At Words on the Water tonight and tomorrow, contemporary writers and readers meet in a beautiful west coast setting. Tonight offers a stimulating mediated panel discussion and a brief glimpse at all of our writers.
On Saturday you can attend individual annotated readings with each guest author. Sessions are 45 minutes and writers often allow time for questions.
The Literary Cabaret on Saturday provides all the components necessary for an entertaining and stimulating evening: readings, music, and good food. Socializing with the writers and other like-minded readers is a key rewarding element of the festival.
- Ticket info:
Weekend Passes – $ 85.
Individual Session Passes:
Friday Night – $20.
Saturday Sessions – $20 per session
Saturday Night – $20.
Shane Koyczan
In a world where poets rarely intersect with stardom, the Opening Ceremonies for the 2010 Winter Olympics introduced us to Shane Koyczan. Shane Koyczan is both a writer and spoken word virtuoso. His first published collection, Visiting Hours, was the only work of poetry selected by both the Guardian and the Globe and Mail for their Best Books of the Year lists in 2005. Destined to become a future classic, Visiting Hours is now in its third edition, and includes We Are More, the powerful and moving poem that defindefine itself, originally commissioned by the Canadian Tourism Commission.
Patricia Robertson
Patricia Robertson’s most recent book is The Goldfish Dancer: Stories and Novellas. Her work has been nominated for the B.C. Book Prizes, the Journey Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the National Magazine Awards (three times). She was also recently named as one of the top forty Canadian short story writers of the twentieth century.
Born in the UK, she grew up in Canada and received her MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She now lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she teaches creative writing at Yukon College. She is the 2010-2011 Writer-in-Residence at the Haig-Brown House in Campbell River.
Kevin Chong
Kevin Chong is the author of a novel, Baroque-a-Nova, published by Penguin in 2001 and received an honourable mention in the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, a non-fiction book called Neil Young Nation published by Greystone in 2005 that was named a book of the year by the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and the Ottawa Citizen, and a forthcoming memoir about horse-racing, also by Greystone.
He teaches part-time at UBC and as a book reviewer, fiction writer, journalist has published in the Walrus, Chatelaine, Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail, Vancouver Magazine, Geist, Descant, Maisonneuve, and others.
Extend the Festival
Who: Myrna Kostash, former writer-in-residence at Haig-Brown House, former participant at the Wors on the Water, in town to attend the festival.
What: Free reading from her newest book, Prodigal Daughter A Journey to Byzantium.
Where: Still Water Books and Art.
When: Sunday, March 13, 7 p.m.
