The Authors are coming! The International Festival of Authors Parry Sound

The International Festival of Authors will be back in Parry Sound on Wednesday 2 November at 7:30 pm. Once again, from the Charles W. Stockey Centre stage, four internationally renowned authors will present impassioned readings from their most recent books. And, once again, we have 2 women, Helen Humphreys and Madeleine Thien, and 2 men, Patrick DeWitt and Will Ferguson.

Last week we introduced the women, the week, the guys.

Patrick DeWitt will read from his most recent novel The Sisters Brothers. This novel is on all shortlists for the big literary prizes this fall, Canada’s Giller Prize, and the Governor General’s Literary Award, as well as the prestigious Man Booker Prize.

The Booker Prize judges describe The Sisters Brothers as “a dazzlingly original novel, a darkly funny, offbeat western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother. It is Oregon, 1851, and Eli and Charlie Sisters, notorious professional killers, are on their way to California to kill a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Charlie makes money and kills anyone who stands in his way; Eli doubts his vocation and falls in love. And they bicker a lot. Then they get to California, and discover that Warm is an inventor who has come up with a magical formula, which could make all of them very rich. What happens next is utterly gripping, strange and sad. Told in deWitt’s darkly comic and arresting style, The Sisters Brothers is the kind of western the Coen Brothers might write – stark, unsettling and with a keen eye for the perversity of human motivation. Like his debut novel Ablutions, it is a novel about the things you tell yourself in order to be able to continue to live the life you find yourself in, and what happens when those stories no longer work. It is an inventive and strange and beautifully controlled piece of fiction and displays an exciting expansion of Dewitt’s range.”

Patrick deWitt was born 1975 in British Columbia, Canada, and has also lived in California, Washington, and Oregon, where he now resides with his wife and child. His first novel, Ablutions, was published in 2009, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice.

It is a particular coup to have Patrick deWitt as one of the authors who will read from the stage at the Charles W. Stockey Centre on Wednesday 2 November, at 7:30 pm.

Will Ferguson, the other guy, will read from his most recent book, Canadian Pie.

Will Ferguson is a familiar name to Canadians. He is an award-winning novelist and travel writer, and is the author of more than a dozen books ranging from budget travel guides to works of literary fiction.  He is a three time winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour – for Happiness in 2002, Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw in 2005, and Beyond Belfast in 2010. He is truly a very funny guy.

Born and raised in a former fur-trading post in Northern Canada. “Closer to the Arctic Circle than the American border”, he now lives in Calgary, in the foothills of the Rockies, with his wife Terumi and their two young sons.

As a teenager Will Ferguson lived and worked in Ecuador, South America, as part of Canada World Youth. A graduate of the York University Film School, he studied screenwriting and film production, before spending five years in Japan, first on the Amakusa Islands south of Nagasaki and then later on the Kyushu mainland.

Will Ferguson has walked across Northern Ireland in the rain, and has hitchhiked the length of Japan, following the springtime “Cherry Blossom Front” that washes across Japan every year. As a college student, he once worked as a professional space cadet at the CN Tower’s “Tour of the Universe.”

In 2010, As one of the head writers for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics Closing Ceremonies, Will wrote material for William Shatner, Martin Short, Catherine O’Hara and Michael J. Fox.

These two men will join Helen Humphreys and Madeliene Thein on the stage at the Charles W. Stockey Centre, on Wednesday 2 November at 7:30 pm – four authors performing impassioned readings from their work.

International Festival of Authors 2011 – The Women – Helen Humphreys & Madeleine Thien

The International Festival of Authors will be back in Parry Sound on Wednesday 2 November at 7:30 pm. Once again, from the Charles W. Stockey Centre stage, four internationally renowned authors will present impassioned readings from their most recent books. And, once again, we have 2 women, Helen Humphreys and Madeleine Thien, and 2 men, Patrick DeWitt and Will Ferguson.

Ladies first is the tradition, so this week I will write about the women – next week the men.

Helen Humphreys is the award-winning author of four books of poetry, one work of creative non-fiction, and five acclaimed novels. She was born in Kingston-on-Thames, England, and now lives in Kingston, Ontario. Her accolades include the City of Toronto Book Award, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Lambda Literary Award, and Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry. Her novel, Coventry, was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year. The Lost Garden was a Canada Reads selection. Afterimage won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize; Leaving Earth received the Toronto Book Award; and The Frozen Thames was a #1 bestseller. In 2009, Humphreys was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize for literary excellence. She is a very accomplished writer.

Helen Humphreys has been to Parry Sound before – twice in fact. We liked her so much that she has been invited to return, to read from her most recent novel The Reinvention of Love.

The Reinvention of Love chronicles the life of Charles Sainte-Beuve, an ambitious French journalist, and contemporary of Victor Hugo. Victor and Charles become friends – a friendship much complicated when Charles and Victor Hugo’s wife, Adèle, become lovers. Theirs was a love affair that scandalized Paris in the 1830’s – a politically tumultuous time, with duels fought in parks, and the threat of a cholera epidemic. In this society of artists and writers, Victor Hugo was making his mark. Notre Dame de Paris was published in 1831, as our story begins. Helen Humphreys has taken historical fact, and events in real lives of her “characters” and masterfully embellished their story. Her writing, as always, exquisite, and the story fascinating. We can look forward to a mesmerizing reading from The Reinvention of Love.

Madeleine Thien will present a reading from her most recent novel Dogs at the Perimeter, published this year. In 2001, the year her first book, a collection of short stories, Simple Recipes, was published Madeleine Thien was presented with an award as the most promising Canadian writer under the age of 30. Followed by a novel, Certainty, in 2006, Madeleine Thien’s books have been published internationally, and her work has been translated into 16 languages. In 2008 she spent time studying at the prestigious International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and in 2010, she received the Ovid Festival Prize, awarded each year to an international writer of promise. Ellen Seligman, senior vice-president and fiction publisher at McClelland and Stewart says, “I think Madeleine is poised to break out, and I think this book has all of the ingredients.”

A woman who seems to be constantly travelling, Madeleine Thien, in fact, wrote the first draft of Dogs at the Perimeter, while living for a time in Cambodia. The novel takes place in both Cambodia and Montreal. We meet Jane, who was a child in Cambodia in 1975, before escaping to make a life in Canada. Thirty years later, when her friend and mentor, Hiroji Matsui, disappears, she follows his story to Southeast Asia.

Madeline Thien is currently living in Berlin with her partner, the writer Rawi Hage, but she has returned to Canada this fall to make the rounds of the Literary Festivals, and we are delighted to be welcoming her to Parry Sound.

Madeline Thien and Helen Humphreys will share the stage with Will Ferguson and Patrick DeWitt on Wednesday 2 November at 7:30pm at the Charles W. Stockey Centre. Watch for more about the men next week.

Enter the magic of the Midnight Sweatlodge with Waubgeshig Rice at the Charles W. Stockey Centre

On Friday 21 October at 7:30 pm Waubgeshig Rice will introduce readers to his first book, a collection of connected short stories, Midnight Sweatlodge.

We will meet a group of young people about to enter a traditional Sweatlodge. On their hands and knees, as if returning to a mothers womb, they come for healing, cleansing, seeking an understanding of who they are as Anishinaabe people.

The first young man to speak talks about the childhood of two young boys. They lived near a town that was established by the white settlers, who pillaged the trees and prospered on what was once native land. We learn that in only three generations the people on the reservation have lost their original language. This young man is seeking solace twenty years after the tragic and violent death of his father.

We then meet David, a young man struggling to do well in school, to resist the easy access to alcohol and drugs that so many of his friends use. His parents are unemployed, lost to alcohol abuse. This boy has no breakfast, no lunch, yet he tries to be a good example to his younger siblings. Of all of his challenges, it is the racism he experiences at the high school off the reservation, that he finds most impossible to bear.

The Elder, listening to these young people, tells his own story of childhood abuse, despair and loss.

We also have a story of a native boy and his relationship with a non-native girl, in an urban setting. Many cultures discourage their children from becoming involved in relationships outside of their own culture and race – it is of course the road to assimilation, the loss of identity that their families fear. Another concern may be the risk that some of these relationships cannot survive the challenges they will face as a mixed-race family with very different beliefs and culture.

We meet another man, who chooses to leave the Sweatlodge, he cannot face what he knows he must acknowledge – his inability to give up alcohol abuse. He knows that he is causing harm to his wife and his child – his uncontrollable violent impulses when drinking are destroying his life. He witnesses the corruption on his reservation – the drug abuse. His own father died young in an “alcohol related hunting mishap”, but this young man must find his own way to peace.

The novel ends with a lovely passage about the power of nature, and a native interpretation of a naturally occurring rock formation on Georgian Bay. Those of us who know Georgian Bay will be at home with the setting of this little book. Native readers will see themselves and their culture portrayed with unblinking honesty as this young writer sees it. Those of us who are not of native heritage, and perhaps know very little of the culture of the Anishinaabe people, will find ourselves learning about both the strength and the tragedy of these people.

I had some questions for Waub Rice when I finished this well crafted and compelling book. I wondered about the terminology he uses – the words Anishinaabe and Indian are used interchangeably in his stories – and I wondered what words are now considered acceptable. Waub said that Anishinaabe is the preferred word when speaking about Canada’s native people, because Anishinaabe is their word, in their own language. In his opinion the word Indian may be acceptable when speaking among themselves, but not by anyone else, especially an authority figure, such as a teacher, or a policeman – it is a word that simply has “too much baggage”, says Waub Rice.

Waubgeshig Rice, now 32 years old, lived most of this life on the Wasauksing First Nation, he then attended Rosseau Lake College, and Parry Sound High School. I asked him about his experience growing up in both the native and non-native world, with parents of both cultures. Waub, unlike so many of the young people in his stories, grew up in a “totally harmonious, respectful and loving” environment. However, he is certainly not blind to the situation of many native people in our country, who live in poverty and desperation. Yet this young writer is, in fact, optimistic about the future of the people he writes about. Like the narrator in his first story, there is optimism that the community is now in healing, reclaiming their culture and their language.

Waub believes there is hope, even if it may sometimes to hard to find. He said he sees that “underneath complicated veils of darkness there is optimism”.

This is the first volume of fiction from this young writer. It has been very well received and I am sure we can expect more in the future. I wondered about the lack of a dedication in his book, and Waub answered that it was “written with gratitude to the community in which he grew up, and his family and friends”.

All of that community, along with family and friends, will have the opportunity to congratulate Waubgeshig Rice on the publication of Midnight Sweatlodge, and to hear him read from his work at the Charles W. Stockey Centre on Friday 21 October at 7:30 pm.