For more information, check the media page for press releases or the schedule page for up-to-date times and locations.
Open Book
The Pacific Festival of the Book and the Greater Victoria Public Library present a noon-hour reading Friday, May 8 hosted by Linda Rogers with M.A.C Farrant, Pauline Holdstock, Harold Rhenisch, student Victoria poets and Ontario poet and songwriting sensation Robert Priest.
Victoria Public Library, Main Branch
Friday, May 8
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm.
Free!
M.A.C. Farrant
Born in Sydney, Australia and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, M.A.C. Farrant
is the acclaimed author oM.A.C. Farrant is the author of nine collections of
satirical and humorous short fiction. As well, a novel-length memoir, My
Turquoise Years, was published by Greystone Books/Douglas & McIntyre
in 2004. Her stories have been adapted for both radio and television and are
widely anthologized in Canada and the United States. Farrant has taught fiction
workshops in Canada and Australia. She was a visiting writer-in-residence at
Macquarie University in Sydney. A full-time writer currently residing in Sidney,
B.C., she also reviews books for the Vancouver Sun and the Globe
& Mail. An active promoter of literary arts, she is the co-producer
and host of the Sidney Reading Series. Talon Books will publish Down the
Road to Eternity--New & Selected Fiction in the Fall of 2009. Pauline Holdstock
Pauline Holdstock writes novels, short fiction and essays. Her books have been
published in the U.K, the U.S., Brazil, Portugal, Australia and Germany, as
well as in Canada, where CBC’s The Arts Tonight has featured her work.
Pauline’s short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines. Her
recent novel, Beyond Measure, was a finalist for the 2004 Giller Prize
and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Canada and Caribbean Region. It won
the BC Book Prizes Ethel Wilson Award for Fiction in 2005. Her most recent work
is the novella The World of Light Where We Live, winner of the Malahat
Review 2006 Novella Contest. She also writes non-fiction. Her essays and book
reviews have appeared in Canada’s national newspapers and have been broadcast
on CBC radio. She was the winner of the Prairie Fire Personal Journalism Prize,
2000. Pauline has taught at the Victoria School of Writing and at the University
of Victoria. She was on the faculty of the Banff Centre Wired Writing Studio,
2006/7.Check out paulineholdstock.com/
Harold Rhenisch
Harold
Rhenisch was born in Penticton, B.C., in 1958. He is a poet, an arts columnist,
and was the publisher of The Milestones Review, a book review quarterly.
Harold Rhenisch lives in the Cariboo country, the high volcanic plateau between
the Thompson and Fraser rivers that drain the British Columbia Interior. Rhenisch's
poetry explores the land on which he lives and where he grew up in an immigrant
culture developing orchards and vineyards in the fertile Okanagan Valley. In
the juxtaposition of new European cultures and an ancient land, Rhenisch sees
again the Kenya of the 1920s portrayed by Karen Blixen in Out of Africa.
After waiting in vain for a V.S. Naipaul to write of the colonial plantation
cultures of the Okanagan, Rhenisch turned his sense of the land into a vehicle
capable of speaking for a complex contemporary world: the autobiographical fiction
of Out of the Interior: The Lost Country. For nearly thirty years,
Rhenisch has striven to create an authentic literature for the silent rural
parts of Canada, to place their images and dialects on an equal footing with
those of the modern urban world. At the same time, he has been a student of
Ezra Pound, post-modern German literature and trickster mythology.Check out www.haroldrhenisch.com/
Robert Priest
Robert
Priest is the author of fifteen books of poetry. His most recent book is Reading
the Bible Backwards. He won the Acorn People’s Poetry Award for his now
classic Mad Hand (1988). In his alias as Dr. Poetry he wrote and performed
thirteen segments for CBC radio’s spoken-word show Wordbeat.
As a songwriter, he co-wrote the number one hit, "Song Instead of a Kiss,"
for Alannah Myles. His Aphorisms have already appeared in The Farmer’s
Almanac, and Colombo’s Canadian Quotations. His musical
play Minibugs and Microchips received a $25,000.00 Chalmer’s
Award. Both of his books of poems for children, Daysongs Nightsongs
and The Secret Invasion of Bananas are on the CBC’s recommended
reading list. As a teacher/workshop leader he has been described as “Ontario’s
most popular poet in the schools” by Today’s Parent Magazine.
He is also a highly respected journalist for Toronto’s weekly Now
magazine.Check out www.poempainter.com/
HOME | ABOUT | PRESENTERS | PERFORMANCES | WORKSHOPS | EXHIBITORS
SCHEDULES | SPONSORS | VOLUNTEERS | CONTACT US
copyright 2007 Victoria Arts Connection Multidiscipline Society- all rights reserved