Book Room catch-up: Margoshes and Lynes

It's been a busy spring so far. Lots of arts funding, travelling, meeting, interviewing, editing and writing.

Two Book Room audio interviews and readings have been published on the web since I last loaded one here on this blog, so let's catch up, shall we?

A little less than a month ago, I spent a couple of lovely, warm days in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan - the Paris of the Prairies. I was there to meet with other literature funders from across the country at the Canadian Public Arts Funders (CPAF) literature conference. It was my pleasure to facilitate a session featuring three fascinating and brilliant women discussing the future of Canadian writing and publishing:

Rita Bouvier, Métis poet and educator, community-learning facilitator, researcher/writer; Cynthia Good, Director of Creative Book Publishing at Humber College and former president and publisher of Penguin Books; and, Giuseppina D’Agostino, Associate Professor of Law, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University and Deputy Editor, Intellectual Property Journal.

When not facilitating or meeting, I sampled the local food, read some local chapbooks, took in some local art and interviewed a couple of local(ish) authors.

Longtime prairie-man (though born in Brooklyn), Dave Margoshes stopped by my glorious river-view hotel room to talk about his life as a writer and his new novel, A Book of Great Worth:



Dave then read a selection from A Book of Great Worth:



Later, poet, novelist and coordinator of the University of Saskatchewan's brand new MFA in Writing program, Jeanette Lynes, stopped by the room, and we chatted about her 2009 Giller-nominated novel The Factory Voice:



And, of course, Ms. Lynes then favoured me, and the Book Room's resident wild puma, Mordecai, with a reading from her very enjoyable book:



Remember, if you are enjoying your visits to The Book Room, you can subscribe to the podcast through iTunes. It's free - free as in free beer; not as in free culture.

Of course, while all that was going on, Canada's struggling writers and publishers continued the defence of their rights under copyright against increasingly absurd and obnoxious attacks from well-paid free-culture theorists angered by a recent responsible behaviour trend on campus.

A puma's work is never done.

 
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