Time:4:00-4:30pm

Astri Wright

Astri Wright teaches the History of Art in the Department of Art at
Uvic. Astri is an authority on Indonesian art and is a frequent vistor
to the Pacific Islands. She has curated several shows for the Maltwood Gallery, escpecially a significant show on contemporary Middle Eastern Art.

Wright's research interests focus on the modern and contemporary arts and visual cultures of Southeast Asia, with a particular focus on Indonesia. Themes of interest include the dialogue between Southeast Asia and Euro-American modern and post-modern cultures; the visual scripting of history, personal and communal; issues of politics and gender in negotiating social change through artistic activity; tradition, faith, and their contesting in the shaping of Southeast Asian art and artist careers.

After publishing the first scholarly monograph on contemporary Indonesian painting in English in 1994, Soul, Spirit and Mountain: Preoccupations of Contemporary Indonesian Painters, Wright's writings have focused mostly on activist and socially-engaged artists in Indonesia, and women artists in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. She has written for a broad range of audiences, from academic publications to commercial art publications and the daily press. Wright is currently an Associate Professor in the History in Art Department at the University of Victoria, BC, teaching South and Southeast Asian art since 1991.
Session Time: Symposium "The12:30-1:30pm Pacific Context- Books in our Pacific Community"