Sunday December 7, 2008

Before Christmas completely obliterates Canadian brain cells, Lit Live gives you five more brushes with literary grandeur on December 7th. Please click on the links to the right for more info on each writer. (Or scroll down this page.) And remember, 7:30 p.m. is show time!

Wesley Bates gives us the inside story with his memoir In Black and White from Gaspereau Press.

Sally Cooper reads excerpts of her new novel Tell Everything, from Dundurn Press.

Elaine Kalman Naves presents her biography Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature, published by Vehicule Press.

Margaret Christakos reads from her latest poetry collection What Stirs, from Coach House Books.

Kyle Buckley delves into The Laundromat Essays, published by Coach House Books.

Wesley Bates

Wesley Bates was born in the Yukon and raised in Saskatchewan. He now lives in Clifford, Ontario, where he runs West Meadow Press. Known primarily as a wood engraver, Bates’ work has been commissioned by numerous publishers, including Penguin, Random House, McClelland & Stewart, The Porcupine’s Quill and Gaspereau Press.

In Black & White is Bates’ account of his career as a freelance illustrator. Beginning with his earliest inspirations in the pages of books browsed in childhood, Bates recalls his first set of wood-engraving tools, his first and subsequent commissions, becoming established in the Hamilton arts scene, and his collaboration with friends and acquaintances in the private press and publishing communities. He tells the stories behind several book projects and commissioned works, including illustrating W.O. Mitchell’s The Black Bonspiel of Willie McCrimmon for McClelland & Stewart, George Elliott Clarke’s award-winning Execution Poems for Gaspereau Press and the lasting friendship that developed in the process of illustrating the work of American poet and essayist Wendell Berry.

Sally Cooper

Sally Cooper grew up in Inglewood, Ontario, population 400. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Guelph, and has published widely in such places as Shift, Blood & Aphorisms, Carousel, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and eye weekly. Her first novel, Love Object, came out in 2002 to critical acclaim. She wrote her second novel, Tell Everything, with the support of The Canada Council for the Arts and The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. She lives and writes in Hamilton, Ontario.

Elaine Kalman Naves

Elaine Kalman Naves was born in Budapest, Hungary, and immigrated to Canada in 1959 as a child. She attended McGill and Bishop’s Universities, and worked as an editor and researcher at the Centre d’Etude de Québec during the 1970s. She now writes a book column and literary features for the Montreal Gazette and also freelances widely. Naves is the author of a work of narrative non-fiction entitled Journey to Vaja: Reconstructing the World of a Hungarian-Jewish Family and a collection of biographical sketches of prominent Montreal authors called The Writers of Montreal. She is also the editor of two scholarly works in Canadian history. Her latest book is Robert Weaver: Godfather of Canadian Literature. This book is about the noted Canadian literary critic who died in early 2008. Naves created a two-part series for CBC Radio One last February on Weaver’s life and work.

Margaret Christakos

Margaret Christakos is a poet and fiction writer living in Toronto whose work has shown consistent interest in recombinant poetics, process writing and seriality. She has published six collections of poetry and one novel, and has given readings and seminars from her work since 1989. Her book Excessive Love Prostheses was awarded the 2003 ReLit Award for Poetry. ARC Magazine wrote of her 2005 collection Sooner: “So much to praise here: the writing is rich with fresh, startling urban imagery; the shifts of register and tone keep the reader on his or her toes; the handling of the disjunctive narrative/lyric line keep the poems kinetic yet filled with tension, restless, questing.”

Christakos has worked as a literary educator in various contexts over many years: Presently, she is part of the U. of T. School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program, where she teaches creative writing and facilitates the lecture/reading series “Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon.”

Kyle Buckley

Kyle Buckley lives and writes in Toronto. He studied at York and the University of Calgary, and has taught creative writing at Ryerson University. He currently works at Type Books in Toronto and is a member of the Scream Literary Festival executive. He is a past winner of the now-defunct Queen Street Quarterly poetry contest. The Laundromat Essay is his first book.