Meet the Writers

Writers confirmed for Festival 2010
Past Festival Writers (1983 – 2009)

Join us in the beautiful gardens of Rockwood Centre in the heart of Sechelt. Listen to your favourite authors in the Pavilion, stroll about the Rockwood gardens and at the evening reception, share a glass of wine with fellow readers and writers.

Festival 2010 Writers

Confirmed as of March 24; in alphabetical order. For full bios and photos, see the Festival Schedule.

Brian Brett

“Stranger than fiction” could sum up Brian Brett’s early life, a life that is best understood by reading Uproar’s Your Only Music, his 2005 half memoir, half poetry diptych. He went on to co-found Blackfish Press, serve as a White Rock alderman, chair the Writers Union of Canada, and write eleven books encompassing poetry, memoir, allegory, fiction and non-fiction. His deep pool of life experience means that much of Brian Brett’s writing is about Brian Brett. Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life, his 2009 Writers’ Trust Prize-winner, is an insight into his life on the Saltspring Island organic farm where he has lived with his family for the past 18 years. Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress, called it “a wise, witty and vivid weave of barnyard tales.” www.brianbrett.ca.

Ian Brown

Ian Brown is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and non-fiction writer. He is also the father of Walker Brown, a 13-year-old boy who was born with an extremely rare ten syllable genetic mutation commonly known by the initials CFC. Walker’s peer group may consist of as few as 300 similarly afflicted people worldwide. He can’t speak or eat solid food and is fed through a tube in his stomach. He wears diapers as well as a helmet and arm padding to prevent self-inflicted injuries. The Boy In the Moon: A Father’s Search For His Disabled Son is an unflinchingly candid account of how Brown’s life and the lives of his wife and daughter have been affected since Walker’s birth. The book is a father’s attempt to understand and justify his damaged son’s life. Ian Brown was recently awarded the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and BC's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/boyinthemoon/

Bonnie Burnard

Prolific is not a descriptor seen in the same sentence as the name Bonnie Burnard. She has eschewed quantity in favour of quality throughout her writing career. It has been a decade since her novel, A Good House, took home the Giller Prize. Her long-awaited second novel, Suddenly, is ostensibly about death, with a plot concerning the final stages of life for a middle-aged woman suffering from breast cancer. The underlying premise, though, is one of life, of the unique nature of friendships among women, of a good marriage and a good man. As the Globe & Mail said: “Burnard shoos away the notion that good people make dull fiction.”
Bonnie Burnard is also the author of two acclaimed collections of short fiction: Women of Influence (Winner, Commonwealth Prize) and Casino and Other Stories (Finalist, Giller Prize).

The 2010 Bruce Hutchison Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Senator Larry Campbell.

Larry Campbell has seen the effects of drug addiction and abuse from several perspectives. As a drug squad cop and then as BC’s Chief Coroner he witnessed daily the death and human degradation caused by drugs. As Mayor of Vancouver he was compelled to seek solutions to a problem that was badly tarnishing the reputation of his city. Finally, as a Liberal Senator he has had to fight to ensure the survival of Insight, the controversial safe injection site he helped to establish in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. Campbell is also co-author, with criminologist Neil Boyd and journalist Lori Culbert, of A Thousand Dreams: Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the Fight For Its Future. Larry Campbell is equally well known as the inspiration for coroner Domenic DaVinci, the central character of the hit CBC television drama DaVinci’s Inquest. Naturally, when Campbell became mayor of Vancouver, so did DaVinci in DaVinci’s City Hall. Regrettably, there was never a third incarnation, DaVinci’s Senate.

He is opinionated, controversial and thought provoking: we expect he will be a very entertaining speaker.

Denise Chong

The Concubine's Children is an enduring Canadian classic. It remained on the Globe & Mail bestseller list for 93 weeks and made Denise Chong a literary household name. Her second book, The Girl In The Picture, is the story of Kim Phuc, the napalm burned nine-year-old Vietnamese girl captured on film fleeing her village. The iconic photograph was instrumental in turning public opinion against the war in Vietnam. Chong's latest book, Egg On Mao, tells the story of Lu Decheng who, along with two friends, at the time of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations, hurled paint-filled eggs at the portrait of Mao that dominates Tiananmen Square. Both Kim Phuc and Lu Decheng now live in Canada.

Karen Connelly

Karen Connelly, at 24, was the youngest recipient ever of the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction. She won it in 1993 for her bestseller, Touch the Dragon: A Thai Journal. Her writing is inspired by her extensive travels and time spent living in such countries as Thailand, Burma, France, Spain and Greece where she still maintains a small house. She is a writer of novels, poetry, memoir and non-fiction with nine books in print. Her books about Thailand and Burma (Myanmar) are politically charged. The Border Surrounds Us, The Lizard Cage, and her latest travel memoir, Burmese Lessons: A Love Story (Random House), are very much about politics and human rights in those countries. Burmese Lessons, in particular, is about the spirit and resilience of the artists and intellectuals who continue to exist and resist under a brutal, totalitarian regime. It is also a frank recounting of her time spent in Burma in 1996, and her relationship with the leader of one of Burma’s many resistance groups. More information at: www.karenconnelly.ca.

Lawrence Hill

Lawrence Hill was by far the most requested author on last year's audience surveys. So, we invited him, he accepted, he'll be here in August.
Lawrence Hill's sweeping historical novel The Book of Negroes, has catapulted him to international literary prominence. It has won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Overall Book and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. It also won, despite stiff competition, the 2009 edition of CBC Radio's Canada Reads. His earlier work includes the 1997 novel Any Known Blood, and the polemic memoir, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black And White In Canada, a best selling work of non-fiction that reveals some uncomfortable truths about race in Canada and also gives some insight into Hill's struggles with his own biracial identity. More information at: www.lawrencehill.com.

Jack Hodgins

Sooner or later anthropologists are going to wonder why Vancouver Island, relative to its population, produces a disproportionate number of first-rate writers—and the odd really amazing jazz musician. Jack Hodgins was born, raised and still lives on Vancouver Island and it is from that perspective that he has been producing award-winning books for the past 40 years. A comprehensive list of his books, awards and nominations would run to pages. Any respectable highlight package, though, must include Spit Delaney’s Island, The Invention of the World, The Resurrection of Joseph Bourne, The Honorary Patron, Broken Ground, Distance and his most recent collection, Damage Done By the Storm. A similarly abridged awards list should include the Governor General’s Award, Commonwealth Prize, Ethel Wilson Prize, Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, Leacock Award for Humour, and the Order of Canada. www.jackhodgins.ca.

Ryan Knighton

He likes to mess with people. Often they don’t believe he is blind. He sometimes wears regular glasses and looks at people when they speak to him. At readings he looks at his book and appears to be actually reading from it. But Ryan Knighton is blind. He has been slowly going blind for the last 20 years—since he was eighteen. Knighton, who teaches at Capilano University, wrote Cockeyed, his internationally acclaimed memoir about the experience. It is far more comedy than tragedy and his screenplay based on the book is currently optioned for film with Jodie Foster set to direct. Ryan became a dad a few years ago and that opened up a whole new world to navigate in the dark. He did what he does best and wrote C’mon Papa: Dispatches From a Dad in the Dark (Knopf Canada). Again, there is a whole lot of funny mixed in with the real challenges of looking after a child you cannot see. www.ryanknighton.com

Annabel Lyon

It's difficult to think of a major Canadian literary award for which Annabel Lyon's novel The Golden Mean has not been nominated. It made the Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist (and was heavily favoured to win), and is nominated for both the Governor General's Literary Award and the Writers' Trust Award. The novel concerns the wholly imagined relationship between Aristotle and a teenaged, pre greatness Alexander. It is an unlikely and weighty sounding premise, but this singular flight of intellectual fancy is so cleverly realized (thanks largely to Lyon's fat-free writing) that the 2000-year-old context is rendered irrelevant to the book's readability. Annabel Lyon's earlier work includes two acclaimed story collections, Oxygen and The Best Thing For You. http://annabellyon.blogspot.com

The Meter’s Running: The New Wave of Poetry

This event will feature three contemporary poets, all working in a free verse style, and making use of unconventional structural devices around which to frame their work.

Joe Denham

The Denham family has been involved in dance, music and the arts in general on the Sunshine Coast for several decades. It was only a matter of time before a talented writer emerged from the nest. Joe Denham, a working commercial fisherman, has produced two books of poetry. Flux, his impressive debut, was followed by Windstorm, a thematically connected collection of five long pieces rich with the language and imagery of the coast. Denham skilfully takes readers to that unpredictable, sometimes violent edge where humankind and the natural world meet.

Elizabeth Bachinsky

Governor General’s Award-nominee Elizabeth Bachinsky is the author of three volumes of poetry the most recent being god of missed connections, a collection that freely plays with the basic architecture of poetry. Some pieces read like straight prose, some leave large areas of negative space on the page, others are one or two word lines written in list-like form. The author, whose Ukrainian heritage is integral to the collection, makes repeated reference to the history of Ukrainian Canadians, as well as to the disaster at Chernobyl. http://elizabethbachinsky.blogspot.com

Gregory Scofield

Gregory Scofield is a Metis writer and one of the most powerful voices of Canada’s Aboriginal peoples. His five volumes of poetry have brought him a number of awards including the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. His most recent work, Kipocihkan: Poems New and Selected, is an anthology of urban Aboriginal songs and a retrospective of his pivotal works. Scofield’s style, too, pushes the boundaries of the genre using unconventional page layouts, and relying upon rhythm, cadence and musicality of language, rather than punctuation, to create syntax.

Brad Cran will host this event. He is an award-winning poet, essayist and photographer. He is also Vancouver’s Poet Laureate.

Shani Mootoo

The Canadian cultural mosaic is neatly summed up in the person of Shani Mootoo, a Canadian of Indian ethnicity, born in Ireland and raised in Trinidad. She is an acclaimed multi-media artist whose work has been exhibited in such prestigious galleries as New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Her use of visual art to express herself was a reaction to the childhood sexual abuse of which she was told never to speak. She began to put things into words with Out On Main Street, her enthusiastically received 1993 collection of short fiction. Her spectacular follow up, the novel Cereus Blooms At Night, was a finalist for the 1997 Giller Prize, the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Ethel Wilson Prize. Her latest novel, Valmiki’s Daughter, is set in Trinidad and is described by its publisher as “a juicy, sexy, beautiful book.”

New Voices: Sarah Roberts and Craig Boyko in conversation with Sheryl MacKay

The second annual New Voices event features two young writers whose first published books are collections of short fiction. That is pretty much where the similarity ends as each has approached the form from a different perspective and each has staked out a different compartment within the wide parameters of the short fiction genre.

Since graduating from the University of Victoria’s writing program, Sarah Roberts, a resident of Gibsons, BC, has been a regular contributor of feature articles to numerous newspapers and magazines. Her short stories have been published by literary journals in Canada, New Zealand, England and the United States. With the publication of Wax Boats, her first collection of short fiction, Sarah Roberts has served notice that she is a writer from whom we shall be hearing much more in the future. www.sarahemilyroberts.ca 

Although his short stories have been published in most of Canada’s best literary magazines, four-time Journey Prize-winner Craig Boyko has been a bit of a well-kept secret. With Blackouts, his first collection of stories, and the subject of consistently effusive reviews, this gifted young Victoria-based writer has quickly and deservedly come to light. Boyko’s impressive debut has been variously described as: stunning; glorious; seriously clever; nuanced and distinct; exuberant and elegiac; profound and delightfully droll. It’s new today, but Boyko’s voice will soon be very familiar.

New Voices will be moderated by Sheryl MacKay, host of CBC Radio’s North By Northwest.
New Voices is made possible by the Marie Steel Memorial Endowment.

Tony Parsons

Many things changed at Global BC (formerly BCTV) during the past 35 years—hair length, tie width, collar height, set design, broadcasting technology, everyone else on the six o'clock news—but the anchorperson delivering the stories on the highest-rated regional newscast in the country, did not. Not until Dec.15, 2009 when Tony Parsons called it a day. His new book is entitled A Life in the News. It's a life, however, that has consisted of much more than the news and Parsons tells it all, from his childhood in England through his 50-year career in Canadian broadcasting. Along the way there have been dozens of awards, fame and fortune, and almost universal peer recognition. There has also been depression, alcohol abuse and several failed marriages. It is a fascinating and revealing memoir.

Louise Penny

Louise Penny wrapped up an 18-year career as a CBC broadcast journalist in order to write. Unfortunately, her new career began with a five-year case of writer's block, but once she got over that speed bump it didn't take long for her to become a bestselling mystery writer. With her latest, The Brutal Telling, her “Three Pines Mystery” series now numbers five. The books are set in a small Quebec village (Three Pines), and feature Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, a latter day mix of Agatha Christie's Poirot and Georges Simenon's Chief Inspector Maigret. Critics love the books, fans worldwide are keeping them on bestseller lists, and awards keep rolling in. More information at: www.louisepenny.com. 

Nino Ricci

Nino Ricci is an equal opportunity novelist. His 2003 Trillium Award-winning novel Testament, is a fictional biography of Jesus. His 2008 Governor General’s Award-winner The Origin of Species, draws on Charles Darwin’s venerated thesis to drive its narrative. The darkly comic novel is set in the mid 1980s in Montreal. Its central character is the son of Italian immigrants whose struggles to make sense of his life include an ill-fated trip to the Galapagos Islands.

Nino Ricci is also the author of a trilogy of novels that includes The Lives of Saints, (Governor General’s Award), In A Glass House, and Where She Has Gone (Giller Prize finalist). The trilogy spans 30 years in the life of its protagonist. Ricci recently contributed Pierre Elliott Trudeau to John Ralston Saul’s Extraordinary Canadians series of biographies. www.ninoricci.com

Adam Lewis Schroeder

He was born in Vernon, lives in Penticton, has travelled extensively, teaches at UBC Okanagan, has published stories in dozens of journals and anthologies, has been regularly asterisked as the next great Canadian writer and is on a lot of peoples’ watch lists. Other than that, he has written Empress of Asia, a story of love and loss that begins in the middle of the Second World War and ends fifty years later. That one earned him a spot among the finalists for both the Ethel Wilson Fiction prize and the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and a place on the Globe & Mail Best Books of the Year list. His recently released second novel, In the Fabled East (Douglas & McIntyre) is set in Indochina (Laos and Vietnam) in the 1930s. Described as a timeless love story and riveting adventure that bridges history, the book is already being touted as a must read by critics. Its author is on a rapid upward trajectory. www.adamlewisschroeder.com

Gwendolyn Southin

Gwen Southin’s second appearance at the Festival will mark 28 years since she was instrumental in its founding.

Southin was born in England, immigrated to Montreal in 1952 and moved to the Sunshine Coast in 1982. She and her husband operated a resort and marina in Pender Harbour before retiring to Sechelt where Gwen launched her writing career. Skip ahead to the present and we find the author celebrating the release of Death as a Last Resort, the fourth book in her popular Margaret Spencer Mystery series. Local fans of the books will enjoy the 1950s and ’60s references to BC locales, such as Hollyburn Mountain, downtown Vancouver, Lulu Island and Pender Harbour. And good news for all fans; Gwen is already hard at work on new cases for the intrepid Maggie and her partner Nat to solve.

Jowi Taylor

In 1995, with the Quebec referendum looming, award-winning writer and broadcaster Jowi Taylor conceived the Six String Nation project, a brilliant metaphor to express Canadian unity and speak to Canadians of every regional and cultural persuasion. What followed was an eleven-year quest to acquire the 63 pieces of Canadian history that would become a guitar named Voyageur. This amazing work of form and function, which includes pieces of the Golden Spruce, Trudeau’s canoe paddle, Gretzky’s hockey stick, and much more, has been played by hundreds of musicians and held by thousands of Canadians. The book, Six String Nation, contains over 100 colour photographs and a fascinating account of the instrument’s components, construction and travels. Well-known local musician Joe Stanton and the Canadian Folk Music Awards-nominated Sunshine Coast folk group The Rakish Angles will perform during this unique Festival closing event. More information at: www.sixstringnation.com. 

Joan Thomas

With her first novel, Reading by Lightning, Joan Thomas set a very high bar for her soon to be released sophomore effort, Curiosity. The earlier novel won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book, The Amazon.ca First Novel Award, made the Globe Best 100 Books list and was a finalist for both the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the McNally Robinson Book of the Year. It also made the long list for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Early reviews and sneak peeks indicate that Curiosity, a work of historical fiction, is set to rival its estimable predecessor on all counts.

Joan Thomas lives in Winnipeg. She has been a long-time book reviewer for the Globe & Mail and has contributed interview based features to the Winnipeg Free Press and Prairie Fire. www.joanthomas.ca.

Jack Whyte

Jack Whyte has now sold over one million books—in Canada alone. His hugely popular Dream of Eagles series of historical novels based on the Arthurian legends, and his more recent Templar Trilogy, have sold millions more worldwide. The eagerly awaited final volume of the Templar series, Order in Chaos, was released earlier this year and quickly snapped up by his legions of hardcore fans. Next up for the tireless Scottish-Canadian Kelowna resident is a series on the heroes of his homeland to be called The Guardians of Scotland. The trilogy, set in the 14th century, will feature James “the Black” Douglas, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. More information at:  www.camulod.com and www.templartrilogy.com.

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