Practice alone before a mirror, then before one or two of your friends,
and ask them to tell you of any faults they see in your work.
Frederick LaDelle, How to Enter Vaudeville
The Little Shadows is out in the UK!
Little pieces…
Hiveblog, a UK booksellers site, asked me to do five guest blogs this month:
1. Displaywriter I wouldn’t be a writer at all if it weren’t for the IBM Displaywriter, a word-processing system used by the Canadian government in the early 80s.
2. Life into Art In my twenties I lived in London, trying to break into theatre, full of passionate intensity. Strangely believe it, the English theatre lacked all conviction that it ought to be impressed…
3. Razzle Dazzle I’ve been living in vaudeville for some time now, the pinkish gaslight gleam of early vaudeville, known as Polite Vaudeville.
4. Writing the War I intended the The Little Shadows to be a vaudeville romp. I wanted to sashay around onstage and make jokes and have a good time for a change.
5. The Quality of the Failure “Half the time I fail to do it on the first trial, but by means of a lot of little extra comedy turns following the failure, I usually succeed in making my audience believe my failure is intentional.”
Readings…
gritLIT Literary Festival
Art Gallery of Hamilton, 123 King Street W – Sunday, April 1, 2012
Grimsby Reading
Grimsby, Ontario – Monday, April 2
Sechelt Arts Council Reading
Sechelt, BC, April 20, 2012
North Shore Writers Festival
North Vancouver City Library, April 21, 2012, 7 pm
Alberta Library Conference
Jasper, Alberta, April 28, 2012, 7 pm
Moose Jaw Festival of Words
July 19-22, 2012
Events and workshops…
Fernie Writers Conference
Fernie, BC, July 15-19, 2012
Other publications…
“Second Person,” a short excerpt from Hughtopia, in the Globe and Mail, July 30 2011.
“On E.H. Young’s Miss Mole,” from Writer’s Choice, on the venerable normblog. Other writers’ choices can be found here.
“The Fine Art of Basking,” a chain story in the National Post, August 12, 2011.
“The Policeman’s Wife, some letters,” Mayerthorpe poems, in Numero Cinq, July 2011.
“Eden in Alberta,” with Matteo Pericoli, the New York Times, June 4, 2011.
New Year’s Eve, an adult literacy book for Good Reads Canada.
Interviews…
Eric Forbes’s Book Addict interview
Ten Terrifying Questions, Booktopia
Good Reading Magazine, Australia
Marita Dachsel’s writing mothers blog, All Things Said & Done
rob mclennan’s 10 or 20 questions