WAM Peace & Writers Tent

WAM's Literary Tent will feature five writing workshops with some of the Prairies' most prominent and up and coming writers. The workshops available are listed below. All are FREE! To sign up, please email Alice Kuipers at kuips1@yahoo.co.uk. Space is limited, so don't wait too long!

Also watch for some of Saskatchewan's most captivating performance poets throughout the WAM site!

Note**:  You need to sign up in advance for each writing workshop - e-mail kuips1@yahoo.co.uk


Workshops


Friday, August 22

  • 4:00pm-6:00pm Yann Martel

Yann Martel is the author of a collection of short stories, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, and of two novels, Self and Life of Pi. He was awarded the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Life of Pi. In 2002-03, Yann Martel was the writer-in-residence at the Saskatoon Public Library. He is presently at work on a novel and an essay, both on the Holocaust.




 




Saturday, August 23

  • 10:00am-12:00pm Louise Bernice Halfe

Louise Bernice Halfe, whose Cree name is Sky Dancer, was born on the Saddle Lake Reserve in Two Hills, Alberta. She made her writing debut as a poet in Writing the Circle: Native Women of Western Canada. In 1993, she was awarded third prize in the League of Canadian Poets' national poetry contest and was Saskatchewan's Poet Laureate for 2005-2006. She has two book publications to her credit: ear Bones & Feathers, published in 1994, received the Canadian Peoples Poet Award and was a finalist for the Spirit of Saskatchewan Award. Blue Marrow, originally published in 1998 and released as a revised edition in 2004, was a finalist for both the Governor General's Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther Award, the 1998 Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award, and the Saskatchewan Poetry Award.





  • 2:00pm-4:00pm Dave Carpenter

For 30 years, David Carpenter has been writing fiction, poetry and essays. His latest novel, Niceman Cometh, is arriving this fall. He is presently at work on a nonfiction book about hunting in North America, which is due out in 2009. He is an average camper, an okay banjoist, not a bad canoist, a good hiker and a fabulous flyfisher.



 


 









  • 4:00pm-6:00pm Guy Vanderhaeghe

Guy Vanderhaeghe is the author of four novels, three collections of short stories, two plays, and one teleplay. He is a two-time winner of the Governor’s-General Award for English language fiction for his collection of short stories, Man Descending and his novel The Englishman’s Boy. His novel The Last Crossing was a winner of the CBC’s Canada Reads competition. He has also been the recipient of the Timothy Findley Prize and the Harbourfront Literary Prize, both for a body of work.










  • 6:00pm-7:00pm Literary & Peace Social!

 Come join our wonderful writers for punch, chips and great conversation!




Sunday, August 24

  • 1:00pm-3:00pm Leona Theis

Leona Theis’s first book, Sightlines, a collection of interlocking short stories set in the fictional town of Flat Hill, won two Saskatchewan Book Awards. Her novel The Art of Salvage, published in 2006, is a sad, funny and ultimately hopeful book about salvaging broken relationships. Her unorthodox memoirs about her mother and her father have appeared in enRoute and Brick, a Literary Journal. She is a recent winner of the CBC Literary Award.



 






Performance Poets


Brent McFarlane


Brent McFarlane, The Noncholant Prophet of the Probable End Times, walked here to Diefenbaker Park, which is a pretty long walk for him. brent is delighted to be some kind of poetry freak her at WAMBLA. His irreverent approach to the spoken word will move you...or it won't. Brent is a graduate of the U of S Drama Department, has studied with Centre for Theatre Practices Gardzienice in Poland, and worked thrice with Governor-General Award winning playwright Colleen Murphy at Sage Hill. His play, "The Man from Nantucket", will be produced somewhere, by somebody, sometime soon.


Caitlin Ward


Caitlin Ward is the Arts editor at Planet S. She is currently working on an English master's, her area of focus is on the Canadian songwriter/writer Leonard Cohen. This past year she read at Saskatoon's only poetry series, Tonight it's Poetry. The crowd loved her. Ward believes she looks terrible in pink, but fights for everyone's right to don the colour.


Rita Bouvier


Rita Bouvier's publications include two books of poetry, Blueberry Clouds and papîyâhtak. Both collections were released by Thistledown Press, and papîyâhtak was nominated for Saskatchewan Book of the Year Award in 2004. Rita is currently employed as Coordinator of the Canadian Council on Learning at the Aboriginal Learning Knowledge Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. Her work has created many opportunities to travel nationally and interationally to New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and other parts of the U.S., St Lucia, Geneva, and India to learn and in some cases represent Educational International with international colleagues on educational issues facing Indigenous peoples. Rita lives in Saskatoon.


Shelly Loeffler


Shelly Loeffler can be heard spinning discs on Sunday nights on a Magic 98.3 jazz radio program. Loeffler has been a spoken word poet for the past five years. She lives in Saskatoon where she has taught for twenty-eight years. She currently teaches Outdoor Education.



Taylor Leedahl


Taylor Leedahl's poetry has been nationally broadcast on CBC radio and she was a competitor in CBC's 2006 National Poetry Face-off. Most recently, her work has appeared in Fast Forward: New Saskatchewan Poets (Hagios Press). Leedahl lives in Saskatoon, Sk where she serves on the JackPine Press collective and runs Saskatoon's only poetry series, Tonight It’s Poetry. In September, Leedahl will release her first collection of poetry, No Apologies for the Weather, with Thistledown Press.


We Are Many Announces Winner of Fiction Contest!


The following entry was submitted to the We Are Many festival fiction competition by Dave Johnson of Nova Scotia, and has been chosen as the winning entry. We extend our congratulations to Dave Johnson and all of the honorable mentions and runners-up listed below, as well as a big thank-you to all those who participated in the maximum 500 word competition. 


he didn't show up tonight

 
but if he had he probably would have picked me up in the hummer and have taken me out to see his land or at least the land he's thinking of buying he's always buying something or thinking about buying something or talking about buying something or like i say just buying something like the hummer for example like he needed a hummer like a hole in the head who needs a hummer anyway the only time i drove it someone in wolfville it's the university town near here where people think about the environment and stuff we live about thirty minutes away in kind of a hick town at least that's what the kids say anyway i'm driving in wolfville and somebody gives me a dirty look and the finger and then another dirty look pissed me off though i can kind of understand it i wanted to say ain't my car and he already had a hummer but it was big and loud and noisy he loved it but you sat in this big thing a mile away from everybody else a big reservoir for something in the middle of it good for war i suppose but what war are we going to get into in berwick and you could deflate the tires and inflate them again without getting out of the vehicle damned handy i'm sure rod did it once to impress me i had to yell back at him as we got underway the thing was so loud and the tires with knobs all over them clacking off the pavement anyway i had to shout to tell him how impressed i was and like i say he loved it and then he traded it with a buddy of his who had a smaller one only it's not small hummer doesn't come in small it's an h2 and what it lacks in the size the other one had it makes up for in colour bright yellow anyway this one drives like a cadillac but it is hard to hide in i think i'll stay away from wolfville but if he had picked me up and taken me out to his land he would have spent the time talking about his golf game and how he had a seventy-five but he had thirty-six putts or something like that even though he hit just about every green in regulation so it was really more like seventy or maybe even lower he's never hit the ball so well and i would be thinking why it is that guys don't consider putting as important as crushing the ball three hundred yards

Honorable Mentions:
Brianne O'Grady of Ontario and Mike Chouinard of BC

Runners-up:

Frances Gapper

Kate Baggot

Carla Richards

Wanda Nolan

Chris Morin

Scott Campbell

Charles Anderson

Thanks again to all those who participated!