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Media
Information >> Festival in the News
Coast Reporter, Aug 16/03 – Hot, funny and full of
process (Jan DeGrass)
Coast Reporter, Aug 11/02 – Opening night
(Jan DeGrass)
Coast Reporter, May 19/02 – Mistry tames devil in
details (Jane Seyd)
Coast Reporter, April 14/02 – Mistry evening at Rockwood
Thank-you to the Coast
Reporter and article authors for permission to reprint the articles on
this page.
Coast
Reporter, August 16, 2003
Hot, funny and full of process
FESTIVAL OF THE WRITTEN ARTS
By Jan DeGrass / Arts and Entertainment Writer
It was a hot
Festival of the Written Arts in Sechelt Aug. 7 to 10. Not only was the
weather warm, but it was a red hot line-up that included true leading
lights of today’s Canadian literature: feminist editor Doris Anderson,
Booker Prize winner Yann Martel and celebrated poet P. K. Page, who
delivered their talks to sold out houses.
It was also a
funny festival. The "brothers in sibling revelry," Will and Ian
Ferguson, set the tone Thursday evening with a hilarious routine that
managed to work in the title of just about every book they had written.
Mike McCardell
was in fine form doing what he does best — telling stories. Sales of
both his books, Chasing the Story God and Back Alley Reporter, have raised
more than $23,000 for the Variety Club. Before the festival, the
award-winning Vancouver journalist told me he would not read from his
books.
"I hate to
sit in front of someone who is reading to me so I don’t do it. It's
more fun just to talk," McCardell said.
The stories
were super. He revealed that he didn't read books at all before the age
of 14, growing up on the tough streets of New York. His memory is vivid of
the days when he and the neighbourhood kids went swimming in boxes,
cast-offs from a factory, and how a Greek worker helped them defeat a
rival gang. An anecdote about his policeman uncle and a young McCardell's
efforts to clean up the bad guys was poignant and revealing. At the time,
the uncle gently steered the youngster away from his toy guns to keep him
out of trouble. Many years later, when McCardell became a journalist, he
discovered his hero uncle had been up to his ears in bribery and
corruption.
This year's
festival was also concerned with what it takes to be a writer.
"I love
hearing about process," said one writer after listening to novelist
Genni Gunn.
Marq de
Villiers presented one of the most thorough talks about process for the
non-fiction writer. He described the extensive research that he
accomplishes with his wife and co-author Sheila Hirtle and some of the
humorous travel adventures he has endured in order to visit his
destinations. Hint: avoid flying Air Mali. There are only two planes, a
little one and a big one, and the big one was seized by the World Bank.
His talk was
one of the most informative for the environmentalist since he spoke
briefly about his exploration of the global water crisis for his book
Water and, more extensively about its sequel, Sahara: A Natural History.
Even Page
talked about her writing process which she called the “provenance” of
her work. Looking demure, elegant and undiminished in her senior years,
the poet read from a variety of published material. A lengthy poem based
on the alphabet which, in the hands of a lesser poet, might have seemed
contrived, made several profound points with eloquence.
Page also
talked about the importance to a poet of changing one’s perception, and
she described how, since her cataract operation, she has literally
perceived the world differently. She earned thunderous applause.
The finale to
the weekend was a sizzling performance dished up by Mother of Pearl, a
five-piece jazz band from Vancouver.
Their obvious
enthusiasm was contagious — the audience was reluctant to call it a
night.
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Coast Reporter,
August 11, 2002
Opening night
Story and photos by Jan DEGRASS
Shelagh Rogers
is the laughing voice of CBC Radio—formerly deputy host to the late
Peter Gzowski, and currently, the genial host of Canada's primary radio
show, This Morning. At Sechelt's Rockwood pavilion Thursday night, Rogers
was as warm as her voice when she opened the 20th annual Festival of the
Written Arts. With Morningside ease, she chatted to Ontario author Jane
Urquhart about battles, love and art.
The two were
an essay in contrasts: Rogers with round, full face, burnished coppery
hair and gregarious manner; Urquhart, lean, long-faced, as spare as her
writing style. Though Rogers freely admitted that they had hoisted the
Mission Hill Chardonnay before the reading, neither of the two spilled
many secrets.
Author Jane Urquhart in conversation
with CBC's Shelagh Rogers on stage at Sechelt's Rockwood Pavilion, Thursday night. |
Urquhart's
most recent book, The Stone Carvers, interweaves little known characters
from Canadian history with lyrical fiction using classic story-telling
techniques. She describes a priest in 1867, whose passion helped an
Ontario settlement acquire a grand church, and the Canadian sculptor,
Walter Allward, responsible for the construction of the Vimy Ridge
memorial.
But the book
is not a biography. On one level it is a story told from the point of view
of an Ontario spinster, Klara Becker, who keeps Charolais cattle and
carves in wood. She journeys to France in 1934 dressed as a man to help
carve the massive monument and in so doing lays to rest the memory of the
one she loved who was lost in The Great War.
On another
level, the book is about the endurance of art and how an artist's whim can
turn into an obsession.
Urquhart told
the audience that she was widowed at a young age and she supposed some of
the book had to do with her own personal loss of a beautiful young man. It
was her husband who took her to Vimy, France—to a piece of land
dedicated to Canadians who had lost their lives there.
"I wasn't
at all interested in visiting battlefields," Urquhart said, "or
golf courses. I think of them as male things." But she found the
experience moving and was even persuaded to enter the tunnels where the
soldiers had lived, slept, ate and died. "It was as if the troops
left just yesterday," she said.
"Talk
about love," asked Rogers. "Tell us about Crazy Phoebe."
The cameo
character in The Stone Carvers is a hobo who steals preserves from
farmhouse root cellars to survive, frees Klara Becker's runaway brother
from his chains, and wraps her thin body in a multitude of shawls and
skirts. In one unusual love scene her shawls are unwrapped, and she is
tenderly bathed in front of the fire by her former husband who knows he
cannot keep her from straying.
"Can
Canadians write erotic scenes—or what?" Rogers commented.
"I
couldn't write about sex until my mother died," Urquhart joked.
The Stone
Carvers was the number-one hardcover national bestseller of 2001, a
finalist for the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award, and
longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize. A previous novel by Urquhart,
The Underpainter (1997) was also acclaimed.
Festival
president Wendy Hunt announced changes to this weekend's line-up. P.K.
Page would not be attending because of illness but a tribute to her would
go ahead as planned on Friday. Newfoundland writer Wayne Johnston,
scheduled to read on Sunday, also bowed out on doctor's orders. His 1 p.m.
slot will be filled by a second reading from Clara Callan author, Richard
Wright.
Writers John Pass and Theresa Kishkan enjoy a drink
with volunteer Eleanor Mae (centre) at the opening night
of the Festival of the Written Arts, Thursday. |
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Coast Reporter, May 19, 2002
Mistry tames devil in details
Story and photo by Jane SEYD
As noted by a Guardian newspaper critic on Monday
night's program for the reading at Sechelt's Rockwood Pavilion, Rohinton
Mistry's "joyful notation of the world reminds us that description is
one of fiction's first and gravest tasks."
Mistry, the award-winning author of Such a Long
Journey, A Fine Balance, and a new novel Family Matters,
is indisputably a master of the telling detail.
 In
selections read from Family Matters Monday night, a
parrot named Timorous, a doctor who recites the Rhyme of the Ancient
Mariner while tending to patients and schoolboys who divide their cricket
teams along lines of Catholics vs. non-Catholics, vegetarians vs.
non-vegetarians, or oil hair vs. non-oiled hair, were just a few of the
delightful details that made Mistry's story of a Bombay family come alive.
Mistry's novels are beautiful, complex works that set
the stories of everyday domestic lives in India within larger battles for
political and social justice.
His characters express their hopes and fears in ways
that are by turns compassionate, wise, peevish and humorous.
Mistry emigrated from India to Canada in 1975. The
immigrant's heightened sense of his native land, combined with the
perspective of the "foreign" weave through his works.
In one selection Mistry read from Monday night,
professor Vakeel and his doctor's assistant discuss the sad state of
politics in their country, reflected by the fact that foreigners aren't
naming their daughters Indira anymore: "Probably, they're naming them
Pepsi and Wrangler."
Not that the situation is better
anywhere else, they conclude:
"Look at the U.S.A., UK,
Canada—they all have nincompoops for leaders."
When the doctor's assistant ponders aloud the
possibility of moving to the U.S. for greater opportunity, it prompts the
professor to ponder, "What about the prospects of the soul? Would
they improve in a foreign land?"
Although the conversation is taking place in Bombay, it
all feels very Canadian somehow.
Meanwhile, a young grandson, Jahangir, finds his own
circumstances lacking compared to the children in the Enid Blyton books he
reads, and wishes his own life was like theirs.
Mistry moderates the more philosophical parts of his
novel with a wonderfully gentle sense of humour: Monday night's
selections, for instance, treated the audience to a golden retriever named
Cleopatra and schoolboys who watch their gorgeous young female teacher,
Miss Alvarez, while pondering if the geometric pattern of the chair weave
impressed in her skirt "went deep enough to make an imprint on her
lovely bum."
The cool temperatures on Monday evening did little to
deter the literati of the Coast, who filled the Rockwood pavilion.
Mistry's delightful reading set the tone for long line
ups at the book table afterwards.
This year's Festival of the Written Arts, featuring Jane
Urquhart, Rex Murphy, P.K. Page, Barbara Gowdy, Patrick Lane and Bill
Richardson, among others takes place Aug. 8-11. Festival events can be
viewed on the Internet at www.writersfestival.ca.
Top
Coast Reporter, April 14, 2002
Mistry Evening at Rockwood
 The
author described as a genius by one British newspaper is coming to Sechelt
in May, presented by the Festival of the Written Arts.
Bombay-born
Rohinton Mistry has won acclaim for his novels, Such a Long Journey
(1991) and A Fine Balance (1995). His eagerly anticipated third
novel, Family Matters, was virtually assured a fast ride from press
to the best-seller lists when it was released last month.
Such
a Long Journey won the Governor General's Award, the Commonwealth
Writers Prize, the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was
short-listed for Britain's Booker Prize. British newspaper, The
Independent, called A Fine Balance, "A towering
masterpiece by a writer of genius..." It won the Giller Prize, the
Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the
Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Award, the International
IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Irish Times International Fiction
Prize, and it recently fulfilled every bookseller's dream when Oprah
Winfrey chose it for her television book club.
Mistry
emigrated to Canada in 1975. He began writing stories in 1983, while
attending night courses at the University of Toronto. His early stories
later became the award-winning collection, Tales from Firozsha Baag
(1987).
The
Festival of the Written Arts presents Rohinton Mistry on Monday, May 13 at
7 p.m. at Rockwood Centre. For tickets, call 885-9631.
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