Bookmark

Bookmark Ends

2011-06-25T16:41:00.000-06:00

And that's it. The brass at CKUA Radio recently went over their programming and their budgets, figured out where they want to go and what they can afford to do, and decided that our weekly little half-hour program about books and authors in Alberta wasn't part of the plan. So our broadcast on Sunday, June 26th, is the last original program, although the station will air re-runs through the summer until the end of August. Over the four seasons that Brenda Finley and I put this program on the air, we broadcast 129 shows and featured 258 interviews. Unfortunately, I was never able to access the original audio of Brenda's interviews, although I still have hopes of doing that at some point. This blog, therefore, has only ever featured the interviews I did on the show. What I'd like to do is get all the Bookmark interviews onto a website and then find a way to add to them, so that we create a central on-line repository of audio recordings that could be used in future as a research resource for students and academics alike. In the meantime, feel free to continue to enjoy the interviews that are here and, above all, buy the books and expose yourself to Alberta literature. It's fabulous!

Ken Davis

Bookmark Interview: Lynn Coady: The Antagonist

2011-06-25T16:32:00.000-06:00

Lynn Coady’s new novel The Antagonist won’t be released by House of Anansi Press until September but already the book has been marked by the National Post as one of the most anticipated books of 2011. That’s in part because of the remarkable body of work this young Cape Breton writer, now living in Edmonton, already has given the world: such novels as Mean Boy, The Saints of Big Harbour, and her first novel Strange Heaven, nominated for a Governor General’s Award.

In The Antagonist, Coady creates the lead character Gordon Rankin, commonly called “Rank,” an oversized muscular young man who, against his will and his nature, is cast in the role of an enforcer, a goon – pressed by his hockey coach, his classmates and especially his diminutive but loud-mouthed and highly opinionated father Gordon Senior. Much of the book features a series of monologues by “Rank”. They come in the form of a series of e-mails sent to a former friend who has outraged Rank by using him as a character in a book, and not in a flattering manner. Rank is gradually revealed to us as a sensitive and intelligent soul trapped within a body that betrays the inner self. Throughout Coady uses lively, dancing language and a devilish sense of humour to carry the tale to its final revelations.

I met with Lynn Coady recently to talk about The Antagonist and asked her to discuss the seminal influences in creating Gordon Rankin Junior. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Helen Waldstein Wilkes: Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery

2011-06-25T16:23:00.000-06:00

The 2nd Annual Alberta Readers’ Choice Award was given out June 11, 2011, at the Alberta Book Awards in Calgary. The winner of the $10,000 prize was 74-year-old Helen Waldstein Wilkes, author of a moving memoir of tragedy, discovery and resilient new life. The book is called Letters from the Lost: A Memoir of Discovery, published by Athabasca University Press.

Helen Waldstein was 2 years old when she fled with her parents from Nazi-occupied Prague to Canada. The letters to which the title refers are those of aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins; letters sent to Helen’s family in their new Canadian home from relatives who did not survive the Holocaust. The letters were handed down to Helen Wilkes by her father but Helen did not open the box of letters until she was 60 years old. When she finally read them, Helen began a journey of discovery to find her lost family in the Old Country and to also discover her own lost heritage as a Jew.

Helen Waldstein Wilkes sat down with me the morning after the Awards in the lobby of Calgary’s grand old Palliser Hotel and talked about her book Letters from the Lost. I opened by asking why she waited so long to study the letters. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Gail Sidonie Sobat: Chance to Dance For You

2011-06-25T15:58:00.001-06:00

Edmonton writer and educator Gail Sidonie Sobat has a new book for young adult readers hot off the presses. Once again Sobat tackles an important and controversial aspect of teenaged life as she did in her book on anorexic young women called Gravity Journal. This time Sobat looks at the challenges facing gay young men and women trying to survive the close, peer-dominated environment of high school. Her new novel is called Chance to Dance for You and is published by Great Plains Teen Fiction. Gail and I recently sat down to talk about the new book and also about her other great passion, YouthWrite, a writing camp for young people that she founded 15 years ago. We started by talking about the lead character of Sobat’s novel, gay high school student and dancer Ian Trudeau. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: David Adams Richards: Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul

2011-06-25T15:46:00.000-06:00

David Adams Richards is among the truly great writers of Canadian literature. His novels have largely centred around the land he knows so well, the Miramichi Valley of New Brunswick. Richards’ body of work has earned him Governor General’s Awards for both fiction and non-fiction, a Giller Prize, a Commonwealth Writers Prize, a Trillium Award and two Gemini Awards.

The latest offering of this soft-spoken son of the Atlantic is again set in the Miramichi Valley, in a small New Brunswick community that abuts a Mikmak village and reservation. Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul, like previous Richards’ novels, is unafraid of the dark and broken corners of human existence, his language blunt and spare with each word powerfully weighted and wielded, his descriptions harsh when necessary and unyielding, while revealing emotions and motivations complex and nuanced.

The book tells the story of Hector Penniac, a 17 year old Micmac boy with dreams of being a doctor, killed in the first few hours of his first real job, that of stacking timber in the hold of a freighter. While the death easily could be an accident, racial divides, old hurts, modern politics and callous conniving soon lead to talk of murder with suspicion falling on a local white man known to be a loner, Roger Savage. What follows is an escalating cycle of prejudice, manipulation and presumption that culminates in violence and more deaths. The story jumps back and forth in time to a future many years later when Markus Paul, a grandson of the Mikmak chief Amos Paul and now an RCMP officer, ends up re-opening the investigation into what really happened to young Penniac and brings to light a number of dark secrets.

David Adams Richards stopped in Edmonton in May 2011 as part of a national tour in support of Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul and was interviewed on Bookmark. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry. In opening, Richards says the story was triggered by an actual accident.

Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul is published by Doubleday Canada.

Bookmark Interview: E.D. Blodgett: Praha

2011-06-25T15:37:00.000-06:00

E.D. “Ted” Blodgett is a former poet-laureate of Edmonton and spent 34 years at the University of Alberta as a professor of Comparative Literature. A widely recognized Canadian poet, literary critic and translator, Blodgett won a Governor-General’s Award for Literature in 1996 for his volume Apostrophes: Woman At A Piano. He has published 2-dozen books of poetry, including two new volumes this year. Blodgett, who now lives in coastal British Columbia, has just published Apostrophes Seven with the University of Alberta Press and Praha with Athabasca University Press.

Praha is an homage to Blodgett’s beloved city of Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, original home of Blodgett’s wife and the city to which he has returned time and time again. Praha consists of 65 poems featured in English on one page and in Czech on the next.

Prague is an eleven-hundred year old city, a sharp contrast to the relatively young city of Edmonton where Blodgett spent so much of his life. Prague was the centre of the Bohemian Empire and at one time was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire. Today a popular destination for tourists, Prague is renowned for its architecture, including its ancient castles and cathedrals. Blodgett seeks to capture the gentle melancholy that hangs over Prague and which he says is embedded in the souls of its citizens; a city that has seen perhaps too much over too long a time so that even a visitor feels its retiring ancient spirit.

I reached Ted Blodgett in May 2011 at his home in B.C.’s lower mainland to talk about the writing of Praha. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry. The week after the interview, Blodgett flew to Prague where a book launch was held for Praha.

Bookmark Interview: Wendy McGrath: Santa Rosa

2011-06-25T15:26:00.000-06:00

Edmonton writer Wendy McGrath was first published as a poet but her past two publications have in fact been novels, including her latest offering Santa Rosa, published in spring 2011 by NeWest Press.

The poet is still very much at work in McGrath’s novels; in fact they seem to exist somewhere along the border of the narrative poem and the novel. Santa Rosa doesn’t so much tell a story as it evokes a private experience, that of a young girl growing up in a north-east Edmonton neighbourhood in the 1960s, curious about the things that a child would be curious about, vaguely aware if uncomprehending of the growing dissolution of her parents’ marriage. I sat down with Wendy McGrath and we talked about the poetic language of her prose and why her novels don’t necessarily concern themselves much with plot and character development. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Wayne Arthurson: Fall from Grace

2011-06-25T15:18:00.000-06:00

Edmonton writer Wayne Arthurson has managed a somewhat rare feat for a largely untried new author–he went to New York and landed a two-book deal with MacMillan Publishing subsidiary Forge. The first book was published in April this year–a murder mystery set in Edmonton and notable for its unusual protagonist, a recently rehabilitated journalist named Leo Desroches, a man almost destroyed by his gambling addiction and who now robs banks in his spare time in order to control his urges.

The novel, called Fall from Grace, opens with reporter Desroches being invited by a police officer to view the body of a young native woman found murdered in a farmer’s field. Covering the story of the woman’s death leads Desroches down a dangerous path as he begins to unravel the secrets of a serial killer whose identity is truly shocking. Wayne Arthurson sat down with Bookmark in May, 2011, to talk about his story. I opened by asking Arthurson if Desroches was based on anyone he knew. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

A second Leo Desroches novel will be released next year by Forge, this book entitled A Killing Winter.

Bookmark Interview: Christopher Walsh: Under the Electric Sky

2011-06-25T15:09:00.000-06:00

Calgary freelance journalist Christopher Walsh took a page out of the Tom Wolfe’s bible on New Journalism a couple of years back, quitting his job as a reporter at an Alberta newspaper to run off and join the travelling carnival. The result is a fascinating and lively account of one of the biggest and longest running carnivals in Canada, the Bill Lynch Shows.

Walsh’s book is entitled Under the Electric Sky: The History of the Bill Lynch Shows, published by Nimbus Press. The 31 year old Walsh joined the Bill Lynch carnival for a summer to study carnies and the lifestyle first hand, taking the writer back to his hometown of Halifax. Walsh appeared on Bookmark in May, 2011, talking about his adventures and the dying form of entertainment known as the carnival. You can hear that interview with clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

After Bill Lynch passed away in 1972, the Bill Lynch Shows were taken over by Soggy Reid. He maintained the Lynch tradition of showing charity to the less fortunate throughout the Maritimes. Several years after buying the carnival, Reid was devastated when an accident on one of the carnival’s rides killed a patron. The carnival almost folded as a result. However, the carnies all rallied around Reid and the carnival persevered, still doing its rounds to this day.

Bookmark Interview: Timothy Taylor: The Blue Light Project

2011-06-25T14:57:00.001-06:00

Vancouver’s Timothy Taylor is an award-winning and best-selling novelist who likely has struck literary gold with his new novel The Blue Light Project, published by Knopf Canada. On the one hand, this book is a serious novel with big ideas woven through it, such as our fascination with fame and anti-fame and society’s repeated sacrificing of celebrities as a sort of cultural ritual, the meaning of art as a political force, of underground street culture and modern-day terrorism. This also is an edgy suspense story, centred around a man who takes hostage an auditorium full of children attending a television talent contest. En route to the story’s amazing conclusion, we meet a beautiful woman and former star athlete still celebrated only for a moment of glory many years before, a broken down journalist whose stellar career crashed and burned when he got caught inventing a source for one of his stories, and the strange street artist known as Rabbit with his almost super-hero abilities in racing across the city’s rooftops in true Parkour fashion.

Timothy Taylor, a one-time banker and self-taught writer, visited Edmonton recently on a book tour, returning to the city where he received his degree in economics from the University of Alberta. Taylor talked to Bookmark about the characters that populate The Blue Light Project and the big ideas that run through this engaging story. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Kath MacLean: Kat Among The Tigers

2011-04-09T12:54:00.000-06:00

Edmonton poet Kath MacLean began a quest years ago when she stumbled upon the journal of New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield while looking for the poetry of Robert Frost at the U of A’s Rutherford Library. Mansfield intrigued her and would not let go. A result of that quest is a collection of exquisite poems by Kath MacLean dedicated to the spirit and life of Mansfield and entitled Kat Among the Tigers, published by University of Alberta Press.

Mansfield’s life was short, brilliant, tragic and decidedly memorable. Born to wealth in colonial New Zealand in 1888, she moved to Europe in the dawn of the 20th Century and emerged as an important modernist writer and a free spirit who had love affairs with both men and women. As one writer said of her, she was “sexually reckless and socially excitable, temperamentally damaged by illness and as malicious and chilling as she could be appealing and vulnerable’. Mansfield was acquainted with such writers as Virginia Woolf, who said that Mansfield was the only writer of whom she was jealous. Aldous Huxley and Christopher Isherwood both used her as a character in their novels. D.H. Lawrence modeled his character Gudrun in the book “Women in Love” on Mansfield. Mansfield fought a long battle with tuberculosis, finally succumbing at the age of 34 years.

I sat down with Kath MacLean recently to talk about her book Kat Among the Tigers and her fascination with Katherine Mansfield. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

NOTE: Kath MacLean will formally launch the book and provide a multi-media presentation of her work on Thursday, April 14th, starting at 7 PM at the Expressionz Café at 9938 – 70 Avenue in Edmonton.

Bookmark Interview: Gayleen Froese: Grayling Cross

2011-04-03T18:49:00.000-06:00

Among the literary genres frequently published by Edmonton’s NeWest Press is that of the mystery thriller; such as the Detective Lane Mysteries by Garry Ryan or the murder mysteries of Roy Innes. Giving us a bit of a twist on the whodunit novel, NeWest has published the second novel in a supernatural mystery trilogy by Edmonton writer Gayleen Froese. Grayling Cross centres again on the unlikely super-sleuth duo of petite P-R expert Collie Kostyna and her plus-sized psychic pal Anna Gareau. Book one of the trilogy, Touch, featured Collie and Anna caught up in murder and mayhem in Victoria. In Grayling Cross, Collie and Anna are back but have fled to Edmonton, where murder and supernatural mystery still manage to find them in the form of a secret society of magicians.

Froese, who also is a singer-songwriter and recording artist, spoke to me recently about her invented detectives and shared her thoughts on whether psychic powers indeed exist. You can hear our interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry. The interview concludes with a brief sampling of the song Threads, written and performed by Gayleen Froese.

The official launch for Grayling Cross will be held Tuesday, April 5th at the ARTery in Edmonton.

Bookmark Interview: Annabel Lyon: The Golden Mean

2011-04-03T18:29:00.001-06:00

In terms of Canadian literature, the year 2009 belonged in good measure to British Columbia’s Annabel Lyon. The 40-year-old author, teacher and mother of two published her first novel only to see the book ascend as one of the most acclaimed works of the year.

The Golden Mean won the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the 2009 Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction. A book favorably compared to Robert Graves’ classic I, Claudius, The Golden Mean tells the story of two giants of classical Greece, the philosopher and scientist Aristotle and the teenaged student who came to be known as Alexander the Great.

Lyon, of Vancouver, recently delivered the fifth annual Henry Kreisel Lecture at the University of Alberta. Prior to the lecture, Lyon spoke with me about her life both during and after the writing of The Golden Mean. She says she doesn’t particularly feel the success of The Golden Mean looming over her sequel, which centres on Aristotle’s daughter. Lyon says her success with the first novel was a result of so many remarkably lucky confluences that it would be absurd to expect similar success on her sophomore attempt--and thus she feels no pressure. You can hear our conversation by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry, with Lyon opening by talking about how the phenomenal success of her debut novel has changed her life.

Bookmark Interview: Bob Barnetson: The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada

2011-04-03T18:14:00.001-06:00

Do employers, with the tacit support of provincial and federal governments, put Canadian workers in harm’s way in order to protect business’ bottom line? That’s the disturbing question raised in a new book entitled The Political Economy of Workplace Injury in Canada, authored by Athabasca University professor Bob Barnetson and published by Athabasca University Press.

Barnetson’s book is clearly pro-labour in tone but that doesn’t diminish in any way the glaring and distressing facts and issues he raises about the epidemic of workplace deaths and injuries in this country?and the seeming inability or indifference of corporations and government to rein in the slaughter.

It’s a fact that every single day in Canada approximately 3 workers are killed on the job. Over 600-thousand Canadians each year are injured on the job severely enough that their activity is subsequently limited. As I discovered in talking with Dr. Barnetson, those statistics only scratch the surface. To hear our interview, click on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Sheree Zielke: Martha's Vine

2011-04-03T18:02:00.001-06:00

Not many budding writers likely would have the audacity to seek a meeting with the head of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang as part of their research, or shove a copy of their first novel into the hands of legendary film-maker James Cameron with an invitation to make a block-buster film in Alberta. But that’s exactly what Edmonton writer Sheree Zielke has done in the past year in pursuit of her calling.

Zielke is author of Martha’s Vine, a violent and occasionally steamy novel that features a war between motorcycle gangs and survivalists in post-apocalyptic Alberta. The 55-year-old Zielke, a photographer, teacher and born-again Christian, has come late to the role of novel writer and she’s not letting anything stand in the way of fulfilling this particular dream. She published the book herself, using print-on-demand technology to keep printing costs down. She’s marketing the book herself, from selling the book on Amazon.com to setting up a Facebook page and a website, to knocking on bookseller’s doors to get the book on shelves.

I caught up with Sheree Zielke at the Chapter’s store in West Edmonton Mall on a Saturday morning in February, where she was busy signing copies of Martha’s Vine. You can listen to our conversation by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Roxanne Harde: Reading the Boss

2011-03-14T07:50:00.001-06:00

You may be a fan of the music of Bruce Springsteen, but did you know the lyrics to his songs are being studied in English courses in North American universities these days? Not only that, but some academics compare the Boss to the Bard.

Among those who argue Springsteen can legitimately be compared to William Shakespeare is University of Alberta English professor Roxanne Harde and professor Irwin Streight of Canada’s Royal Military College. They’ve co-edited a collection of essays that critically evaluate Springsteen as a literary force. The book is called Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen, published by Lexington Books.

I spoke with professor Roxanne Harde for the Bookmark program. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Gordon Laird: The Price of A Bargain

2011-02-20T11:19:00.003-07:00

Every time you head off to a discount big box store to get that must-have steal-of-a-deal, you may be contributing to the decline of the North American economy and our standard of living. Don’t quite see it? Well, best-selling author and journalist Gordon Laird of Calgary connects the dots in his book The Price of a Bargain: The Quest for Cheap and the Death of Globalization, published in 2009 by McClelland and Stewart.

Laird is analysing rather than preachy as he takes aim at such retail giants as Wal-Mart for their ruthless driving of price to the bottom. Laird looks beneath the booming economic miracle of the manufacturing monster in China to expose the dark underbelly of displaced North American industries and communities, and the virtual factory prisons that enslave millions in China who work for peanuts and are imprisoned or murdered if they dare attempt to organize collective bargaining rights.

Above all, Laird exposes North Americans’ collective self-indulgence –the unholy binge we’ve been on as consumers since the end of the second world war-and the economic Armageddon we’re about to reap as a result. The collapse of the U.S. economy in 2008 was not a bizarre aberration but the beginning of a profound shift in world economics in which North Americans may find themselves largely out of the limelight.

Laird’s commentaries have been featured on CNN, CBC Radio and Television, National Public Radio, and in such publications as Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail and the Far Eastern Economic Review. The Globe and Mail calls Gordon Laird “one of the best and best-informed minds in the world,” something quite evident when I interviewed Laird for Bookmark. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Bruce Sellery: Moolala: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things With Their Money

2011-02-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

You’re a smart person. So why is it you never seem to get ahead financially? Well, perhaps you’re looking at money the wrong way. One person who is pretty sure he can help is long-time business journalist Bruce Sellery, author of a new book entitled Moolala: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things With Their Money (and What You Can Do About It), published by McClelland and Stewart.

Bruce Sellery was a founder of cable television’s Business News Network and spent years as BNN’s bureau chief in New York. He also is the host and producer of Workopolis TV, a national prime-time show. These days Bruce Sellery is based in Calgary and has created a personal finance training company called Moolala. I spoke recently with Bruce about why smart people do dumb things with their money…and just what are the dumb things they do? You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Ibrahim Abu-Rabi': The Contemporary Arab Reader on Political Islam

2011-02-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

As dramatic, populist resistance has swept away old authoritarian regimes in the Middle East—in Egypt and Tunisia—Western media coverage, at least initially, focused predictably on Western fears of a steep jump in oil prices or the emergence of a new radical Islamic government in the region. Not as central a voice was articulate commentary from the Arab and Islamic communities of the Middle East regarding their perspectives on the historic upheaval now taking place.

That makes a new book co-published by the University of Alberta Press and Pluto Press all the more intriguing. Entitled The Contemporary Arab Reader on Political Islam, this collection features the writings of some of the leading scholars and activists in the Arab world. Many of the works in this volume appear in English for the first time, giving Western readers unprecedented access to Arab thinking about the Middle East, the West and the movement known generally as political Islam. Addressing such key issues as Shari'ah, human rights, civil society, secularism, globalisation and ummah (the global community of Islam), and the impact of the West on the modern Arab world, this book is a perfect starting point for students and academics looking to understand 'Political Islam' in contemporary Arab and Muslim societies.

The Contemporary Arab Reader on Political Islam is edited, and features an introduction, by internationally esteemed scholar on the subject of political Islam, Dr. Ibrahim Abu-Rabi’. Dr. Abu-Rabi’ currently holds the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Alberta. He is Senior Editor of The Muslim World and is a Co-Director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford University in Connecticut.

I had the opportunity recently to sit down with Dr. Abu-Rabi’ in an interview that aired on Bookmark 06 February 2011, before the toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak had been accomplished. We opened our conversation by discussing the degree to which the events in Egypt represent a ‘sea change’ in the Middle East.

You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Tanna Patterson-Z: Butterflies in Bucaramanga

2011-02-13T11:20:00.000-07:00

It is always a pleasure to come across a truly well-written, well-paced and captivating novel, a pleasure that was mine recently when I read the book Butterflies in Bucaramanga, published by NeWest Press of Edmonton. I was equally delighted and surprised to discover the book is written by a decidedly talented but largely unknown writer living in the Kootenay Mountains of southeastern British Columbia. Her name is Tanna Patterson-Z.

Butterflies in Bucaramanga is a novel based on the true story of the late Edward Leonard of Creston. Leonard was a senior driller with a Canadian drilling company when he was kidnapped by Colombian guerillas in 1998 and held in captivity for 105 days. Leonard returned home to Creston following his release, already in his sixties. Ed Leonard passed away in August, 2009.

I reached Tanna Patterson-Z at her home in Creston recently and learned about the story and the process behind the writing of Butterflies in Bucaramanga. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Aritha van Herk: Family Literacy Day 2011

2011-02-13T11:09:00.001-07:00

January 27th of each year is marked as Family Literacy Day across Canada. This annual observance encourages parents to read to and with their children as a vital part of family education. On Bookmark, we always like to do something at this time of year to honour and draw attention to Family Literacy Day.

This year, we spoke with Aritha van Herk, celebrated author and professor of Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. Van Herk’s book Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta was chosen as the inaugural title for the launch of the One Book, One City campaign in Calgary in November 2010. She recently wrote a column in the Calgary Herald lamenting the lack of literacy and elevated conversation in modern public discourse and also decrying the level of financial support given to Canadian public libraries.

Aritha van Herk says Albertans are increasingly careless about how they use language and this slovenly speech is having a serious effect, both on our ability to think and communicate and also on our economy. You can hear our interview with Aritha van Herk by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

To learn more about special literacy events in your community, go on-line to abclifeliteracy.ca.

Photo credit: Trudie Lee Photography

Bookmark Interview: Barb Dacks: Alberta Encore

2011-02-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

For fourteen years, Legacy magazine presented fascinating features about the diversity of arts, culture and heritage across the province of Alberta and published work by many of Alberta’s best writers. The magazine finally ceased operations in 2009 but the final issue, in Winter 2009, did not turn out to be the last word from Legacy. Recently a book was published that incorporates memorable articles, poems, photographs and artwork originally featured in the magazine over the course of its 56 issues. The book is entitled Alberta Encore. I spoke recently with Legacy magazine founder and editor of the book, Barb Dacks of Edmonton. She opened by sharing her thoughts as to what the legacy of Legacy might be. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

P.S. Copies of Alberta Encore are available in independent bookstores throughout Alberta. You also can order the book by going on-line to the Legacy magazine website.

Bookmark Interview: Geo Takach: Will the Real Alberta Please Stand Up?

2011-02-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing Albertans like talking about almost as much as the weather, it’s what it means to be an Albertan. For that matter, the whole country has some pretty well-developed opinions on Alberta and Albertans, too. That’s what Edmonton film-maker and author Geo Takach discovered when he traveled the country with a camera and asked people what they think of the Wild Rose province and its citizens. The result of Geo’s quest was a documentary film released last year entitled Will the Real Alberta Please Stand Up?

Geo Takach and the University of Alberta Press recently launched a book by the same name. The book is a genuinely fascinating review of the history of Alberta and the evolution of the myths that surround our province and our people. Geo talked with Bookmark about the new publication, one that reveals the complex truths and the enduring myths that have attached to Alberta. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Doug Griffiths: 13 Ways to Kill Your Community

2011-02-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

Most of us live in, and help shape, a community of some sort; whether it be a campus dormitory, a rural village, or a subdivision in a large city. Our contribution can be pro-active and positive or it can be passive or even negative, but we all play a part in the quality of our community. That’s at the heart of a new book published by Frontenac House of Calgary entitled Thirteen Ways To Kill Your Community. It’s written by Wainwright journalist Kelly Clemmer and Battle River-Wainwright Conservative MLA Doug Griffiths. Doug sat down with me recently to talk about how he came up with the idea for this book. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Rick Lauber: Caregiver's Guide for Canadians

2011-02-13T10:21:00.002-07:00

Bookmark admits to a bias toward the literary and creative non-fiction genres than toward more utilitarian volumes such as the “how-to” guide (so please don’t avalanche us with books about repairing leaky pipes or building a fortune through real estate). Nonetheless, when a book crossed my desk recently from Vancouver’s Self-Counsel Press, entitled Caregiver’s Guide for Canadians, I elected to make an exception.

We hear much about the impact of the Baby Boomer generation on rising health care costs and depleted pension funds as Boomers now begin heading into what traditionally have been called the “retirement” years. What we don’t hear about as much is the tremendous impact on Boomers themselves of caring both for aging parents and children trying to get footing in their own lives. The drain, both financially and emotionally, can be staggering.

Caregiver’s Guide for Canadians is not geared solely to the burdens of Baby Boomers but it certainly is a great manual for the rising tide of Canadians who find themselves in the position of caregiver. I spoke recently with author Rick Lauber of Edmonton, a freelance writer who cared for his own parents until their passing and who used the experience to launch a comprehensive investigation into the challenges facing caregivers and the resources and strategies that can help them through the journey. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Rudy Wiebe: Collected Stories 1955-2010

2011-02-12T18:13:00.001-07:00

As one of Alberta’s pre-eminent writers, Rudy Wiebe draws attention any time he publishes a new work. In November, 2010, Wiebe and University of Alberta Press released Rudy Wiebe: Collected Stories 1955-2010, a collection of 50 short stories written by Wiebe over the past 55 years.

Wiebe is best known to most Canadians as a novelist, author of such major works as The Temptations of Big Bear, a book Maclean’s magazine called “one of the best novels, perhaps, ever written in Canada.” This newly published collection is largely made of stories previously published in anthologies or magazines, with the exception of four stories, including one finished only recently entitled “Shadow of a Rock.” The collection is organized into four parts without regard to chronological sequence, starting with stories dedicated to one of Wiebe’s favorite subjects, historic first encounters between First Nations people and European immigrants.

The 76-year-old Wiebe invited me recently into his Edmonton writing studio, generously sharing in a broad-ranging interview that covered the new work, his literary legacy, growing up Mennonite in Canada, his obsession with the experiences of First Nations peoples and their treatment at the hands of whites, and his views on the emerging Western Canadian literary tradition. He also shared his thoughts on what drives his writing, what has influenced his writing style, and what he thinks of the western Canadian literary scene today.

You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry. Wiebe opens by comparing the writing of a novel to that of a short story.

Bookmark Interview: Charles Wilkins: The Wild Ride

2011-02-12T17:52:00.005-07:00

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, adorned in red serge uniform, is a Canadian symbol instantly recognized around the world. The Mountie was once the stuff of dozens of Hollywood movies – from 1910’s Rider of the Plains to 1942’s King of the Mounties with Nelson Eddy’s Rose Marie in between. But behind the iconic image, in the origins of the RCMP, lies a tale wilder than anything that Hollywood could invent.

And that’s the stuff of a new book by journeyman non-fiction author Charles Wilkins called The Wild Ride: A History of the North West Mounted Police 1873 – 1904, published by Stanton Atkins & Dosil Publishers. Complemented by a stunning collection of historical photographs, Wilkins has written a romping script that details the precarious beginnings of the eventually powerful force that brought law and order to western Canada. The Wild Ride is not the first book written about the mounties, far from it, so I asked Charles Wilkins – as we sat in the Northwest Mounted Police outpost at Fort Edmonton Park on a warm autumn's afternoon – just why he took on this project. You can listen to our conversation by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Lawrence Scanlan: A Year of Living Generously

2011-02-12T17:41:00.000-07:00

With over four decades of craft as a successful Canadian journalist under his belt, Lawrence Scanlan gave himself a different sort of assignment in 2008. He spent a year volunteering, a month at a time for 12 different Canadian non-profit agencies.

Scanlan wanted to probe the nature of volunteerism, non-profit service organizations, philanthropy, and the realities of those who are the recipients of such care and generosity. Scanlan also discovered, of course, how giving of oneself changes a person. His findings and experiences have been collected in a new book entitled A Year of Living Generously: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Philanthropy, published by Douglas & McIntyre.

Scanlan, who lives in Kingston, Ontario, spent his year working at a local soup kitchen, with the homeless on the mean streets of Toronto, in a hospice, at a First Nations school. He helped build houses in flood-ravaged New Orleans. He taught journalism at a woman’s radio station in Senegal. And he worked at an HIV-AIDS shelter in Costa Rica.

Lawrence Scanlan came to Edmonton’s LitFest in October, 2010, to promote his new book and to hold workshops on magazine writing. He took time out to talk with me about his year of volunteering and the re-awakened political consciousness that it unleashed in him. Scanlan observes that volunteers provide 17-Billion dollars worth of services in Canada each year; often providing the services of compassion and caring that our governments have abandoned as their responsibility. To hear our interview, just click on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Myrna Kostash: Prodigal Daughter

2011-01-15T12:30:00.001-07:00

Myrna Kostash is among Canada’s foremost writers of creative and literary non-fiction. At every stage of her life, Kostash has written innovatively about the world around her and of herself within that world. Her books are signposts of her journey – beginning with her multicultural classic All of Baba’s Children, published in 1978. Her newest work, published in Autumn, 2010, in a sense is a “book end” to that original work.

Prodigal Daughter: A Journey to Byzantium, published by University of Alberta Press, is a multi-level story: in part a history of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire; in part a travelogue that takes the reader on a culturally-enriched exploration of the enduring citadel of Northern Greece, Thessalonika, and across the Balkans; in part a personal spiritual odyssey that seems to surprise the author as much as any reader. These various threads ravel around Kostash’s central quest to discover the origins and history of St. Demetrius, a saint well-known in the Eastern Orthodox Church with incarnations dating back to the days of the Roman Empire.

I had the privilege recently to sit down with Myrna Kostash in her home in Edmonton. We opened our discussion on the topic of the recent honour given Myrna Kostash by the Writers Trust of Canada, the Matt Cohen Award, which recognizes a Canadian writer of major stature who has unflinchingly lived the writing life. It’s an award that has special meaning for Kostash.

To hear our interview, simply click on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Glenn Rollans: Canada's Proposed New Copyright Legislation

2011-01-15T11:18:00.002-07:00

When you create a work of art–be it a novel, a painting or a symphony–the legal protection you enjoy to control subsequent access and use of your creation is a right called copyright. Copyright acknowledges in law your right as a creator to control use of your work and to be financially compensated for such use by others. Canada’s current Copyright Act has been in existence since 1997, before the modern revolution in the digital formatting of content in both sound and image, including text. New formats, allowing easy transfer of creative and intellectual content from one user experience-device to another, revolutionize how consumers access creative content and how creators are compensated.

The Harper government has taken on the task of crafting new copyright legislation for a new era of technology. Bill C-32 has cleared second reading, has gone to committee for further study, and is expected to return to Parliament for third and final reading in February, 2011.

For insight into Bill C-32 – Bookmark turned to Glenn Rollans, a man admittedly on side with those who create and own intellectual and creative properties. Currently a publishing industry consultant, Rollans is a former co-chair of Access Copyright, the national organization that collects license fees from Canadian educational institutions on behalf of writers and publishers. He also is a former partner in the late great educational publishing company, Duval House of Edmonton. Glenn Rollans encourages people concerned about Bill C-32 to contact their Member of Parliament and express those concerns.

You can listen to the full-length interview I conducted with Glenn Rollans by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry. Note that the broadcast version of this interview was substantially shorter.

Bookmark Interview: Joseph Boydon: Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont

2010-12-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

Joseph Boyden ranks among Canada’s leading contemporary writers. His second published novel Through Black Spruce won the 2008 Giller Prize. His first novel, Three Day Road, was one of the country’s more acclaimed novels of 2005. Boyden, of Irish Catholic, Scots and Ojibwe stock, has taken on the genre of historic NON-fiction in his third published work, Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. The book is part of Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians series, a project steered by none other than John Ralston Saul.

This biography of the two great Metis leaders of the North West Rebellion of 1885 manages to be a unique voice in a fairly crowded field of written works about Riel and Dumont. It has Boyden’s direct yet eloquent delivery. It is the first time that Riel and Dumont’s lives have been intertwined in a biography. And this marks the first time the story of the two men and their remarkable year-and-a-half relationship has been told by a Metis author.

Boyden, who spends much of his time in New Orleans these days, was in Edmonton in October for the city’s Litfest and took time to sit down with me to discuss Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Alyssa York: Fauna

2010-12-27T16:57:00.001-07:00

Alyssa York of Toronto is already making big waves as a Canadian writer to watch. Her second novel Effigy almost took the Giller Prize in 2007, up against the likes of M.G. Vassanji and Michael Ondaatje.

York’s novels, now three in number, are very different from each other in subject matter but are nonetheless related in that they reflect her remarkable research and attention to detail. While Effigy revolves around a shameful historical incident, the massacre of settlers at the hands of Mormons and Pauites in 1850s Utah, York’s newest book Fauna, is cast in modern day Toronto, on the stage of a decrepit
autowrecker’s yard alongside the Don Valley,

where the owner provides a compassionate haven for the wounded, both animal and human alike, in a wonderful but unsentimental story that weaves equal measures of love and menace.

I had a chance to interview York in Edmonton in October 2010 as she promoted Fauna, published by Random House Canada. She talked about her new book, her writing process, and her childhood roots right here in Alberta. To hear that interview, simply click on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Thomas Trofimuk: Waiting for Columbus - A Year Later

2010-12-27T16:23:00.000-07:00

Edmonton author Thomas Trofimuk is working on a new book (actually two books) these days or at least he’s trying to … that is, when his last book isn’t stirring things up again and demanding his attention.

Waiting for Columbus – a riveting romance mystery about a man in a modern day Spanish insane asylum who believes he is Christopher Columbus – was published in August, 2009; in Canada by McClelland and Stewart. When Bookmark talked to Trofimuk last fall, the omens were good. The U.S. rights to the book had sold for $200,000 and a Hollywood-New York film company looked like it was serious about turning the book into a movie. That bright early flame appeared to sputter somewhat when the film company and Trofimuk parted ways and Canadian sales of the book turned out to be modest.

Fear not. The flame is once again burning bright. The film is very much back on – Canadian indie company Angel Entertainment has optioned the book, and is in serious negotiations with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jose Rivera, who wrote the screenplays for The Motorcycle Diaries and Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road.

To top off the good news, Waiting for Columbus is one of the 2010 picks by Britain’s most influential book club, Richard and Judy’s, which in turn has resulted in the book landing on the British best seller list.

When Trofimuk and I did this interview over a pasta lunch in late September, 2010, he had just returned from 10 days in England and Europe. To hear that interview, just click on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: David Suzuki: The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision For Our Sustainable Future

2010-12-27T16:02:00.001-07:00

Dr. David Suzuki, Canada’s very own Father Nature, shows only the slightest hint of his age, 74, as he storms across the country promoting his latest book called The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision For Our Sustainable Future, published jointly by Greystone Books and the David Suzuki Foundation. Suzuki wryly comments that he’s now in the “Death Zone,” but in fact the man exudes nothing but vitality and unabated enthusiasm for his crusade to save the planet.

Suzuki is a geneticist, internationally renowned radio and television broadcast personality on the subjects of science and nature, and a deeply devoted environmentalist.

Suzuki made promotional stops in Edmonton and Calgary as part of a national tour in September 2010 to promote his new book. I caught up with Dr. Suzuki in his dressing room at the Myer Horowitz Theatre on the U of A campus in Edmonton, just before he went on stage to deliver his Legacy lecture to a packed house.

We started by talking about a documentary film of Suzuki’s life and cause, a project that actually led directly to his new book. The film, called Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie, had just won the Cadillac People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

To hear our interview, simply click on the title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Tim Bowling: 2010-2011 Writer-in-Residence at University of Alberta

2010-12-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

Tim Bowling is a western Canadian poet and novelist now living in Edmonton, regarded by a number of critics as an artist deserving of national attention, one who is maturing into a major Canadian talent. Quill and Quire magazine calls Bowling “a poet of rare talent.” The Edmonton Journal says Bowling’s work is “achingly real.” And the Toronto Globe and Mail says “Tim Bowling is one of Canada’s greatest living poets. He’s also a novelist and an accomplished storyteller with a gift for vivid imagery…”

Tim Bowling won a Guggenheim Scholarship in 2008, putting him in a class with such writers as Margaret Atwood. He’s been named this year’s writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, given an office and financial support to continue his literary creations while he makes himself accessible to university students and others with a passion for writing literature.

Bowling grew up at the mouth of the Fraser River, in Ladner, BC, and spent years in the family tradition, working on a gill-netter gathering fish for a living. Tim Bowling has been both celebrated and criticized for incorporating the life of a Fraser River fisherman into much of his work.

Tim Bowling and I sat down in September 2010 and talked about his writing, his career to date, and the importance of his new appointment as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. To hear the broadcast version of that interview, click on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Photo Credit for Tim Bowling photograph: Theresa Shea

Bookmark Interview: Jordan and David Stouck: Collecting Stamps Would Have Been More Fun: Canadian Publishing and the Correspondence of Sinclair Ross, 1933 – 1986

2010-10-31T16:33:00.000-06:00

Today considered one of Canada’s great writers, James Sinclair Ross spent most of his days far from the literary spotlight. Born in Shellbrook, Saskatchewan in 1908, son of a housekeeper and single mother, Sinclair Ross lived a life out of step with his passions. He spent his working years as a banker when he wanted to be a full-time writer. He wrote dark, stark stories, faithful to the people and the lost, lonely places of dustbowl Saskatchewan, but at a time when war-time readers and Toronto-based publishers wanted something happier. And he was a gay, or at least bisexual, man at a time when such an orientation could be a highly dangerous calling.

By the time fame finally found him, in the heady nationalist days of the late 1960s and early 70s, Sinclair Ross had retired from banking and lived on a pension abroad, in Greece and Spain. By the time Ross was established as a Canadian literary icon in the 1980s, ill health forced him back to Canada. He died of the complications of Parkinson’s disease in Vancouver in 1996.

Sinclair Ross was best known to many Canadians for his short stories, which found their way into numerous national and international anthologies; works such as A Field of Wheat, The Painted Door, A Lamp At Noon, and Cornet At Night. He also wrote the much acclaimed novel As For Me and My House, first published by Reyal and Hitchcock of New York in 1941 to scant and dismal reviews and then again by McClelland and Stewart in 1957 as part of its New Canadian Library series. Two subsequent novels failed to win critical acclaim but his fourth, Sawbones Memorial, carved out new ground in writing style and received numerous accolades.

Insight into Sinclair Ross the man is hard to come by. He was by nature a shy, reclusive individual, reluctant to make new acquaintances. He refused to do public readings of his work and only ever granted one media interview. Despite that, Ross carried on a written correspondence with many of the major literary and publishing figures of his day in Canada and it is there we find the personal Ross.

This brings us to a new book, just published by University of Alberta Press. The book is entitled Collecting Stamps Would Have Been More Fun, sub-titled Canadian Publishing and the Correspondence of Sinclair Ross, 1933 – 1986. It is a compilation of letters between Ross and others, assembled by Jordan Stouck, a professor at UBC-Okanagan, and her father, David Stouck, professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, author of a biography of Sinclair Ross and someone who was friends with Ross in his later years. I sat down with both Jordan and David Stouck in Vancouver recently to discuss the book and the life of Sinclair Ross. You can listen to that conversation by clicking on the title of this blog entry. First, David and Jordan read from the letters, David starting with a letter a discouraged Ross wrote to a supportive editor, John Gray, in December 1957.

Bookmark Interview: Thomas King: On The Importance of Literacy

2010-10-31T16:03:00.000-06:00

In July 2010, Edmonton hosted a national conference on Family Literacy entitled “Cultivating Connections.” Experts from across the country and around the world gathered in the city to discuss the latest research and developments related to family literacy programs.

Keynote speaker at the conference was Thomas King, a renowned Canadian Aboriginal novelist, short story writer, scriptwriter, and photographer. In 2003, Dr. King delivered the prestigious Massey Lectures, his address entitled The Truth About Stories. A subsequently published version of that speech won Ontario’s Trillium Award. Two of King’s books have been nominated for Governor General Literary Awards, his children’s book, A Coyote Columbus Story, and his novel, Green Grass, Running Water. Thomas King was the creator, writer and performer of the CBC radio show The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour, which aired from 1997 to 2000.

I spoke with Thomas King prior to his presentation to the Edmonton conference. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Ted Hart: J.B. Harkin: Father of Canada’s National Parks

2010-10-31T15:10:00.000-06:00

Canada today has over 40 National Parks or National Park Reserves, a federal system of protected areas designed to represent all of Canada’s distinct natural regions. And this year, 2010, marks the 125th Anniversary of the establishment of Banff National Park, the first of the country’s national parks.

Thus we approach a new book release from University of Alberta Press entitled J.B. Harkin: Father of Canada’s National Parks. This substantial biography is authored by Ted Hart, now director emeritus of the Whyte Museum of the Rockies in Banff.

J.B. Harkin was a federal bureaucrat in the Department of the Interior who came to develop a vision and a passion for the development of a national system of parks that would preserve our country’s natural heritage. Hart’s book is a play-by-play of the political stick handling at which Harkin excelled. We owe him a great debt for having a national parks system today that is the envy of the world. I spoke to Ted Hart recently about his research and the subject of his enquiry, J.B. Harkin. We opened by looking at Ottawa’s far-sighted decision in 1885 to establish Banff National Park. You can hear that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Tony Fabijancic: Bosnia: In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip

2010-10-31T11:10:00.000-06:00

The University of Alberta Press recently came out with a book that is a fascinating read for anyone who takes an interest in the historically turbulent region of Europe known as the Balkans.

BOSNIA: In the Footsteps of Gavrilo Princip is written by Edmonton-born Tony Fabijancic, an English professor at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, Newfoundland.

As an adult, Tony Fabijancic extensively toured the land of his ancestors and wrote the critically acclaimed travel book Croatia: Travels in Undiscovered Country.

Along the way, Fabijancic became fascinated by the story of young Yugoslavian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, the Serb peasant who fatally shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on a sunny morning on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo. The death of Franz Ferdinand unleashed a sequence of international manoeuvres that resulted in the First World War.

Tony Fabijancic began to do research on Princip, learning everything he could about the man; where he grew up and how he came to be recruited into the underground Serbian nationalist movement. In 2005 and 2006, Fabijancic made trips to Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, in order to retrace the life of Gavrilo Princip and the steps leading up to the assassination. In the process, Fabijancic came to a deeper understanding of the historic tensions of religion and nationalism in the Balkan states that have periodically erupted into horrific violence and cruelty, and also of the possible future that’s in store for this still deeply divided corner of the new Europe.

You can listen to my interview with Tony Fabijancic about the book Bosnia by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Alastair Sweeny: Black Bonanza

2010-10-31T10:59:00.000-06:00

Development of the Athabasca Oilsands has been the topic of at least a half-dozen books published in the past three years, reflective of the importance and controversy attached to the world’s largest known oil reserves. Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk and Stupid to the Last Drop by William Marsden spoke of the environmental Armaggedon that was being unleashed along the Athabasca River. Green Oil by Satya Das said oilsands development was necessary and inevitable but suggested stronger public activism and government leadership to force energy companies to meet higher environmental standards. And Stampede by Gordon Pitts focussed on the shift of Canada’s economic centre from Ontario to the West as a result of the oilsands and other energy projects.

The newest book in the collection is one just released by publishing giant John Wiley and Sons entitled Black Bonanza: Canada’s Oil Sands and the Race to Secure North America’s Energy Future. It’s written by Alastair Sweeny, a business historian, publisher and author based in Ottawa; a well-respected researcher who has worked for such Canadian writing heavyweights as Peter C. Newman, Pierre Berton and Jeffrey Simpson.

It’s clear in the book that Sweeny is very pro- oilsands development which, especially in light of the off-shore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, he says is a relatively safe and highly stable supply of oil for the North American economy. Sweeny says there’s enough oil in the Athabasca oilsands to give us time to develop the new technologies that will make fossil-fuel based economies obsolete. To listen to my interview with Alastair Sweeny, click on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: People of the Lakes

2010-10-30T12:43:00.000-06:00

The Vuntut Gwitchin are a people who have occupied lands now known as the northern Yukon and Alaska for thousands of years. For countless generations, they carefully passed down their collective tribal experience through oral histories. Now, the Vuntut Gwitchin have taken the preservation of their heritage and history in an entirely new direction. Working with Edmonton anthropologist Shirleen Smith and University of Alberta Press, the community has developed a comprehensive book of their stories, the book called People of the Lakes. The stories were collected through film and audio recordings of the Elders, most interviews conducted in the Elder’s first language, Gwitchin. Edmonton anthropologist Shirleen Smith worked with the Vuntut Gwitchin throughout this project.

In this blog post's audio feature, you will first hear the voice of Mary Jane Moses of Old Crow, Heritage Researcher for the Vuntut Gwitchin government. Mary Jane talks about why her people chose to capture their oral tradition and history on film and in the book. Then you will hear anthropologist Shirleen Smith discussing the project and her own perspective on why the Vuntut Gwitchin chose to be so open in revealing their stories.

To hear the audio, simply click on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Dektet 2010

2010-10-24T12:25:00.001-06:00

Frontenac House of Calgary is a publishing house best known for its volumes of poetry. Carefully selected and beautifully printed, the books of Frontenac House have a solid reputation in presenting high quality works by emerging and established poets in Alberta and across Canada. 2010 marks the 10th anniversary of the founding of Frontenac House and of its celebrated Quartet series. To honour the occasion, Frontenac House has published Dektet 2010, a collection of 10 books of poetry. The featured works are:

Attenuations of Force by Lori Cayer of Winnipeg, MB
Children of Ararat by Keith Garebian of Mississauga, ON
Confessions of an Empty Purse by S. McDonald of Toronto, ON
ex nihilo by Adebe D. A. of Toronto, ON
Fallacies of Motion by William Nichols of Edmonton, AB
Falling Blues by Jannie Edwards of Edmonton, AB
[sic] by Nikki Reimer of Vancouver, BC
Standoff Terrain by Jocko Benoit of Calgary, AB
Surface to Air by Douglas Burnet Smith of Antigonish, NS
White Shirt by Laurie MacFayden of Edmonton, AB

The featured audio in this blog entry includes an interview with Rose and David Scollard, founders of Frontenac House, talking about Dektet 2010, a reading by Jannie Edwards of Falling Blues followed by an interview with the poet, and an interview with Jocko Benoit, talking about his work Standoff Terrain. You can listen to this audio by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Emblems of Empire: John Vollmer and Jacqueine Simcox

2010-09-25T22:38:00.003-06:00

The University of Alberta Press in Spring 2010 enveiled what surely has to be one of the most sumptuous books the press has ever published: Emblems of Empire, a large, gorgeous art book featuring 72 pieces of Ching and Ming Dynasty clothing and artwork from the MacTaggart Art Collection – a once-private collection donated by Sandy and Cecile MacTaggart to the University of Alberta Museums.

Emblems of Empire is written by John Vollmer of New York and Jacqueline Simcox of London, England – two of the world’s leading experts on the art and artifacts of the Chinese Emperors. Working with the design team at University of Alberta Press, Vollmer and Simcox have crafted a book that is both a beautiful photographic tribute to the amazing materials within the MacTaggart Collection and a learned text on the history and structure of dynastic China and how both clothing and art contributed to maintaining the order of the Empire.

The willingness of John Vollmer and Jacqueline Simcox to undertake this project arises in part from the fact that the MacTaggart Collection is one of the foremost collections of Chinese paintings and textiles outside of China. I had the opportunity to speak with them when they flew into Edmonton for the launch of “Emblems of Empire.”

You can listen in on our conversation by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Yann Martel: Beatrice and Virgil

2010-09-25T22:15:00.002-06:00

Yann Martel is among Canada’s most internationally renowned writers, a feat accomplished by a single novel published in 2001 called Life of Pi. The tale of a young Indian male trapped in a life raft on the high seas with a Bengal tiger, full of spiritual mystery, raw violence and edgy suspense, captivated readers around the world. Life of Pi has sold 7-million copies worldwide to date, 700-thousand copies in Canada.

In April of this year, Martel released a new novel, this one entitled Beatrice and Virgil. Like Life of Pi, Beatrice and Virgil has animals playing central characters. But rather than a theme of spiritual exploration and possibility, this story centres on the darkness of the human soul, weaving a play-within-a-novel as it revisits the Holocaust, the extermination of 6-million Jews and as many people of other minorities by the Nazi German state during the years of the Second World War.

Yann Martel, in Edmonton as part of a national tour to promote Beatrice and Virgil, spoke with Bookmark about the new novel. He responded to questions as to how he handles such criticism as scathing reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post, and why he continues to live in Saskatoon. Yann Martel begins our interview, however, by discussing whether he found it difficult to write Beatrice and Virgil in the face of the overwhelming success of Life of Pi.

You can listen to our interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Hiromi Goto

2010-09-25T22:02:00.002-06:00

Edmonton bid farewell in May 2010 to adult and children’s novelist and poet, Hiromi Goto, as her year as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta drew to a close. Goto is used to settling in for a spell and then bidding adieu. She was born in Japan and emigrated with her parents to British Columbia when she was still a toddler. In B.C. her father ran a mushroom farm. As Goto was on the threshold of adolescence, her father moved the family to a small farming community south of Calgary known as Nanton, where he started anew a mushroom farm, an enterprise in which the whole family was required to be involved. Hiromi’s grandmother lived with the family from the time Hiromi was five and would share family stories and Japanese folklore with her, influences that would emerge in Hiromi’s literary work later.

Hiromi Goto earned a BA in Humanities from the University of Calgary in 1989. Five years later, she was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize – Canadian Caribbean Region – for best first novel, the book was the much acclaimed novel A Chorus of Mushrooms, rich in its expression of Japanese-Canadian culture.

Her second novel, The Kappa Child, was released in 2001 and earned the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Regional Book. This book again drew on Japanese-Canadian cultural expression but began to draw on elements of fantasy and folklore to add magic and mystery. Also in 2001, Goto released her first children’s book, The Water of Possibility.

Hopeful Monsters, a collection of short stories, was released in 2004. Goto’s most recent novel, published last year by Penguin, is geared to adolescent readers and is entitled Half World. A sequel of sorts is slated for release later this year. Meantime, Goto collaborated with Canadian performance poet David Bateman on a long and very adult poem about the seductions and destructions of alcohol, the work entitled Wait Until Late Afternoon and published by Frontenac House of Calgary.

Hiromi Goto recently sat down with me to talk about her career, her books, her view of the writing process, and the year she’s just spent as writer-in-residence.

To hear this interview, click on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Alice Major: Memory's Daugher

2010-09-25T21:41:00.001-06:00

Prominent Edmonton poet Alice Major has just released a new collection of her poems entitled Memory’s Daughter, published by University of Alberta Press. As the jacket notes to the collection tell us, Memory’s Daughter is an homage to her parents. In a collection of poems that is both elegy and celebration, she explores the transformations wrought by history, biology, and the alchemy of love. Her poems show how carefully she has listed to the voices of the Muses, the mythological daughters of Mnemosyne, goddess of Memory. I spoke with Alice Major recently about this new body of work. We begin that conversation with Alice preparing to read one of her poems from Memory’s Daughter, a poem entitled Baucis and Philemone.

You can listen to our interview by clicking on the title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Chantal Allen: Bomb Canada

2010-07-25T15:19:00.004-06:00

In April of 2010, Bookmark aired an interview I conducted with journalist Chantal Allan about her first published book, BOMB CANADA And Other Unkind Remarks in the American Media, published by Athabasca University Press of Edmonton.

The provocative title comes from a half serious-half tongue-in-cheek article in the American magazine National Review by Jonah Goldberg in 2002. Goldberg suggested Canada had enjoyed its national security on the back of the American military and that it was time we boosted our own forces and did more internationally. In 2005, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson stirred a media tempest-in-a-teapot on this side of the border when he suggested Canada was like America’s retarded cousin encountered at a family Thanksgiving Dinner, to be patted on the head but otherwise not to be taken seriously.

Remarks such as these fascinate Chantal Allan, who was born and raised in Winnipeg and worked for the CBC before pursuing her career and a graduate degree in journalism in Los Angeles. Allan began a study of the history of commentary about Canada in American media as a graduate research project. Her research papers led to speaking engagements on the topic and eventually to this new book. Bomb Canada And Other Unkind Remarks in the American Media traces tit-for-tat media and political broadsides from 1867, the year of the Canadian Confederation, to the present day. Allan’s book demonstrates that the tensions between Canada and the United States, and the often snide remarks that ensue from them, are nothing new. At the time of Confederation, U.S. journalists and politicians suggested outright that American Manifest Destiny dictated that the United States extend all the way north to Alaska and that Canada should simply be annexed.

To start our interview, I asked Chantal Allan why American media commentary about its northern neighbour became notably vulgar, brutish and even threatening after September 11, 2001, the dawn of the War on Terror. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Eden Robinson

2010-07-25T15:02:00.003-06:00

Haisla First Nations writer Eden Robinson delivered the 2010 Henry Kreisel lecture early this year to a mesmerized audience at the Timms Centre for the Arts on the University of Alberta campus. In doing so, she joined Dany Laferriere, Joseph Boydon and Wayne Johnston in the small but growing company of acclaimed Canadian authors who have delivered the Kreisel lecture. Robinson’s “lecture” was riveting for its seemingly off-the-cuff rendering of stories about her home of Kitimaat Village on the Northwest Coast of British Columbia.

Robinson has been described as the Merchant of Menace and one of the most disturbing writers in Canadian literature. The National Post said of her “Eden Robinson writes with the violent beauty of a seasoned knifefighter. . . . In her hands, language is a weapon that can leave you bleeding.” Her first published book, in 1998, was a collection of four stories, one a novella and the others short stories. It was called “trap lines” and the New York Times, no less, declared it a Notable Book of the Year. The Royal Society of Literature in Britain awarded it the Winifred Holtby Prize for best first work of fiction.

Robinson followed “trap lines” with her first novel “Monkey Beach.” The first English-language novel to be published by a Haisla writer, “Monkey Beach” is a celebration of life told through a harrowing yet restrained story of grief and survival, set within Haisla culture and spiritual belief and raw West Coast wilderness. It was nominated for both the Giller Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award. It was published internationally and was on Canadian best-seller lists for months.

Robinson’s third work Blood Sports, published in 2006, returned to East Vancouver and the gritty, violent landscape of her first collection “trap lines,” specifically continuing the tense sadistic psycho-drama between Tom and Jeremy, the two leading characters of her novella Contact Sports.

Just before heading off to deliver the Henry Kriesel lecture, Eden Robinson sat down with me in the lobby of a nearby hotel to talk about her amazing career thus far and what drives her to write. I started by asking how it felt to write the early work, before all the fame. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

2010 Alberta Book Awards

2010-05-17T13:05:00.003-06:00

Almost 300 writers, editors, publishers, publicists, politicians and personalities turned up at the Delta Inn South in Edmonton Friday night for the 2010 Alberta Book Awards. For the first time in a number of years, the Awards show was a joint presentation of the Writers Guild of Alberta and the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.

The gala also marked the first time that the Alberta Readers Choice Award was given out. The Award is a partnership of the Edmonton Public Library and the Book Publishers Association of Alberta and has garnered considerable attention for its $10,000 prize, which goes to the author of a book published by an Alberta publisher during the previous year, as voted on by the general reading public. The winner of the inaugural award is Calgary writer Michael Davie for his comedic look at adolescent sexuality in the book Fishing for Bacon, published by NeWest Press of Edmonton. Fishing for Bacon also was awarded the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction.

Here are the other award recipients:

Alberta Literary Awards

Wilfred Eggleston Award for Nonfiction - Will Ferguson (Calgary), Beyond Belfast, Penguin Canada

R. Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature - Linda Smith (Grande Prairie), The Broken Thread, Coteau Books

Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry - Catherine Owen (Edmonton), Frenzy, Anvil Press

Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama - Beth Graham (Edmonton), Charlie Tomlinson and Daniela Vlaskalic, The Drowning Girls, from The Drowning Girls/Comrades, Playwrights Canada Press
Amber Bowerman Memorial Travel Writing Award - Mia Atienza (Edmonton), One Flamenco Night

James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction - Joan Dixon (Redwood Meadows), The Perils of War and Mother-Son Relationships

Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story -Ben Lof (Edmonton), When in the Field with Her at His Back, in The Malahat Review

Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Prize - Diana Davidson (Edmonton), Ahead of the Ice

Alberta Book Publishing Awards

Lifetime Achievement Award
This award is presented in recognition of an individual’s contribution to Alberta’s book publishing community. Awarded to former BPAA executive director Katherine Shute, for her outstanding work and service within Alberta’s book publishing industry.

Alberta Book Design Awards

Book Cover/Jacket
Freehand Books (imprint of Broadview Press) (Calgary)—Buying Cigarettes for the Dog by Stuart Ross, cover design by Fidel Pena, Underline Studio

Book Illustration
Maggie & Pierrot: A Children’s Book Publisher (Edmonton)—Theo in the Spotlight by Patti McIntosh, illustrated by Tara Langlois
Book Design
RMB (Rocky Mountain Books) (Calgary)—The Incomparable Honeybee by Reese Halter, book design by Chyla Cardinal

Children’s & Young Adult Book Award
Maggie & Pierrot: A Children’s Book Publisher (Edmonton)—Theo in the Spotlight by Patti McIntosh, illustrated by Tara Langlois

Educational Book Award
Weigl Educational Publishers Limited (Calgary)—Canadian Citizenship in Action Series: Protecting Rights in Canada, Resolving Political Differences, Citizens and the Political Process, citizens Rights and Responsibilities Production Coordinators Heather C. Hudak and Heather Kissock

Scholarly & Academic Book Award
The University of Alberta Press (Edmonton)—People of the Lakes by Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and Shirleen Smith

Trade Fiction Book Award
NeWest Press (Edmonton)—Seal Intestine Raincoat by Rosie Chard

Trade Non-Fiction Book Award
Glenbow Museum (Calgary)—Vistas: Artists on the Canadian Pacific Railway by Roger G. Boulet

Lois Hole Award for Editorial Excellence
University of Alberta Press (Edmonton)—People of the Lakes by Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation,
production editor Mary Lou Roy, copy editor Meaghan Craven

Poetry Book Award
Freehand Books (imprint of Broadview Press) (Calgary)—subUrban Legends by Joan Crate

Publisher of the Year
NeWest Press (Edmonton)

Bookmark Interview: Dr. Gabor Mate: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction

2010-05-16T10:27:00.002-06:00

(This interview was first broadcast on March 14th, 2010)

Dr. Gabor Mate is a writer whose highly researched and beautifully written books almost invariably stir things up in the medical establishment. This quiet yet intense physician spent much of the past ten years caring for drug addicts and other lost souls in the tough, bleak neighbourhoods of East Vancouver, serving as staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility. His patients faced life-threatening drug addictions, mental illness, Hepatitis C or HIV and, in many cases, all four.

His most recent book tells the stories of those drug addicts as real and vital people. It tells the truth about his own quirky addictions. It also synthesizes the findings of hundreds of research papers representing the latest scientific research on addiction; any addiction: drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, video games, shopping, work. Above all, the book looks at the epidemic of addictions in our society, tells us why we are so prone to them and what is needed to liberate ourselves from their hold on our emotions and behaviours. The book is called In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction, published by Random House Canada.

Dr. Gabor Mate was in Edmonton recently, to speak before medical practitioners, nurses and clinicians. He also gave a public address as a special presentation of LitFest, Edmonton’s International Literary Festival. He took time out of a very busy schedule to also speak with Bookmark. We started by talking about the Harper government’s announcement last month that it will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to overturn a BC Court of Appeal ruling. That ruling allows the Insite safe injection site in East Vancouver to continue operating. Insite is a place where drug addicts are allowed to bring their drugs with them for supervised and safe injections under sanitary conditions.

You can listen to the full-length and unedited interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Dymphny Dronyk: Home and Away

2010-05-15T12:31:00.003-06:00

(This interview was first broadcast on March 7, 2010)

House of Blue Skies is an Alberta micro-publisher owned by two hard-working professional women who also somehow find time to write poetry and publish books. Angela Kublik is director of the Fort Saskatchewan Public Library. Dymphny Dronyk of Grande Prairie owns her own mediation services business.

A somewhat unique claim to fame for the House of Blue Skies is that it has published now two volumes of poetry that have actually sold very well. The first was entitled Writing the Land: Alberta Through Its Poets, published in 2007, now in its third printing. The publisher now has released a second volume entitled Home and Away: Alberta’s Finest Poets Muse on the Meaning of Home, a book which found its way onto the best-seller lists in Edmonton and Calgary. I spoke recently with Dymphny Dronyk from her home in Grande Prairie. You can listen to that Skype-based interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Rosie Chards: Seal Intestine Raincoat

2010-05-12T20:46:00.003-06:00

(First broadcast February 21, 2010)

Seal Intestine Raincoat is a fascinating novel set in present-day Winnipeg in the depths of a very cold winter. Our hero is a 15-year-old boy who has just emigrated to Canada from England and is trying to adjust to life in his new home. As the novel develops, we sense rising anxiety and suspense as Winnipeg finds itself suffering a gasoline shortage just as a massive winter storm breaks over the city. Soon the city’s power cuts out. No fuel, no electricity and people are in a full-blown panic. With his father trapped back in England, young Fred must care for his mother and their home, which is soon invaded by desperate Winnipegers in search of food, warmth and shelter. I used Skype and contacted the book's very promising first-time novelist and recent immigrant to Canada, Rosie Chard, who speaks from her home in Winnipeg. Seal Intestine Raincoat is published by NeWest Press of Edmonton.

You can listen to the interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Robert Kroetsch: Too Bad: Sketches Toward A Self-Portrait

2010-03-01T18:35:00.002-07:00

(Interview first broadcast in two parts February 7th and 14th, 2010)

Robert Kroetsch is a pioneer upon the Alberta literary landscape. He was among the first, if not the first, writer to boldly set his stories in Alberta and make them about Alberta characters doing things that Albertans are known to do, at least occasionally. His novel The Studhorse Man, published in 1969, guaranteed his place in the Canadian pantheon of important literary talents. His work in both the novel form, literary criticism, and the poem, has been as prolific and enduring as it has often been courageous and rebellious, demanding an artist’s space sufficient to find his own voice.

Kroetsch, at 82 years of age, continues to create new work and shows no sign of having lost either his sense of humour or his sense of irreverence. He has just published his latest collection of poems entitled Too Bad: Sketches Toward A Self-Portrait, published by University of Alberta Press.

Kroetsch has only recently returned to Alberta, after many years of wandering, now living in Leduc. Kroetsch and I recently talked about his new book and the perspective of a man who can look back upon a most remarkable career. The interview opens with Kroetsch reading three poems from his new collection Too Bad: Sketches Toward A Self-Portrait. You can listen to this interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Here's a photograph of Kroetsch and I shortly after this interview was recorded.

Bookmark Interview: Jessica Simon: From Ice to Ashes

2010-02-13T13:40:00.003-07:00

(first broadcast January 31, 2010)

A new book published by Edmonton’s NeWest Press takes the mystery-adventure genre into a rarely used environment, that of the Canadian North. From Ice to Ashes is a fast-paced first novel written by long-time Yukon resident Jessica Simon.

From Ice to Ashes centres around the Yukon Arctic Ultra--the most challenging human-powered race in the world. The Arctic Ultra runs 430 miles from Whitehorse to Dawson City, following the Yukon Quest Trail. The race is held in February in temperatures that can be below minus 50 even without the wind chill. Course hazards can include hypothermia, frostbite and possible blizzards.

In the book, a terrorist seeking vengeance against the U.S. government takes part in the Yukon Arctic Ultra as a cover to gain access to Fort Greely, Alaska, an anti-ballistic missile base just across the Yukon border.
Hot on the heels of the terrorist is Simon’s crafted hero Markus Fanger, an ex-pat German who has become an Auxiliary officer with the RCMP.

Author Jessica Simon is a literary arts columnist for What’s Up Yukon, and she has contributed articles to San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Outdoor Edge, Yukon News, and Yukon, North of Ordinary. Before devoting her life to the written word, she worked as a guide for a wilderness tourism company for German-speaking visitors to the Yukon, which she co-founded with her husband.

From my office in Edmonton, I reached Jessica at her home, a log house in the woods about 25 kilometres outside of Whitehorse, Yukon. I used Skype and a recording software called Total Recorder to record the interview on my laptop. I may not have the hang of it quite yet as there was some "phasing" of sound in the recording that I had to take quite a bit of time to modify later before airing the interview -- it still has a bit of an odd sound to it in places. Anyway, it's quite listenable and decidely interesting. If you want to hear it, just click on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Dr. Afua Cooper

2010-02-13T12:54:00.001-07:00

(first broadcast January 24, 2010)

The Canadian Literature Centre at the University of Alberta regularly introduces students and the general public to some of the finest literary talent that our country has to offer, notably through its monthly Brown Bag Lunch series. In January 2010, the Centre presented Dr. Afua Cooper, author and professor of history and Women’s Studies at the University of Toronto, to present readings of her poetry and historic non-fiction.

The Jamaican-born Cooper wrote the best-selling historical non-fiction The Hanging of Angelique, for which she was short-listed for a Governor-General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. It tells the story of a woman, a black slave, accused of setting Montreal on fire in the 18th century and subsequently sentenced to death. Notably, Dr. Cooper’s academic work exposes the largely unreported history of black slavery in Canada.

Cooper also is regarded as an important, founding artist in Canada’s dub poetry scene. I spoke with Afua Cooper following her presentation for the Canadian Literature Centre. If you click on the title of this blog entry, you can hear that interview, which opens with with a portion of Afua Cooper’s dub poem, “Negro Cemetary,” which talks about the discovery and destruction of ancient black cemeteries in Ontario.

Bookmark Interview: Roberta Laurie and Kat Flannery: How I Shot My Brother and Other Stories

2010-02-13T12:38:00.007-07:00

(First broadcast January 17, 2010)

One of the perennially fascinating aspects of the craft of creative writing is how compelling it is for so many people, regardless of whether fame and fortune follow. Even more fascinating, for me at least, is when writers take on the additional adventure of book publishing rather than wait for their manuscript to be accepted by an established publishing house. Success is far from guaranteed, unless you measure success by the satisfaction of taking your fate in your own hands.

In a semi-rural region west of Edmonton – the County of Parkland, to be precise – several writers last year decided to pool their talents and resources and create a publishing company called Prairie Dog Publishing. Their first publication is an anthology of poems and short prose works entitled How I Shot My Brother And Other Stories. Those who contributed to this project are enthusiastic, talented and, for the most part, amateur writers keen to see their work in print. The book has been a success on a number of fronts, including the fact that it has sold quite well.

I sat down recently with Roberta Laurie and Kat Flannery, two founders of Prairie Dog Publishing, to talk about what motivated them to take on their own publishing venture and about the anthology How I Shot My Brother and Other Stories.

You can listen to that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry. At last report, How I Shot My Brother had sold out and Prairie Dog was still debating whether to reprint the book.

Bookmark Interview: Diane Wishart: The Rose That Grew From Concrete

2010-02-13T12:20:00.003-07:00

(First broadcast January 10, 2010)

Some students in Alberta schools have a hard enough time surviving, much less getting an education. By extreme example, the young people who enter the halls of "Wild Rose Alternative School" (a pseudonym for a high school in Edmonton’s inner city), run a gauntlet of violence at home, life on the streets, drug and alcohol addiction, and confrontations with police. For the teachers who work at Wild Rose School, conventional pedagogy simply doesn’t work. Out of necessity, the school has developed a unique approach to helping students who otherwise would completely fall through the cracks, an approach which also suggests a way for dealing with students in crisis at any school.

Educator Diane Wishart has taught at, and researched, Wild Rose School and its students. She has collected her discoveries in a book entitled The Rose That Grew From Concrete: Teaching and Learning With Disenfranchised Youth. We spoke recently about the book and the tough realities insideWild Rose School.

You can listen to that interview with clicking on the title of this blog entry. The Rose That Grew From Concrete is published by University of Alberta Press.

Bookmark Interview: Tony Whyte: The Meteorites of Alberta

2010-02-13T12:11:00.002-07:00

(First broadcast January 3, 2010)

Most of us have witnessed a shooting star briefly flaring across the night sky. The shooting star is caused by meteorids, extraplanetary objects that usually are little larger than a grain of sand and sometimes as big as a boulder several feet across, burning up as they enter earth’s atmosphere.

Occasionally, the object is big enough that it survives entry into our atmosphere and actually crashes into the earth. Once landed, it is called a meteorite.

A new book entitled The Meteorites of Alberta tells the story of the sixteen major meteorites that had landed in our province up to the time when the book was published. It is a fascinating read, if occasionally challenging for some of the science and language used. Author Tony Whyte effectively blends the science and scientific research involved with each meteorite with the human story surrounding the meteorite’s discovery. I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Tony Whyte in the book-lined study of his Edmonton home to talk about The Meteorites of Alberta.

You can listen to that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry. The Meteorites of Alberta is published by University of Alberta Press.

Bookmark Interview: Will Ferguson: Beyond Belfast

2010-02-13T12:00:00.001-07:00

(first broadcast December 27, 2009)

Will Ferguson is considered among Canada’s best writers of humour. His book HappinessTM , a satire about a self-help book that actually works, has been published in 26 languages and 31 countries and won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. The Calgary-based writer tends to the genre of travel writing, with such works as Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada and Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan. Will’s latest effort is a book entitled Beyond Belfast, recounting his 900-kilometre walk around Northern Ireland on the alleged footpath called the Ulster Way. With his sardonic wit and keen observance, Will Ferguson shares the unique vision of an Irish son raised in Canada rediscovering the paradox of the deeply entrenched division and the warmth of character that is the Northern Irish.

You can listen to my interview with Will Ferguson by clicking on the title of this blog entry. Beyond Belfast is published in hardcover by Viking Canada.

Bookmark Interview: Satya Das: Green Oil

2010-02-13T11:39:00.002-07:00

(First broadcast December 20, 2009)

From the demands of tower-climbing protestors on the ramparts of the Parliament buildings to a growing chorus of critics at the Copenhagen summit on Climate Change, it is clear that the Athabasca oilsands are undeniably at the centre of a growing international storm of controversy over the environmental impact of oilsands extraction. That controversy is well reflected in two recent books on the subject. Last year you may recall Bookmark interviewed author Andrew Nikiforuk of Calgary about his best-selling and highly critical assessment of oilsands development entitled Tar Sands:Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent.

Now public policy consultant and former journalist Satya Das of Edmonton has come out with a very different take on the oilsands debate with his book Green Oil. Das declares that it is absurd to advocate shutting down oilsands development, and that critics such as Nikiforuk are naieve if they think the 1.7-trillion barrels of oil buried in the Athabasca oilsands will NOT be exploited by an oil-hungry world. Better, he says, to accept that reality and get busy figuring out how to do it in an environmentally sustainable manner.

You can listen to my interview with Satya Das by clicking on the title of this blog post. Green Oil is published by Sextant, an imprint of Cambridge Strategies, the consulting company in which Das is a partner. For more information, go to http://greenoilbook.com

Bookmark Interview: Tom Wayman: Woodstock Rising

2010-02-13T10:46:00.001-07:00

(First broadcast December 13, 2009)

Among the many fascinating literary characters to at least temporarily call Alberta home is Tom Wayman, professor of English at the University of Calgary.

Wayman is a leading Canadian work-poet, i.e., a poet who celebrates and explores the realities of mundane working life through poetic expression. He has written 25 books to date, many of those books much acclaimed and award-winning. He is a founder of both the Kootenay School of Writing and the Vancouver Industrial Writers Union. He was born in Ontario but has spent most of his life in British Columbia.

Wayman earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in 1968 at the University of California at Irvine. This is notable here only because Tom Wayman’s first novel is a wickedly black comedy with a hero named Wayman, which he swears is pure coincidence, set primarily at University of California Irvine circa late 1960s. The book is called Woodstock Rising, a coming-of-age tale in southern California and Nevada complete with a music festival that makes Woodstock look puny by comparison and capped off with a light show that is nothing less than a stolen nuclear warhead exploded high in the atmosphere. Tom Wayman and I sat down recently and chatted about the Summer of Love and his mad-cap vision of an alternate apocalypse.

You can hear that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry. Woodstock Rising is published by Dundurn Publishing of Toronto.

Bookmark Interview: Chad Viminitz: Money Assassins

2010-02-13T10:32:00.004-07:00

(first broadcast December 6, 2009)

The Great Recession now is two years old and even in relatively fortunate Canada there has been plenty of pain. Unfortunately, there also are signs that the worst is yet to come and at least some of it will be a direct result of our own folly.

The Certified General Accountants of Canada reported back in May of 2009 that household debt in Canada had reached the unprecedented total of 1.3 Trillion dollars. That report revealed that 85 per cent of Canadians said they had outstanding debt on their credit cards. Over the past year, personal bankruptcies by Canadians have grown 36 per cent. Credit card write-offs by the banks in Canada were expected to hit a Billion dollars this year.

Moody’s recently projected that unemployment levels in Canada will skyrocket to almost 10 percent by the second quarter of 2010, which will result in a further escalation of bankruptices and credit card defaults.

Edmonton financial planner Chad Viminitz is preaching a financial gospel that would have sounded familiar to our Depression era ancestors. His new book is called Money Assassins: How they stole your financial freedom and how you can get it back. In it, Viminitz urges Canadians to change our ways immediately before we financially self-destruct.

You can listen to my interview with Chad Viminitz by clicking on the title of this blog entry. Money Assassins is published by Insomniac Press.

Bookmark Interview: Leilah Nadir: The Orange Trees of Baghdad

2010-01-12T07:48:00.003-07:00

(First broadcast November 29, 2009)

For Vancouver author Leilah Nadir, the tragedy of Iraq is both distant and intimate. Born in Calgary of an Iraqi Christian father and a British mother, Nadir has lived her life in Canada and England, never in Iraq. The book The Orange Trees of Baghdad is Nadir's quest, only indirectly fulfilled, to know the family and land that has been kept from her by history and modern circumstance. In the absence of direct experience, her story becomes a powerful contrast of a human-scale story against the cold international political and military abstract. You can listen to my interview with Leilah Nadir by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

The Orange Trees of Baghdad is published by Key Porter Books of Toronto. It received the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature in 2008.

Since the invasion of Iraq, Leilah Nadir has written and broadcast political commentaries for the CBC, The Globe and Mail and The Georgia Straight. She also writes fiction and has written a play, Heavenly Bodies. She lives with her family in Vancouver, BC.

Bookmark Interview: Myrna Kostash: The Frog Lake Reader

2009-11-22T17:22:00.003-07:00

(First broadcast November 15, 2009)

1885 was a watershed year in western Canadian history, a year in which the accumulated tensions between a growing tide of settlers backed by Ottawa and the desperately pressed indigenous people of the west were unleashed in bloody measure. The Metis backed demands for land and treaties with the NorthWest Rebellion under Louis Riel.

At the same time, at Frog Lake, Alberta, a handful of hungry, frustrated, angry Cree warriors raided a small settler village in search of goods, unwittingly triggering slaughter and retribution in equal measure. The Frog Lake Massacre, as it came to be called by the Canadian mainstream, saw nine villagers murdered by the warriors, later resulting in eight warriors being hanged at Fort Battleford, Saskatchewan. The events of this story informed Rudy Weibe’s much acclaimed novel The Tempations of Big Bear.

This much-misunderstood, largely forgotten event in Western Canadian history now receives unique and thorough treatment from acclaimed creative non-fiction writer Myrna Kostash of Edmonton in her latest book The Frog Lake Reader, published by NeWest Press. Kostash has collected a myriad of voices – those involved in the Frog Lake Massacre, those not involved directly but living at the same time and who later relayed what they were told, and those who since have written about and commented on this mythic tragedy that played itself out over eight months in 1885. Kostash uses selected writings or transcript excerpts to reconstruct both chronologically and critically the Frog Lake Massacre. The result is an intense, vivid resurrection of this now 125 year old event.

You can listen to my full, unedited interview (30 minutes) with Myrna Kostash about The Frog Lake Reader by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Deborah Willis: Vanishing and Other Stories

2009-11-22T16:48:00.002-07:00

(First broadcast November 8, 2009)

Deborah Willis is today a relatively unknown name in Canadian literature but a writer of whom you likely will hear much more in future. This 28-year-old from Calgary, Alberta, now lives in Victoria, BC, where she works as a bookseller at the renowned Munro’s Bookstore while taking classes at the University of Victoria. She also was in the running for this year's Governor-General’s Literary Award for her collection of short stories entitled VANISHING AND OTHER STORIES, published by Penguin Canada. Not bad for a first work.

Her stories in this collection explore emotional and physical absences and the ways in which people leave or are left. The disciplined sparseness of her lines only makes her descriptions of people, places and experience all the more powerful, evoking both compassion and a sense of irony in witnessing the fundamental oddness of our human condition.

The story behind her early success is fascinating, as I learned recently when talking to Deborah Willis while she attended the Edmonton International Literary Festival.You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry.

Bookmark Interview: Ian Sheldon: Cambridge Footsteps

2009-11-10T18:27:00.005-07:00

(First broadcast November 1, 2009)

Edmonton artist Ian Sheldon has achieved a rare honour. His architectural paintings of Cambridge University and the surrounding city have been selected as the subject of a book commemorating the 800th anniversary of the founding of the university. The book, featuring 55 Sheldon paintings, is entitled Footsteps: A Passage Through Time and is published by Cambridge University Press.

You can listen to my recent interview with Ian by clicking on the Title of this Blog Entry. To learn more about Ian Sheldon and his art, go to his website: www.iansheldon.com

Bookmark Interview: Rowland Lorimer & John Maxwell - the Future of Book Publishing

2009-11-10T18:12:00.001-07:00

(First broadcast October 11, 2009)

Rowland Lorimer is Director of the Master of Publishing Program at Simon Fraser University and also Director of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing. John Maxwell is assistant professor in the SFU publishing program and a specialist in Internet and New Media technologies. They presented a seminar in September, 2009, at the Look Beyond the Book Conference, hosted by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta in Banff. The seminar, entitled Imagining Publishing 2.0: Strategic Organization for New Realities, sought to galvanize the thinking of book publishers around the imminent possibilities of a digital technology and environment that will inevitably and profoundly change the nature of publishing as we have known it. I sat down afterward with Lorimer and Maxwell to overview their presentation. You can hear that interview by clicking the Title of this Blog Entry.

Please note that Maxwell begins speaking first. You will have to sort out Maxwell's and Lorimer's voices for yourselves, which I'm sure you'll have no problem doing.

Bookmark Interview: Don Hunter: Incident at Willow Creek

2009-10-07T20:55:00.003-06:00

(First broadcast October 4, 2009)

Don Hunter’s latest novel is a well-paced and vivid mystery, complete with strong characters and a powerful climax. Incident at Willow Creek, published by Edmonton’s NeWest Press, is the story of a woman who inherits a mystery upon her mother’s death. Through records found in a safety deposit box, it is discovered the mother had secrets, secrets that involve a German prisoner-of-war camp in southern Alberta during the Second World War.

I dropped in on Don Hunter at his home in Fort Langley to talk about his terrific new novel. You can hear that conversation by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

For many years, Don Hunter was a senior columnist with the Vancouver Province newspaper. Upon retiring from the paper in 1996, the journalist and former teacher let no grass grow under his feet, instead devoting his talents full-time to creative writing. An earlier memoir Hunter had published of his years as a teacher in Northern British Columbia enjoyed new life as a television mini-series 9B. He also enjoyed success with a popular collection of short stories called Spinner’s Inlet, which centred on a host of unusual characters living on an unnamed Gulf Island.

Bookmark Interview: Rich Vivone: Ralph Klein Could Have Been a Superstar

2009-10-04T10:06:00.003-06:00

(First broadcast September 27, 2009)

Long-time political pundit at the Alberta legislature, Rich Vivone, has come out of retirement long enough to publish a no-holds barred book about Ralph Klein’s years in provincial politics. Vivone, who for many years was publisher and editor of the much-read newsletter Insight Into Government, telegraphs the tough text in the title of his book, Ralph Klein Could Have Been a Superstar. Vivone, who now lives in Ontario, returned to Edmonton recently to visit friends and promote the book. We sat down to talk about the book, including why Vivone ultimately decided to publish it himself.

You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Thomas Trofimuk: Waiting for Columbus

2009-10-04T09:25:00.006-06:00

(First broadcast September 20, 2009)

Thomas Trofimuk is a novelist and poet based in Edmonton--a man who, on first encounter, struck me as refreshingly modest and good-humoured. The founder of Edmonton’s locally notorious Raging Poets Society, Trofimuk has toiled in recent years as a writer of novels. His first two novels, The 52nd Poem and Doubting Yourself to the Bone, were published by smaller Canadian literary presses and enjoyed significant critical acclaim but otherwise were typically Canadian in their commercial success. Now in the fall of 2009, Trofimuk’s third novel appears destined to follow a very different trajectory – of the kind that gives birth to fame and fortune.

Waiting for Columbus tells the story of a man arrested by police in Saville, Spain, in 2004 and sent to a local insane asylum. The man is charismatic, handsome and full of wit and intelligence—but he believes and insists that he is THE Christopher Columbus, anxious to get the ships he needs to sail out into the Unknown western ocean on a quest to find a shorter route to the Orient. What follows is an amazing weave of reality and delusion, of the 15th century and the 20th, of love and doubt and of transformation and healing.

The Canadian publishing rights for Waiting for Columbus were acquired by McClelland and Stewart. Then, Knopf-Doubleday ponied up $200,000 for the US rights. European publishers followed quickly behind. To top it off, a Hollywood film production company has developed a screen play of the book and has sent scripts to no less than actors Daniel Day Lewis and Penelope Cruz for the lead roles.

Thomas Trofimuk and I sat down recently over coffee in his comfortable home in a modest enclave of north Edmonton. We talked about Waiting for Columbus and whether he has any concern that both his personal life and his life as a writer may be about to change. You can listen to that interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Susan Minsos: Squire Davis and the Crazy River

2009-10-03T10:50:00.011-06:00

(First broadcast September 13, 2009)

Squire Davis and the Crazy River is a delightful historic novel that romantically revolves around a young Scottish immigrant living near what is today Brantford, Ontario, and a young, handsome Mohawk man known as Squire Davis, whose family has come with Joseph Brant to settle along the Grand River. The time period is 1845 and we discover that Ontario is a far wilder, more adventurous and dangerous place than is commonly considered. There’s no shortage of conflict and intrigue. The Scots are not the only ones to have settled in the region. In the fall-out of the American Revolution, United Empire Loyalists and many of the Iroquois Six Nations, including the Mohawk, have fled the American colonies to Ontario. Ontario also is sanctuary for escaped black slaves, and we discover that bounty hunters think nothing of crossing the border into Canada to try to capture the runaways and take them back.

The author, Susan Minsos of Edmonton, has written two previous books--both are acclaimed non-fiction works about culture and socialization: Weird Tit-for-Tat: The Game of Our Lives and the other, Culture Clubs: The Art of Living Together. Minsos’ new book appears on the surface to be a radical departure from her past work, a historical fiction set in 19th century Ontario. Minsos says, however, that this novel does feature continuity with her past work. You can listen to my interview with Susan Minsos, which first aired on Bookmark on 13 September 2009, by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

The publisher of this book deserves special mention. Jerome Martin of Spotted Cow Press in Edmonton is an enthusiastic adopter of new communications technologies and his support for Squire Davis and the Crazy River certainly reflects that. The book itself is not only available in print form but also has been produced as an e-book in both basic and enhanced formats. The launch for the book was held simultaneously in two different locations: at the University of Alberta Bookstore in Edmonton and at Titles, the bookstore at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Both bookstores happen to be locations for the Espresso Book Machine, a potentially revolutionary new device for printing books on demand. Linked by full video-conference facilities, the two bookstores began printing Minsos' book at precisely the same time. Then Minsos gave a reading from the book, seen and heard in both Edmonton and Hamilton, and those attending the launch who were in McMaster were able to ask the author questions. Jerome Martin, of course, couldn't resist calling the launch the first "Double Espresso" book launch in history. To learn more about the wonderful world of Jerome Martin go to www.spottedcowpress.ca

Thank you to all BOOKMARK supporters!!!

2009-09-30T23:06:00.002-06:00

As followers of BOOKMARK radio broadcasts on the CKUA Radio Network may be aware, the program almost didn't make it to Season 3. The recession took something of a toll on CKUA fundraising efforts during the public broadcaster's spring 2009 campaign. Station management had little choice but to look at budget cuts. On the programming side, it was concluded that spoken words are much more expensive to produce than music programs and that they likely would have to bear the brunt of cuts in that area. In June, your humble servant was notified by CKUA's program director the station was reluctantly looking at cancelling the program.

I asked if management would reconsider that decision if I was able to raise the necessary budget through donations from Alberta's literary community or if corporate underwriters for the program could be found. Station management gave me until the end of July to raise the necessary money -- otherwise, that was it.

I put out the word and, to my delight and amazement, within 21 days authors, literary organizations, publishers, all donated money to sponsor a show, and corporate and public sector underwriters came forward to put us over the top. We raised $25,000.00, covering about two-thirds of the program's budget. CKUA gave us the green light and on September 13th, 2009, we aired the first broadcast of the third season of BOOKMARK.

My sincere thanks to every one of you who thought this program important enough to support with your hard-earned money. We'll do our best to be deserving of your faith in us. And now a public thanks to the following people and organizations who stepped forward and made a donation or committed to becoming a corporate underwriter of the program:

DONORS

David Chereos, artistic director, Edmonton LitFest
Alberta branch, Canadian Authors Association
Edmonton author, English professor and biker Ted Bishop (Riding with Rilke)
Brindle & Glass Publishing, Victoria, BC
Kate Walker Agency
University of Alberta Press
Canadian Literature Centre, University of Alberta
Kingsley Publishing, Calgary
University of Calgary Press
Douglas and Sharon Barbour
The Historical Society of Alberta
Wind Eye Seminars of Edmonton
Edmonton poet Alice Majors and author Gail Sidonie-Sobat

CORPORATE UNDERWRITERS

Edmonton Public Library
Alberta Views Magazine
Maclab Enterprises

Bookmark Interview: Pierrette Requier: details from the edge of the village

2009-08-01T13:27:00.013-06:00

(First broadcast June 28, 2009)

Each year the publisher Frontenac House of Calgary selects four collections of poetry and presents those four volumes as its Quartet for the year. Among the four poets so honoured in Quartet 2009 is Edmonton poet Pierrette Requier. Her selected volume is entitled details from the edge of the village. Former Edmonton poet-laureate Alice Major says of this collection

“Pierrette’s work is about speaking from the margins – from the almost forgotten fringes of French on the northern prairies, and from the liminal lingual space where English and French talk to each other.”

Pierrette Requier reads from the collection for Bookmark and speaks about her work. You can listen in by clicking the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Peter Atkinson: Making Game

2009-08-01T12:30:00.008-06:00

Among the books on the 2009 list of Athabasca University Press is a slender, quite odd volume that defies easy categorization. It's called Making Game: An Essay on Hunting, Familiar Things, and the Strangeness of Being Who One Is, written by independent American scholar Peter Atkinson. Be warned - in some respects, it's not easy reading. On the other hand, it is full of passages that frequently are nothing short of breath-taking. If I were to compare it to anything I’ve read before, I might be tempted to say Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig but that comparison doesn't really do it justice. Atkinson has blended personal memoire and philosophical treatise with a writing style and literary skill that has resulted in a work of rare originality. At heart, it is above all a book about the nature of nostalgia and grief.

Atkinson himself has a Ph.D. in Philosophy built on academic training in the phenomenological tradition, a trail that wanders from Husserl to Hegel to Heideger to Jean-Paul Sartre. His Master of Fine Arts degree is in Poetry. He has taught literature and philosophy at the University of Salzburg. Atkinson also has been a New York City apartment building developer, a private investor, a U.S. naval officer, a contract manager for a large defense contractor, a carpenter, a guitar teacher, a high school teacher, and a yoga teacher, not necessarily in that order. He has been married three times and has two sons by his first marriage.

In Making Game, Atkinson the writer and philosopher attempts to understand why it is that he hunts wild game. The pursuit of that understanding leads him through some profound terrain about family, history and the values of our modern times. Peter Atkinson published Making Game with Athabasca University Press as a result of a personal friendship. Visiting Edmonton in the late spring of 2009 for an international conference on poetry, Atkinson sat down with me to talk about Making Game. You can listen to that conversation by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Marty Chan and Lorna Bennett: True Story

2009-07-29T07:14:00.004-06:00

Well-known Edmonton playwright Marty Chan and illustrator Lorna Bennett have collaborated to create a new book for young children entitled True Story, essentially the tale of two mischievious cats based on Marty’s personal trials and tribulations with his own domestic felines. While the book is a self-published effort, Marty has taken a smart, professional approach to everything from the quality of the publication to the marketing and distribution. I sat down with Marty and Lorna recently and received some worthwhile insight on what it takes to be a professional writer and artist in Alberta, above all the willingness to do whatever it takes. You can hear that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: British journalist and author Valerie Mason-john

2009-07-14T07:37:00.009-06:00

British journalist and award-winning author Valerie Mason-John recently said farewell to Jolly Olde England and moved lock, stock and barrel to Edmonton.

Mason-John has written for the venerable left-of-center newspaper The Guardian, has been a researcher and on-air personality on BBC Radio and Television, she’s also written for England’s national black newspaper The Voice and for a number of gay activist newspapers and magazines. As an international correspondent, she has covered aboriginal rights issues in Australia.

Mason-John was born in Cambridge, England, in 1962. She grew up in orphanages and foster homes but still found a way to get a good education and recently received an honorary doctorate from the University of East London. Mason-John is the author of several acclaimed books, notably a fictionalized autobiography entitled Borrowed Body, which one critic called England’s The Colour Purple. She also is author of the award-winning non-fiction work Broken Voices: Untouchable Women Speak Out, which features the words, causes, triumphs and tragedies of untouchable caste women in India. She is also a veteran stage actress with the Talawa Theatre Company in London and a playwright.

Valerie Mason-John appeared on the Bookmark program the 7th of June, 2009. I started out by asking what brought her to Edmonton. You can hear the interview by clicking the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Jennifer Brower: Lost Tracks

2009-06-28T16:30:00.003-06:00

The rise and fall of Buffalo National Park is an important story, both in terms of Alberta’s history and in the history of Canadian conservation efforts.

Lost Tracks: Buffalo National Park 1909 – 1939 is a new book written by Jennifer Brower, a researcher for the Buffalo National Park Foundation, a group in Wainwright seeking to keep the memory of the park alive. The book is published by Athabasca University Press. Brower’s book paints a fair portrait of a well-intentioned but ill-informed conservation effort to save the last of the Plains bison and which, in the short span of three decades, ended in fiasco. By the turn of the 20th Century, the teeming millions of plains bison that once blanketed the Great Plains from Canada to New Mexico had dwindled to a small free-ranging herd in Montana. When settlers started moving in on the herd’s land in 1904, the herd’s owner offered the last of the bison to the Canadian government. At first reluctant, Ottawa eventually agreed to take the animals. The herd was moved by rail car, first to Elk Island National Park. The Montana owner didn’t feel the park was suitable for the herd and so the 300 animals were moved again to a large piece of scrubland in eastern Alberta, on what is today the site of Canadian Forces Camp Wainwright.

Buffalo National Park was the first wild animal conservation project ever undertaken in Canada and federal officials soon discovered they had a lot to learn. The big problem was that the animals bred very successfully and soon overpopulated the park. With overpopulation came disease. The federal government’s attempts to solve the problem had far-reaching implications, as I learned in talking with Lost Tracks author Jennifer Brower. You can hear that interview by clicking the title of this blog entry.

By the way, the healthy plains bison population that you can still see at Elk Island National Park today actually grew from a small number of stragglers missed by federal staff when they moved that last wild Montana herd from Elk Island to Wainwright.

2009-06-28T10:30:00.002-06:00

Bookmark Interview: Daniel Coleman: In Bed With The Word

2009-06-28T10:02:00.007-06:00

University of Alberta Press recently published a slender, elegant volume that is in essence an extended essay on the virtue of reading a book. It’s called In Bed With The Word: Reading, Spirituality and Cultural Politics. The author is McMaster University English professor Daniel Coleman. Coleman writes:

“Reading is not solely an exercise to feed one’s inner life. Rather, eating the book—not just nibbling at it, or having a little taste here and there, but eating it wholesale—produces a changed person, an empowered person, a different kind of person, and changed people means social and political change, too, not just personal change.”

Coleman was in Edmonton recently to launch the book In Bed With The Word and he and I found time to sit down in a quiet back corner of Audrey’s Books and talk about this work. You can listen to that interview by clicking the Title of this entry.

Bookmark Interview: Wendy M. Davis: Dal and Rice

2009-05-17T09:53:00.005-06:00

A personal benefit of hosting this program is the opportunity I am given to meet with so many fascinating people with wonderful stories to tell. One such person is a charming and graceful woman now 80 years of age who lives in Edmonton with a rather significant flock of songbirds, as you’ll hear by listening to my interview with her.

Wendy M. Davis has taken up the craft of writing fairly late in life, but she does so with skill and humour and a sharp memory of a remarkable time in her own life and in that of the modern world. Ms. Davis has just written a book simply entitled Dal & Rice. The book is published by McGill-Queen’s University Press as part of its Footprints Series, a series with a mandate to introduce extraordinary Canadians, past and present, who have led fascinating and important lives at home and throughout the world.

Dal & Rice is a memoire of Wendy Davis’s life growing up in India in the final days of the British Raj in the 1940s. Her illustrious father is very much at the centre of the story. Sir Godfrey Davis was a high-ranking judge in India who loved the country passionately and only reluctantly left it in 1947 on the eve of Indian independence.

Sir Godfrey became a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, despite a less than auspicious beginning to the friendship. To hear the story, click on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Annari van der Merwe: South African publisher

2009-05-17T09:38:00.003-06:00

This month's Get Publishing conference at MacEwan College in Edmonton was an opportunity for Alberta writers to meet publishers and other industry professionals with a view to honing their understanding of the business of being a writer. This year’s theme, Writing Across Borders, encouraged authors to think of new markets outside Canada.

A special guest speaker at this year’s conference was Annari van der Merwe, an internationally renowned book publisher from South Africa, who has made a career out of finding and nurturing emerging black writers. I had the opportunity to sit down with van der Merwe after her keynote address to the conference. We talked about South African publishing and literature, and similarities in the challenges facing writers and publishers in Alberta and South Africa, for example finding a large enough readership for books of regional voice to make publishing such a book financially feasible.

Van der Merwe started her publishing career as a children’s book editor with a prominent publishing house, Tafelburg. She later founded the influential small press Kwela Books in 1994, the same year that South Africa held its first fully democratic elections and finally ended 46 years of the government-enforced racial segregation known as apartheid. The mission of Kwela Books was to find and develop black writers.

Van der Merwe later became founder and director of the Random House imprint Umuzi. There van der Merwe discovered the writer Silhe Khumalo and helped him develop his acclaimed travelogue Dark Continent My Black Arse. She recalls that at first the inexperienced Khumalo simply submitted a manuscript of 30 pages that did little more than list all the places he had visited on a trip from Cape Town to Cairo. She persuaded him to fill in the meager manuscript with his memories, sounds, scents, the thoughts he had experienced while travelling. The result was an exhuberant, wonderful new work.

Hear my conversation with Annari van der Merwe by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Roger Epp: We Are All Treaty People: Prairie Essays

2009-05-17T09:26:00.003-06:00

Dr. Roger Epp is a political scientist who often provides media commentary on rural issues. He’s also Dean of the University of Alberta’s Augustana campus in Camrose, a small city of 16,000 people an hour’s drive southeast of Edmonton. Dr. Epp has just published a book entitled We Are All Treaty People: Prairie Essays, a very readable collection of personal remembrances mixed with historical overviews of radical prairie politics and the relationship between First Nations people in western Canada and the settlers and their descendants. At core, it’s a book that reminds us of the importance of place in defining who we are as a people, something frequently lost in the noise of urban centres. It’s a call back to the land and to rural Alberta. We Are All Treaty People: Prairie Essays was published in the spring of 2009 by University of Alberta Press.

You can hear my interview with Dr. Epp by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Sarah Carter: The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation-Building in Western Canada

2009-05-17T09:16:00.002-06:00

In the year 1870, the vast western wilderness known as Rupert’s Land was turned over to the new Dominion of Canada by the Hudson’s Bay Company. At the time, western Canada was largely populated by First Nations tribes and Metis and a relatively small smattering of white fur traders, explorers, early settlers and Hudson Bay Company employees.

Up to this point, those living in the west had been pretty much free to live each according to his or her own custom or fashion, beyond the reach of so-called civilized society. Aboriginal customs of marriage and divorce at this time were flexible and tolerant. Polygamy was commonplace, usually involving a man with several wives. A woman was perfectly free to divorce her husband if he failed to provide or was abusive. Homosexual relationships were not unknown and quite accepted. People of European origin living in the west in those early days often adopted the customs of marriage of their aboriginal neighbours.

After 1870, the federal government and central Canada quickly asserted its authority in the west and among the changes were policies and laws that prohibited any union but monogamy and that made divorce virtually impossible.

This new social and moral order, imposed from the east, is the subject of a book entitled The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915. The book is written by University of Alberta history professor Sarah Carter. I sat down recently with Dr. Carter to discuss the book and she shared her research on the impact of the imposition of monogamy on First nations communities. You can hear that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

The Importance of Being Monogamous: Marriage and Nation Building in Western Canada to 1915 is co-published by the University of Alberta Press and Athabasca University Press.

Bookmark Interview: Bill Corbett: The 11000ers of the Canadian Rockies

2009-05-17T09:05:00.002-06:00

An updated version is out this spring of Bill Corbett’s award-winning book The 11000ers of the Canadian Rockies, published by Rocky Mountain Books. The book provides a fascinating insight into the history of mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies and also provides detailed information on approaching and ascending each of the 54 mountains in the northern Rockies that are 11,000 feet in altitude or higher. In 2002, Bill Corbett became only the third person ever to climb all 54 mountains. Recently he and I sat down and talked about that remarkable feat. You can hear that interview by clicking on the Title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: M Ann Hall - Immodest and Sensational

2009-03-22T14:30:00.003-06:00

Canada has a fascinating and largely untold history of the accomplishments of amateur and professional female athletes that dates all the way back to the days of Confederation. That history is the subject of a new book by Dr. M. Ann Hall, professor emeritus with the University of Alberta's Department of Physical Education and Recreation.

The book is entitled Immodest and Sensational: 150 Years of Canadian Women in Sport, published by James Lorimer and Company of Toronto. In it, we discover that Canada had professional female athletes as early as the 1870s. They competed in walking races, apparently to the enjoyment of men and with a fair bit of betting on the side, although the races quickly fell prey to the Temperance movement. By the 1880s, bicycle racing was the new outlet for athletic young women. Bicycle riding itself had become a popular pasttime of women, unsuccessfully discouraged by the guardians of propriety in Upper Canada society. While middle- and upper-class women were expected to be genteel and not take part in such activities, ironically it was universities and colleges that proved the hotbeds of reform in opening the doors of athletic competition to women. Canada soon had emerging female champions in such sports as tennis and golf.

Then, in 1912, a young teacher by the name of J. Percy Page in Edmonton had his efforts to organize a young lady’s basketball team result in one of the most successful sports franchises in Canadian history, The Edmonton Grads. You can hear my interview with M Ann Hall by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Marina Endicott - Open Arms

2009-03-22T14:20:00.005-06:00

Edmonton author Marina Endicott has enjoyed an exciting half-year since we spoke to her last September, although you wouldn't know it from her calm demeanor. Last fall, her second novel Good to A Fault had just been published by new Calgary literary imprint Freehand Books. Freehand released four books all on the same day to mark its formal launch as a publishing entity, Endicott's book among them. All four books received critical acclaim and Freehand Books, along with its editor Melanie Little, were something of an overnight sensation.

Good To A Fault certainly pulled its weight, being both short-listed for the Giller Prize and now currently short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book. Not surprisingly, Good To A Fault now is in its fourth printing. Freehand has understandably sought to capitalize on Endicott's new found fame by rushing back into print Endicott's first novel Open Arms.

I sat down with Marina Endicott recently and started off by asking whether all the attention has changed anything for her. You can hear the interview by clicking the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Doug Barbour and Lou Morin - NeWest Press

2009-03-22T14:14:00.003-06:00

This year NeWest Press of Edmonton is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its Nunatak First Fiction series, a series founded by former NeWest editors, Rudy Weibe and Aritha van Herk and one dedicated to showcasing outstanding works by emerging talents.

Now counting 27 titles (21 in print), Nunatak has evolved into a premiere showcase for new talent. The longest-running first fiction series in Canada, it has launched the careers of, among others, Thomas Wharton with Icefields and Suzette Mayr with Moon Honey. Currently another Nunatak first book, Theanna Bischoff’s Cleavage, has been shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best New Book.

NeWest Press has been making waves ever since George Melnyk launched the non-profit literary publishing house in 1977 in order to provide better opportunities to young western writers. Melnyk’s friend Doug Barbour lent him 500 dollars to get the press started. Today, Barbour is still involved in NeWest, as president of the board. I sat down with Barbour and current general manager, Lou Morin, to review NeWest’s history and find out more about its future. You can hear that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Su Croll - Blood Mother

2009-03-22T14:10:00.002-06:00

Edmonton writer Su Croll has published a new and powerful collection of poems entitled Blood Mother, published by Signature Editions of Winnipeg. The 54 pieces that make up this collection essentially take the reader through the emotional, physical and spiritual transformations that attend pregnancy and a woman becoming a mother. You can listen to my recent interview with Su about the book by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Su’s first book of poetry was entitled WorldaMirth and won the 1992 Kalamalka New Writers Competition and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her fiction and poetry have been widely published in Canadian literary magazines and anthologies.

Bookmark Interview: Dave Hugelschaffer - One Careless Moment

2009-03-22T14:04:00.003-06:00

Dave Hugelschaffer is a Forest Ranger and a trained forest fire fighter who lives near Edson, Alberta. He’s also a determined writer of novels who may finally have hit pay dirt with his Porter Cassel mystery series, published by Cormorant Books of Toronto.

Dave grew up on a small farm north of Edmonton. After graduating from high school, he became a full-time trapper and ran a team of sled dogs. He writes about what he knows, the wilds of Alberta, but in a way that gives him a unique slant on the ever popular genre known as the mystery novel. His hero, Porter Cassel, investigates forest fires of suspicious origin. The first Porter Cassel book, Day into Night, was published in June, 2006. The second book in the series, One Careless Moment, has just been published. You can hear my interview with Dave Hugelschaffer about his new book and his long and methodical writer's apprenticeship by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Bookmark Interview: Dave Hugelschaffer - One Careless Moment

2009-03-22T14:04:00.000-06:00

Bookmark Interview: Cheryl Kaye Tardif - Writer, Market Thyself!

2009-03-22T13:53:00.004-06:00

Cheryl Kaye Tardif has been part of Edmonton’s writing scene for a number of years now. She’s a writer of suspense and mystery novels. Whalesong is perhaps her best-known work. It has sold respectable numbers as Canadian fiction works go, and Cheryl has had nibbles from film companies looking at turning the book into a movie.

Cheryl Kaye Tardif is determined-very determined-to be a successful author but, so far, nothing has come easy. Her books have been largely self-published to this point, although she now has a New York literary agent and is looking for that first breakthrough deal with a mainstream publisher. She’s innovative certainly, currently working to be the first author to write a book using the iPhone.

Cheryl promotes herself and her work relentlessly, to the amusement and grudging admiration of her writing colleagues. There is no public venue or social marketing tool that Cheryl won’t use to get the word out. She has a website, blogs, a Facebook page, she’s on Twitter and MySpace…she’ll hold booksignings day and night, especially during the pre-Christmas season. She stays in close touch with her readers and anyone else who takes an interest in her work. Frankly, she puts the publicity departments of a lot of major publishers to shame.

All that is to say that I couldn’t resist sitting down with Cheryl Kaye Tardif for an interview, to give us all a lesson in Author Self-Promotion 101. You can hear that interview by clicking on the title of this blog entry.

Cheryl Kaye Tardif’s sheer determination to be a successful published writer is an essential ingredient in what can be a tough journey. Cheryl recently learned that the publisher who picked up Whale Song now is letting it go out of print … an all too familiar sign of these uncertain times. However, if hard work and dogged determination count for anything, Cheryl Kaye Tardif should yet have her dream fulfilled.

2009-03-22T13:43:00.002-06:00

Bookmark Interview: Larry Krotz - The Uncertain Business of Doing Good

2009-03-22T13:39:00.002-06:00

Larry Krotz is an award-winning journalist, author and filmmaker. He has traveled extensively in Africa over the past quarter-century, where he produced the acclaimed National Film Board documentary Searching for Hawa’s Secret. He has written for Walrus, The National Post, the Globe and Mail and the United Church Observer.

The latest book by Larry Krotz is entitled The Uncertain Business of Doing Good: Outsiders in Africa. It’s published by University of Manitoba Press. In the book, Krotz takes aim at Western perceptions of Africa, suggesting we tend to see the continent and its people as disabled, constantly in need of our intervention and good works, even as we exploit Africa’s wealth. Krotz, who now lives in Toronto, was in Edmonton recently to visit family, giving me an opportunity to find out more about his views on the relationship between the West and Africa.

Bookmark Interview: Gordon R. Freeman - Canada's Stonehenge

2009-02-06T21:24:00.003-07:00

A fascinating new book was launched in Edmonton this past week entitled
Canada’s Stonehenge: Astounding Archaeological Discoveries in Canada, England and Wales, published by Kingsley Publishing of Calgary.

The book tells of an ancient aboriginal medicine wheel in southern Alberta that has in fact changed what we know about the famous neolithic structure of Stonehenge on the Salisbury plains of England.

The book is written by retired University of Alberta scientist, Dr. Gordon Freeman. Freeman was a pioneer in establishing academic institutes of interdisciplinary study in the 1960s…specifically at the U of A, in chemistry, physics and human societies. Upon his retirement from the university in the 1980s, Freeman took up the serious study of another passion, archaeology.

When Dr. Freeman saw the Majorville Medicine Wheel near Brooks, Alberta, a site the Blackfoot call Omakh-kyoohk-tuhk (my phonetic pronunciation), or The Big Arrangement, he saw something he claims other archaeologists had missed – that Omakh was in fact a Temple to the Sun, Moon and Morningstar and, significantly, a gigantic solar and lunar calendar which the ancient ones – often called the Oxbow People – had built 5,000 years ago. Gigantic indeed – 10 square miles of landmarks interlaced with an intricate pattern of placed rocks - ALL linked to the stars, the sun and the moon … a pattern that, in its ability to tell the passage of time, is more accurate than modern-day calendars.

You can listen to my interview with Dr. Freeman by clicking on the Title of this Entry.

Bookmark Interview - David Schindler - The Algal Bowl

2009-01-18T13:24:00.003-07:00

North American lakes, and lakes in regions of heavy human habitation around the world, are at grave risk of dying. That's the central message of the book The Algal Bowl: Overfertilization of the World's Freshwaters and Estuaries, written by David Schindler and the late John R. Vallentyne, and released in late 2008 by University of Alberta Press.

Dr. Schindler is Killam Memorial Chair and Professor of Ecology at the University of Alberta. Along with Vallentyne, who died in 2007, Schindler pioneered much of what we now know about the biology and ecology of freshwater bodies and the way in which human habitation threatens them. Schindler came to international acclaim as the man who "discovered" acid rain and successfully pressed governments around the world to take steps to control it. Schindler and Vallentyne were equally influential in getting phosphates removed from detergents.

The threat to freshwater, in North America and around the globe, remains, however, as a result of the byproducts of human activity flowing into lakes and rivers. I recently interviewed Dr. Schindler about the causes of Algal Bloom, and why it poses, in his view, a greater crisis than that of acid rain.

Vallentyne first wrote The Algal Bowl in 1974 but the book received little attention at the time. Thirty years later, Vallentyne asked Schindler to update the work, incorporating the significant science and knowledge acquired since the first edition. The result is The Algal Bowl: Overfertilization of the World's Freshwaters and Estuaries.

You can listen to the complete interview, which runs about 24 minutes, by clicking on the title of this post.

Bookmark Interview: Gordon Pitts - Stampede! The Rise of the West and Canada's New Power Elite

2008-12-31T10:02:00.009-07:00

Gordon Pitts

Senior business writer for the Globe and Mail's Report on Business, Gordon Pitts,is an award-winning, best-selling author (who doesn't want that descriptive attached to one's name?) of such books as Storming the Fortress, In The Blood and Kings of Convergence.

In his latest work, Stampede! The Rise of the West and Canada's New Power Elite, Pitts turns his gaze to Alberta and its second oil boom, fueled by the hyperactive development of the Athabasca tarsands under the Klein administration through the 1990s and early 21st century. Specifically, Pitts looks at how Alberta's sustained economic affluence has driven the power base of Canada increasingly west and established the country as a resource-exporting nation first and foremost. Pitts also examines the strains on the Confederation being exerted by the new economic realities, particularly in the current recession. The ghost of the National Energy Program, the growing clamour over the environmental impact of the tarsands exploitation, and the historic frustration of Albertans at being shut out politically on the national stage, are all potent ingredients in the brewing of a new constitutional crisis.

I spoke recently with Gordon Pitts about his new book and aired the interview on the 21 December 2008 edition of BOOKMARK. You can hear our conversation by clicking the Title of this entry.

Bookmark Interview: A.K. Hallum - Listening to Trees

2008-12-31T09:41:00.003-07:00

Andreas Kare Hallum is professor emeritus in silviculture studies at the University of Alberta. Dr. Hallum spent 50 years working as an expert on forests, first in his native Norway and later in Canada. He has consulted for governments around the world in developing forest management strategies. Listening to Trees, published by NeWest Press of Edmonton, expresses a unique voice, one that is scientific and authoritative while also spiritual and emotional. The book is Dr. Hallum's impassioned plea to the world's citizens to take the steps necessary to protect the planet's forests before it really is too late. I interviewed Dr. Hallum about his book in November and aired the conversation on the December 14th, 2008, edition of Bookmark. You can listen to that interview by clicking the Title of this entry.

Bookmark Interview: Gail Sidonie Sobat - Gravity Journal

2008-12-31T09:21:00.006-07:00

Edmonton author Gail Sidonie Sobat released her sixth book earlier this year, a novel intended for teenaged audiences. Gravity Journal, published by Great Plains of Winnipeg, has been critically acclaimed for its gritty, unflinching portrait of a teenaged girl with a severe eating disorder. I interviewed Gail recently to talk about the story, one that comes out of Gail’s daily experiences as a teacher at the University of Alberta Hospital School. You can listen to the interview by clicking the Title of this entry.

Bookmark Interview: Linda Goyette - The Story That Brought Me Here

2008-12-31T08:53:00.004-07:00

Linda Goyette is an Edmonton-based author and journalist whose previous books include Rocky Mountain Kids, Kidmonton: True Stories of River City Kids, Edmonton in Our Own Words, Standing Together: Women Speak Out About Violence and Abuse and Second Opinion.

The Story That Brought Me Here: To Alberta From Everywhere is a moving collection of stories and poems in which writers from around the world share their thoughts on creating a life in Alberta. Expressed with beauty and clarity, and sometimes translated from the writer's native tongue, these very personal accounts of joy and sadness, regret and humour, homesickness and exuberance, describe the defining moments of a departure and an arrival.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Linda Goyette about editing this book and why she was moved to create this collection. Joining us was one of the authors in the book and the current PEN Canada Writer-in-Exile at the Edmonton Public Library, Rita Espechit. You can listen to this interview, which aired on Bookmark 30 November 2008, by clicking the Title of this entry. Linda begins by noting that the idea for The Story That Brought Me Here came while she was working as writer-in-residence at the Edmonton Public Library and was developing the book Edmonton In Our Own Words.

Bookmark Interview: Brian Hades, publisher - Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy

2008-12-31T08:04:00.004-07:00

Brian Hades is publisher of Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy and Tesseract Books, based in Calgary. Hades Publications, devoted exclusively to the science fiction and fantasy genre, is now the largest single genre publisher in Canada.

Brian and I sat down for an interview while he and I attended the annual Book Publishers Association of Alberta convention in Banff in September, 2008. We sat outside with the sun shining and the beautiful mountain vista all about us and Brian talked about his unique journey of success. You can hear that interview by clicking the Title of this entry.