FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS
Fraser Valley Lois J. Peterson, Surrey lpwordsolutions@hotmail.com
Flexing their muscles in preparation for a busy fall, Fraser Valley members’ work showed up in a variety of venues in the late spring and summer as they put their time and skills to a variety of uses. The Red Wall author Jane Hall was featured in the summer issue of BC BookWorld. In July she presented a paper in Florida at a Summit on Leadership in Public Safety and was a guest of Texas Women’s University. In August she held a book signing at the Coquitlam Chapters. Her book was recently reviewed in Alberta and Oregon and is currently spotlighted on the Public Safety Leadership Development Consortium website. Jeanne Ainslie’s erotic novel A Country Girl (Dell, Blue Moon), which sold over 64,000 copies, came back into print in August with Xlibris. Debbie McKeown launched her writing website, www.djmckeown.com, and published an article in WestCoast Families magazine about a new Special Olympics program for young children. Susan McCaslin’s poems appeared in the anthologies White Ink: Poems on Mothers and Motherhood, Ascent Aspirations Magazine and Crossing Lines: Poets Who Came to Canada in the Vietnam Era. Her poems also appeared in Precipice, Room, Descant and The Merton Journal; her latest volume of poetry, Lifting the Stone, was reviewed in Room; The Pacific Rim Review of Books published her paper on Denise Levertov’s and Thomas Merton’s peace poetry and an essay on Blake. Since the launch of Lifting the Stone (Seraphim Editions), she has read at Fort Langley’s Fort Art Gallery, The Canadian Memorial Centre for Peace, Victoria’s Planet Earth Poetry Series, the Wired Monk in Vancouver, the UBC Robson Square Bookstore, the Vancouver Public Library and for an Association of College and University Instructors of English conference. In April she gave three readings in Edmonton and in early June moderated a workshop at the “Our Way Home” conference at SFU Harbour Centre.
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Lois Peterson started converting her adult memoir to a children’s novel Return of the Summer Fish for Tradewind Books, loosely basing it on her childhood in Iraq. Doris Riedweg signed a book contract with Libros Libertad Publishing of White Rock for her novel, Fury of the Wind, to be released early in 2009. Writer/ storyteller/performer Robert Stelmach toured 17 Fraser Valley libraries over the summer, as part of his “Little Johnny Small and Other Stories” tour, as well as presenting four performances on the Island. In April, Thuong Vuong-Riddick made an Off the Page presentation at Devon Elementary School and met with four-year students in the History of Canada course at the University College of the Fraser Valley at Abbotsford. On May18 Thuong made a presentation at Bridge Elementary School in Richmond. David Watmough’s memoir Myself Through Others was published by Dundurn Press in August.
Central Kay McCracken, Salmon Arm kaymcc@telus.net
Nancy Holmes, from the department of Creative Studies, UBCO Kelowna, brings us the new fall line-up of literary events. The Lake: A Reading Series will host two campus readings and three downtown readings between September and December 2008.For more information, visit http://web.ubc.ca/okanagan/ creative/events/literaryevents.html Heidi Garnett’s work will be represented in the anthology, ROCKSALT: An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry, edited by author Harold Rhenisch and Mona Fertig, publisher of Mother Tongue Publishing. Heidi, who lives in Kelowna, was recently shortlisted for Arc Poem of the Year but withdrew due to a conflict.
WORDWORKS–FALL 2008