What: Literary Leanings 2006
When: Sunday, Feb. 19 and Monday, Feb. 20, 8 p.m.
Where: Joey Chan’s
Tickets: Free admission
Tuck away into a book and the characters come to life the way your imagination intended it to.
Listen to the words be transformed from print to public reading by the author who penned the words and suddenly, reader turns to listener and the characters come to life the way the author intended them to.
Five award-winning guest authors along with local scribblers from the Whistler Writer’s Group, The Vicious Circle, will bring stories off the shelves and into the public domain for two evenings: Sunday, Feb. 19 and Monday, Feb. 20 at 8 p.m. at Joey Chan’s Creekside Chinese eatery.
"Almost like storytelling, (a public reading) makes the words real," said author and Vicious Circle founder Stella Harvey.
"You hear what people have to say. How they intended for the reader to read it. I remember when Nancy Lee read from her Dead Girls Book. The book had a lot of depressing stories, but when she read one of them aloud, I realized the comedic value in it. You can hear how authors intended it to be portrayed. And you can meet them and talk with them about books and writing. It is open to the public who are readers as well as other writers."
This year, the scope of Literary Leanings has stretched to Canada’s East Coast, inviting award-winning novelists Lisa Moore and Michael Winter of Newfoundland to Whistler.
Two-time Giller Prize nominee Lisa Moore’s first work was Open, a best-selling short story collection, and most recently the novel Alligator. Her byline is also regularly found in the Globe and Mail.
Moore will be joined by fellow Maritimer Winter who received the Drummer General’s Award for The Big Why and the Winterset Award for This All Happened, which was also nominated for the Trillium Book and Atlantic Book awards.
From the West Coast, Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier share their award-winning tales.
Over the past 45 years, Lane has garnered too many awards to count for his poetry. He received the Governor General’s Award for Poems: New and Selected in 1979 and The Canadian Authors Association Award for his Selected Poems in 1988. Celebrated as the "best poet of his generation", the writing vet has also written more than 20 books.
Crozier is also a celebrated Canadian poet with 14 books of poetry under her pen, including Inventing the Hawk, winner of the 1992 Governor General’s Award.
Yukon storyteller Ivan Coyote, heralded as a "natural-born storyteller" by the Globe and Mail, will host both evening events.
Sunday night features Lane and Crozier along with local writers Greg Schroeder, Stephen Vogler, Lisa Richardson and Pam Barnsley. Monday night features Moore and Winter as well as local writers Harvey, Rebecca Wood Barrett, Brandi Higgins and Sarah Leach.
The casual social soiree includes readings and appetizers. Admission is free.
Coyote also hosts the Boot Camp for Procrastinators writing workshop Saturday, Feb. 18 from 2 to 5 p.m. at Alta Lake School.
For authors who have been writing that book for years on end and for scribes with a journal of a dozen half finished poems, the three-hour workshop whips writers’ pens into shape with practical tips getting writers to confront the blank-page syndrome.
Other Celebration 2010 writing workshops include The Path of the Journal: From first entry to published piece with Maria Coffey Feb. 18 at the Squamish Library, and Travel Writing Tips, Tales and Techniques with Coffey Feb. 19 at Spruce Grove Field House.
Photographer Dag Goering is also hosting two photography workshops Putting the Heart into Travel Photography Feb. 18 at Capilano College in Squamish and Feb. 19 at Spruce Grove Field House.
Writing workshops are $10/$15 and photography workshops $35.
For more information, visit www.whistlerartscouncil.com .
To enroll in Boot Camp for Procrastinators, call 604-932-4518.
