Friday, February 17, 2012

March Declares Its Winners

On Sunday March 4th -- in addition to the stellar threesome of poets we've booked for you -- we'll be presenting the winning stories from the Creative Keyboards competition, that annual race to the heavens that is sponsored by the Hamilton Arts Council.

Maureen Hynes will read from Marrow, Willow, her latest collection of poems, recently released by Pedlar Press.

Shane Neilson presents selections from Gunmetal Blue, his at-times-painful, but always lyrically honest memoir, published by Palimpsest Press.

David Haskins reads from poetry, published and new. Also, if we're lucky, we'll hear some of his fiction too.

Maureen Hynes

Maureen Hynes's first book of poetry, Rough Skin (Wolsak and Wynn), won the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry. Her second collection, Harm's Way, was published by Brick Books, and her third, Marrow, Willow, arrived in April, 2011 from Pedlar Press in Toronto. She is a winner of the Petra Kenney Poetry Prize (London, England), and her poem, "The Last Cigarette" was chosen for the anthology Best Canadian Poems 2010, edited by Lorna Crozier. Hynes' poem, "The Poison Colour" was longlisted for the same collection for 2011. Maureen is the poetry editor for Our Times magazine.

Shane Neilson

Shane Neilson is a physician who practices Family Medicine in Erin, Ontario. He has published two poetry collections, Mensicus and Complete Physical, the latter of which was nominated for a 2011 Trillium Award. In 2010 he won Arc's Poem of The Year contest. Gunmetal Blue is his second nonfiction book, his first being a collection of essays entitled Call Me Doctor.

David Haskins

David Haskins has published poetry and fiction in over thirty literary journals (Windsor Review, Fiddlehead, Canadian Forum, Journal of Canadian Fiction), anthologies (Saving Bannister, Voices from the Niagara), and books (Canadian Children’s Annual, The Fruits of Experience, This Little Light of Mine). His earlier poems are collected in his book Reclamation (Borealis Press, 1980). He has won first prizes from the CBC Short Story Competition, the Canadian Authors Association (Niagara), the Ontario Poetry Society, and Arts Hamilton. Haskins emigrated to Canada from England at the age of eight. His teaching career spans 35 years, in secondary schools as Department Head of English, for Brock University College of Education, and as author and teacher for the Ontario Ministry of Education. He is currently preparing two books of recent poems and memoir stories, and a fantasy young adult novel. He lives on the shores of Lake Ontario, and drives a red 1970 MGB on top-down days.

Creative Keyboards Winning Stories!

On Sunday, March 4th, we'll announce -- and hear -- the winning stories in the Creative Keyboards competition, sponsored by The Hamilton Arts Council. The readers who will grace our stage and read these stories will be announced in this space, in a few Internet minutes . . .