Wordworks Winter 2006 Gary Geddes

WORDWORKS Winter 2006

T h e Vo i c e o f B r i t i s h C o l u m b i a Wr i t e r s

Gary Geddes The Writer as Witness

The Federation of BC Writers presents The 19th Annual Literary Writes Competition

Literary Writes 2007 Deadline: July 1, 2007 First prize is $500 Second prize is $300 Third prize is $150 This Year’s Category: Travel Stories Foreign Affairs: Travel stories with a twist!

Romance, danger or desire, fiction or creative nonfiction, from political intrigue in Iraq to a chance encounter in a Tunisian café, send us your best in 1000 words or less!

Little more than six months to go… and there’s Christmas and New Year’s, the mid-winter blahs, the Ides of March, Easter chocolate, end-of-term exams, the start of the water polo season… and before you know it, it’s Canada Day again.

So Go, Go, Go!

The competition is open to all BC writers and residents.

D Entries must be original work, not previously published in any form.

D Maximum of 1000 words per entry.

D Typed on one side of 8½ x 11” white paper, pages numbered consecutively and stapled together; written in English.

D Blind judging will be in effect, so do not put your name on the manuscript, but please put the title on each page.

D Enclose a cover sheet with your name, address, telephone number, email address, the title of your submission and its word length.

D Entry fee is $15 for Federation members and $20 for non-members. There is no limit to the number of entries an individual may submit. Each entry must be accompanied by the entry fee. A person may win only one prize. Make cheques or money orders payable to The Federation of BC Writers.

D Entries must be postmarked on or before July 1, 2007. No entries will be returned.

Copyright remains with the author.

D No email submissions.

Winners will be announced in September, 2007.

Judge: TBA

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Mail submissions and cheques, postmarked before July 1, 2007, to: Literary Writes The Federation of BC Writers PO Box 3887 Stn Terminal Vancouver, BC V6B 3Z3

This year’s category is Travel Stories.

Remember the deadline: July 1, 2007

Features

News

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New Chapbook Press Welcomes Writers Worldwide

A Note from our Managing Editor The Press Room

By Andrea McKenzie

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Inside Out: A Writer Serves Time at a Prison Writing Retreat

Contests & Markets 21 Contests & Markets 24 Writing to Win

By Heidi Greco

By Lois J. Peterson

11 Author! Author!

Photo Phantasy: One Writer’s Quest for the Elusive Author Photo

By Elsie K. Neufeld

Community

14 The Erotics of Insomnia: Harnessing the Midnight Muse

25 Launched!

New titles by Federation members

By Ryszard Dubanski

29 Regional Reports Member news from around the province

16 Gary Geddes: The Writer as Witness

Interview by Fernanda Viveiros

35 The Last Word: Überauthors and Others

By Jan Drabek

36 In Memoriam Vi Plotnikoff 1937-2006 Cover photo by Danielle Schaub, of Haifa, Israel

WORDWORKS–FALL 2006

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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

WORDWORKS THE FEDERATION OF BC WRITERS IS THE VOICE OF WRITERS IN BC—SUPPORTING, DEVELOPING AND EDUCATING WRITERS WHILE FOSTERING A COMMUNITY FOR WRITING THROUGHOUT THE PROVINCE.

A Note From Our Managing Editor “The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.”

Publisher THE FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Editorial Committee MARGARET THOMPSON LINDA CROSFIELD SHANNON COWAN GAIL BUENTE SHIRLEY RUDOLPH

Managing Editor FERNANDA VIVEIROS

Production & Design SHIRLEY RUDOLPH

Webmaster GUILLAUME LEVESQUE

2006-2007 Board of Directors PRESIDENT—BRIAN BUSBY VICE PRESIDENT—KARIN KONSTANTYNOWICZ TREASURER—GREG BALL SECRETARY—LOIS PETERSON PAST PRESIDENT—MARGARET THOMPSON EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR—FERNANDA VIVEIROS

Regional Representatives 1. NORTH—LYNDA WILLIAMS 2. SOUTH EAST—ANNE STRACHAN 3. CENTRAL—KAY MCCRACKEN 4. FRASER VALLEY—SYLVIA TAYLOR 5. LOWER MAINLAND—TBA 6. THE ISLANDS—DAVID FRASER THE FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS PO BOX 3887 STN TERMINAL VANCOUVER, BC V6B 3Z3 T: 604-683-2057 BCWRITERS@SHAW.CA WWW.BCWRITERS.COM

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s Emerson so eloquently puts it, writing requires a certain degree of bravery, dedication and risk. And inspired by a writer’s use of language, through his or her ability to bring into being a physical existence from a mere thought or idea…another writer is born.

The creative act of writing—and reading—intensifies our own thinking, encourages us to see new realities and explore novel possibilities. We believe WordWorks brings some of those possibilities to you. More than just a forum of our members’ work and accomplishments, this magazine serves as inspiration to those just finding their own voices. The profile interviews, essays and articles within these pages invite entry to a province-wide community of writers, and connect us, via their shared experience, as people engaged in the world of words.

Traditional book and magazine publishers face ongoing challenges but there are probably more opportunities now to write for publication than ever before. Online magazines and journals, access to foreign markets courtesy of the Internet, micro presses and chapbook presses popping up everywhere, not to mention the proliferation of blogs—and the books that have resulted from them—prove that opportunities are there for those ready to risk that launch into the infinite.

On behalf of the WordWorks editorial team and the Federation’s Board of Directors, may the New Year take your writing from inspiration to publication!

Fernanda Viveiros

ISSN # 0843-1329

PUBLICATIONS MAIL AGREEMENT NO. 40685010 POSTAL CUSTOMER NO. 7017320 RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO FEDERATION OF BC WRITERS BOX 3887 STN TERMINAL VANCOUVER BC V6B 3Z3

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WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

NEWS

The Press Room Access Copyright A reminder from Access Copyright regarding their new Affiliation Applications: Members who would like to become Access Copyright affiliates and would like to start their affiliation in 2006 must ensure that they return the completed application no later than noon on Thursday, December 21, 2006. Access Copyright has revised its submission guidelines for affiliation applications. New submission guidelines apply to new affiliations only, as of January 1, 2006. Applications must be sent in by mail. Original signatures are legally required, so Access Copyright cannot accept applications submitted via fax or email. Affiliation kits containing the Affiliation Agreement, application form, application FAQ and the “Providing a Works List to Access Copyright” guide sheets are available on request from Affiliate Services at affiliates@accesscopyright.ca or by phone at 1 (800) 893-5777 ext. 250 or 275.

The Writers’ Union of Canada It has come to TWUC’s attention that some Canadian publishers are requiring authors to purchase numerous copies of their work in order to guarantee publication of the work. While the contract between the Author and the Publisher may not state that the Author will purchase several hundred copies of the book, there is nonetheless a verbal agreement between the Author and Publisher that the Author will purchase a certain number of copies in order to guarantee sales. Coincidentally, the Fed office recently received queries from several BC authors asking about this practice—and whether to accept the publisher’s terms. One Victoria writer was asked to “guarantee sales of 500 books,” the implication being that she would purchase 500 books in exchange for publication, and furthermore, become responsible for marketing and selling these books herself.

Upon notifying the publisher that she

scale event, April 20 to 22, 2007, in Banff, which will include open readings, a keynote speaker and workshops, a special event, and their AGM. Visit the CNFC website for membership information and details at www.cnfc.freeservers.com

would be unable to purchase 500 copies or guarantee that 500 copies of the book would be sold via the traditional marketplace, the publisher rescinded the offer to publish. “While they (the publisher and his ‘committee’), all loved the book and thought the writing was very good, they didn’t feel that the book ‘fit into their program’,” said the disappointed writer.

The Union is trying to learn more about this practice and would appreciate any information or insight authors can provide. All information received will be kept confidential. BC writers can contact Pacific Coordinator Judy Villeneuve at 604535-8288 or twucpacific@shaw.ca

Creative Nonfiction Collective Seeks Writers of Nonfiction Prior to its incorporation as a Society in Alberta in 2005, the Creative Nonfiction Collective was already active among nonfiction writers throughout the western provinces who gathered in 2004 and 2005 at the Banff Centre for a creative nonfiction conference. The event addressed issues raised by the practice of creative nonfiction and featured readings, book launches and workshops dedicated to professional development and networking. Members participate in very active listserv discussions and have established links with the Toronto’s Writers’ Centre and the Saskatoon Co-op. The group has been meeting informally since 2004 to explore the range and potential of this rapidly growing genre, and to debate the social, cultural and ethical issues that define and preoccupy the genre and its practitioners.

One of the CNFC’s goals is to establish a national presence among nonfiction writers and their readers, editors and publishers.

The nonfiction genre in Canada is finally coming into its own on the literary scene, and the Collective sees that it has a role to play in its encouragement, development and promotion. The Collective will host a large-

WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

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Canada Post to Withdraw Support of PAP The Canadian magazine industry is bracing for major upheaval with the news that Canada Post Corporation intends to withdraw its $15 million financial contribution to the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) within the next several months. The $15 million gap will mean that postage costs for the average magazine will jump by 31 percent and will drastically alter the way that magazines are delivered to Canadians. The steep and sudden increase in distribution costs is not viable for many publishers, putting at risk the choice and amount of Canadian magazines available to readers.

It will also effectively put an end to a century-long partnership and to the subscription-based delivery model that has evolved because of federal government magazine policy.

Magazines Canada is asking everyone to write to their local Members of Parliament in order to “generate thoughtful discussion around the importance of Canadian magazines and what is at stake with Canada Post’s decision to withdraw from the PAP.” Magazines Canada is asking that there be a “review and evaluation of Canada’s magazine policy before Canada Post is allowed to walk away from a century-long distribution partnership. Our messages are about the impact on readers and access to Canadian magazines, as well as on the creative community and the magazine publishing industry.”

In order to help facilitate writing to your Members of Parliament, Magazine Canada has drafted a sample letter with a link to the addresses of each MP. Anne McClelland, Executive Director of the Book and Periodical Council, encourages all writers to send a letter or speak to your MP in person. MP Link: http:// canada.gc.ca/directories/direct_e.html#mp

FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Literary Writes 2006

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he winners of the 2006 Literary Writes competition for poetry were announced September 24 at Vancouver’s Word On The Street. First place winner was Susan McCaslin with her poem, “Radiant Body.” Second place winner was Sue Cormier with her entry “Measure”, and “Unpacking” by Mary Ann Moore garnered a third place finish! This year’s Literary Writes judge, Sandy Shreve, hosted readings by the winning poets at the Federation Celebration event in the Author’s Tent.

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ongratulations to Mo Gosh who received Honourable Mention for her poem “if you are fearful,” and to the following writers whose poems made the judge’s long list selection: Alvin Ens, Roy Roberts, Anne Miles, Susan Fenner, Sheila Peters, Robert Martens and David Prest.

Radiant Body “For as the soul is a being of the cosmic order, it is absolutely necessary that it should have an estate or portion of the cosmos in which to keep house.”

—Philoponus Perhaps heaven shelters in this elbow resting on this desk, where hand cradles chin, or out there in Orion thoughts intend to lean into this place and grow lungs, or go four-footed, or on wings, so says the circulating word that sings news from nowhere, mystery in the wheels, surprise—whatever awakened Ezekiel who though broken, half in hell considered no negotiations, no deals.

If all of me belongs in several worlds, when body ages and leaf-like curls

Federation president Brian Busby with first place winner Susan McCaslin and Fed member Richard Hopkins.

it is possible some radiant skin will flare within this flesh, a denser light, forgotten guest arise familiar like lost kin.

What if earth houses more than we know—some subtle-bodied dream of long ago?

Susan McCaslin is a poet and instructor of English at Douglas College in New Westminster, BC, who has authored eight volumes of poetry, including A Plot of Light (Oolichan Press, 2004) and At the Mercy Seat (Ronsdale Press, 2003).

Judge Sandy Shreve congratulates second place winner Sue Cormier.

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WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

FEATURES

Measure a cat in a locked box. is it alive or dead. who would you ask. how much time has passed. stand in one place. watch the leaves turn. watch the angle of sun change. count the hours, the miles. is this tragic. is this a tragedy. a testimonial. spread your arms. measure the distance. divide the number of time zones by how many people. how many years. is it too late to call. the number of faces. in a crowd. she stood too close. someone was watching. did she notice. how could she not. your hand on her face. so much in the way her chin turned. the nature of bodies. language. silence as an excess of words. were you listening. two roads crossed. divided. is a straight line always. the necessity of touch. a beam of light in a vacuum will bend. given the nature of intuition. analyze her silence. analyze yours. what were your options. given an infinite number of words and a limited amount of time. a cat sleeping on your chest will steal your breath. at the top of the stairs is a box.

Schroedinger’s cat. does it matter how many locks. as long as it’s closed. how long did she hold. who looked away first. phone number. hand. mouth. face. if you had asked. if she hadn’t turned her head. if it weren’t so crowded. heartrate and lifespan are inversely proportional. calculate life expectancy. what did you expect. if given the chance. what would you say. a second chance. a chance meeting. the close passing of bodies in a crowded hallway. given the fallability of photographs. does she remember. will you forget. souvenirs. evidence. a sealed box at the top of the stairs. can you prove this (n)ever happened. given the amount of passing time. calculate the speed of light. does memory include shadows. how close did you stand. the sound of one hand clasping. a small animal in a large box will eventually. given a list of statistics. the number of breaths in a minute. calculate the probablities of the following. marriage. divorce. birth. rebirth. life. afterlife. death. a photograph. a mirror. do you look the same. would you recognize. given the number of people in the world. what are the chances. footprints. are you standing. where. was she here. the box at the top of the stairs. when you move. will you leave it or add more locks. who do you sleep beside. do they know. what would you say. do you dream. when you lie awake. about who. the fine line between daydreams. define possibility. the cat loves the sunlight. a locked box. don’t open it. you may not want to know. the distance between two bodies is a straight line. a raised hand from across the street. a greeting. a warning. waving. drowning. given the number of years that have passed. calculate the probability. a live cat in a sealed box. is it raining where she is. is the sun on your face. how many time zones can the wind blow across. if two people think of the same thing, will the phone ring. hold your hands against the sky. count the stars. assume life. measure the distance: in inches, in miles, in years, in lightyears. the spiraling strands of DNA. assume breath. a theory beyond proof. if you stand very still and watch the clouds. you can feel the earth turn. hold these words up like unborn children. adore them. believe in reincarnation.

First Place, $500 prize: Susan McCaslin “Radiant Body Body””

Second Place, $300 prize: Susan Cormier ”Measure”

Third Place, $150 prize: Mary Ann Moore ”Unpacking”

Metis artist Susan Cormier has won or been shortlisted for several literary awards, including CBC’s National Literary Award in Poetry, Arc Magazine’s Poem of the Year Award, the British Columbia Alternative Writing and Design contest, and Anvil Press/subTerrain Magazine’s Lush Triumphant Award.

Mary Ann Moore’s poem, next page WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Unpacking I unpack the poppy goddess and place her in the middle, tall like Mt. Juktas, arms outspread, the wings of the double axe at Knossos, the frescoed dolphins, iced coffee, a rusted yellow mailbox and the bright blue sea, the sage I pinch from a bundle wrapped in a town called Kas where I swam in azure waters among Lycean ruins. Covered my hair with a purple cotton scarf trimmed with seashells. Showered with two women under one lone spout,

Federation member Mary Ann Moore travelled from her home in Nanaimo to read her winning poem at Vancouver’s Word on the Street.

I sit at my table in Wisdom’s Chair, the Aghia Sophia held up by marble green columns from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the smell of halvah, the Spice Market, the boat on the Bosphorus, the red hand of Fatima, the multi-layered mysteries of Byzantium, this bit of kitsch is from Frida’s land, a dancing skeleton — it helps to create a shrine to the artist of the Casa Azul, a retablo of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the colours of pain and death: sinister blue, yellow love, gangrene, a land I’ve never been to but the colours remind me of something, a photo from Ghost Ranch at Abiqui, Kokopelli, Georgia’s animal bones, chilies in an orange/red wreath, the white-washed walls of Mabel’s adobe house where D. H. and Frieda met with Ansel and Willa. The weather-beaten birdhouses lined the fence, the magpies’ mischief filled the yard. We could see the cross on the hill at the Pueblo, loved to roll the words: Arroyo Seco, a poetry book of odes to ordinary things, Neruda’s delight in mermaids, socks, onions and scissors like wings. The poet’s obligation. Rumi’s mevlevi, a bluecovered book from Konya where he and the other dervishes rest, each in a sarcophagus adorned with a fez, alight with Arabic gold calligraphy praising Allah, the crocheted edge on the small white hankie, a smooth brown stone like an egg from a chicken I was afraid to put my hand under. Enough water to scald a pig like the one Grandpa chased around the barnyard. Later hung and disembowelled in colours like the blues and pinks of Grandma’s house dresses covered by a butcher apron. The time she burned the baby bonus in the wood stove. A quilt of patterns stitched together with commas.

Mary Ann Moore is a poet, writer and workshop facilitator in Nanaimo. Her poetry, fiction and a personal essay have received Honourable Mentions and prizes from Prairie Fire, Off the Shelf and others.

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WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

FEATURES

New Chapbook Press Welcomes Writers Worldwide

By Andrea McKenzie

Hear ye, hear ye! There is a new publishing house in town called Rubicon Press (www.rubiconpress.org), which is accepting manuscripts from writers worldwide.

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touch about the manuscripts we’re considering.” enna Butler (Founding Editor), who resides in Rubicon is based on the idea of creating a global commuEdmonton, Alberta and Victoria-based writer and Federation member Yvonne Blomer (Assistant Editor) are nity of writers by publishing the work of poets worldwide.

“Most presses in Canada will the masterminds behind the only publish Canadian work, new press. The two met while but we want to publish internapursuing their Master of Creative tional poetry,” says Blomer, Writing degrees at the University whose own poetry has won of East Anglia in the U.K. in awards and been published 2004/05. The points of distribuwidely in Canadian journals and tion for the press, so far, are East anthologies.

Anglia, Edmonton (where Butler “I feel that Yvonne and I really is currently teaching full-time), are doing what we set out to do, and Victoria. in the sense that we reach out to The two friends decided to writers from around the world, showcase their classmates’ accomwhereas most independent poetry plishments in a chapbook because publishers are very focused on a according to Butler, “Norwich is local market,” said Butler. very supportive of its university’s Rubicon Press is built on a Creative Writing program, but labour of love between the there hadn’t been a big push in the author and publisher, which past to have its poets present their means that the publisher work to the community.” The understands the joy, sweat and thrilled new publisher added, “To tears that is an integral part of date, we’ve had two readings in the the writing process and the city for the launches of two finished product. Therefore, different Rubicon chapbooks.”

Victoria writer Yvonne Blomer is one-half of BC’s Rubicon provides each book After earning their master’s newest chapbook press, Rubicon Press. with the professional design and degrees and returning to their care that it deserves. respective homes, the two man“Right from the press’s aged to further collaborate on the project by sending work inception, I envisioned a strong independent poetry puband ideas back and forth via email and snail mail. lisher founded on the hard work of its volunteer members— “Yes, it does make things challenging sometimes in the people who loved poetry, who read poetry widely, and who sense that we can’t just meet over coffee to review the latest wanted to reach international as well as local authors,” said pile of manuscripts; I’m at the post office several times a month, sending her photocopied batches of the newest work Butler. “I am all about very tactile, beautifully-designed books, and I feel that a small press has better access to this so she can review it,” said Butler. “We are excellent (read, kind of work because it is dealing with limited print runs.” fanatic) e-mailers, though, so we have no trouble keeping in more on next page WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

New Chapbook Press, cont’d

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his means that there is not a mass production of the book where the quality of individual care and craftsmanship may be jeopardized. Butler’s main vision for the press is that of “a publishing company that works one-on-one with its authors during the editing and design process to create a book that really reflects the author’s original vision for his/her completed manuscript.”

As for deciding what to call the press, “I’ve always been a little attached to the name Rubicon (crossing the Rubicon!).

I love the idea of pushing borders and striving for change— in a positive sense, of course,” said Butler.

The press is focused on accepting manuscripts for individual chapbooks, but their first edition Tempus is a compilation of poets both local and abroad. Rubicon Press has already received submissions from Japan and Italy, in addition to Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. “For the inaugural chapbook we did a collection, poems

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chosen by Jenna. I was concerned that I didn’t want to have competing interests as many of the Victoria poets are people I know well. We have just released our first single collection by writer Todd Swift. He’s a Montreal-born Canadian living in London, England. Also we have plans to publish a collection

by Lorri Neilsen Glenn in the winter,” says Blomer.

Tempus was launched in East Anglia and Edmonton in summer 2006, and had its inauguration in Victoria on October 20, 2006, at the Black Stilt Cafe Planet Earth Poetry series.

This article was first published in Ascents Aspirations Magazine. Reprinted with permission.

Andrea McKenzie grew up in Victoria, BC, where she still resides. She is a long-time fixture at the Mocambopo Poetry Series, which is now Planet Earth Poetry. Andrea holds a BA in English Literature from the University of Victoria. She is an aspiring poet, novelist and freelance writer. Her poetry has appeared in Canadian Literature, Mocambo Nights, Quills, Boulevard and Rubicon Press. In 2005, she published her first book of poetry, A Mother’s String, through Ekstasis Editions.

WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

FEATURES

Inside Out A Writer Serves Time at a Prison Writing Retreat

By Heidi Greco

The last weekend of October actually began in September. Maybe even June, if I want to dig back to root causes. I just know it was early summer when I first put the note on my calendar—to be part of that gathering where I’d meet Mary. And Mary, well, she’s the reason I ended up in prison.

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d Griffin is another part of how I got to Matsqui. He can best be described as a long-time writing activist.

He established Surrey’s Creative Writing Program and has always been a force behind the Surrey International Writers’ Conference. For years, Ed has run a program to help meet the needs of writers who are in prison.

Even though Mary and I had never met before that day in September, when we did, it was as if something clicked.

Her enthusiasm made me want to know more about the program she described for us—a writing retreat at the medium-security penitentiary in Abbotsford. I’ll admit I first envisioned this as a weekend where I’d be sleeping over in the prison. I imagined the ghosts and haunted spirits I’d encounter, especially as the date would be so close to Halloween. But that wasn’t the case; we’d only be spending our days there. Still, even without having to prepare for an overnight stay, there was plenty to do.

The first priority was filling out an application form to gain clearance into the facility. It was obvious this wasn’t some Internet dating form, where you could shed a few pounds or shift a number in your date of birth. This wanted nothing but the cold, hard facts, Ma’am.

I worried some because I had to admit I have an acquaintance who’s in prison. A bigger worry was that there might be someone else I knew in there, but I hadn’t yet heard the news. Luckily, telling the truth did me no harm, as I was cleared for entry. Exhale.

The next item of business was submitting a piece for a booklet that Mary was going to produce. This would contain work by the participants: the ten writers who would represent the outside world and the group of men we’d come to know as “Insiders.” Looking at it now, I’d have to say I

WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

Heidi Greco is a writer and editor who lives in South Surrey.

She covers readings and other events at her blog, www.outonthebiglimb.blogspot.com

submitted a chicken-shit piece, one that revealed very little.

But the pieces the Matsqui inmates submitted compensated for my lack of courage.

They had written poems, short stories and essays. As might be imagined, much of the men’s work found its focus in the prison system, often relating the frustration that results when appeals go awry. Their pieces were among the more on next page 9

FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Inside Out, cont’d strongest in the booklet, having obviously grown out of experiences that were emotionally fraught.

Consider these words from Chris: There’s a tire tread only inches from my face. Hair and blood on it. At least that’s what it looks like to me. There’s a throbbing sensation in my right hand, but my left is completely numb. A second ago I tried to swivel my neck to no success.

Chin seems to move, however when I close my jaw it doesn’t quite hinge.

I don’t know about you, but to me that reads like something from Bill Gaston or Denis Johnson.

One of my favourite “outsider” writings was by Todd Parker, a student at the University of British Columbia. He’s currently in the BFA program, with plans to pursue a master’s degree. His nonfiction piece had so much grit to it, I assumed an inmate had written it. One day my father drove his truck away and never came back.

I thought that sounded like a pretty good recipe for turning out to be a criminal. It also showed just how little difference there was between the insiders and the outsiders.

We were together on this retreat for one reason: because we are writers.

I could go on about the sound of the gates clanging shut behind us as we entered. I could try to describe the sloppy joes or the boiled hot dogs we ate for lunch. I could tell you about standing out in the chill of the smoke-hole between rains. But what I really want you to know is that this retreat changed something in me. When the weekend was over, it took me a few days just to “decompress” from where I had been. It was as if I’d gone diving, and then emerged from the water too fast. It seemed ridiculous, but when I got home, I could barely speak. My partner wondered whether I’d fallen in love. While that wasn’t quite the case, it’s as if something clicked over in me, that the timer moved along to the next, more urgent notch. Something in my perspective shifted— about writing and probably also about people.

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Insiders or outsiders, it was clear we all were passionate about words. One of the men raised the idea of “the hierarchy of language,” explaining how language gets used by the prison system to keep the prisoners inside. He told us that even though many inmates are functionally illiterate, they must fill out forms in order to launch an appeal. Knowing my own inadequacies when it comes to filling out forms, I see this as yet another system that makes no sense, one with an outcome that can only be frustration.

Penny Duane’s sci-fi tale involving futuristic soldiers is based on her experience in the U.S. Marine Corps. Her account of her own recruitment did not seem much different from one of the men’s account of his dealings with a parole officer. In both cases, options were misrepresented; entrapment seemed the order of the day. It was as if choices didn’t really exist.

I remembered how one of the men summed up the problem when he said that so many of the inmates just get “lost in the linguistic labyrinth.”

I looked again at the aptly titled Inside Out, the booklet containing participants’ writings. The labyrinth design on its cover—a pattern echoed on a cushion in my living room—seemed so appropriate.

It’s the image of that colourful and bright cushion I would like to leave you with. Discovered in a sales bin at IKEA, I bought it with the idea of having a finger-sized labyrinth for some lazy meditation. But if you look closely, the design is flawed. Whoever set the embroidery machine made a mistake: some of the curving roads are blocked. The resulting pattern is a maze without an exit.

Before, I’d tossed around the idea of fixing the pillow, of removing the faulty stitches, of opening some of those blocked paths in its pattern. Now, after meeting my new writing friends at Matsqui, this seems like an important thing to do.

If you’d like to know more about participating in one of these retreats, contact Mary Ellen Reid at mereidbc@shaw.ca.

WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

FEATURES

AUTHOR! AUTHOR!

Photo Phantasy One Writer’s Quest for the Elusive Author Photo

By Elsie K. Neufeld

I should have known there would be trouble when my husband got out his Pentax, the one that accompanied us in the late ’70s when we camped our way from Amsterdam to Morocco. I kept a journal and he snapped photos.

Hundreds of photos.

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oday, however, all I need is one black and white headshot for the anthology in which my poems will appear. The photos I’d sent were unsuitable and the publisher has given me only two days to replace them.

“Are you sure it works?” I ask my husband as he opens the battered case. “Maybe we should just use my point-and-click. All I need is one good photo.”

Since his gaze verges on a glare, I don’t remind him of the photos he took last spring in which hikers and trees resembled a dense forest at dusk. Instead, I hand him the film, which I say is a twelve and he insists is a twenty-four.

I retrieve the empty box. What? I’m sure I asked for a twelve. Well! Maybe I am wrong about his camera, too.

Outside, he fiddles with the light meter. Should it wobble like that? Separate like three silver dollars? I’m afraid to ask. Instead I ask where I should pose, then protest when he suggests on the top rail; it’s wet and might freeze my bum or worse—what if I fall off?

He repeats the word up.

I grab the top rail. Climb up, hold tight and look into the camera. I squint and blink just as he clicks.

Elsie K. Neufeld is editor-in-chief and contributing poet to Half in the Sun: Anthology of Mennonite Writing (Ronsdale, 2006). The photo in question appears in the poetry anthology Breaking the Surface (Sono Nis, 2000).

He tells me to wet my lips and shoots again, right when I stick out my tongue. Good thing it’s a twenty-four exposure film.

I follow instructions. Put one leg down. Look thoughtful. Turn my face towards the mountain. Eyes elsewhere.

Then he tells me to stick out my jaw. My jaw? My hand goes instinctively to my chin, which time has doubled. He assures me it won’t look silly, it will have a tightening effect. He mouths iguana and I laugh before I can think to be offended. Stick my jaw out as far as possible, smile, smile and click, click, click.

When the film is full, he tosses it in my direction and I drive to Costco, which has a one-hour processing service.

Or so I thought, until the pimply-faced clerk, whose sculpted hair reminds me of our cockatiel, tells me otherwise. Nor do they process black and white film. The lad suggests London Drugs, where I’d purchased the film. more on next page

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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

who does, though he’s a trucker so he may not be around.

His business is “Black Knight” and he works out of his “How long will that take, Shirlee?” I ask the woman there. home. If he’s not your guy, says the voice on the line, you’re out of luck.

A blue, oval name tag hangs crookedly over her left breast.

I hang up and dial the number. “Bri-an?” a woman Shirlee drawls and calls me “Ma’am” before and after she screams too close to the phone, “there’s some lady that needs informs me that it takes a week to process black and white a film developed today. Come talk to her.” Black Knight film in their Alberta-based lab. When answering my quesBrian takes over. “Yup. Nope. Leavin’ at 1 today. Sure. If you tion of other, more local, possibilities, she suggests…maybe come down right now. What kinda camera? How old?” He Vancouver. gives me directions.

I stand there, staring. Chew a tag of loose skin on my Thirty minutes later, I find the house with red roof and lower lip until I taste blood. What to do, what to do? A child red trim. It’s older, all right. With a driveway long and wide screams behind me, and the pole-and-rope aisle behind me enough to accommodate rigs. A ladder stands beside a tall collapses with a loud clang. “Now look what you’ve done,” rhododendron, a string of Christmas lights dangles between says her mother. The screams grow louder. top step and bush. Painted plywood cut-outs are pegged into Shirlee picks up a speaker. Her booming voice requests the lawn: penguins, candy canes, and assistance. five snowmen.

I ponder making two trips into A guy in a black Stetson and Vancouver (six hours driving, plus gas) cowboy boots appears. “So you found versus a courier, when my ex-photogHe tips back his hat. the place, eh?” he says. He tips back rapher brother comes to mind. Of A person could get lost in his hat. A person could get lost in course! He’ll be able to help me. He used to own a shop in Abbotsford and those round, cow-brown those round, cow-brown eyes.

He gestures, and for a moment I knew everyone in the business. eyes. hesitate, but then follow him along the I thank Shirlee, and turn to go. She path, down three steps and into a small nods, but without eye contact. darkroom under the back deck. There’s a black panther on “Ma’am? Ma’am? Your…”

The world spins, and suddenly I’m sprawled on the floor, the door, like on the screen at the start of an old, R-rated movie. my purse strap snagged in the hooked end of the cordonedBrian tugs at an overhead string and the room lights up. off aisle. A child giggles and a woman gasps. I pick myself Black and white prints cover the walls. There’s one of a up and right the toppled pole. Drive home without stopyoung girl holding a balloon. Nothing indecent. ping. Don’t even notice, until I am pressing telephone I hand him the film. He takes it and starts talking. Seems buttons, that I’ve scraped my right palm. Never mind; it’s in no hurry although it’s almost eleven. I ask if he still plans business first. But my brother’s not home and no shops are to leave at one. “Oh, depends. If it’s snottin’ outside, then open so I leave a series of urgent messages and request a one; if not, three. I’m just dickin’ around with Christmas quick reply. Then I wait…all evening. lights today.” He points, asks if that’s the camera we used.

I nod and laugh; emphasize old Pentax. Finger the light n the morning I wake to my daughter dropping the cat meter until something clatters to the concrete. on my pillow. I groan. Push the cat off. Daughter says Brian is startled. Takes a look, and says it shouldn’t fall I’m being mean, but I tell her cats are resilient. I demonapart like that. He suspects it has a loose screw, and if I don’t strate how they always land on their feet. Daughter is not fix that I won’t get a proper reading. I say I’ll tell my husimpressed. band. I try not to sound frantic and resist the urge to grab Wide awake now, I remember. The film! the meter from him.

While the coffee drips, I check my answering machine.

He hands it back. The meter comes apart in my hand as Nothing. I grab the phone book, flip to the back. Just as my finger finds PHOTOGRAPHY, my daughter says we have to soon as he lets go. Brian steps toward me. I back away. He stops, looks me in the eye and smiles. “Just getting a Ziploc leave right now or she’ll be late for school. bag,” he says, “for the pieces.” He pulls one from a drawer, I return from my morning walk at 9:57, with a clearer places the loose pieces inside and rides his fingers, slowly, mind. I will have this film processed today. I call the first along the seal, then hands me the bag. He asks for my phone photo lab listed in the Yellow Pages and describe my need. number so he can call when he’s done.

They don’t process black and white but recommend someone

Photo Phantasy, cont’d

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I

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FEATURES

At home, I check my email. No messages. I give my son a five-minutes-to-departure notice and listen to my answering machine. That was fast, I think when the Black Knight’s voice tells me to call him asap.

The news isn’t good. He says he can’t get anything off the “thin negatives.” He asks again what kind of light we shot in.

I sigh into the phone. Mumble something about starting over.

There’s silence at the other end. Then, an offer: if I get more black and white film Brian will shoot me. Since the weather’s holding, he won’t leave until three.

I resist at first, say I’ll find a studio in town. But he’s keen, says he has time and besides, “They’ll charge you a leg just for the sitting fee.”

I ask my son how I look as we drive down the mountain.

I drive with one eye on the road, the other in the rear-view mirror. Damn! Why hadn’t I washed my hair?

notice now is his hair. It’s bad, really bad, dishevelled and flat. I touch my own. Fluff it up. Should I worry? If so, there’s no time. He’s rattling off instructions: Look that way. Turn slowly. Real slow now. He says he can tell I’ve done this before, and I laugh, recall posing for my husband.

“Shhh. Don’t talk. Oh, there’s the spark. Good. Good.

Keep turning…”

I pivot into another time, when I posed for the new Pentax in dandelion fields, beside collapsed barns and the rusty gate of an abandoned cemetery. In the back of our van in southern France. It was a hot day, and we’d just come back from the beach. Yes, that Pentax has seen better days…

The Black Knight brings me back. Says he got some good shots and he’ll process the film real quick.

And sure enough, within the hour I’m following Brian again down those back stairs. He stops. “Old ones,” he says, holding up a strip of blank brown negatives, “and…new.” In nd then I’m back at London the darker strip, distinct faces fill each Drugs, buying three rolls of square. He apologizes for not making a black and white film, to make I’m laughing in a few, contact sheet and recommends a good sure I have the right kind. None is chewing gum in another, my place nearby that’s fast. exactly what Brian asked for, but the I open my wallet and ask how hair’s flat in each one, and much. He ponders my question, says, clerk insists these will do, and if I’m the wrinkles around my eyes “There’s a lot of guys out there that’ll back in an hour, I can return the unused ones. resemble a mushroom’s wanna rip you off, but I don’t charge The Black Knight is pacing his that much.” underside. driveway with a cell phone when I I throw down some tens and he return. A woman stands behind a hands me his card. Slips the coil of parked Jeep. His mother? Wife? She looks older, but I can’t negatives into an envelope, passes it to me, and we head tell. I walk over, say hi. The bristly wart near her mouth yooutside. He’s wearing his hat again. “Your eyes,” I start to yos when she asks how my day is going. say.

I look over her shoulder. Tell her I’m having a bit of a “What’s that?” photo nightmare. She assures me that Brian will take care of “You’ve got a good eye,” I say, and refer to the photos I’d me, and then the wart stops moving. seen in his studio wall.

I try to not smile, to focus on the penguins behind her, not He pushes his hat back, looks at me real slow. “You the flashback of that movie in which John Candy tosses a caught me in a good mood. Christmas lights and all…” quarter onto the desk of a dour-faced principal and suggests Barthel’s is re-roofing and the place is dusty and loud, but she hire a rat to chew that thing off her face. Luckily, the it’s open for business. I relinquish the negatives and hope for Black Knight comes over before I complete my thought. the best. I’ve already decided if these prints don’t turn out, He suggests we get started, that we do it on the lawn. I I’m submitting a blank. follow him there.

But an hour later they’re done. I’m laughing in a few, He paces from the rhododendron to the blue spruce on chewing gum in another, my hair’s flat in each one, and the the far lawn, then points to a spot where I should stand. He wrinkles around my eyes resemble a mushroom’s underside. looks at the film. “Twenty-four, eh?”

I’ll mail the best ones to my publisher tonight.

I say they didn’t have twelve, and besides, I’m not photoI head home; take an alternate route past the Black genic. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” he says from behind the Knight’s house. The driveway is empty, but the whole place camera, his hand on its protruding lens. He kneels on the is lit up. It looks cheesy and cheery. Festive. wet lawn. “Wouldn’t say that at all.”

At home, I spread the light-meter’s coin-shiny pieces over He tips his hat back, and then tosses it onto the porch. my husband’s pillow, and place one black and white photo at And suddenly, his eyes no longer draw my attention; all I the edge.

A

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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

The Erotics of Insomnia Harnessing the Midnight Muse

By Ryszard Dubanski

Being a beastly writer, living with one, knowing others, not to mention having read the odd book (some very odd), at times I find myself wondering how other writers write. What are their inspirations, work habits, and so on? Like, how does Stephen King get down so many thousands of words a day? What fuels that kind of productivity? More generally, and especially when facing a deadline, I’ve found myself speculating about the creative wellsprings of various well-known books.

Writer’s Little Helpers…

Abusing substances is a well-documented author’s aid. For example, picture pale, delicate, drugged-to-the-gills Mary Shelley composing Frankenstein one night in a feverish writing contest at the Lake Como villa. You can still see the genesis of her visionary myth shimmering in the first few dark chapters of that classic, before rational day-time editing kicked in to pasteurize the tale (and she never wrote anything as good again—just look at Last Man). Intoxication and writing go together, like, well, whiskey and soda. Think Fitzgerald, Lowry, Hemingway, et al. Then there are the dopers and fanciers of psychedelics: like Kerouac and Kesey, respectively. In my urgency to avoid work I’ve even nurtured suspicions about apparently strait-laced authors, like Joseph Conrad. Compare all those long, travelogue-filled novels to his crisp, spare yet so powerful Heart of Darkness, quite outside his normal realist purview. Maybe he, like some of the Gothic novelists, deliberately took an indigestible dinner —or something stronger—to bring on “the horror, the horror.”

And this just in on Stephen King: According to a recent review in the NY Times, he used/uses a magic combo of drugs and booze—so ripped on cocaine that he’d write feverishly at his desk nostrils stuffed with Kleenex to offset the drug’s nose bleeding side effect.

What facilitates my own writing? Kind of a personal question, but I’m willing to share my private mode, or, should I say, dirty little secret, with fellow scribblers—in the noble hope of helping others. My own mainline facilitator is

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considered, these days, to be a major and growing health problem. Pharmaceutical companies make mega-bucks promising to treat it. Clinics are devoted to its study while scores of personal websites offer ‘cures’ plus support for sufferers. My muse, the monkey on my back, is insomnia. I write, at least in part, because I can’t sleep.

It may be heredity. Ever since I turned fourteen, my mother and I would stay up ‘til the late show ended, and later still, while my father and brother slept like those proverbial logs. Seems like our small family was split 50/50 along slumber lines. For some time I was seriously worried, especially as I got older, even sought medical help for this condition. Sleeping pills work, but make you—or me, anyway—dopey through the day. Of course, I’d already tried all the friend-of-a-friend advice: warm milk, a murmurous radio on for background noise, even sniffing a cut-up onion in a jar. (!) And I’d read, obsessively, magazine and newspaper columns on how to improve your sleep life. Take melatonin to regulate rhythms, valerian to relax, chamomile to settle the system, they variously enjoined; or, more vaguely, think happy thoughts. Much of the advice was contradictory; one annoying expert would insist that I not booze in the evening, while another, more lovable, urged a hot toddy before retiring. Many pushed getting more exercise (No! No!) — just as I started to give in, however, I hit one that insisted that ab-twists and press-ups before bed guaranteed sleeplessness. End result? I was wide awake... and my thoughts weren’t happy.

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The Answer is More Education Punch ‘sleep’ into Google and you get an initial 244,000,000 hits. So, it’s a really big deal. But the scientific community is not unanimous on sleep, when you check. In fact, there’s no consensus on the actual role of slumber among theorists.

Though, of course, since they are theorists, there are theories.

One is that we sleep to ‘practise REM’—that is, to rehearse stereoscopic coordination of eye movement, because that’s what happens in sleep. But surely there’s a cause and effect issue here: just because any particular thing occurs during sleep, there’s no inherent reason to believe that sleep occurs simply to allow that thing to happen. (Besides, how dull—if sleep is for synchronized eye-swivelling, why not be awake and look at something?)

Then there’s the more general ‘Repair and Restoration’ notion, proposing that since the body mends itself at night, after the exertions of the day, that’s what sleep is for. True, no doubt, that some repairs do occur at night; but again this seems subject to the chicken and egg query. Are some restorations simply occurring when the body’s at rest, or does sleep exist to accommodate/facilitate repair?

‘Mini-hibernation’ fans claim we are set up to sleep when food is scarce or when life is dangerous. Sleeping, we conserve energy when it can’t be readily replenished—ergo Circadian rhythm. In prehistoric times, once the sun set, the landscape became doubly perilous for unprotected humanity, with pitfalls and predators galore; what better way to keep safe than to develop a built-in command to seek shelter, lie down and stay still ’til light returned? Yes, but it’s been a while since I saw a pride of hungry lions on Commercial Drive.

And so on. Whatever the theories, of body or mind, most folks believe that we simply need regular sustained sleep, for the sake of sanity, that if we don’t have ‘down-time’ from our cares we would go crazy. This sounds credible—after all, everyone feels better after eight hours or so of catching zzzs, right?

But—there are people who sleep very little, just an hour or two per night, and these folks are not running mad in the streets (at least, I hope not). I’ve also read in some of those odd books mentioned previously of a few exceptional individuals who never sleep, though scientists would disagree, claiming such stories urban myths. According to them, only a few Africans suffering from a rare gene disorder that stops the production of sleep hormones in middle age don’t actually sleep, and that kills them. Yet permanent alterations of sleep patterns do happen, albeit mysteriously: e.g., a person comes home one night from a party, can’t get to sleep, then has insomnia evermore. Other times such changes may come on after trauma, as in wars or accidents; a disruption occurs in the normal, quotidian

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habit, and, in such cases, regular sleep may return over time or not.

Nor should we forget that sleep is not omnipresent in nature. Sharks don’t do it—no one knows why not. But there is speculation that their sleeplessness may be connected to the fact that sharks are one of the few life forms that do not get cancer.

Eureka is not just a Town in California By this point I was thoroughly confused, and like the scientist hero, Archimedes, when faced with a tough question about the relative weights of metals, I decided to sleep on it, or at least toss and turn on it—then woke to a startling revelation. Maybe, just maybe, sleep’s not such a big deal, after all? Nobody really knows for sure... perhaps the “what I really need is a good night’s sleep” nostrum should be queried, even moderated. Even among slumberous beasts like us bipeds, the apparent need for sleep alters over time— as we boomers morphing into geezers are now discovering.

Maybe there are even evolutionary advantages to insomnia. I mean, what if sleep really is an atavism, like tonsils, something humankind has grown beyond over the millennia.

Could it be we just don’t need it anymore, or not as much?

Cities never sleep. Like, maybe I’m one of a new more advanced breed of urban humanity, on the cusp of an evolutionary leap, sort of a Cro-Magnon as opposed to a Neanderthal (though I must say I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the latter group as a gentler, kinder species).

Anyway, I stopped fretting about missed sleep—and actually started to discover many advantages to the insomniac lifestyle. You can have two sets of friends, chipper action-packed day-people and cool, bohemian night owls. As well, there’s plenty of weird media on at night, psychic friends, phone-me girls/guys, infomercials, odd little flicks on the arty channels—stuff the sleepy-bye folk never see. All great for writing ideas. And, most important of all, writingwise you can get some darn good work done.

Let’s Spend the Night Together There’s something sensual and enveloping about the deep night. To the happily insomniac scribbler, night time is welcoming—familiar ground. You are solitary, safe, secure.

You know every square meter of your dark abode, can walk it blind and don’t need light to find your way. But should you want them, you know that there are lights everywhere, tiny, pretty ones, party red and green, starry white, sunny gold—on the computers, the phones, clock faces, VCR, CD players, appliances, power cords—all a-twinkle, creating a continued on page 20 15

FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Gary Geddes The Writer as Witness

photo: Danielle Schaub

Born in Vancouver, Gary Geddes lives at French Beach on Vancouver Island but has taught and lectured at universities across Canada and sojourned abroad. He has written and edited more than 35 books, including the bestselling memoir, Sailing Home, and won over a dozen national and international awards, among them the Americas Best Book Award and the Gabriela Mistral Prize. A prolific poet, Geddes is the author of sixteen volumes of poetry, including the memorable Skaldance, and the translator (with George Liang) of I Didn’t Notice the Mountain Growing Dark: Poems of Li Bai and Du Fu. Most recently, he was Distinguished Professor of Canadian Culture in the Center for Canadian-American Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, and is the current writerin-residence at the Vancouver Public Library. As a mentor and as a writer, Geddes conveys a humane perspective on issues both personal and political, whether documenting the world’s forgotten places and histories, or exploring his own family legends. His nonfiction writing, as evidenced in The Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things, incorporates history, political analysis and cultural anthropology in an eloquent call to arms. Here, in conversation with Fernanda Viveiros, he speaks on the paradox of living in the twenty-first century

Fernanda Viveiros: You’ve served as a writer-in-residence at numerous universities including the University of Alberta, Malaspina University College, University of Ottawa and Green College at UBC. How different is it for you to work with members of the public—as opposed to students—in your present position as the writer-in-residence at the Vancouver Public Library?

Gary Geddes: Working with members of the public is always less exhausting than working with students. The students are mostly very committed, have paid hard cash for the privilege of picking brains, and are also often, though not always, fairly well versed in literature and criticism. So, it can be quite demanding to work with serious creative writing students who want and deserve the best you can give them. People who visit a writer-in-residence at the library 16

may be just as serious as their university counterparts, but they are often less demanding and more grateful for whatever you can offer in terms of time and constructive criticism. I usually ask for short manuscripts, about five pages, which allows me to give those pages fairly detailed attention.

The reading takes an hour, writing a solid one- or two-page critique takes at least an hour, and meeting with the student takes another hour, so the whole process involves quite a commitment. There’s nothing like the pleasure of seeing a light come on in a writer’s face when something that may be quite obvious to me is pointed out—a different way to break the line, the kind of torque that can be generated by enjambment, ways to increase density of image and sound in a poem, altering the patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.

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FEATURES

FV: American journalist Christopher Hitchens believes there is a direct link between musical and literary talent and I’m reminded by your comment above—about the “sound in a poem”—that you’ve said you often sang as a child.

GG: I think it’s true that poets with musical training, like Robyn Sarah and Jan Zwicky, are more likely to find the music in language early in their careers. For the rest of us, it takes a little longer. I had no musical training as a child, but I listened to the radio and sang at the top of my lungs while weeding two acres of potatoes. I had a good ear and memory for tunes. Later, I sang in a church choir and a rock group called The High Fives. The ‘high’ had nothing to do with narcotic substances, but with the fact that we were high school students and high on music. One guitar and five voices. We did everything from “Blue Suede Shoes” to “In the Jungle,” with me taking the high tenor parts. I think music could have been an alternative career for me had domestic penury not prevented me from studying the subject.

Joseph Conrad spoke of language as a form that aspires “to the magic suggestiveness of music,” which is something I’ve struggled with throughout my career. The two dominant impulses in poetry are lyric and narrative, the pull of story and the pull of song. As a writer of long poems and narratives, my concern has been to achieve enough moments of lyric intensity in my work to lift it above conventional prose.

This involves knowing how to break the lines, how to vary patterns of stress and how to make enough happen in terms of recurring sound to give seemingly ordinary speech a touch of magic and grace. Of course, I’ve failed miserably most of the time.

FV: Was your own early writing shaped by a literary mentor?

GG: I had no single literary mentor. However, I had the good fortune to be asked to edit two anthologies, one national and one international, when I was still wet behind the poetic ears. This forced me to read widely and deeply in order to figure out what certain poets were trying to achieve, how they were getting certain effects in their work. As a result, I made a huge commitment of time and energy studying the works of 50 to 100 very fine poets. The conception and scope of both anthology projects demanded that I have something useful and original to say about each of these poets, without interfering with a student’s efforts to understand and interpret the poem. This was a great challenge and most of the time I was flying by the seat of my pants trying to live up to my own and Oxford’s expectations.

So, I owe my modest achievements to a host of very fine WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

writers, many of them Canadian. The thing is, you never stop learning, and always seem to be starting again from scratch.

FV: Although well known as a political poet, two of your more recent titles have been works of nonfiction: Sailing Home: A Journey Through Time, Place and Memory and another travel memoir, The Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things.

Here again, you are inspired by your travels, by your exposure to both foreign and familiar territory—and yet you’ve said you travel “in order to escape the vortex of subjectivity, to get away from home where the whirl of self in the static world left me dizzy, unsettled.” Are you saying you feel most at peace, more substantial, when travelling?

GG: No, I’m not more at peace travelling. In fact, I am quite a nervous traveller, always over-awed by the spectacle of cultures so different from my own and by the simple tasks of finding a cheap bed and reliable food. I think I was trying to explain that the self in stasis needs a regular shaking up, to avoid complacency, egotism, and all the perils of thinking one’s own lot is somehow the template for humanity. I was very fortunate as an academic to have a regular income, a modicum of social status, and time to spare. I know a lot of shit is happening in the world out there. At times I feel I must immerse myself in that more troubled stream, live cheaply, stick my neck out, take some risks, and try to understand at the grassroots level what is happening in more troubled places.

FV: Your writing often addresses “personal and tribal ghosts” as you touch upon the mystical, the religious, the sainthood found in the lives of common people. In one interview, you even say that as a youth you wanted to be a preacher and save the world. Is exposing and recording the world’s “sins” via your poems, prose and memoir akin to confession? Is there some sense of guilt in not being able to heal or fix all those things you have witnessed in your travels?

GG: It was not out of pure whimsy that nineteenth-century writer Cardinal Newman called his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua. All writing, all art, is an apology for our failed lives. We write so that others might love us, or at least understand us, and hopefully love themselves a little more in the process. Bronwen Wallace spoke a lot about Lao Tzu and his notion that we should address the wound in each other, the part that is broken, damaged, in ruins. By addressing this wound, this breakage, we declare our affinity and solidarity with others. I don’t need to go to Gaza or Nicaragua or more on next page 17

FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Gary Geddes, cont’d Chile to know that suffering is the daily bread for much of humanity; Hastings and Main in downtown Vancouver will do. I’m interested in understanding the reasons for this suffering and my own complicity.

FV: Many poets, especially those from South and Central America, Asia and parts of Europe, have had a strong political commitment, both in their lives and in their poetry.

Your writing is dangerous—or would be, if you actually lived in a country where journalists and writers are routinely tortured or shot.

GG: I’ve spent time on the barricades, and working on the left: I was an active protestor against the Vietnam War; I interviewed Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong camps; I went to Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship to do human rights interviews; I was in Nicaragua during the Sandinista regime, protesting with Kris Kristofferson in front of the US embassy against American support of the Contras; I travelled to Gaza, West Bank and Israel after the Oslo Accord to monitor the situation there; and I was in Afghanistan on a Taliban visa two weeks before 9/11 after spending two weeks interviewing Afghan refugees in camps in Pakistan. Inequality and inequity trouble me. None of this work was driven, I hope, by perverse or grandiose motives.

I simply felt concerned and was moved to learn more about these trouble sites. I doubt that my poems and prose about Chile or Palestine or Central America have saved any lives, though they have named names and pointed to deficiencies in myself and in the cultures that have shaped and sustained me.

Atwood has said that in Canada you can say anything because no one is listening. Robertson Davies insisted that being a writer in Canada has about as much cachet as being a manufacturer of yogurt. I’m grateful for the conditions that enable me to travel and write about what I see as honestly as I can, but I’m always conscious of the hypocrisy here that allows us to masquerade as international peacekeepers abroad while, at home, we slaughtered the Beothuk Indians, robbed and degraded other First Nations, imprisoned our Japanese-Canadians, taxed and second-rated Chinese-Canadians, turned away a shipload of European Jews fleeing the Holocaust, inflicted war measures on the Quebecois; and that’s just for starters.

FV: You’re not the first Canadian writer to take to the seas after the implosion of a relationship or career but in your case, 18

rather than travel someplace warm or exotic, you chose your own back yard: the west coast of BC. In Sailing Home: A Journey Through Time, Place and Memory you write of navigating “in a sea teeming with personal and tribal ghosts.” Which came first, the idea for the book—or the need to escape?

GG: Neither. I was a fledgling sailor, descended from a long line of Scottish fishermen and boat builders. As a child, I gillnetted with my father in Rivers Inlet; later, I worked at my uncle’s boat rentals in Howe Sound and drove water taxi during the summer when I taught school on Texada Island. I think I can claim a few grains of salt in my blood. I owned a sailboat years earlier when I taught at the University of Victoria, so it had been a long-time ambition of mine to own a decent boat and sail up the coast. When I proposed writing a memoir about the coast, Phyllis Bruce at HarperCollins reminded me that memoirs are written by important people, not schmucks. Phyllis was a friend, so she could get away with the hard truth. I had to agree. My life seemed important to me, but I could not imagine it would seem important enough to anyone else to justify a whole book. So I suggested to Phyllis that I would tack back and forth between the personal and the public, between sailing and reminiscence; I also convinced her that my drowned grandfather, my aunt with the wooden leg, my uncle who had bombed and been shot down over Hamburg were not exactly bland materials for a memoir.

Writing Sailing Home was not escape; it was a salvage operation.

I was recovering family history, giving imaginative shape to vanishing legends, mine and yours.

FV: This sense of wanting to connect to the past, to reveal the hidden, is present in much of your writing, and especially so with The Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things where you attempt to follow in the footsteps of Huishen, a fifthcentury Buddhist monk who you believe may have had contact with the native people of North America’s west coast. Did your travels through Afghanistan, China and Mexico lead you to any firm conclusions?

GG: No graffiti was found saying “Huishen was here.” A Chinese scholar of Buddhism I met had never heard of him; neither had the citizens of Jingzhou, the walled city in China, where he is said to have made his report to the emperor and court historians and, later, been buried. Though Huishen remained elusive and his trail uncertain, I certainly found enough interesting material to make me question the traditional Bering land-bridge theory of the peopling of the Americas and to believe that Asian contact with the Americas has been happening for thousands of years, most of it by way WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

FEATURES

Mientras ella caminaba por el estacionamienta en el sol al mediodía, sintiendo el mundo bellow y fugaz, un guardia joven, que la tenía en la vista,

of coastal migration. I share the conclusions of David Kelly and Betty Meggers, two archaeologists who, respectively, consider the ocean not a barrier but a conveyor-belt and a superhighway. Most important, I think, was the lesson embedded in all of this frenetic travel and research: we are all interconnected, part of the same family, and there is no barrier, however arduous or distant, that humans, out of curiosity or desperation, will not attempt to cross.

doblaba la rodilla como si le pidiese la mano.

Su declaración, inequivocable, clara, floreció en ella, atrevesó su cuello, segó la traquia, quitándole aliento.

FV: A translator yourself, a number of your own books have been translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. How closely did you work with the translators? Were variations made to the text in any of these versions in order to adjust for cultural differences?

GG: Translation is a wonderful art, one for which I have the greatest respect. I wish Canadians did more of it and Canada Council felt inclined to support it. And yet there are always surprises when a text is translated. Australian poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe once told me about receiving the pageproofs for the Italian translation of his poems. He found they had translated the word ‘nappies’ (the Australian term for diapers) as ‘little sleeps.’

I did not know the other languages well enough to contribute to the translation process, so had to take it all on faith. I was startled to find that my run-on couplets in The Terracotta Army had been changed into closed couplets in the Chinese version, making them seem more traditional to a Chinese reader. And I was very curious though to know how Lake Sagaris would translate some lines from my Kent State poem, “Sandra Lee Scheuer,” which describe in English a young soldier going down on one knee to shoot. I had used an image of marriage earlier in the poem and it came into play again: As she walked in sunlight through the parking-lot at noon, feeling the world a passing lovely place, a young guardsman, who had his sights on her, was going down on one knee, as if he might propose.

His declaration, unmistakable, articulate, flowered within her, passed through her neck, severed her trachea, taking her breath away.

I think Lake Sagaris was able to make the translation into Spanish quite successfully, especially as the double meaning of “had his sights on her,” which would be lost in some languages, translates quite closely in Spanish.

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FV: Saramago has said, “the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in us all the time.” In your own writing, you often touch upon the misuse of power, and the “dark side” of politics, religion and culture. What drives you to record the violent images you see and how do you reconcile its existence in the twenty-first century with your own belief in justice?

GG: My eldest daughter Jenny, who teaches at the University of Virginia and edits The Hedgehog Review, writes about evil and is a specialist in Holocaust writing. She spends a lot of time thinking about this question which troubles me so deeply, so perhaps there’s something in the genes, all those Scottish genes shaped by too much oatmeal and the outrage of the Clearances. The things that trouble me—and the voices in the past that cry out to be written down—have to be given imaginative shape, a verbal home. That seems to be my way of shaking off the albatross of Kent State, the Spanish Conquest, the Disappeared of Chile. I don’t invent the violence; and I certainly don’t celebrate it. My pain matters to me, but it does not matter in the grand scheme of things. I don’t write to tell people how sad or hurt I am. I write to make them feel those events long after the fact, to keep certain terrible moments alive in the imagination, on record. While there is often no justice, there is always the potential for hope. When the poem works, as Yeats said, “a terrible beauty is born.”

FV: I understand your new book, Falsework, coming out next fall and described as an “illustrated, book-length poetic narrative,” is based on the Second Narrows Bridge tragedy in 1958. This event had personal significance for you in that your father was involved in the search for bodies in the water. Was this the first time you attempted to write about the bridge collapse?

GG: Yes, I’ve been thinking about that event sporadically for almost fifty years, since the bridge came down during construction June 17, 1958, the month I graduated from King Edward High School. I was working on the waterfront more on next page 19

FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

having worked on both sides of the fence, what do you feel are the biggest challenges facing this country’s publishing industry?

Gary Geddes, cont’d that summer at BC Sugar Refinery, so the news did not take long to reach me. I ran with my friends to the pier at Buckerfield Seeds to see if the report was true. I did not know until years later that my father had been called out as a diver to search for bodies in the wreckage. I’ve carried the image of him dangling from his umbilical cord of oxygen in that cauldron of swirling water and twisted metal for much of my adult life, but had only referred to the incident briefly in my floating memoir, Sailing Home. Being back on the coast, then in Vancouver as writer-in-residence at Green College and the Vancouver Public Library, enabled me to interview survivors of the bridge disaster, engineers, families of victims, even Tom Berger who defended the ironworkers in court. It’s been a long gestation period, but the book is nearly complete. And there seems a good chance that it will have a life on stage as well as in book form.

FV: In addition to being a literary mentor, editor, critic and active promoter of Canadian writers, your career has included stints as the publisher of Quadrant Editions and Cormorant Books. Given your long career in Canadian publishing and

The Erotics of Insomnia, cont’d from page 15 warm Xmas-like glimmer with associated festive feelings year round.

In the deep night, all your senses—smell, sight, touch— seem more balanced and acutely focused, and so does your memory, a writer’s primary source. Plus it’s bliss quiet, no phone ringing, no distracting traffic noise. You can hear the sounds of silence, especially after a snowfall or the abrupt stop of a storm when it seems loudest of all. Eating—a bowl of ice-cream, a leftover snack from the fridge with a glass of wine—is different, more intensely satisfying. Everything feels good: from the fuzz of flannel jammies on skin to the kinesthetic coziness of rooms that in darkness draw in on themselves. A mellow warmth radiates from still-glowing embers in the hearth; and it’s all just for love of you. For these dark hours you can be the centre of your Universe, a god-like being in full command of all that surrounds you.

Omnipotent, protean, procreative.

Maybe that’s it, the odd privacy—and megalomania— insomnia engenders that makes it a time to be so much more generative on the page/screen than during the day when you

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GG: The biggest challenge continues to be how to survive as an independent country next-door to the United States.

Despite all the claptrap about living in a global village, and the role of the internet and new media in our lives, I never forget George Grant’s observation that “if we skip the stage of nationalism, we don’t become internationals (there are no such animals), but Americans. It’s as simple as that.” So our publishing and other arts will need even greater financial support if we are to stand against the tsunami of American books and magazines and movies and television programs threatening to engulf us. Fortunately, our best writers and artists are forging a distinctly Canadian consciousness that is being recognized abroad, even though many Canadians at home are not even aware of what is happening. However, these thoughts bring me around to the nagging question of whether the survival of Canada as an independent state is as important a concern as the survival of the planet. It’s exciting to think of the link between these two issues and the possibility that we might, as Canadians, become part of a global solution rather than part of the continuing problem.

are, in my case, 9-to-5ing it. There you are, alone but not really, solitary yet surrounded by the warm essence of your life. Your beloved(s) sleep peacefully nearby. And you’re content—to savour the solitude, the freedom, not switching on the TV, but writing. The world is yours for now, until it wakes up. Nothing disturbs the quiet. You are in control, without distractions, focused, in touch with your true self and your vision.

Sound sexy? In that case, good news, for you too can join the club, proclaim the sweetness of sleep shortages, the dark delights of drowselessness, and the freedoms it engenders.

Experience the fun, groovy, creative side of insomnia! You can easily train yourself to cut down on all that wasteful sleep-time. Retire later, and try setting the alarm five minutes ahead every night, until you hit your optimum watch period. Happy writing.

A value-added bonus: recent research out the University of California, San Diego, suggests memory is compromised by sleep deprivation. So many outrageous slings and arrows— not to mention, editors—I long to forget. How about you?

Ryszard Dubanski writes and sometimes sleeps in Vancouver. He is the author of Black Teeth (Signature Editions).

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CONTESTS & MARKETS

Contests & Markets Please note that inclusion in WordWorks is not an endorsement of any contest or market. We encourage our readers to thoroughly research all contests or markets before submitting work and it’s recommended that you read one or two copies of the publication in question to make sure your writing “fits’ publication requirements and guidelines. Our home page at www.bcwriters.com lists recent additions to Contests and Markets.

CONTESTS Friends: A Contest for Writers Deadline: December 31, 2006 www.mbwriter.mb.ca/contest/ friends.htm What would we do without our friends?

Here’s your chance to immortalize yours. You can enter the Friends writing contest (sponsored by the Manitoba Writers’ Guild), pay the $15 entry fee and download the submission form at www.mbwriter.mb.ca.

Lichen Arts & Letters Preview’s Annual Poetry Contest Deadline: December 31, 2006 www.lichenjournal.ca Each entry to consist of a single set of three poems that develop a single theme. Poems must be original, unpublished and not submitted elsewhere. Entry fee of $20 includes a full year subscription to Lichen. Blind judging in effect. For complete details on submission guidelines and entry fees, check out the website or mail query to The Editorial Board, LICHEN Arts & Letters Preview, 234-701 Rossland Road East, Whitby, Ontario, Canada, L1N 9K3.

Accenti Second Annual Nonfiction Contest Deadline: December 31, 2006 www.accenti.ca Accenti: The Canadian Magazine with an Italian Accent is accepting entries for their second annual nonfiction contest.

Top prize: $1000 and publication.

Open to international entrants. Topic: open, but must in some way reflect or make reference to Canada and Italy, or

the Italian Canadian experience (10003000 words). Winning entries will be presented at the Accenti Magazine Awards during the 9th Blue Metropolis Montreal Literary Festival in April 2007.

Entry fee: $20. Check out the website for details or write to: contests@accenti.ca

Descant Deadline: December 31, 2006 www.descant.on.ca Theme issue: Iran. Descant is accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, essays, art and photography for upcoming theme issue on Iran. Check website for details.

FreeFall Magazine 2006 Fiction & Poetry Contest Deadline: December 31, 2006 www.alexandrawriters.org Submit fiction (3000 words max.) or five poems per entry. Theme: Love. An entry form and a separate cover page setting out the title of your entry, category, word count, and including a bio (three line max.) must accompany each entry. Your name is not to appear anywhere on your manuscript. Entries will not be returned.

Electronic or fax submissions not accepted. Cheque or money order payable to Alexandra Writers’ Centre Society (FreeFall Contest). Entry fee is $10, $20 for non-members, and includes a one year subscription. Prizes for Fiction: 1st $200, 2nd $100. Poetry: 1st $200, 2nd $100. Christopher Wiseman, 2006 W.O. Mitchell Award nominee, will be guest editor for this contest. Send entry to: FreeFall Contest, 922 - 9 AVE SE, Calgary, AB T2G 0S4 Canada

Geist Postcard Story Contest Deadline: December 31, 2006 www.geist.com The deadline has been extended for the Geist Annual Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest so there’s still time to sharpen your pencils! As well as being published in Geist and on the Geist website, the three winning entries will also appear on The Tyee (www.thetyee.ca), BC’s independent alternative daily online newspaper. For details on the contest, visit the website.

PRISM international’s 20th Annual Short fiction Contest Deadline: January 31, 2007 www.prism.arts.ubc.ca The winning entry will be published in the 2007 Summer Issue of PRISM international and receive an additional payment of $20 per printed page (in Canadian dollars or the U.S. equivalent). Grand prize - $2,000.

Runner’s-up prizes - $200 each. The entry fee is $27 for one story, plus $7 for each additional story. Winners will be notified in June 2007, and winning stories will be published in the 2007 Summer Fiction Contest Issue. For details, check guidelines and submission requirements posted on the Prism website.

19th Annual Short Grain Contest ebruary 28, 2007 Deadline: FFebruary www.grainmagazine.ca/contest.htm Grain Magazine offers $6,000 in cash prizes. Categories include Dramatic Monologue (a self-contained speech given by a single character in 500 words or less), Postcard Story (a work of

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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Contests & Markets cont’d narrative fiction in 500 words or less), Prose Poem (a lyric poem written as a prose paragraph in 500 words or less), and Long Grain of Truth (a creative work of nonfiction of 5,000 words or less on any subject). Each entrant receives a one-year (four issues) subscription to Grain Magazine. All contest winners will also have their winning piece published in the autumn 2007 issue of the magazine. The basic fee for Canadian entrants is $30 for a maximum of two entries in any one or two categories. For an additional $8 you may enter up to three more pieces in any categories. For details, check out the website.

5th Annual CanWrite! Conference Story Contest Deadline: FFebruary ebruary 28, 2007 www.canauthors.org/cwcontest.html Contest is open to all ages and all Canadian and U.S. residents. Short stories must be fiction, unpublished, and no longer than 1,500 words in length.

Fee: $15 Cdn. per story. The top ten selections will be published in an anthology that will be launched at the 86th CAA Annual Conference in Ottawa on July 5-8, 2007. The top three winners will also receive $500, $200 and $100 respectively plus a free conference registration with no cash value. See our website for complete contest rules and details. Please make all cheques or money orders out to “Canadian Authors Association” and mail your entry to “CanWrite!

Conference Story Contest” c/o Evan Kenney, 32 Green Meadow Crescent, Welland, ON L3C 6X3.

Association of Italian Canadian Writers 2006 Writing Contest Deadline: March 1, 2007 www.aicw.ca/contest06.htm Three categories: Fiction, Nonfiction and Poetry. Limit of 2400 words for Fiction and Nonfiction, and 40 lines per Poem. Submissions accepted in English,

French and Italian. Non-member entry fee: $20 Cdn. AICW member entry fee $10. Each fiction or nonfiction submission requires its own entry fee.

Poets may send a maximum of three poems. Send three copies of manuscripts; manuscripts will not be returned. Blind judging in effect, cover letter needed. Information: e-mail Venera Fazio at veneraf@ebtech.net or view submission details on website.

So to Speak: a Feminist Journal of Language and Art Annual Fiction Contest Deadline: March 15, 2007 www.gmu.edu/org/sts Submit your short story (under 5000 words) and $15 entry fee for consideration in So To Speak’s annual fiction contest. Judge: Lucy Corin, author of Everyday Psycho Killers: A History for Girls and Professor of English of the University of California. 1st place: $500 and publication (and publication for two runners up). Details on website.

SubTERRAIN Deadline: March 15, 2007 www.subterrain.ca Theme Issue #47 (Summer/Fall 07): Sports. Be sure to identify on the envelope the theme issue for which you’re submitting. Fiction: 2,000-3,000 words. Creative nonfiction: to 4,000 words. No unsolicited poetry, unless it is specifically related to a theme issue. No electronic submissions, and you MUST include a self-addressed envelope if you want your work to be considered. Send both general and theme-related submissions to: P.O. Box 3008, MPO Vancouver, BC V6B 3X5.

Borderlines Poetry and Flash Fiction Contest Deadline: March 31, 2007 www.ascentaspirations.ca/ borderlines.htm Ascent Aspirations Magazine seeks poetry and flash fiction for its fourth anthology,

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Borderlines, to be published in Fall 2007. Prizes include cash and publication. Contest fee for poetry is $10 for three poems. Contest fee for flash fiction is $10 per piece of flash fiction. Multiple entries will be accepted.

Full details on the website or contact publisher David Fraser at ascentaspirations@shaw.ca

MARKETS Broken Pencil www.brokenpencil.com/ Considers fiction from 50 to 3000 words, just not at the same time. Query them about articles on indie/alternative culture. They have a rant section, too.

Boxcar Poetry Review www.lone-crow.com/BOXCAR/ Seeks your best poetry, artwork, photography, interviews and reviews.

Contemporary Verse 2 www.contemporaryverse2.ca/ Considers submissions of poetry (4-6 poems), articles, essays and reviews, by snail (include S.A.S.E.) or email (.rtf or MS Word .doc attachments preferred).

Response time from 2 to 6 months. No simultaneous submissions.

The Canadian Expat Magazine www.thecanadianexpat.com Quarterly magazine is seeking submissions for articles (1,000 to 2,000 words) of interest to the Canadian expatriate population or those who are considering living abroad. Pays up to $200 per article (reprints accepted). Visit the website for detailed guideline information or send your article proposal (no complete manuscripts!) to The Canadian Expat, 7780 Columbia Drive, Grand Forks, BC, V0H 1H2.

dANDelion www.dandelionmagazine.ca/ Bi-annual magazine focuses on prose and poetry. Accepts email submissions

WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

CONTESTS & MARKETS

in .rft or .doc format, or by mail to Dandelion Magazine Society, c/o Dept. of English, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4. Only responds to submissions that have been accepted for publication.

The Green Muse thegreenmuse.org/ New print/online journal seeks submissions of poetry, prose, memoir, essay, digital photography and artwork.

Welcomes variety in theme and form.

Submit work as in-body text, rather than attachments.

Knock www.knockjournal.org Literary arts journal published twice a year accepts prose to 2,500 words, up to four poems, or plays of 10 minutes or less duration. Open to submissions from Oct 1, 2006 to January 15, 2007. Send as email or mail to KNOCK, Antioch University Seattle, 2326 Sixth Avenue, Seattle, WA 98121.

The New Orphic Review Reads mailed submissions of fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays. Send, with S.A.S.E., to NOR, 706 Mill Street, Nelson, BC V1L 4S5.

On Spec www.onspec.ca/guidelines.php On Spec (AB) seeks original, unpublished speculative fiction and poetry (fantasy, horror, ghost stories, fairy stories, magic realism, etc.). ON SPEC buys first North American serial (magazine) rights to your work. They pay upon acceptance. Minimum payment for fiction is $50 and maximum payment is $180. Check out the website for full details on submission guidelines.

Their rules for poetry submission are especially charming.

Orca Book Publishers www.orcabook.com Orca Book Publishers seeks short novels (23,000-26,000 words) for ages 10+ (grade 2 to grade 5 reading level, ideal for struggling and reluctant readers).

Looking for strong stories with sports action combined with exciting mystery and suspense, vivid characterization and compelling plotlines. Send outline, synopsis and sample chapters to: Andrew Wooldridge, Orca Book Publishers, PO Box 5626, Stn B, Victoria, BC V8R 6S4.

Penniless Press www.pennilesspress10.com Come by. Have a read. If you think your work would fit, send it here. Send submissions to penniless.press@gmail.com or snail to 6427 St. Louis Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1C 2X9.

Pine www.pinemagazine.ca You’ll definitely want to read the submission guidelines before sending them your fiction, nonfiction, poetry (maybe you don’t want to submit poetry), journalism or photography. But they’re looking for that sort of thing, especially if it’s urgent and honest.

Poetry Ireland Review www.poetryireland.ie Quarterly review welcomes submissions from Ireland and abroad, in English or Irish. Mail up to 6 poems to Peter Sirr, Editor, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Ireland, 2 Proud’s Lane, Off St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland with an S.A.S.E. (you’ll need International Reply Coupons) if you want your work back, or supply them with an email where they can contact you and let them know it’s okay to recycle. (The editor changes every four issues, so check the website for latest submission guidelines).

Queen’s Quarterly www.queensu.ca/quarterly/ Publishes articles, reviews, short stories (2,500-3,000 words), and poetry (up to six poems). Encourages submissions by e-mail attachments. You may also submit work by mail to 144 Barrie Street, Queen’s University, Kingston,

WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

Ontario K7L 3N6. Include S.A.S.E. If accepted, you must be able to provide text by email attachment or on a disk.

Qwerty www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/QWERTY/ The University of New Brunswick’s gradrun journal is looking for fresh poetry (up to five), prose (3000 words max.) and artwork for its winter issue. We accept innovative and unconventional poetry, fiction, non-fiction, plays, music lyrics, visual art, reviews and other work of unadulterated creative genius. Please limit your submissions to a maximum of five poems or 5000 words of prose, and send no more than two submissions per year. Payment: contributor copy and “immortalization on the printed page.”

For information, email qwerty@unb.ca

Room of One’s Own www.roommagazine.com Accepts submissions from women of fiction, creative non-fiction, and essays (to 5,000 words) and poetry (4-5 poems) mailed to PO Box 46160, Station D, Vancouver, BC V6J 5G5.

Please supply an email address so they can get back to you. Current reading time: 6 to 9 months.

Spinetingler Magazine www.spinetinglermag.com/ If your stories make readers’ minds race, blood run cold and hearts beat faster, this is the market for you. Get on over to the submission guidelines and have yourself a read.

West Wind Review home.sou.edu/~westwind/ Strives to “publish top-notch writing that has something to say and says it in a way we’d never expect.” Published annually in the spring. Accepts prose and poetry submissions post-marked between May 15 and December 1. Mail to West Wind Review (indicate Fiction or Poetry), 1250 Siskiyou Boulevard, Ashland, Oregon 97520.

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FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Online Tattoo Highway www.tattoohighway.org TH says it likes fresh, vivid language, and stories and poems that are actually ABOUT something. If your work has an edge, provokes the editors to think, or makes them laugh, so much the better.

Email submissions as .rtf attachments or in plain text in the body of your email. Check website for issue themes and deadlines.

Virtual Tales www.virtualtales.com/ Here’s a site that’s looking for longer stories in order to offer subscribers serialized stories in short bursts via email. Accepts most genres. Pay is a percentage of subscription.

Writers’ Resources Duotrope’s Digest www.duotrope.com/ Easy-to-sort database for over 1200 current markets for short fiction and poetry. Become a registered user (it’s free) and you’ll have access to a submissions tracker

LP WordSolutions www.lpwordsolutions.com Lois Peterson’s website just keeps getting better and better. Sign up to receive Imprint, a free monthly newsletter for anyone who writes for pleasure or publication. Writing tips, market information, contests, workshops, readings, and more.

Contributors welcome.

Poetry Publication Database www.miller777.com/pubs/ _pub_index_.php Dandy reference of several US literary magazines, including an easy-to-read table that tells you if it’s an online or print media, reading/submission dates, and more.

Writing to Win

By Lois J. Peterson There’s money to be made, a chance of publication, and sometimes even a little glory in sending your work to writing contests. You’ll have a better chance of grabbing a little of each for yourself if you plan what, where, and when to submit.

1 Use contest deadlines to motivate you to write something fresh rather than just submitting something that has already done the rounds.

2 Don’t submit “just for the hell of it.” Most contestants are submitting their best writing. Your work will be competing against theirs, so send in your most finely crafted writing.

3 If possible, find a copy of a previous contest anthology to see what kind of work made it across the finish line.

4 Track down the judges’ own writing. You can hope they’ll be objective in their consideration of contest entries, but reviewing their writing might give you an idea of whether they might prefer literary work, writing that is more commercial, humour, etc.

5 Determine the “cost benefit” of each contest you’re considering. If the entry fee costs $10 and the top prize $75, is writing a fresh piece going to be worth your time and effort?

6 If, however, the prize includes publication in a market you aspire to, that might tip the scales.

7 And if your entry fee includes a subscription to the publication, that might increase the contest fee value to you.

8 If publication is part of the prize, you might have trouble placing the piece elsewhere in another market. Weigh where you’d most like to see your work to appear in print.

9 Consider whether it might be worth submitting two pieces (of slightly different style, tone or subject) to one contest, rather than two entries to two different contests.

10 If submitting two pieces to the same contest, enter one early and one closer to the deadline. Some entries are read as they come in, and those received close to the deadline risk being read by judges whose eyes are tired. On the other hand, an entry received later might be remembered more clearly.

11 Check the guidelines carefully. Honour the word limits. Ensure your entry is “blind” if that’s requested. Send the necessary information on the cover sheet.

Double-check that you’ve complied with all submission requirements (don’t forget the entry fee!) before you put your work in the mail.

12 Assume that the judges review entries objectively, with specific criteria in mind.

However, most contests include an element of subjectivity. So if your piece does not place well, don’t take it personally.

Consider each contest entry as one more way to develop discipline in your writing by meeting deadlines, writing for a specific market, and refining your craft. Give yourself credit for each piece you submit, celebrate when your work takes home the prize, and be ready to try again when you get the chance!

This article first appeared in Imprint, a newletter for anyone who writes for pleasure or publication, published by LP wordsolutions - www.lpwordsolutions.com.

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COMMUNITY

Launched!

New Titles by Federation Members

The Aviary

Where Soldiers Lie

Miranda Pearson Oolichan Books, September 2006 ISBN 0-88982-230-1 $17.95

John Wilson Key Porter, September 2006 ISBN 1-55263-790-5 $15.95

Connected by the element of air, the poems in The Aviary raise questions about desire, the spirit and the unconscious juxtaposed against the everyday, beautiful and absurd, the surface of “things”. The poems in this collection circle ideas of impermanence, of our inner and outer landscapes with all their diverse freedoms and imprisonments.

They also reflect on the intimate power dynamics between men and women, employing an audacious tone of selfmockery to question the value of confession, and taking a mournfully wry view of the lyric and romantic tradition. Infidelity and betrayal are explored with stark and resolute determination, defining a philosophy of loss and attempting to delineate the ways and means of jealousy, grief and ironic ecstasy.

India, 1857: for sixteen-year-old Jack O’Hara—farmed out to a distant aunt and uncle after the death of his parents—India is an exotic place of wonder and mystery.

The sights and smells, the food and local customs, the complicated caste system; everything is different from life back home in the wilds of Canada. And then the country erupts in violence as the Indian Army mutinies. Jack, his soldier friend, Tommy, Alice, the girl he dreams about, and 1,000 soldiers, women and children are suddenly forced to fight for their lives in an inadequate entrenchment, hoping against hope that relief will reach them in time. Who, if any, will survive as the tragedy unfolds?

Miranda Pearson was born in England and came to Canada in 1991 to work as a psychiatric nurse. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s MFA program in Creative Writing, where she was also on faculty. Miranda is currently the poetry “mentor” at SFU’s Writer’s Studio. Her poetry is published widely in literary journals and anthologies.

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Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, John Wilson grew up on the Isle of Skye and outside Glasgow without the slightest idea that he would ever write books. After a degree in Geology from St. Andrews University, he worked in Zimbabwe and Alberta before taking up writing full-time and moving out to Vancouver Island in 1991. He is the author of fifteen novels and five nonfiction books for kids, teens and adults.

FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

Yukon Tears and Laughter Joyce Yardley Hancock House, September 2006 ISBN 0-88839-594-9 $16.95 Born in the small, northern community of Whitehorse, before the building of the Alaska Highway, Joyce Yardley’s childhood was full of friends, family and, most of the time, fun. In Yukon Tears and Laughter, she shares memories of that time as well as other episodes in her life. This daughter of the Yukon recreates her past and local history faithfully and without artifice through a bold chronicle of her experiences, weaving her stories in both poetry and prose. From her years as a wife and mother, working with her family ranching, mining and even trapping for fur, to finally pulling up roots after a lifetime of living in the Yukon, Joyce’s reminiscences will appeal to readers of biographies and adventure alike.

Joyce Yardley is the author of Crazy Cooks and Gold Miners, the true-life experiences of running a lodge and mining in the north with her husband, and Yukon Riverboat Days. Joyce now lives in Nanaimo, where she continues to travel and write and is enjoying a new phase of her life.

BAYCHIMO: Arctic Ghost Ship Anthony Dalton Heritage House, October 2006 ISBN 1-894974-14-X $19.95 BAYCHIMO Arctic Ghost Ship is the story of a 1,322 ton steamship owned by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Each year from 1921 to 1931 she sailed to fur trade ports in the Siberian Arctic and Canada’s Arctic.

In October 1931 she became trapped in heavy ice close to the northwest coast of Alaska. In danger of being crushed by ice she was abandoned by her crew. For the next three or four decades BAYCHIMO drifted throughout much of the Arctic in a huge pan of old ice. She was often seen and boarded by Inuit, adventurers and trappers.

No one, however, could save her.

Anthony Dalton is the author of five nautical books, one of which – WAYWARD SAILOR, in search of the real Tristan Jones – was nominated for the Welsh Book of the Year Award in 2004. In addition to being a member of the Federation of BC Writers, Dalton is president of the Vancouver branch of the Canadian Authors Association.

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a broken mirror, fallen leaf Yvonne Blomer Ekstasis Editions, October 2006 ISBN 1-894974-14-X $17.95 In this first full collection of poems, Yvonne Blomer explores the liminal experience of being a foreigner in Japan in lyrical imagistic poems whose recreation of place sing on the page and resonate in the memory. The poems explore how the strange can be familiar; how the places we know best follow us, sometimes confusing, sometimes illuminating.

“There’s a kind of spiky freshness about Yvonne Blomer’s poetry that strikes one as authentic…it is less the spikes of cacti, more the spikes of light pushing between the Japanese and English, between the otherness of the ghazal form and the things Blomer’s particular ghazals have to say.”

—George Szirtes, Reel, winner of the 2004 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry Yvonne Blomer’s poetry has been published internationally and is included in the anthologies In Fine Form: The Canadian Book of Form Poetry, The Fed Anthology and Mocambo Nights. A finalist in the Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize and in the CBC Literary Awards, Yvonne has recently completed a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in the UK.

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A Road for Canada: The Illustrated Story of the Trans-Canada Highway Daniel Francis Stanton Atkins & Dosil, October 2006 ISBN 0-9732346-7-9 $39.95 A Road For Canada is a lavishly illustrated book tracing the history of the TransCanada Highway from its origins, conceived more than a century ago as a wagon road, to its present-day status as a crucial artery linking the Canadian confederation.

The book also recounts the first attempts to cross Canada by car and spins stories of the dreamers who persevered with their vision of a nation-spanning road.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Daniel Francis is the author of 20 books, principally about Canadian history. Titles include The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian Culture (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1992) and National Dreams: Myth, Memory and Canadian History (Arsenal Pulp, 1997). He was editorial director of the mammoth Encyclopedia of British Columbia, hailed on its appearance in 2000 as one of the most important books about the province ever published. His book L.D.: Mayor Louis Taylor and the Rise of Vancouver won the City of Vancouver Book Award in 2004.

Treading Water

A Summer Father

Anne DeGrace McArthur and Company, October 2006 paperback release ISBN 1-55278-598-X $14.95

Joanna M. Weston Frontenac House, October 2006 ISBN 1-897181-05-1 $15.95

The voices of the residents of Bear Creek surface in Treading Water: Gus Sanders, a young trapper, arrives to seek his fortune in 1904 but loses his heart, then his life; in 1911 Jake Schroeder must choose between his desire to join up and his Mennonite Pacifist roots; Isobel Grey, suffragette, escapes the Winnipeg riots and brings her politics with her; Dutch war bride Aliesje Milner, six months pregnant, waits at the train station for a husband whose face she can no longer remember; and by 1965 young Paul Doyle’s summer job demolishing houses to make way for the new hydroelectric dam teaches him more than he bargained for. The indomitable personality of Ursula Hartmann threads through the novel as we follow a community from its innocent beginnings until the day the waters rise.

Anne DeGrace is a librarian, journalist, and mother who lives in Nelson, British Columbia. She has co-authored two photographic books about the West Kootenay region, and her short stories have appeared in The New Quarterly and Room of One’s Own. Treading Water, inspired by the tiny community of Renata, is her first novel.

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When her father Major John Jarmain died in the Battle of Normandy on June 26, 1944, Joanna Weston was six years old. A book of Jarmain’s poetry was published in 1945 and Joanna read the poems again and again over the years in an attempt to get to know the man behind the words: to search for my childhood self/and the father who died.

More than six decades later, her own book of poems, A Summer Father, gives us a poignant portrait of her absent father and her own war-marred childhood.

“Sixty years on, the war that took her father’s life is still very real for Joanna Weston. She evokes that war, that father, and an undiminished child’s love, in poems as deceptively simple and cunning as a sniper’s bullet. This book is a Remembrance Day poppy.”

— Dave Margoshes Joanna M. Weston grew up on the North Downs of Kent, under one of the main bombing runs to London. She left England at eighteen, becoming Canadian on February 15, 1965, the day the maple leaf flag was adopted.

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Yung Chigi Stephen Lones Wombat Books, November 2006 ISBN 0-9732034-1-2 $12.95 In the Depression days of May 1934, a twenty-year-old college student, bored with country summers spent baling hay and knocking almonds, lands an exciting job aboard a small American freighter headed for British-controlled Burma. Between timber poaching and wildlife encounters, he experiences more adventure than he can handle, forever to marvel at having even survived. Stephen Lones takes on the challenge of preserving in novella form a well-loved oral tale told for many years by his late father about a supposed summer job aboard a ship. With several illustrations

by Vancouver artist Kacey McDougall, this blend of fact and fiction contains historically accurate background material suited for readers from pre-teen to senior.

Born in California, Stephen Lones moved to Canada in the late 1960s and now resides in New Denver, BC. Stephen previously co-authored the nonfiction book How to Build Your Own Floor Loom (Harbour Publishing, 1974) and contributed to the Slocan Writers Guild collected works, Tales From the Slocan (Wombat Press, 2000).

His Doubtful Excellency: A Canadian Novelist’s Adventures as President Havel’s Ambassador in Prague Jan Drabek Ekstasis Editions, November 2006 ISBN 1-894800-87-7 $21.95 In His Doubtful Excellency, Czech-Canadian author Jan Drabek regales the reader with the escapades of an artist pressed into diplomatic service. When, after the fall of communism his former schoolmate, playwright Vaclav Havel, becomes president of the Czech Republic, Drabek is named ambassador and chief of protocol, welcoming dignitaries such as Queen Elizabeth and Pope John Paul II. Drabek’s poignant memoir of a pivotal moment in a changing global landscape has been a bestseller in the Czech Republic. “Drabek’s story of our times is in places full of humor, but also coloured by nostalgia over his loss of illusions…” wrote one reviewer. His Doubtful Excellency reveals one man’s experience with a political atlas in flux as well as an entertaining glimpse below the smooth surface of diplomacy, when Popes and royalty come to visit.

Jan Drabek is the author of 15 books both in English and in his native Czech. Born in Czechoslovakia, Jan Drabek returned there in 1990 to teach English, and ended up an ambassador under President Vaclav Havel.

He now lives and writes in Vancouver.

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Righteous Anger Lynda Williams Hades Publications, November 2006 ISBN 1-894063-38-4 $22.95 Earth’s future descendants have evolved into two distinct cultures: Reetions, a technologically advanced, computer regulated society; and Sevolites, a genetically enhanced, environmentally conscious class structured society. In this richly textured, adventurous continuation of the Okal Rel Universe Saga, Righteous Anger tells the tale of Horth Nersal, a half-breed “rejakt” accepted by neither cultural group.

Overcoming language and social impediments, Horth discovers that he is gifted with spatial genius and, as a result, becomes highly adept at sword fighting. When Sevolite prince Amel is kidnapped by the Reetions, Horth issues a call to arms hoping to unite his warlike race with a single act of righteous anger. His journey leads him to question whether to execute his duty or follow his heart… and perhaps pay the ultimate price.

Lynda Williams currently teaches computer literacy at the University of Northern BC. She was born in Prince George, BC, and graduated from UVic with an emphasis in Chemistry and Creative Writing. She holds an M.L.S. from the University of Toronto and a M.Sc. from McMaster and serves as the North Region representative of the FED.

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Regional Reports North Lynda Williams, Prince George Lynda@okalrel.org Terrace writer Chantal Meijer has been published in the fall issue of Harrowsmith Country Life. Her article, “May They Rest in Peace,” lauds a group of volunteers who cleaned up the pioneer cemetery. Chantal’s writing is included in the new anthology, The Kid Turned out Fine, published by Adams Media (the Chicken Soup people). She also writes a regular natural/ cultural history column for Hawkair’s inflight magazine.

Jacqueline Baldwin shared her poetry with Writing 11 & 12 students from Kelly Road Secondary and Prince George Secondary in a reading sponsored by the Fed’s Off The Page Program. On June 8, as part of a presentation to the Geography and the Social Work Departments’ symposium: “Caring For The North: Gender, Care & Northern Places” at the UNBC, Jacqueline read her essay/poem “Call The Name Gently: Ne-chaaaaa-ko” from her book, A Northern Woman (Caitlin Press, 2003).

The Four Seasons Gallery in Smithers set the scene for the northern launch of Half in the Sun: Anthology of Mennonite Writing (Ronsdale Press, 2006). Contributing authors Leanne Boschman, Al Rempel and Elsie K. Neufeld (Fraser Valley member) read to an enthusiastic audience.

Margo Hearne of Masset published an article, “Haida Gwaii: A Christmas Bird Count Challenge” in The National Audubon Society’s American Birds. She also placed news articles in the Observer and NW Connection.

Rob Budde is pleased to announce the September 2006 release of The Forestry Diversification Project: New Prince George Poets by UNBC Press which featured 17 bright new poets and a veteran—Michael Armstrong, a former Federation president. Rob also hosted Ottawa poets rob mclennan and Stephen Brockwell at a reading attended by nearly 60 poetry enthusiasts at UNBC on November 2.

The northern branch of the Federation of BC Writers met on November 18 at Books & Company. Audrey L’Heureux was the featured presenter, giving fellow writers the run down on ACCESS and how to get paid for having your books in libraries.

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Central Kay McCracken, Salmon Arm kaymcc@jetstream.net On October 20, Heidi Garnett shared her stunning poems with a standing-room-only crowd at the launch of her book, phosphorus (Thistledown) at Gallery Vertigo in Vernon. Heidi’s Kelowna launch the night before, at the Art Ark, held a noisy, enthusiastic crowd of about 70 people who wouldn’t stop clapping.

The evening ended with a standing ovation.

A rapt audience enjoyed Deanna Kawatski reading from her new work, Burning Man, Slaying Dragon, soon to be submitted to publishers, and from Clara and Me, October 21 at the Prestige Harbourfront Resort in Salmon Arm. After the award ceremony for the Worst Opening Line of a Novel contest, Fed members Ken Firth, Howard Brown and Elizabeth Lute read at the open mic session. The Shuswap Association of Writers gratefully acknowledges financial support from The Federation of BC Writers.

Patsy Alford will have a poem in dANDelion in November. She’s doing a collaborative project with the residents of The Shores, the retirement home her mother lives in, interviewing some of the women with particular emphasis on their early domestic experiences.

Lynne Stonier-Newman is busy promoting THE LAWMAN: Adventures of a Frontier Diplomat (TouchWood).

Over 70 people attended Lynne’s book launch last May 30 at the Kamloops Community Arts Centre.

Ab McQuillin reports that the Quesnel Wordspinners, formerly Quesnel Writers Group, celebrated their 25th Anniversary at the launch of Currents Through Time, their ninth publication. More than twenty authors met at the Wee Chippie Restaurant in Quesnel to read and Ab played a new tune he had written to accompany the book’s first poem.

Sharon Stearns of Dunster will be participating in the Women’s International Playwriting conference, held in Jakarta and Bali this year, Nov. 19-26. She’s one of seven Canadian playwright delegates chosen and will read from her most recent play, “Shout Sister,” a play with music inspired by the life of The Boswell Sisters, a jazz singing trio famous in the ’20s and ’30s. There’ll be about 500 playwrights from all over the world participating, including Indonesian theatre artists.

Nancy Holmes of Kelowna was the Okanagan rep. for Random Acts of Poetry, held this year from October 2-8.

She read to Kelowna City Council, to Kelowna MLA Sindi Hawkins, to an adult literacy class in Penticton, at several 29

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Howard Brown’s poem, “Why” was published in Harvesting Treasures, the Canadian Poetry Association members’ anthology (River Bones Press). His poem “Scottsford Blues” placed second in the Poetry at Work contest sponsored by The Canadian Poetry & Literary Project, UBCO Kelowna. This poem and another one called “Overtime” are displayed on the buses in Kelowna. Howard’s poem “The Philosopher” appears in Pine Beetle Review: Volume I, and “47 Herbs and Spices” in Volume II. His poem “Past Lives” appears in Agua Terra, Ascent Aspirations Anthology III, published in Nanaimo, BC, by our Islands representative, David Fraser. Howard recently published a chapbook of his poems, In the 1950s and Other Disrespectful Pieces (Really Small Vernon Press).

South East Anne Strachan, Nakusp sisinwriting@hotmail.com Congratulations to Jenny Craig for winning the nonfiction category of the Nelson and District Arts Council literary competition held in October. The topic, the 1930s, was revealed at 5 pm. on a Friday and writers were given thirty hours to submit a piece.

In November, Holley Rubinsky interviewed Rita Moir and Caroline Woodward for her radio program, “The Writer’s Show.” The show airs Thursdays at noon, Pacific time, but you can download and listen to any of the shows any time: www.kootenaycoopradio.com/writers In October, Golden’s Kuya Minogue read at the Columbia-Kootenay Cultural Alliance conference, a community initiative sponsored by the Columbia Basin Trust. She read from her novel Death by Colonization, as well as from her new novel, a work in progress, Bluegrass Bandits. She also published an article in the Fall/Winter issue of ARTiculate magazine, “Zen Writing Practice.”

Angie Abdou kicked off a book tour for her first book, a short story collection called Anything Boys Can Do, at bookstores throughout southeast BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Ernest Hekkanen reports that the Fall issue of The New Orphic Review, subtitled Led Astray by Idealism, appeared in September. At the moment, Ernest is working on three

Spotted at the 2006 Shuswap Lake International Mini-Writers Fest held in Salmon Arm. Federation members (clockwise): Deanna Kawatski & Harold Rhenisch, Ernest Hekkanen, A.S. Penne and Michael Heatherington.

schools and wineries, at the Farmer’s Market, to a college calculus class, and on the CBC Daybreak show to Marion Barschel. CHBC TV captured Nancy reading at outdoor cafés, and Mike Roberts, in his exuberance, read several of her poems to the delight of the bard herself.

On October 27, the Shuswap Writers’ Coffee House met at Java Express in Salmon Arm for their monthly soirée after the summer break. Dorothy Rolin organized the two-hour event.

Kay McCracken emceed the first half. Karen Bissenden, Howard and Alice Brown, Ken Firth, Elizabeth Lute and John Vivian entertained forty or so people with a lively variety of readings.

The City of Kelowna’s bus system sponsored “poetry on the bus.” A poem written by Sterling Haynes called “Hockey’s Eh Team” is now displayed. Here is a chance for all local and area poets to impress Kelowna commuters. Once again, this project is spearheaded by Dr. Veronica Gail, President of the Canadian Poetry & Literary Project at UBCO. The book promotion and readings at Creek Theatre and Art Walk in Lake Country during the second weekend in September were a huge success. A multitude of readers, including Stan Sauerwein, took part.

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totally unrelated novellas, the first of which, Shadows on a Cave Wall, will be published in March, 2007. Margrith Schraner’s book, The Reluctant Author: The Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen, was launched on November 18, at the New Orphic Gallery in Nelson.

Ross Klatte’s memoir, Leaving the Farm, about growing up on a Minnesota dairy farm in the 1940s and ’50s, will be published by Oolichan Books in the spring of 2007. It took a long time to write, starting with Ross winning the 1990 CBC Literary Competition with a personal essay called “Leaving the Farm,” an adaptation of which forms the opening chapter of the book, and being helped in its initial stages by a Canada Council Explorations Grant that allowed Ross to take a nine-month leave of absence from Selkirk College in 1991-92 to begin the research and writing.

Anne DeGrace’s novel, Treading Water, published by McArthur and Company, has now been released in trade paper.

Linda Lee Crosfield has a poem in the next issue of Ascent Aspirations and four poems in the current New Orphic Review. “A Small Conclave of Chairs” is Rita Moir’s contribution to the new anthology Nobody’s Mother: Life Without Kids, edited by Lynne Van Luven, with a foreword by Shelagh Rogers and published by TouchWood Editions.

Barb MacPherson had an article entitled “A Saintly Garden” published in Herb Quarterly and has also resumed teaching creative writing classes for the local literacy program.

Vi Plotnikoff, author of Head Cook at Weddings and Funerals, died on November 20. Vi was a long-time Fed member who loved her writing community and the support it gave her. In turn, scores of aspiring writers have attended workshops she’s given over the years. She was an accomplished storyteller, both on the page and, as many of you will recall, at the Proctor Storytelling Festival. Please see page 36 for her “In Memoriam” notice.

Thanks to all who contributed to this report.

Fraser Valley Sylvia Taylor, Langley sylviataylor@uniserve.com Surrey Public Library’s Young Adult Writing Contest for short story, poem and comic, held its awards ceremony Nov. 3 at the Guildford Library, judged by Sylvia Taylor, Penny Duane, Pam Kent, Heidi Hoff, Heinz Senger, Dave Strutt, Marg Coe, Maureen Foster and David Conn.

The Surrey Public Library is honouring its 25th anniversary in 2008 by inviting writers from across Canada to apply WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

as the Library’s first Writer-in-Residence from February 4 to May 30, 2008. The purpose of the residency is to foster a greater appreciation for Canadian writing within the community. Details at the Surrey Public Library web site.

The Surrey International Writers Conference enjoyed its 14th successful year, October 19-22, at the Sheraton Guildford Hotel. The conference sold out again, with about 800 registrants enjoying over 70 workshops presented by approximately 45 experienced authors, editors and agents.

The conference’s writing contest paid $1000 prizes to winners in four categories: Ray Jones of Toronto won the Storytellers Award with “Man Falling”; Janet Oakley of Bellingham won the Nonfiction award with “Drywall in the Time of Grief ”; Henry Beissel of Ottawa won the Poetry Award, with “The Jade Canoe”; and Gillian Derkson of New Westminster won the Writing for Young People Award with “The Way of Small Things.”

Gordon Kirkland’s new At Large Podcast, title track to his CD, I’m Big For My Age, can be accessed online at http://kirklandatlarge.libsyn.com/.

Anthony Dalton’s latest book, BAYCHIMO: Arctic Ghost Ship (Heritage House) is now in bookstores throughout BC. BAYCHIMO is the true story of a Hudson’s Bay Company steamship that became trapped in Arctic ice in October 1931. On October 31, Anthony presented at two teacher’s conferences in Alberta and was interviewed about his new book by Terry Moore on CFAX. In August Sylvia Taylor presented at the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland for the 5th year. She is currently teaching writing classes in White Rock and the Surrey Creative Writing Diploma Program in addition to ghostwriting and editing books for several clients. She represented the Federation at Word On the Street, Surrey International Writers Conference and Langley Author’s Celebration event.

Julie H. Ferguson has been promoting her book, Sing a New Song: Portraits of Canada’s Crusading Bishops, locally and in Ontario and the Okanagan, in person and on radio and television. Her article, “Pitching Professionally,” appeared in the Fall issue of WordWorks. She also co-judged (with Elizabeth Lyon) the Surrey International Writers’ Conference nonfiction contest in October.

Sandra Harper gave a reading on her book, Inside Kenya Creating Tomorrow, at the West Vancouver Library on October 19.

Susan McCaslin had poems published in The Windsor Review, Hammered Out, Transition and Presence. Her essay, “The Feral Muse,” was published in the League of Canadian Poets Living Archives Series of the Feminist Caucus, 2006.

Her latest volume of poetry, A Plot of Light (Oolichan 31

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Books), was reviewed in Hammered Out # 8 and The Canadian Book Review Annual. Her poem, “Preceptor,” was a finalist in the Dorothy Livesay Anthology Contest for 2006.

“Radiant Body” was the first-place winner in the Federation of BC Writers Literary Writes Poetry Contest for 2006 and “Faith Is the Evidence” and “In a Room Called Resurrection” were included in the long list. Susan read her winning poem at this year’s Word on the Street. She also read at the Poetry in Transit event at the Vancouver International Writers’ Festival in October.

Elsie K. Neufeld launched and read, throughout November, from Half in the Sun: Anthology of Mennonite Writing (Ronsdale Press, 2006) for which she was editor-in-chief.

Lois Peterson’s book, 101 - and more - Writing Exercises to Get You Started and Keep You Going is now in bookstores and libraries across BC. In November she’ll be teaching workshops in the U.K. Heidi Greco’s poems “Hype” and “Even the Starship Enterprise is getting grounded,” will be included in Corporate Watch’s ten year anniversary anthology, This poem is sponsored by. . . An accompanying CD of readings will also be published by this organization based in the U.K.

The Islands David Fraser, Nanoose Bay ascentaspirations@shaw.ca Sheryl McFarlane launched her first YA novel, The Smell of Paint (Fitzhenry & Whiteside).

Sheryl presented at the Whistler Writer’s Festival and appeared at Vancouver Island’s Booksplash Festival, and presented at author programs for the Coquitlam School District Christine Smart’s first book of poetry, decked and dancing, was published by Hedgerow Press and launched on Sept 30. Kay Stewart and husband Chris Bullock, coauthors of A Deadly Little List (NeWest, 2006), were in Edmonton to take part in the filming of A Total Write Off, an improv writing contest that will air on Booked TV, ACCESS, and the Learning Channel in April. They also read at Audrey’s Bookstore and spoke to a creative writing class at Grant MacEwan College.

Mary Ann Moore won third prize in the Literary Writes poetry contest for her poem, “Unpacking.” She read at Word on the Street in Vancouver on September 24.

Elizabeth Rhett Woods launched her new novel Beyond the Pale at The Solstice Café in Victoria on October 19. She 32

read at the Vancouver Public Library on October 25; in Winnipeg at McNally Robinson books, in Toronto at Another Story Books and at the Stratford Public Library in November.

John Wilson presented on books for boys at the BCTLA conference in Sidney on October 20. His book, Four Steps to Death was a Geoffrey Bilson Honour Book and is short listed for the White Pine Award and the Manitoba Young Readers’ Choice Award. Red Goodwin is also short listed for the Red Maple Award.

Shirley Skidmore’s book, Coffin Ship Legacy, was displayed at the 58th annual Book Fair in Frankfurt Germany in October.

Rachel Wyatt participated at the Calgary WordFest on a panel, read in the “The Banff Experience” session and at an evening reading event. At the Vancouver International Festival of Writers, Rachel was on two panels about the short story which included brief readings and lively discussions.

Joanna Weston’s book, A Summer Father, a timely reminder in our annual Remembrance Day commemorations of the personal and universal consequences of war, was launched in Calgary on November 8.

The poem, “Simple Things,” by Caroline H. Davidson was read on the CBC Outfront program in September. The poem is from the book, A Time of Trial, Beyond the Terror of 9/11 (Hidden Brook Press).

The Ladysmith Writers’ Circle launched their first anthology on November 14 at the Ladysmith Library. Lines on the 49th Parallel is full of humour, suspense and poetry by Peggy Grigor, Tine Steen-Dekker, Beryl Wearne, Helena Joyce, Marion Rossner and Caroline H. Davidson.

Shirley Goldberg, Leanne McIntosh and Kim Goldberg hosted Urban Poetry Cafe On Radio CHLY, 101.7 FM (Nanaimo) on August 29.

Adrienne Mason has two new books in her Primary Physical Sciences series: Change It!: Solids, liquids, gases and you and Build It!: Structures, systems and you (Kids Can Press). Rights for another book, Lu & Clancy’s Secret Codes, have been bought by a publisher in the Czech Republic and Bats, Owls and Otters has been picked up by Elex Media of Indonesia. Adrienne toured southern Ontario during the Canadian Children’s Book Week in November. Adrienne’s book, Skunks, has been nominated for the OLA Silver Birch Award.

Kathy Page, author of Alphabet, a novel which was nominated for the Governor General’s award in 2005, was in the Kootenays in September to give a series of eight readings.

Her new short story “The Right Thing to Say” was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 (UK), as interval material for one of the Promenade Concerts on September 4. Kathy also read at the WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

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Arts Centre in Sechelt on November 17 and taught a one-day fiction writing workshop in Gibsons the following day.

On October 13, Creative Magic, the successful vision of organizer, Cindy Shantz, weaved its spell over an audience of over seventy people at the Nanaimo Art Gallery. Fran Thiessen, Andrew Brown, Eliza Gardiner, Lorna McNeil, Rebecca Friesen, HawkOwl, and Cindy Shantz read and performed.

David Hill has published his second book, The Diamond Connection, a powerful novel of the secretive diamond business driven by greed, intrigue, deceit and passion.

Cornelia C. Hornosty’s poem, “Ordinary Days,” was posted on Leaf Press’ “Monday’s Poem,” October 16 to 23.

In September, Pauline Holdstock moderated a discussion, “Mining Life’s Experiences,” for the Raw Exchange Reading Series. Panelists included Fed member Michele Adams, Keith Maillard and Jan Conn. In October she was at the Banff Centre where she is on the faculty of the Wired Writing Studio (on-line residency) until March 30, 2007.

On October 28, along with Linda Rogers and Carla Funk, she read at the Fran Willis Gallery in Victoria for the Malahat Review gala. On December 6, National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, Pauline will read with Charlotte Gill in Vancouver.

A launch and reading for Joyce Yardley’s third book, Yukon Tears and Laughter (Hancock House) was held at the Harbourfront Library (VIRL) in Nanaimo in September.

Kim Goldberg has had poetry published this fall in Nimrod International Journal (from University of Tulsa, Oklahoma), and in Cahoots (a new quarterly women’s magazine from Saskatoon).

SheLa Morrison of Gabriola Island has had two more true animal stories published recently. “Sonny The Rat Sniffs Out Big Trouble” appears in Heroic Animals Are Smarter Than Jack and “Biggie Opens Doors By Himself ” appears in Smart Sassy Animals.

Lower Mainland Compiled in-office by Managing Editor The Fed, with special host and Literary Writes judge Sandy Shreve, held a “Federation Celebration” at this year’s Word on the Street at Library Square on Sunday, September 24.

Winners of our Literary Writes contest, Susan McCaslin, Sue Cormier, Mary Ann Moore (plus Honourable Mention Yo Gosh) read their poems in the Authors Tent at 5:30 pm, followed by refreshments in celebration of our 30th anniversary. A number of our members including Patrick Lane, Miranda Pearson, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Eileen Kernaghan, Sheri Radford, John Wilson and Sandy Shreve read or WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

Barbara and Andrea greet visitors to the Fed table at WOTS.

presented at venues throughout the day. Thanks to Barbara Coleman, Sylvia Taylor and Andrea Lowe who volunteered at the Federation table while executive director Fernanda Viveiros and Fed president Brian Busby attended members’ events.

The Poetry in Transit Anniversary Celebration, held October 20 during the Vancouver International Writers Festival, attracted a standing-room only crowd. Hosted by Susan Musgrave, the event featured readings by some of BC’s best poets including Fed members Bill New, Sandy Shreve, Leona Gom, Heather Haley, Jamie Reid, Heidi Greco, Miranda Pearson, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Susan McCaslin and Kate Braid.

Deb McVittie bought one of the Lower Mainland’s favourite independent bookstores, 32 Books Co, located in Edgemont Village (North Vancouver). McVittie has been involved in the literary community for many years as a workshop facilitator, editor, writer and volunteer.

On September 12, George Fetherling read at the Robson Square Bookstore, along with touring Ontario author Jim Nason. Fetherling’s Subway Books has just released Red Light Neon, a new title about the history of prostitution in Vancouver by Daniel Francis. Daniel also has another new book, A Road For Canada, published by Stanton Atkins & Dosil, and he presented illustrated slide talks on November 14 at the West Vancouver Public Library and November 23 at the Vancouver Public Library.

Simone Gingras-Fox has had a poem, “Cinnamon Toast,” published in Literary Place for the Early Years (Scholastic Education, 2006). Eileen Kernaghan’s 1989 historical fantasy The Sarsen Witch will be republished in 2007 by Juno Books, an imprint of Wildside Press.

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Heather Haley at Word On The Street.

On November 16, author and singer Heather Haley returned to Pacific Cinémathèque to host an annual special evening devoted to film and videopoetry, a hybrid creative form that integrates verse with media-art visuals produced by a camera or a computer.

Gerhard Winkler is pleased to announce the publication of writing from the edge. The annual anthology is published

by Rogue Literary Press (a group of five members of a small writers group within the North Shore Writers Association) and was launched at the annual windup of the NSWA at Milestones in Park Royal on November 20.

Bill New launched his new book, Touching Equador (Oolichan), at a launch event held in Nanaimo at Hill’s Native Arts on November 22. Carl Leggo’s new book of poems, Come-By-Chance, has been published by Breakwater Books out of St. John’s.

Dukes up to Bowen Island member Bernice Lever who started a four-year term in July with the Public Lending Right Commission based in Ottawa. She is the Canadian Authors Association representative for this Canada Council commission, but fights on behalf of all writers. Congratulations to Michele Adams, whose manuscript is shortlisted for the Metcalfe-Rooke Award.

Jan Drabek’s memoir, His Doubtful Excellency: A Canadian Novelist’s Adventures as President Havel’s Ambassador in Prague (Ekstasis Editions) will be launched at Café Montmarte on November 29.

Larry Jacobsen has returned from a snowy tour of libraries and schools on Hwy 16 (Prince George to Prince 34

Rupert), where he regaled his listeners with stories and slides from his book, Leaning Into The Wind: Memoirs of an Immigrant Prairie Farm Boy. Jacqueline Pearce will launch her new children’s novel, The Truth About Rats (and Dogs) (Orca, 2006), on December 2 at the Vancouver SPCA shelter.

Congratulations to Sheri Radford whose second book, Penelope and the Monsters, has been nominated for the 20062007 Chocolate Lily Awards. The book has also been nominated for the 2007 Blue Spruce Award. Sheri’s first book, Penelope and the Humongous Burp, was named a 2006 Blue Spruce Honour Book.

Kate Braid presented a reading, along with John Barton and Florence McNeil, at the Emily Carr exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery on November 5. She also read on November 26 at two events at The Christmas Writers’ Festival, organized by Michael Elcock in Sidney, BC. Kate’s essay, “The Mother Puzzle,” is included in the anthology, Nobody’s Mother: Life Without Kids, edited by Lynne Van Luven. The book was launched in Victoria on November 9.

Jan DeGrass and Carol Upton of the Sunshine School of Writing presented a successful workshop on November 18 with Kathy Page. Sunshine Coast writer Eugene James has relocated to Campbell River and has joined the Comox Valley Writers Club.

Ryszard Dubanski led a Federation-sponsored workshop on memoir writing on November 18 at the Listel Hotel in Vancouver. The workshops attracted members from all over the province, including Chantal Meijer (Terrace), Sylvia Olson (Kamloops), Jim Elliot (Halfmoon Bay) and Margaret Shaw (Sechelt).

Bonnie Nish and Sita Carboni of Pandora’s Collective are hosting a new reading series they started in North Vancouver along with bookstore owner John Fisher of Upstart Crow Books. Their December 1 event will feature readings by Monique Durand and Madeleine Gagnon, newly published with Talon Books.

Lee Edward Fodi celebrated International School Library Day on October 23 by visiting Morgan Elementary School in Surrey. Coincidentally, ISLD also marks the one year anniversary of the release of Fodi’s book, Kendra Kandlestar and the Box of Whispers, which was recently honoured with a Surrey Book of the Year Award.

Miranda Pearson (The Aviary, winner of the Alfred G. Bailey Award) read at Cross Border Pollination on November 3, and again at the Long Journey anthology launch on November 13. Both events were held at the VPL downtown. Miranda will be the “special guest poet” at the Christmas Arts Fête at the Alliance for Arts and Culture on December 6.

WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

FEATURES

THE LAST WORD

Überauthors and Others

By Jan Drabek

I

n the middle of September the headline on Cheri Hanson’s column in the Vancouver Sun read “Self Publishing Loses Its Former Stigma.” When contacted, her colleague Rebecca Wigod, the Books Editor from the same paper who had featured several reviews of self-published books on her pages during the past year, agreed that “you just can’t ignore these trends.”

Self-publishing used to be associated with vanity publishing and the image of thousands of unsold books cluttering up a hapless author’s basement. However, mentioned in Hanson’s column is Lulu.com, a modern technology company equipped to help authors with everything they need to be a writer—from producing to distributing books.

“Users upload their materials, choose sizes, covers (or provide their own designs) and set prices; Lulu takes care of the rest. There are no set-up fees, and the company prints and ships each book as it’s bought,” writes Hanson. Close to a quarter million people have contacted Lulu—over half of them during the past year alone. “It gives you some idea of the growth curve we have experienced,” says a representative for the company.

Cheri Hanson also writes that “prevailing (and let’s face it, elitist) industry wisdom holds that self-publishing is the last stop for authors who don’t measure up to traditional standards. In some cases, that is true, but there’s a renegade new group of writers who simply don’t want to follow the rules. More and more writers are choosing the full control of self-publishing.”

Did you hear that? Full control, she says. This means that writers are able to hire their own marketing and publicity experts for a set fee, and then collect a much higher rate of royalties, all without the interference of anyone in the middle.

I can’t help thinking that this strong publish-on-demand trend may be at least partially the result of some of the points made in the Fall 2006 issue of WordWorks by Julie Ferguson in her article entitled “Pitching Professionally.” It would seem that many a publisher has fallen in line with other businesses, opting for computers instead of people. In addition, those tasks that are more complicated, creative and WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

time-consuming (understand expensive) have been neatly farmed out.

Unfortunately, they frequently fall to us writers. From Ferguson’s article it would seem we are now not only required to punch in number one for English, two for French, but are also challenged by anonymous voices giving impersonal directives to recruit us as press release experts and even marketing managers. Writers are now expected to study the market and then to correlate, astonish and provide business strategies. In short, they are to transform themselves into something like überauthors and all of it before the publisher even glances at the manuscript.

Except that book publishing is not like most other businesses. There is a strange mixture of art and commerce that plays a key part in publishing. Not only are many writers artists to boot, without much knowledge of the ways of the commercial world, but they are also quite individualistic, even rebellious. In the past, this often made for rather explosive literature.

Under such headings as Remove all opportunities for rejection, Remember to categorize your book and Format your query professionally, Julie Ferguson in her article neatly laid out the rules of the new order. Its gist is that publish or perish is now changed into comply or perish, no matter how great your manuscript may be.

Admittedly, this is not true of all publishers. The smarter ones among them wouldn’t think of coming to class without doing their homework. Recently I came across one who offered a contract without even seeing the manuscript. He liked the proposed title, and its short explanation (which enlightened without sounding like a hyperactive query letter), then quietly actually looked up the author’s writing credits.

He seems to be one of those publishers who wisely realize that many competent authors may not be up to it—assuming those new roles and complying, I mean. Consider Ferguson’s explanation that “a query letter is an elegantly blended mixture of information, reassurance, and a ‘movie trailer.’” She advises to “remember that this is a letter from a professional.” more on next page 35

FEDERATION OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WRITERS

The Last Word, cont’d Professional what? Public relations and marketing whiz? Those people are considered to be highly paid specialists nowadays. Why should authors be expected to possess such talents? Many of us in the business can still recall the time when publishers and agents read manuscripts instead of query letters.

And the most capable among them were able to decide whether to reject after the first five or ten pages, without having to bother with contrived query letters.

Somewhat suspicious to my wellweathered ears also sounds Ms. Ferguson’s advice that writers should categorize their own books. She says failing to do so would be “delivering an early warning of impending publisher angst.” Not so long ago, this sort of thing used to be the publisher’s job as well.

To my mind, all this doubtlessly well-meant advice is a sign of an entirely different publishers’ angst, triggered by the steadily declining North American readership figures. That’s on the one hand. On the other, there are those individualistic and rebellious writers for whom a new way has opened up of getting their works before their public.

It’s called print on demand.

But not for all. I suspect that quite a few writers would still choose to avail themselves of the conventional publishers’ services if the relationship once again became more balanced.

A good place to start would be by reading manuscripts or at least factual summaries instead of query letters constructed like movie trailers.

Jan Drabek is a former president of the Federation of BC Writers and the author of 15 books both in English and in his native Czech. His latest book, a memoir called His Doubtful Excellency: A Canadian Novelist’s Adventures as President Havel’s Ambassador in Prague was published this fall by Ekstasis Editions.

In Memoriam

Vi Plotnikoff 1937-2006 C

astlegar writer Vi Plotnikoff, author of Head Cook at Weddings and Funerals And Other Stories of Doukhobor Life, died in November after a short but feisty battle with a brain tumour. She was 68.

Vi was born in Verigin, Saskatchewan, and grew up in Grand Forks, BC. She married her husband, Serge, and they moved to Castlegar where they raised two sons.

She was the first woman to publish fiction from within the Doukhobor culture. Head Cook (Polestar, 1994) went into three printings, and Vi received invitations to speak at international scholarly meetings and literary events.

Her work is included in course curriculums across Canada and the U.S., and her short stories appear in anthologies such as West by Northwest and Weaving a Country: Stories From Canadian Immigrants.

She wrote the comprehensive section on Doukhobors in Castlegar—A Confluence, published in 2000.

Vi working on her novel-in-progress at Rita’s

V

i was featured in the 1998 television documentary, Soul Communion, which examined how contemporary writers and artists were finding ways to portray the Doukhobor diaspora. At one point in the film she reads from the novel she had almost completed at the time of her death.

“Vi had the wonderful literary ability to portray the lives of Doukhobor women in a humble and candid way,” said Natalie Voykin, author of A Gift of Peace. “She inspired Doukhobor women to take courage and begin writing.”

Author Caroline Woodward described Vi’s work as being “the cultural equivalent of Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls & Women, with the same wise, cleareyed, and essentially subversive observations.”

Vi was proud of her long-time affiliation with the Fed. She loved the potluck meetings, the mini-conferences, and especially the camaraderie. She had a wonderful sense of humour and was always eager to help out, whether that meant moving tables or facilitating a workshop. She was a fine writer, a perceptive editor, and a popular reader at Kootenay events. We’ll miss her.

—Linda Crosfield and Rita Moir

36

WORDWORKS–WINTER 2006

SUBMISSION CALL FOR NONFICTION ANTHOLOGY The Federation of BC Writers is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of a new anthology of nonfiction by Federation members.

The first since The Fed Anthology, the book will be published by Anvil Press in Spring 2008. For this new collection, the editorial board, directed by award winning author Daniel Francis, is seeking literary nonfiction pieces with a strong sense of place that capture the writer’s connection or interaction with a specific geographical landscape, community or setting in British Columbia.

The editorial board is particularly interested in excellent writing about uncommon experiences or pivotal life events that reveal something about the writer’s relationship to “place” —be it a city, rural community, the great outdoors or even, a room of one’s own. We are looking for writing with strong personal ‘ stories that define, challenge narratives, memorable details and diverse or contribute to our identity as voices—stories that define, challenge or British Columbian writers ’ contribute to our identity as British Columbian writers.

Eligibility Author must be 18 years of age or older, and a Canadian citizen or landed immigrant.

Membership in the Federation of BC Writers is an eligibility requirement.

Previously published submissions are welcome provided the author retains the copyright or can obtain permission from the copyright holder to reprint the material.

Rules Preferred length is 3000 to 4000 words.

Blind judging. Do not include your name on entry submission, but enclose a cover sheet with your name, address, telephone number and title(s) of entry.

Submit 2 copies of each entry on white 8 x 11 paper, one side only, double spaced, 12 point regular font (no bold or italics or script), 1" margins, numbered pages. No fax or email submissions accepted. Do not send the original, as entries will not be returned. Notifications of acceptance will be sent to shortlisted authors in June 2007.

Deadline

Send entries to:

Entries must be postmarked no later than May 1, 2007.

Anthology 2008 Federation of BC Writers Box 3887 Stn Terminal Vancouver, BC V6B 3Z3