2011 Events Schedule

Opening Reception — Reading and Discussion with Kim Echlin
Friday, June 3
Room 2-922, Enterprise Square
10230 Jasper Avenue
5–7 pm
Free and open to the public
Ontario-based author Kim Echlin will give a reading from her latest novel, The Disappeared, which was nominated for the Giller Prize in 2009. She will talk about the process of writing this novel, including travel in Cambodia, research on international truth commissions, and the relationship between literature and the act of witness.
Performing Your Words: Student Readings over Lunch

Tuesday–Friday, June 7–10
Room 2-957, Enterprise Square
10230 Jasper Avenue
12:20—1:20 pm 
Readings open to the public


Attend mini-tutorials that will teach you how to become more comfortable and skillful performers of your words. Develop comfort inhabiting the performance space. Participants will then have the opportunity to hear each others' work—always a highlight of the program.

Women’s Words Fantastic Faculty Readings
Tuesday, June 8
 The Artery
9535 Jasper Avenue
Doors open 7 pm, readings commence at 7:30 pm
$5 per person— Open to the public
Organized by Greenwoods’ Bookshoppe and Calgary Spoken Word Society.Tickets available at Greenwoods Books (7925 104 Street, 780.439.2005) or at the door. Cash bar available.

Dinner & Panel: Women & writing: right on track… or backtracking?

Thursday, June 9
Saskatchewan Room, Faculty Club, U of A
11435 Saskatchewan Drive
Panel discussion: 7 pm (free and open to the public)
Buffet dinner: 5:30—6:30 pm ($25 per person - call 780-492.3116 to register with a credit card, or include a separate cheque for $25 with your workshop registration).
 

 

It started with a protest letter to The New Yorker, against the lack of women’s bylines in its issues. Soon the organization VIDA – Women in Literary Arts – followed with a dismaying tally comparing the presence of men and women writers on the pages of American magazines. Then the bomb exploded all over: online on hundreds of blogs, making headlines in print on The Village Voice and such, or in Canadian airspace as CBC’s The Sunday Edition ran a one-hour segment broaching the issue. The numbers are loud and clear. The New Yorker – the original bone of contention – turned out not to be so bad, with “only” 73% of its pages occupied by men in 2010. A tame result, compared to worst offenders like Harper’s Magazine (79%) or the champion The New York Review of Books (85%).

Be it blip or tendency, American-only or widespread, this startling disappearing act of women’s writing calls for some straight talk on the state of gender issues in the writing and publishing world. To discuss the matter, we brought together a pioneer activist on opening spaces for women’s writing, seventy-something author Mary Woodbury; a university professor specializing in gender issues, writer and lecturer Janice Williamson; and an insider in the publishing industry, editor and rebel-with-a-cause Linda Goyette – all kept on a very short leash by our immoderate moderator, Calgary’s “Mama of Dada” and spoken-word extraordinaire Sheri-D Wilson.