Archives for the month of: June, 2011

Ali Riley to perform at The Word On The Street

Ali Riley’s first book, Wayward, was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. She has since released another book of poetry Tear Down.

She was born in Calgary, and was the singer/songwriter of the seminal psycho-country band Sacred Heart of Elvis. In Toronto, she acted in several theatre productions, including The Lorca Play, for which the company won a Dora Mavor Moore award for best performance by a female. Her produced plays include dog dream, Philosophy in the Bedroom and Hole in my Heart the Size of My Heart. Her poetry has appeared in Geist, The nth Position Anthology, Matrix, This Magazine, Event and the Moosehead Review, and she has performed at festivals, schools, and hootennannies across the country. She currently lives on a farm between Nanton and Vulcan, Alberta.

A big shout out to Blaine Greenwood and Most Vocal Poets for bringing in some stellar performers for The Word On The Street Festival!

http://frontenachouse.com/authors/single/ali_riley/

Canadian author Gail Bowen

Canadian mystery writer Gail Bowen

Then you are going to love hearing that author Gail Bowen is coming to town September 25th!

Gail Bowen’s Joanne Kilbourn mysteries have made her one of Canada’s most popular crime writers. The first book in the series, Deadly Appearances (1990), was nominated for the W.H. Smith Books in Canada award for best first novel. Bowen has also written five plays that have been produced across Canada, and several of her mysteries have been made into TV movies starring Wendy Crewson as Joanne. Head of the English Department at the First Nations University of Canada, the Toronto-born Gail Bowen lives in Regina.  (author summary from http://www.Mcclelland.com)

http://www.gailbowen.com/

St. Patrick’s Fine Arts Elementary School students are getting excited about The Word On The Street Festival in September. Although it’s still months away they couldn’t sit still! They were a singin’, dancin’ and groovin’ to the smash “This Book’s Gonna Be A Good Book” adapted from the current Black Eyed Peas hit song “I Gotta Feeling”. 

A big THANKS to all the students of St. Pat’s who took part, the musicians who played along, Val Lazzaretto and Shelley Baier for taking it on, and photographer Dave Rossiter from the Lethbridge Herald and Terry Vogt from CTV for helping spreading the word!

The Lethbridge Public Library, in conjunction with CKXU Radio Network, has launched a summer-long live radio show to promote the inaugural The Word On The Street Festival and celebrate literacy and literary art in our city. Each segment features one or more local personalities in discussion with the radio host along with music and spoken word! Keep your dials tuned each Sunday from 5 to 6 p.m to CKXU 88.3 for updates on the festival, sneak peaks of the artists and authors involved and hints at where our next live FLASH MOB will be!

Out of range? You can tune in online at CKXU.com

Missed an episode? Thats A-OK, you can catch up here or on our Facebook page anytime!

 

The Word On The Street Festival is pleased to announce that Betty Jane Hegerat will be joining the festival line up for this September!

Betty Jane writes from a longstanding fascination with relationships and families and the secrets and lies that bind ordinary lives together. She is the author of two novels and a collection of short stories.  A book of creative non-fiction, The Boy, which is told around a mass murder in Alberta in 1959, was published by Oolichan Books in spring 2011.  A social worker by profession, Betty Jane now teaches creative writing for Continuing Education at the University of Calgary and for the Alexandra Writers Centre and other venues. She was the 2009 Writer in Residence at the Memorial Park Library.

Take a listen to Betty Jane read from her new novel The Boy  from The Word On The Street CKXU Radio show. The program will be running all summer long until the Festival debuts on September 25th! So keep your dials tuned to 88.3 FM or online from 5 to 6 p.m. Sunday nights for more interviews with local celebrities and authors, music and festival updates.

Bruce Hunter - Countery Music Country

Bruce Hunter is the author of three books of poetry, a collection of short stories and the award-winning novel In The Bear’s House (Banff Mountain Book Festival’s Canadian Rockies Award, 2009).

Deafened as an infant, he worked in blue-collar jobs for nearly fifteen years, including labourer, Zamboni driver and gardener before and after attending Malaspina College. In his late twenties, he studied with W.O. Mitchell at the Banff School of Fine Arts and attended York University.

For the past twenty years, he has taught English and Liberal Studies at Seneca College as well as stints teaching Creative Writing at the Banff Centre and York University. In 2002, he was the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Writer in Residence at the Banff Centre. In the fall of 2007, he was Writer in Residence for the Richmond Hill Public Library. (author summary from www.oolichan.com/)

www.brucehunter.ca

 What a blast we had putting together the first (of many…:-) promotional events to get Lethbridge talking about The Word On The Street Festival coming up in September.

Festival Volunteers

Happy Friday from the Festival team! This has been a very busy and productive week working with the Library staff to shortlist our authors and putting the finishing touches on the first official Lethbridge WOTS pre-event promotion; a live flash mob scheduled for 10:30 am Saturday morning somewhere in the city… :-)

We’ve been getting lots of people asking about volunteer opportunities. Check out the volunteer job list on the Volunteer page here, there’s a contact form to sign up or suggest some other volunteer role you would be interested in.  Ever dreamed of playing the big chicken…?

 

Just a quick note to share some of the amazing successes happening as we continue to organize and promote the Word On The Street Festival. Here are a few of the milestones so far…

  • More than 80 authors have expressed an interest in taking part
  • We are talking to 30-ish musicians and bands
  • within the first few days of the article appearing in the Lethbridge Herald we had more than a dozen volunteers sign up
  • 2 flash mob events happening next week… can’t tell you where but one will be Saturday June 11th and the second June 13th
  • The WOTS blog has hit 700 page views in just over a month!! Yeah!
  • The CKXU radio interviews have attracted many local personalities willing to share reading-themed memories and perspectives including Clint Dunford, Greg Weadick, and Jean Greer McCarthy

I’ve been involved in many Lethbridge projects but this is truly amazing! Thank you Lethbridge from the festival team and everyone at the Lethbridge Public Library.

 

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