Friday, October 16, 2009

Wattle and Daubers Featured Readers @ Spoken INK!

Eileen Kernaghan & Casey Wolf

I'll be one of three featured readers at the Burnaby Writers' Society Spoken INK reading series next Tuesday. Each of us has been published by the new micro-publisher Wattle and Daub Books.

Here is the scoop:

The Burnaby Writers' Society’s Spoken INK presents BC writers Casey Wolf, Addena Sumter-Freitag, and Eileen Kernaghan reading from their recent Wattle and Daub Books releases.

Casey will read from her short speculative fiction collection Finding Creatures & Other Stories, Addena from her poetry collection Back in the Days, and Eileen from her speculative poetry release, Tales from the Holograph Woods.

Date: Tuesday, October 20, 7:30 pm.

Location: James Street Café, 3819 Canada Way (one block east of Boundary Rd. in Burnaby)

Contact: bwscafe@gmail.com

Open mic to follow featured readers.


Addena Sumter-Freitag

Wattle and Daub Books


Finding Creatures & Other Stories by C. June Wolf:


“Wolf uses different genres, different voices, different cultures—in short whatever she needs to make the story work. What ties it all together is her sure-handed prose and a depth she brings to her writing, that indefinable element that rises up from between the lines and gives a good story its resonance…”

from the introduction by Charles De Lint, author of The Onion Girl and Dingo.


SAINT FRANCIS AND THE GREEN MAN

While praying at the edge of the woods one day, with the larks singing all about him and the grey-brown hare of Greccio outstretched like a dog at his side, Francis lifted his eyes. There was a stirring of the underbrush just ahead of where he was standing and he saw something—someone standing at ease beneath an aged, twisted oak. It could not be identified as any creature he had ever known, and indeed was neither creature nor plant nor man, but a strange combination of the three. The leafy, pelted being stared out thoughtfully at Francis, a light smile at the corners of its wide, lipless mouth and even more vividly in its flickering ochre eyes.


Francis' prayer did not falter. (It was many years since he had perfected the ability to pray in any circumstances, and it was like breath to him.) But he gave a little start. And his eyes widened in surprise.


For Francis was a man of his land. He had seen the ancient, lichened images carved on mottled stone. He knew the creature that stood before him, half-obscured by leaves, both its own and those of the brush that grew all around it. He had not believed that such a thing had ever truly lived, but there it was, and suddenly Francis’ world began to teeter…


Back in the Days by Addena Sumter-Freitag:


…bold-faced, broad-based and takes up space in a Canada that needs to be re-raced. *Back in the Days* is a book that will change your sense of here, and will eclectify your sense of self, wherever and whoever you are. You’ll love going back with Sumter-Freitag, whether or not you were there the first time around, because you’re here and now in her glorious storytelling.

—Wayde Compton author of Performance Bond


BACK IN THE DAYS

Friday nite meant all of us met up

And we’d be ‘stylin’

Fixin’ to dance the Madison

And Jive ‘like there was no tomorrow’.

Back in the days when a Bitch was a dog

And Nigger was a fightin’ word.

And all the Canadian guys would stand around

and posture

And ‘toss a dance challenge’ to the American G.I.s

who came to town to take all their girls

(Not that they wanted us Black girls

Before the American guys came ‘on the scene’).

Back in the days when a Bitch was a dog

And Nigger was a fightin’ word…


Tales from the Holograph Woods by Eileen Kernaghan:


"Kernaghan has touched something deep and visceral with these verses. You will read them once, then, in the middle of the night, wake suddenly, shivering, and need to read them again. Eileen Kernaghan neither lights a single candle nor curses the darkness—she swallows it whole and then sets it on fire."
—Sandra Kasturi author of The Animal Bridegroom


CHIAROSCURO

the shadow is always there
dark subtext, dissonance: the mocking laughter
in the fairy wood, the scowling presence
at the birthday feast, the faint suggestion
of warts beneath the velvet coat

this is the page in the book you dare not turn to
the face you see in the mirror
when the light falls at the wrong angle

this is the sly poison under the apple’s
smooth red skin, the dark that is not
light’s absence, but its twin.


Eileen Kernaghan's Wild Talent: A Novel of the Supernatural has been short-listed for the 2009 Sunburst Award for Canadian Speculative Fiction.


Finding Creatures & Other Stories

by C. June Wolf

$15.95

ISBN 978-0-9810658-0-9


Back in the Days

by Addena Sumter-Freitag

$15.95

ISBN: 978-0-9810658-1-6


Tales from the Holograph Woods: Speculative Poems
by Eileen Kernaghan
$9.95
ISBN 978-0-9810658-2-3


Date: Tuesday, October 20, 7:30 pm.

Location: James Street Café, 3819 Canada Way (one block east of Boundary Rd. in Burnaby)

Contact: bwscafe@gmail.com


Open mic to follow featured readers.


Wattle and Daub Books
Grandview RPO PO Box 78038
Vancouver BC V5N 5W1
Canada
http://wattleanddaubbooks.ca/


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