The Year of Becoming – turning your life into an experiment

A test for your pattern recognition skills:  what do The 100 Mile Diet, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, The Year of Living Biblically, Nickel and Dimed, and the recent No Impact Man have in common?  (Apart from the fact they mostly began as blogs, they have mostly been optioned for movies, they threatened to disintegrate marriages, they made various best-seller lists and they fall into the dubious literary category of “ordeal” books or “immersion journalism”…)

They were all year-long experiments, in which their authors took a hypothesis and made themselves guinea pigs. It’s a gonzo tradition – Morgan Spurlock ate only McDonald’s for 30 days, Grant Stoddard didn’t sleep for a month. (He also had sex with himself, but that’s a whole other story.) But a month is an experiment. A year is an ordeal. It takes a different level of commitment. (A level of commitment that lasts long enough for a publishing house to discover what you’re up to.)

The year-long ordeal might be an effective gimmick to cut publishing deals. But it also seems to tie into a bigger longing – the longing for transformation. All the makeover shows we can tune into at night serve up fairy godmothers to bad parents, bad money-managers, bad dressers, bad dieters, bad dancers, and magic-wand them to a better place.

Reading, being the slow food equivalent in the entertainment world, reveals transformations that require at least 365 days to take hold. And if a new habit takes 21 days to establish, then a year is probably needed to undo your reflexive reach for the remote control/frozen pizza dinner/VISA card as life crutch.

And the thing is, we only really get things in life once we’ve lived them. Sure, we can know something, intellectually, but it’s not until we experience it, viscerally, that we really truly bodily KNOW it… and so, life actually is an experiment, and we need to get out of our thought-bubbles and get messy to really know what it’s like to be in this incarnation, this time around, to know what really might be possible. How far could one year take you?

On Alice Munro and the Short Story

Whistler Reads anchorwoman, Paula Shackleton, did some serious prep work for last week’s book club get-together on Alice Munro and the short story.

Here’s her top ten cribsheet:

1. The short story derived from oral traditions that could be enjoyed at one sitting.

2. Through the centuries the rhymed verse of Homeric-type epics evolved to Canterbury Tales, Aesop fables evolved to Grimms Fairy Tales, and parables evolved to anecdotes, which finally trended to realism and the modern short story.

3. Every short story uses 5 elements: Plot, Character, Conflict, Theme, Setting.

4. Writers have introduced styles within the short story genre: Philip Roth evokes Jewish writing and others continue the trend of cultural identity. Feminism and other socio-political themes explore all corners of the human condition. The 90s saw a period of magic realism. Alice Munro sits firmly in the “Minimalist Camp” along with noted short story writers: John Updike, Joyce Carol Oates, Raymond Carver, and Hemingway (among others).

5. Minimalism is characterized by a single plot line, few characters, one theme, precise writing where the protagonist is not exceptional and their attributes are revealed to the reader through context. Alice to a T.

6. A short story ranges from 1,000 words to 20,000 words but averages 7,500 words.

7. It is considered the most demanding oeuvre because the length is inversely proportional to its impact.

8. I did a quick review of all the noted short story writers and luxuriated in those I’ve read that still resonate:
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter),
Herman Melville (Bartleby the Scrivener),
Edgar Allan Poe (The Black Cat),
Nikolai Gogol (The Overcoat),
Guy de Maupassant (The Necklace),
Anton Chekhov. (The entire list)
Jorge Luis Borges (The Garden of Forking Paths)
Kurt Vonnegut (Canary in the Cathouse), John Cheever, Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald (who paid all his bills with short stories.)
Canadian specialists like: Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Jane Urquart, and Mordecai Richler. I’m sure you have your own favourites.

9. How do we know these writers? It is because of all the dedicated publications that print a short story per edition, which puts bread on writers’ tables and enables them to compile books of short stories, and also publishers to print short story anthologies. We love: The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Saturday Evening Post, Scribners, and then there is all the esteemed literary journals: The Paris Review, Granta, Quill & Quire, etc.

10. Talking about stories can be as much fun as reading them.

Long live a community that votes for a yearly favourite writer

Who’d want to win the Pulitzer when they could win the 2009 Best of Pemberton Favourite Writer poll?

Lisa Richardson, hype-mistress for the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, contributor to Tourism Whistler’s award-winning media room, and NBCOlympics.com correspondent, joins Cindy Filipenko (Best of Pemberton Favourite Writer 2007, 2008), GD Maxwell (Best of Whistler Favourite Writer, 1998-2005, 2006-2008), Natalie Langmann (runner-up 2008), Feet Banks (2006), Stephen Vogler (runner-up 2007), as some of the scribes keeping the local arts and culture scene kicking.

Imagine it – a place in which gravity exerts such a profound force on the local culture and economy, has so many people engaged in the power of text.

Stephen Vogler Gets Set To Launch His New Book

Coming this October – something to warm you from the inside-out, as the mercury drops  - Stephen Vogler’s new book, Only in Whistler: Tales of a Mountain Town. “If I found myself laughing at some part of the writing day,” says Vogler, of writing this book, “I figured I was hitting the mark.

The book, which took Vogler a year to write, “following 32 years of intensive research”, offers the kind of insider’s view that not many people can offer in Whistler. In a town where a person’s credibility is contingent on how long they’ve managed to live there, Vogler has seen 34 seasons turn, enough to give him the immersion necessary to scribe authoritatively about the community that lies, layered beneath the outerskins of marketing gloss, transient residents, and institutional amnesia.  ”I don’t think my idea of Whistler has changed much since 1994 when the first pieces for Whistler Features were written,” says Vogler. “It’s still a place with a very glossed-over corporate veneer––which is what most people think of when they think of Whistler––while beneath that lies this seething mass of eccentric characters and stories that truly characterizes the place. It’s those characters and their stories that I dug into in this book.”

Anyone who has read Vogler’s debut collection, Whistler Features, knows how funny he can be. And anyone who has Top of the Pass on their coffee table knows he also has a great eye for character and a poetic perspective, capturing a place with the help of local photographers Bonny Makarewicz and Toshi Kawano “where gravity drives the economy and the lifestyle.”

The biggest difference between Top of the Pass and Vogler’s newest offering, Only in Whistler, is that this one has no pictures.

Says Vogler, “It’s all storytelling. In the last one, because it was a pictorial essay as well, I had to step back a bit with the writing so that the photos could tell part of the story, almost like a script. With this one I just dug into all the stories of growing up here and all the eccentric characters I’ve gotten to know over the last thirty-odd years. It begins in 1976 when I was 12 years old and we moved to Whistler. “

Hypothesis: Writers Speak With Their Hands

Looking through Festival photos and seeing a common theme:  writers speak with their hands…  What does it mean?

Fanmail – incoming

From the Pique today, West Vancouver writer Pauline Ahoy Logan writes:

A heartfelt thanks to Stella Harvey, organizers, panelists, participants and fellow voyeurs of the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival. I was very impressed by the enthusiasm everyone enjoyed and shared for the written word. The insightful sessions led by Wayne Grady and the writing aerobics of Michel Beaudry greatly inspired me to press pen to paper. An evening among the literati of the Sea-to-Sky corridor (and Brazil!) was great fun to hear the ageless gender debate, be captivated by the poetic lyricism of Shane Koyczan and participate in the illuminating haiku competition! A wonderful event for inspiration and networking.

Numbers from Fest show our word-stock is up.

The Festival organisers have been busy crunching data into bytes and reports, to discover the following:

• Over 8 years, Festival attendance has grown from 20 to 134. In 2008, attendance increased by 25% over the previous year, and in 2009, the numbers grew by another 15%.
• 31% of participants had attended last year’s festival.
• Half of the guest authors were corridor-based, matching the wealth of local creative talent with out of town guests.
• Almost 10% of attendees were under the age of 25. Another 100 students had the chance to hear from guest author Chris Humphreys.
• The Festival’s promo campaign generated 200,000 hots to our website at www.theviciouscircle.ca, and 950 column inches in editorial coverage, an advertising equivalent of $50,000.
• An increased percentage of attendees this year came from beyond Sea to Sky corridor, up to 37%.
• The Festival program was downloaded almost 1000 times.
• 100% of participants said they were likely or very likely to come again.

The Pique covers some more details in their post-mortem today.

Ten Ways to Tell If a Writers Festival Is a Success

#1. For the weekend of September 11-13 2009, in Whistler, book sales are up, crime stats are down.

#2. High school students are overheard, after visit of author CC Humphreys, saying “I am reading the French Executioner and it’s awesome” and “I never would have picked up this book (The Fetch) but because I met him, I did and I really like it. I think it’s because I already understand what’s happening. It’s kinda cool to meet the author in person.”

#3. Sixty people walked into a bar, and before the night was through, 20 of them had written poems.

#4. Attendance grows by 15% over the 2008 Festival, despite the economy, beautiful weather and Stephen Harper’s War on Culture.

#5.  100% of attendees say they are “likely” or “very likely” to attend the Festival in the future.

#6. Aspiring magazine writers pitch story ideas to editors and several hear the magic invitation, “let’s talk more.”

#7. Random people skip through Whistler behind a flautist and write poetry on the dock by Alta Lake. It’s an inspiring setting. Might as well make the most of it.

#8. Author Nancy Lee (Dead Girls) proclaims the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival top-notch, with a higher calibre of professionalism, communication and regard for the visiting writers than any out-of-town festival, including festivals in the UK and Paris.

#9. 240 people have direct and intimate contact with a professional working writer, and come away having charged up their word-power decoder rings.  Word POWER!@)!#

#10. The Festival Director gets a good night sleep for the first time in months, and bounces up the next morning with plans for the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival 2010.

And most importantly, the day after the Festival, people are writing.

Weird phenomena of writers gathering captured in series of photos

As rare as the Bigfoot, several sightings of writers in Whistler were captured on camera this past weekend. Spontaneous gatherings took place, both indoors and outdoors. Most creatures were wielding notebooks, often scribbling frantically, sometimes staring into the distance, occasionally reading out loud. Experts in the paranormal say, “There must have been some kind of convergence we weren’t aware of. It certainly seems that an important gathering took place this weekend. What it means, over the long-term, is just something we’ll have to watch for. But I definitely think this is a phenomenon we should pay attention to.”

Photographic evidence has been posted at www.flickr.com/photos/elvicious.

Ready for our Oscar speech, Vicious-style?

Stella Harvey is the Whistler Writers Festival’s Little Engine That Could.  She receives herewith her eighth nomination for Best Director in a Drama Series, Best Supporting Everything in a Cast of Thousands Production, and Best Friend of the Arts and Literary Community in Whistler.)

But to help move this word-nerd-train, she enlisted the support of a host of folk, and we want to throw out huge virtual applause to them, with thanks, for jumping on board the 8th Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, and enabling over 150 writers to take the journey.

Food and Shelter: Before we can self-actualise, we need to get our basic needs met. Thanks to Legends at Whistler Creek, Evolution at Creekside, Alta Lake Station House (the RMOW), Players Chophouse, Whistler Cooks Catering and Blenz Coffee for essential sustenance and hosting.

Funding support: Grants and funding support from the Whistler Arts Council, the Resort Municipality of Whistler’s Community Enrichment Program, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Writers Union of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts and the 2009 Cultural Capitals program enabled us to bring a host of professional writers to town to anchor this critical mass of word-nerds!

Media partners: For helping us to get the word out, thanks to the BC Association of Magazine Publishers, the Pique, the Georgia Straight and Sub-Terrain magazine, as well as The Tyee,  the Question, Vancouver Review and BC Bookworld.  Thanks also to Tourism Whistler. And our wonderful local journalists for spilling ink for us – Jennifer Miller and Holly Fraughton, as well as Pique contributors Rebecca Wood Barrett, Mary McDonald and Pam Barnsley.

For going the extra mile:  The Pique newsmagazine and the Whistler Museum and Archives stepped up to support two young individual writers, enabling them to attend the Writer in Residence program through September, and to develop a project of their own. Huge thanks to Bob Barnett and Jehanne Burns for answering the call and being our partners in creative crime!

Community partners: Where would we be without Dan and Armchair Books? With nothing to read. Without temptation. Walking into a corporate megalith store’o'books to the sound of our souls sucking away.  Thank you Armchair Books for standing behind the Writers Festival for the last eight years, and for part of what makes the Whistler retail experience wonderful and unique.

You, the brave: Annie Dillard wrote, “You can’t test courage cautiously.” It takes courage to get out of your comfort zone, out of your couch’s vortex, or to admit, ‘yes, I am a word-nerd.’  Thank you to all the bold attendees of the 8th annual Whistler Readers and Writers Festival for keeping the word-stoke fired. Welcome to the Vicious Circle.

Where is the Festival?

Getting there is half the adventure.

While Friday and Saturday’s events will take place at Creekside (hit Legends Hotel at the foot of the mountain, and Players Chophouse for Saturday night’s shenanigans), Sunday will take place at Alta Lake Station House.

Best way to get into a writerly frame of mind is to get out of the car. Access to Alta Lake Station House, where the Poetry Walk will commence, and where the manuscript appraisal, readings and writing workshop on Sunday will take place, is on foot or bike, via the Valley Trail.

Hit the trail from the Alta Lake Road side (5.3km from Alpine Way traffic light), or Wayside Park. Parking is available at both ends. From the Alta Lake Road side, start at the yellow boom gates and follow the (not yellow, not brick, not road) path (black, bitumen)… for a relaxed 5 minute-ish jaunt.  The house is identified by a couple of small “Shhh! Workshop in progress” signs.

Which Olympic sport does your scribbling most represent?

The five month countdown to the Olympics is marked, by coincidence, this Saturday, with the debut of Haiku Idol, a live-poetry writing contest that has its genesis in a national poetry slam held during the Calgary Cultural Olympiad.

The Whistler Readers and Writers Festival takes the Olympic analogies even further this week, with Rebecca Wood Barrett’s feature in the Pique, comparing novel writing to the speed skating long track (endurance, much time spent going round in circles, draft after draft), short story writing with the halfpipe (compact site plus high aptitude for risk forces practitioners to go big), or magazine writing with the bobsled (it’s all about nailing that torpedo-start to grab the advantage and the reader’s attention.)

Profile your prowess…  After all, making it as a writer is as audacious an accomplishment as winning a medal. We’ve got more in common than we realise.

Whistler’s Writers in Residence Set Up Shop

They’ve been raiding the bookstore and ReUse It Centre, and putting 20 local writers through their paces, as Whistler’s Writer in Residency program gets underway.

Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds, profiled in today’s Question, will be feature instructors at the Writers Festival on Saturday. Learn about Writing Place, Writing People, Discovering Your Writer’s Voice, and Discovering Your Editor’s Muscle with Trimming the Fat with two of Canada’s most beloved writers.

5 Reasons to check out the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival

1. Success in writing is about who you know. It’s shitty to admit that merit alone is insufficient, and god bless Obama for actually creating a meritocracy across the border and telling kids to work hard, but the world is about networks and relationships and it takes other human beings to open doors, especially when your arms are full of manuscripts. We bring those door-opening people to you – writers, publishers, editors. The Whistler Readers and Writers Festival is an intimate industry event for people in the fields of words and stories.

2. It could be the last festival. You never know. You might also be dead by this time next year. Bottom line, why put off until tomorrow what you could do today? Carpe diem, remember.

3. Guest authors are making history come alive. We need that rear-view mirror to the past to put everyday life, depressing headlines and minor personal crises into context. Many of the Festival’s guest authors, Lee Henderson, Claire Mulligan, Merilyn Simonds, Annabel Lyon and Chris Humphreys excavate history to create tremendously readable novels.

4. An ideas-fest always gets your brain tingling. As stoked as I am to read the first Buyer’s Guide of the year, with all the ski and snowboard gear reviews, there are only so many conversations I can have about sidecut and camber and binding mounting devices before I feel like standing up and screaming, “Can’t we just talk about our feelings for five fucking minutes?”  The moment usually passes. But for one weekend a year, at the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, I can immerse myself in conversations that make life, and the life of the mind, seem incredibly rich.

5. It will kickstart your creative mojo. Motivation is a slippery little sucker. Sometimes a bootcamp is what we need. A few teachers. A few inspiring fellows. A few skills and drills. Maybe even someone yelling at you. (Or shouting down that little voice inside your mind that has been getting too much airplay – “you can’t. You’re not good enough. You don’t dare.”)

Dare.

As Annie Dillard said, You can’t test courage cautiously.

Moleskine notebooks release special Whistler Readers and Writers Festival edition

Available in limited quantities at Armchair Books, this special souvenir notebook was designed by Whistler’s own Jasmine Robinson.

Feeling a little noun-challenged?

Otherwise known as a brain-fart, Mommy-alzheimers or the momentary space walk, that experience of losing one’s words (“um, she’s like a really good friend of mine and her name is…??”), we’ve all been noun-challenged. Thwarted by the disappearing person, place, thing.  It’s okay. Learning how to fill in the blanks when your words abandon you just better prepares you for travel in countries where you don’t speak the language.

But when it comes to writing, you want to get that person-place-thing thing dialled. The crux of a good story is at the nexus between those three things.

Enter the three Wise Men.

The place is Whistler. Legends Hotel at Creekside, to be exact.

The people are writers Wayne Grady, Chris Humphreys and Leslie Anthony.

The things? All your ideas and ambitions. Stories. Notebooks. Pens. Whatever talisman you carry in your pocket. Frankincense. Myrrh.

Saturday, 11 September. Grab coffee. Get started with Writing Place, or Characters in Action.

After lunch, Write People like a Profiler.

Wrap it up with the whole package – Writing for the action sports world by nailing person to place to thing.

It’s not a tricky equation, once you have the tools.

How peppery is a pack of pickled poets?

Sugar and spice and all things nice? Not necessarily. There’s no need for poetry to be as saccharine as a Hallmark greeting card… especially when it’s written in the adrenaline-boosting, fat-free zone of Whistler, and inspired by a shot of fine Scotch.

To free up your Muse to be spicy and articulate, the poets are talking a long walk on the beach. Join them on Sunday. It’s free.

Speak to me of Aristotle

I dutifully crack open the spine of Annabel Lyon’s new novel, The Golden Mean. She’s coming to Whistler on Friday as part of the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival. Plus, she writes about Aristotle and I really should know something about one of the greatest thinkers in western civilisation.

Two sentences in, any sense of obligation is out the window. I am reading for pure pleasure, chasing my own curiosity through the annals of 350 BC, not stopping until I’m at page 284 and can close the book and turn off the light. Sure, it was a rainy Sunday. But if I had known that philosophy could be so muscular and bawdy and vigorous, I too would probably turn to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in times of trouble.

Lyon’s novel has been praised for its brilliance and its intellectual depth, and deservedly so. But such words suggested to me a dense tome that might bring on faint headaches from the effort. The Golden Mean had the opposite effect. It was exhilarating to be transported so effortlessly to a long ago place and time, peopled by vaguely familiar characters – Aristotle, Plato, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great – who now skitter about vividly in my mind’s eye.

I spent the day in ancient Macedonia. And I can’t wait to get back.

Writers Fest says It’s Time For Whistler to Think Cinematically

EXT. LEGENDS HOTEL CREEKSIDE/WHISTLER’S WRITER’S FESTIVAL – DAY

A CROWD clutching notebooks and lattés mills about. A YOUNG MAN approaches a distressed YOUNG WOMAN slumped against a stone pillar.

MAN

Hi, can I help you with something?

The woman rises to her full height and gestures towards the alpine.

WOMAN

Help? Can you tell me words to describe this beauty?

Can you silence my seven  roommates while I write?

Can you tell my parents that I’ve become a-a-a-

Uncomfortable with her intensity, the man carefully backs away.

WOMAN

(horrified stage whisper)
A Canadian screenwriter!

<SFX: ACCELERATING HARLEYS> Two women squeal up on motorbikes: it’s REBECCA WOOD BARRETT and CINDY FILIPENKO. The crowd FREEZES.

REBECCA WOOD BARRETT

Screenwriting? We can help with that!

The offer of help sends a murmur through the crowd.

CROWD WALLA
What will they teach us?/ One does cartoons, apparently./

Wonder if they know anyone at the CBC?

WOOD BARRETT pulls a rolled-up copy of WHISTLER WRITER’S FESTIVAL PROGRAM from the bike’s saddlebag. She smacks it against her open palm.

REBECCA WOOD BARRETT

It’s all here in the program the details
of festivals two screenwriting workshops.

CINDY FILIPENKO

I’m doing kids’ TV at 1 o’clock on Saturday.
Sept. 12, and Woodsy is giving a workshop on How To Write a One Page Screenplay later that day at 4 pm.

The CROWD CHEERS wildly. The women exchange pleased looks.

REBECCA WOOD BARRETT

To Citta’s! Our work here is done!

And your work, aspiring screenwriters, is just beginning.  Get your ducks in a row for the Whistler Film Festival with a crash course in screenwriting this weekend.

It’s Official. Book-art is a Trend.

The latest darling for designers is the book.

Following up on earlier posts about large-scale sculptures made from books, we stumbled upon a feature in Elemente magazine, showcasing various innovations in the world of interior design. From book-shelves to vases to table-lamps, those remaindered books are getting new life.

UK designer Not Tom pulled some books out of the trash at the end of a jumble sale. Dutch designer Bom makes reading lamps from old books.  UK design grad, Laura Cahill, is making lamp stands and reading stools from old books.  (Just the perfect place for kicking back with the e-reader…)

Haiku Idol Wants You to Slam a Few Choice Words Around

Inspired by the Calgary 1988 Olympics, the home of the 2010 Games is about to play host to a contest that organisers worry might get out of control.

After all, the stakes don’t get any higher for a poet than when there’s a chance to get paid.

Haiku Idol debuts in Whistler on Saturday September 12 2009, to mark the 6 month countdown to the 2010 Winter Olympics.

The live, high-speed, poetry-writing contest  involves one bag of money, one thesaurus, and 20 writers ranging from the celebrated to the obscure, who will test their mettle, with hopefully, a minimum of spittle, when they’re given one torn-out page from the thesaurus, one pencil, one notebook and one half hour as everyone else heads to the bar, to scribe a poem, of any length and any style.

When the bell rings, its pencils down and mikes up, as they take the spotlight to read, and reveal what the crucible created. The winner takes the money, and runs.

Due to limited seating, potential poetry-slammers and audience members are advised to purchase their tickets in advance at www.theviciouscircle.ca.

The Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, September 11-13 2009 presents He Read, She Read: The Battle of the Book Clubs, followed by Haiku Idol, Saturday September 12, 7:30pm, Players Chophouse, Whistler Creekside, $25

Whistler writer Sara Leach creates a kid-hero in Jake Reynolds

To those who agree with the old adage “those who can do, and those who can’t teach”, I present my rebuttal. Sara Leach.

She can. She does. And she teaches.

The Whistler-based elementary school teacher-librarian is about to launch her debut children’s novel with Orca Book Publishers, Jake Reynolds: Chicken or Eagle. (The book will launch at Kidsbooks in Vancouver on October 15.)

In the novel, eleven year old Jake Reynolds has to deal with his braver and cooler best friend Emily, the wolf that he suspects is stalking Hidalgo Island, and the reality that he might just be too chicken to be the hero of Hidalgo.

The book was born more than seven years ago, when Leach and her husband were walking on the beach and saw a seal pup lying on a boulder that poked out of the water. “As we watched,” Sara says, “an eagle almost managed to scoop it up and eat it for lunch, but the seal pup got away just in time. My husband turned to me and said, ‘You should write a story about two kids on an island like this. Imagine all the adventures they could have’.  But the time we had walked home, Jake and Emily had started to take shape in my head.”

Leach is also about to publish a children’s picture book illustrated by Steven Corvelo called Mountain Machines.

On Saturday September 12, at the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, she will offer up the inside scoop to aspiring children’s book writers, with her 2.5 hour interactive workshop on Writing for Children. Covering everything from what makes a good children’s book, to how to navigate the publishing gauntlet, Leach is an inspiring example of Whistler’s creative can-do. (and teach.)

Hottest tickets in town – sweet trifecta of Shane Koyczan, the Battle of the Bookclubs and Haiku Idol

Shane Koyczan is the icing. Listen.

This is what the experience of poetry is meant to feel like.

Pam Barnsley explains in today’s Pique why this is a show you shouldn’t miss.

Koyczan anchors the all-star line-up at this year’s Whistler Readers and Writers Festival on Saturday, September 12, at Players Chophouse.

The self-confessed nerd from Penticton is the first poet from outside the US to win the USA Individual National Poetry Slam.

Get your tickets, chillun’. Sometimes, the day must be seized… must not be allowed to slip-slide away.

Writer-in-residence takes up lodging in Heathrow Airport

Philosopher/writer Alain de Botton has moved into the airport at Heathrow as part of a marketing initiative that aims to humanise the bad-press-besieged Terminal 5.

The collaboration is turning the airport into a meeting place between the corporate sector and the creative sector – with de Botton being paid an undisclosed sum and granted full creative freedom to write stories that will be compiled into a book and given away to travellers.

Heathrow says it is the first airport to employ a writer-in-residence, but in-house writers have been adopted by institutions from prisons, shopping malls and football teams to London’s ritzy Savoy Hotel.

This fall, the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival hosts its third and fourth writers-in-residence, husband-and-wife authors Wayne Grady and Merilyn Simonds. They’ll hunker down at historic Alta Lake house for several months, first leading workshops for 20 participants in the residency program, and then, working on their own writing.

The Vicious Circle though, inspired by the Heathrow project, is looking at taking the writer-in-residence program to new heights. Anyone want to live on top of Whistler Mountain? Inspiration is pretty much guaranteed.

Pencils Ready! Time to pick a course, any course…

Nibble away at different hors d’oevres, or sit down for a multi-course masterpiece… Regardless of your style - graze or slow-feast , sharpen your pencils and chopsticks and pick and scribble your way through  the brain-bounty of the 8th annual Whistler Readers and Writers Festival.

Writers, get ready, there's a brainstorm coming... picking up passengers, coast to coast...