BIOGRAPHIES: Festival 2009 ~ NOV 12 - 15
Winona Baker
Winona Baker was international grand prizewinner of the Foreign Minister's Prize in the 1989 haiku contest celebrating the 300th anniversary of Basho's most famous work, "Oko no Hosomichi". She has written six books: Not So Scarlet A Woman, Clouds Empty Themselves, Moss-Hung Trees, Beyond the Lighthouse, Even a Stone Breathes, and The Slough: A Prairie Childhood. Baker has won humor, free verse, and sonnet contests and has had her poems included in over 80 anthologies in North America, New Zealand, Japan, and Europe, including The Norton Haiku Anthology. She is a member of the League of Canadian Poets and the North American, European, and Japanese Haiku Associations.
http://www.poets.ca/linktext/direct/baker.htm
Christian Bök
Christian Bök is the author not only of Crystallography, a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, but also of Eunoia, a bestselling work of experimental literature which won the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. Bök has created artificial languages for two television shows: Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. Bök has also earned many accolades for his virtuoso performances of sound poetry (particularly the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters). His conceptual artworks (which include books built out of Rubik’s cubes and Lego bricks) have appeared at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City as part of the exhibit Poetry Plastique. Bök is currently a Professor of English at the University of Calgary.
Marilyn Bowering
Marilyn Bowering is a Canadian writer who has received many awards for poetry including the Pat Lowther Award, the Dorothy Livesay Prize, and several National Magazine Awards. Her work has twice been nominated for the Governor General's Prize. She was a recent Fulbright Scholar at New York University. Recognition for Marilyn Bowering's fiction includes the Ethel Wilson Prize, designation of Notable Book by the New York Times, and short-listing for the worldwide Orange Prize. Her most recent books are Green (poetry) and What It Takes To Be Human (novel).
http://www.marilynbowering.com
Pat Braden
Pat Braden brings to the stage a variety of musical styles, rooted in his early days playing electric and string bass with high-school concert and big bands, community choral and theatre productions, jazz, blues, rock, and country bands. Since then, he’s worked with everyone from bluesmen to Métis fiddlers, folksingers to throat singers. In addition to his bass skills, he writes, records, and performs on the Chapman Stick, a guitar/bass hybrid that allows him to play lead, rhythm, and bass parts simultaneously. He has released five CDs, and his latest, the live recording A Place to Call Home, is a musical journey through northern landscapes and realities that’s as expansive and captivating as the northern lights.
http://www.myspace.com/patrickbraden
Bufflehead
Ornithologists know the bufflehead as a small, elegant, and somewhat comical duck that’s frequently seen in Gabriola’s winter waters. Bufflehead, the band, is an equally singular breed: a group of spur-of-the-moment improvisers who can jump with ease from Balinese melodies to Middle Eastern beats to free-jazz freak-outs. Individually, multi-instrumentalists Andreas Kahre, Mark Parlett, and Alex Varty have studied with Miles Davis bandmates, rejigged Igor Stravinsky scores, and jammed with Randy Bachman; together, they’re ready for anything the West Coast’s wildest open-mike nights can throw their way.
Drek Daa
Drek Daa is an award-winning poet, songwriter, CBC columnist, arts organizer, academic, and psychotherapist. He arrived in Canada from Poland in 1990, when he enrolled in his first ESL course. He did not leave school until 2006, when he received his PhD in Psychology from Simon Fraser University. Drek started writing poetry in English in 2000, and since then has performed his poetry in all imaginable venues, winning, among other honors, the title of Canadian Individual Performance Poetry Co-Champion at the 2004 Canadian Spoken Wordlympics Festival. He was a subject of a 2004 full-length CBC documentary, and was Poet of Honour at the 2007 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Halifax. From 2005 to 2007, he was a weekly columnist for CBC Radio One as Drek Daa: That Polish Guy. Drek spent 2008 away from the stage and wrote a full-feature poetic film script, Paper Heart. In 2009 he was commissioned by the Poetry Gabriola Society to be a part of Canada Speaks: New Literary Performance Works By Twelve Canadian Artists.
http://www.thecyrk.ca http://www.myspace.com/drekdaa
Sandy Duncan
Sandy Frances Duncan has lived on Gabriola for 20-plus years. She is the author of 10 novels for adults and young adults, and has published poetry, essays, and short stories. She co-editied (f)Lip, a journal of feminist writing, and Witness to Wilderness; The Clayoquot Sound Anthology. Her writing has been included in many anthologies. Sandy’s latest literary endeavour is Never Sleep With a Suspect on Gabriola Island, the first of a mystery series co-authored with George Szanto.
Paul Dutton
Paul Dutton is a poet, novelist, essayist, and oral sound artist who is internationally renowned for both his literary and musical performances. Throughout four decades he has published, recorded, and performed his work in various contexts, solo and collaborative, in print and film, on TV, radio, and the Web. He has taken his art to festivals, clubs, concert halls, and classrooms throughout Canada and across the United States, Europe, and South America.
Dutton’s artistic focus continues to be the exploration of consciousness and perception through the creation of multisensory works, employing written poetry and prose, visual poetry, and the sonic dimensions of language and oral expression.
He was a member of the legendary Four Horsemen poetry-performance quartet (1970–1988), along with Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Steve McCaffery, and the late bpNichol. He joins his soundsinging oralities to John Oswald’s alto sax and Michael Snow’s piano and synthesizer in the free-improvisation band CCMC (1989 to the present). He recently formed Quintet à Bras in company with two French poets and two French instrumentalists. The most recent of his six books is a novel, Several Women Dancing (Mercury Press, 2002), and the latest of his five solo recordings is the CD Oralizations (DAME Records, 2005).
Easy Writers
Nine Vancouver Island residents make up this eclectic, dynamic group. Poets, prose-writers, performers of monologues, storytellers, and satirists—they all share a love for the written and spoken word. Easy Writers are John Beaton, Dianne Clarence, David Fraser, Harvey Jenkins, Judith Millar, Mary Ann Moore, Cindy Shantz, Patricia Smekal, and Fran Thiessen. These nine intrepid men and women are all published writers and practiced performers who promise to keep an audience enthralled.
http://www.ascentaspirations.ca/onesweetride.htm
Tanya Evanson
Tanya Evanson is an Antiguan-Québecoise lover, writer, poet, vocalist, dancer, teacher, and director of Mother Tongue Media—a griotte living in Vancouver, B.C. Since 1995, her live performances have fused poetry, storytelling, rap, and song in five languages. She often works with musicians and has performed extensively across Canada, with highlights including the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and the Vancouver International Storytelling Festival. She has released two spoken-world music CDs, Invisible World (2004) and The Memorists (2008), and is featured as writer and performer in the award-winning videopoem Almost Forgot my Bones (2004). As Mother Tongue Media, she has hosted and produced multimedia events in Vancouver, including the Tales of Ordinary Madness spoken-word series, the Under the Griot Tree Black History Month Festival, and Trans-Metaphoria Black Poetics. She is also a student of Sufism and a whirling dervish. In 2004, she moved to Istanbul, Turkey where she lived for four years, and has performed as a whirling dervish across Europe. She attempts to combine all her experiences into one.
http://www.mothertonguemedia.com
The Fugitives
The Fugitives are a group of multi-instrumentalists, songwriters, poets, and novelists based out of Vancouver. The core of the ensemble includes Brendan McLeod, Adrian Glynn, and Barbara Adler. Though they each have burgeoning solo careers, having won individual accolades as diverse as the Canadian SLAM poetry championship, the CBC poet laureate, and a place in the Peak Performance songwriting series, their primary focus lies in banding together to integrate their sensibilities into a dynamic mix of modern folk. The Fugitives’ last release, In Streetlight Communion, was nominated for a 2007 Canadian Folk Music Award for pushing the boundaries of contemporary folk. They’ve returned with a five-song EP, Find Me, to be followed by a full-length release in March of 2010.
http://www.fugitives.ca
Antony Holland
Acting in live theatre has been Antony’s major passion since he was 12 years old. Over the many years that followed, he has won numerous awards for his work and his tireless promotion of theatre in BC. He created the much acclaimed acting school in Vancouver, Studio 58. In 2007, he won the Jessie award for outstanding performance by an actor in a lead role, for his portrayal of Morrie in Tuesdays with Morrie at the Vancouver Arts Club. His main occupation these days is running his own studio on Gabriola Island, B.C., where he has created a uniquely stripped-down style of theatre, which has been very successful with Gabriola audiences. Antony believes that were this style of theatre adopted more widely, actors and audiences would reap the benefits—more employment for actors, and more good plays for audiences at a price that makes theatre far more accessible than it is today.
Wanda Collins Johnson
Wanda Collins Johnson, a registered teacher of Hatha Yoga with further training in Yin Yoga, offers Yoga for Writers & Illustrators. She began her journey in yoga with varied symptoms related to an old whiplash injury, but then fell in love with the practice, finding that yoga opened not only the body but the heart, mind, and intuition--powerful resources for art and writing. A native of Tennessee, she enjoys painting outside, morning sun salutations, and writing about life in the woods. For more information about Wanda or to read her blog about yoga, art, and writing, please visit her website,
http://wandacollinsjohnson.com
Sheila Norgate
Sheila Norgate is an interdisciplinary artist, which just means she does a lot of different things, sometimes at the same time, although not necessarily. She is a painting, writing, dog-crazy feminist who sometimes worries whether there will be enough room left in her life for all the passions she wishes to entertain.
Norgate makes her home on Gabriola, where she practices letting herself go.
http://sheilanorgate.com
Alexis O’Hara
Alexis is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Montreal. Her practice exploits an intermingling of vocal exploration, live electronic improvisation, dark cabaret humor, video, and installation. From 1998 to 2000, she produced a monthly event that combined a poetry slam and a bring-your-own art auction. In 2001, she released a book of poetry entitled (more than) Filthy Lies; and in 2002, her first album, In Abulia (Grenadine Records). Several mini-CDs followed. In 2003, she began an exploration of interactive documentary performance with the project Subject to Change, followed by The Sorrow Sponge. Her eclectic performances have been presented in a variety of contexts, from spoken word to live art festivals, new music symposiums to "women & technology" events in Slovenia, Austria, Mexico, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, and across Canada and the US. In 2009, she accepts the challenge launched by artist Dayna McLeod and is producing one video a week (www.52pickupvideos.com). Alexis is presently at work on her second album. Tour dates and other info can be found at http://www.dyslex6.com and http://www.myspace.com/alexisohara
Evalyn Parry
Evalyn Parry is an award-winning, multidisciplinary creator/performer based in Toronto. As a spoken-word artist and songwriter she is known for her outrageous humour, poignant storytelling, and charged social commentary. She has released three critically acclaimed CDs, most recently Small Theatres on Borealis Records. With her theatre company, The Independent Aunties, she has co-authored and performed five plays, including the Dora-nominated Breakfast (Theatre Centre), and Clean Irene & Dirty Maxine (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre). She is an associate artist at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, where she directs and mentors the Queer Youth Arts Program. In the new year, Evalyn will be touring her new show Spin, a music-and-spoken-word-cycle which explores the connections between bicycles, women, and advertising. She is also excited to be part of the Poetry Gabriola project Canada Speaks through Poetry Gabriola.
http://www.evalynparry.com
Radio After Dark
Established in 2004 by Antonio Gradanti and Bill Miner, Radio After Dark captures the essence of old-time radio by recreating the classic shows of the 1930s and 1940s, complete with live sound effects, period costumes, and the occasional hilarious blooper. Along with Miner and Gradanti, the ensemble now includes multi-instrumentalist Tina Jones (of the Tina Jones Band and the Kerplunks) and former Devil Doll and cabaret artist Kathy McIntyre. Since 2007 Radio After Dark has produced original scripts written by Bill Miner that weave fictional and historical characters together, using the Gulf Islands and Nanaimo as their backdrop, combining dark humour, plot twists and outstanding performances. Most recently, the Radio After Dark crew premiered another original script at the Gabriola Theatre Festival to a sold out and appreciative audience.
Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry
Edited by Mona Fertig and Harold Rhenisch, Rocksalt fetures new and previously unpublished poetry and poetics from 108 BC poets. Dynamic and groundbreaking, the first anthology of contemporary BC poetry in 31 years reveals an eclectic mix of new, mid-career, and established BC poets writing in a rich variety of styles. Reading at the Gabriola launch will be Shauna Paull, David Fraser, Yvonne Blomer, Kim Goldberg, Christopher Levenson, Jen Currin, Danielle Walker, David Swanson, Catherine Greenwood, D.C. Reid, and Michael Kenyon.
http://www.mothertonguepublishing.com/rocksalt
Suitcase Local
Suitcase Local is both an ensemble and a full-length performance piece, with the band being audio poet (and Poetry Gabriola Festival artistic director) Hilary Peach, percussionist Andreas Kahre, and guitarist Alexander Varty. Individually, all three have had extensive careers in the performing and literary arts: Peach as a writer, recording artist, consultant, and arts activist; Kahre as a drummer, theorist, set- and sound-designer, magazine editor, and paper-theatre enthusiast; Varty as a touring guitarist, music curator, editor, and journalist. In Suitcase Local, the show, the three employ their diverse abilities to animate a "folk opera" that takes a hilarious, horrific, and occasionally otherworldly look at a Canadian woman’s experiences working as an industrial welder in the USA.
http://www.hilarypeach.com
George Szanto
George Szanto’s first novel, Not Working (1982) is the story of a big-city cop turned rural househusband. Sixteen Ways to Skin a Cat (1978) and Duets (1989) try to bring some anarchy to an overly structured universe. Friends & Marriages (1995) follows several interconnected characters over two decades. The Underside of Stones (2004), part one of the trilogy The Conquests of Mexico, is the story of a Canadian who lives a year in Mexico and finds his life and beliefs progressively subverted; part two, Second Sight (2004), exposes the realms of Mexican wealth and politics; part three, The Condesa of M. (2005), explores Mexico’s darker religious underworld. With Sandy Frances Duncan he is presently writing a detective series, Islands Investigations International. Never Sleep with a Suspect on Gabriola Island, came out this year; the second, Always Kiss the Corpse on Whidbey Island, will be published next year.
http://www.georgeszanto.com
K. Louise Vincent
K. Louise Vincent’s most recent book of poetry is The Discipline of Undressing (Leaf Press) shortlisted for the ReLit Award. Her book, Transforming Abuse: Nonviolence Resistance and Recovery (New Society) is used in many countries around the world. Other poetry publications include Hannah and the Holy Fire (Oolichan), numerous chapbooks and various collaborations within community and literary journals. These days she’s working on a book of fictional essays tilted The Liquid Art of Unlocking. K. Louise lives on Gabriola Island.
Naomi Beth Wakan
Naomi Beth Wakan has written or compiled over 30 books including Images of Japan (Pacific-Edge Publishing) and Haiku: one breath poetry (Heian International). The latter book was a choice of the Canadian Children's Book Centre and was also selected by the American Library Association for its 2001 catalogue of Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults. Her book of poetry, Segues, was published by Wolsak and Wynn in the Spring of 2005. Recent books of poetry and essays include Late Bloomer: On Writing Later in Life, and Compositions: Notes on the Written Word. She will have a new book out with them Spring 2010, Book Ends. Her writing workshops, Late Bloomers, aim to inspire and empower the older writer. Naomi is a member of Haiku Canada, Tanka Canada, and the League of Canadian Poets. Her poetry and essays have been read on CBC, and have been printed in numerous magazines including Geist, Room of One's Own, Moonset, and Resurgence. She lives on Gabriola Island, B.C. with her husband, the sculptor Elias Wakan.
http://www.naomiwakan.com