Thank you to our official radio sponsors Country 95.5 and B-93 for helping us to get the word out… 
so excited to have the Boom Box on site Festival Day!
Archives for category: Canada
Lots of exciting things happening in and around The Word On The Street Festival! The Lethbridge Public Library in conjunction with The Most Vocal Poets Society is bringing Radio Personality and Poet Nik Beat to Lethbridge.
“Nik Beat has spent much time writing and playing music, and this shows in the lyricism of his work. His images and narratives are celebrations of pop culture, which allow his poetry to be direct, unpretentious, and uninhibited. ” ( http://www.kingsleyettienne.com)
Find him in the Theatre Gallery at the Lethbridge Public Library on September 22nd. He’ll be setting the pace for what is guarenteed to be an awesome weekend of spoken word, authors, music and fun!
Check out Nik Beat’s God Is A Romantic Scientist, Night Makes Us All Stars or Sir Real on our Myspace Page or keep your ears tuned to CKXU Sundays from 5 to 6 p.m to catch his tracks on The Word On The Street Radio Show.
Y.S. Lee wrote "The Traitor In The Tunnel"
Wow! I am starting to feel as though the Festival is developing a life of it’s own! Every day, we are being contacted by more and more authors, musicians, volunters and community organizations who are hearing about how much fun this is and want to get involved. Thank you Lethbridge!
The Library staff are an amazing connection into the author world and have been busy dreaming up great ideas for innovative Festival programs. Teenbrarian (love that job title!) Paige McGeorge has organized a series of Skype chats for Festival day with authors including Y.S. Lee, Erin Bow, Maryrose Wood, Natale Ghent and Don Calame with more in the works to be announced soon.
This Sunday on CKXU 88.3 FM listen to Alderman Liz Iwaskiw and LPL Associate Director Christina Wilson live from 5:00 til 6:00 pm … have a happy Street Wheelers weekend from the Festival management team!
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!
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)
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/)
