Aqua Books: When The Killer Mutant Lizards Attack

As part of Best of Fest 2010, the Winnipeg Fringe hit When The Killer Mutant Lizards Attack, starring Brent Hirose, will be performed at Aqua Books on October 6.  

The play begins at 7:30 p. m. and runs to 8:30 p. m.

Tickets are $10.

The inevitable happened: 

The Killer Mutant Lizards attacked, decimated the city and mysteriously disappeared. 

The survivors resume their lives, but ask: Why? How? 

And... Will they return?

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Vigil for Murdered and Missing Aboriginal Women

Take part in the honouring vigil for Manitoba's missing and murdered women which is being held by the Legislative Building (in the back by the fountain) on Monday, October 4 from 7:00 p. m. to 8:30 p. m.

Please come out and support the families who have been impacted by a loved one being murdered or who has gone missing.

The event is being organized by Stop Violence Against Aboriginal Women Action Group (SVAAWAG).

For those who aren't in Winnipeg on October 4, there are vigils happening all across the country. 

Check out this list of 2010 Vigil Locations from NWAC of the Sisters in Spirit vigils being held coast to coast.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Aqua Books: Larry Desrochers, Columpa Bobb, Casimiro Nhussi, James Struthers

That's right!!  Aqua Books, at 274 Garry Street, is presenting 4 guests!!!

Something for everyone!!!

Come and see Kelly Hughes Live! on Friday, October 1, at 7:00 p. m.

Kelly will share the stage with Larry Desrochers (Manitoba Opera), Columpa Bobb (MTYP), Casimiro Nhussi (NAfro Dance) and Steven Schipper (MTC).

Music will be provided by James Struthers.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Aqua Books: Deborah Schnitzer

Aqua Books is pleased to be the permanent home of the poetry series Speaking Crow. 

The Crow starts at 7:00 p. m. and is followed by 2 open-mic sets and short breaks in between.  

Come take up the mic and wax poetic about life, the universe and everything!

On Tuesday, October 5, the featured reader is Deborah Schnitzer.

Deborah’s work appears in several anthologies, including Children of the Shoah: Holocaust Literature and Education and Dropped Threads.  

She co-edited Uncommon Wealth: An Anthology of Poetry in English and, with Debbie Keahey, The Madwoman in the Academy: Writing on the Tower, a gathering of women’s writing about graduate school, teaching and tenure. 

She has published 2 books of poetry, Black Beyond Blue and Loving Gertrude Stein, and also a novel, Gertrude Unmanageable. 

Her new book An Unexpected Break in the Weather is a novel of unconventional friendships in a Winnipeg neighbourhood. 

Schnitzer is a 3M Teaching Fellow in the English Department at the University of Winnipeg.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Paul Ullrich's The Bicycle Lesson in Bike Shorts

Local cartoonist/animator Paul Ullrich's latest cartoon The Bicycle Lesson will be featured as part of the Bike Shorts Film Festival to be held at Cinematheque, 100 Arthur Street.

The screenings will take place on September 27 and 28, from 7:00 p. m. to 10:00 p. m.

Doors will open at 6:00 p. m.  

Come early and see some art from the Push Pedal Stride Art Show in the lobby.

Tickets are $10 in advance, $12.50 at the door.

To reserve your tickets email Don English at donengl@mts.net 

The Bicycle Lesson, which has played at many festivals throughout North America, is based on a true story about a five year old boy’s first bicycle lesson, given to him by his older brother and sister, which goes terribly wrong.

The Bike Shorts Film Festival has been shown in a number of Canadian cities in the past 10 years, including Winnipeg in 2008 and 2009.  This is a new version with new films.

Planning to be in Calgary on Tuesday, October 19?

Why not plan to take in the Calgary Bike Shorts Film Festival to be held at John Dutton Theatre, Downtown Central Public (W.R. Castell) Library, from 7:00 to 9:15 p. m.

Tickets available on-line at www.bikecalgary.org

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Aqua Books: Stone Soup Storytellers

People in all times and places have told stories. 

Stone Soup storytelling happens with the participants passing the talking stick around.  If you want to tell a story, keep the stick.  If you just want to listen, pass it along. 

The Winnipeg Storytellers group, around since the early 80s, has some very experienced tellers.  But amateurs and listeners are always welcome. 

Since 2005, they have been meeting September through May at Aqua Books, on the second Friday of the month. 

All sessions start at 7:30 p. m., and are open to all, including children. 

Admission is free.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Diane Tye: Women's Recipe Collections as Autobiography

On Wednesday, September 29, Diane Tye will speak about her new book Baking as Biography.  A Life Story in Recipes. 

This book is a daughter's exploration of her mother's life as revealed through her baking.  

The talk will take place at the University of Winnipeg - Room 1L07.  It will run from 2:30 p. m. to 3:30 p. m.   

This event is free, open to all, and is presented by IWGS.

Diane Tye has a PhD in Folklore from Memorial University, where she has been teaching since 1995.  She is also a long time supporter and past coordinator of Memorial University’s Women’s Studies Program.

Diane has been an active member of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada for more than 20 years.  She is a past president of FSAC and presently serves as associate English language editor for the association’s journal Ethnologies.

She works across a number of folklore genres, including foodways, custom and narrative, and teaches courses in research methodology.  She has published on subjects from bachelorette parties to Christmas mummering, contemporary legend and cultural understandings of regionally iconic foods like molasses.  

Most of her research has been located in Atlantic Canada and much of it centres on the uses women make of folklore in their everyday lives. 

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Aqua Books: Laurie Block & Jess Woolford

Please come to Aqua Books on Friday, October 1, for a non-fictional/poetry evening featuring Laurie Block and Jess Woolford. 

While Brandon's Laurie Block has published 3 books of poetry.  The most recent, Time Out of Mind, took the Lansdowne Prize for Poetry 2007. 

Laurie Block’s non-fiction has been all over the nominee lists for the National Magazine Awards, Western Magazine Awards, and CBC Literary Awards the last few years.  His writing can also be found in anthologies and magazines.   

His stories have won the 2003 Prairie Fire Fiction Contest, the 2004 National Magazine Award for fiction and a 2008 Western Magazine Award. 

Jessica Woolford's poetry has appeared in A/Cross Sections: New Manitoba Writing, Artistry of Life, and CV2.

Her poem technique took second prize in CV2's 2004 Poetics of Space Contest.  An excerpt from Confinement: A Memoir of Abortion was featured in the Spring 2008 issue of Prairie Fire.  She has written about abortion and genocide for the journal Social Politics. 

Though she now lives in Winnipeg, she grew up in central Vermont, where she first began writing. 

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

WNDX Festival of Film and Video Art

You're all invited to tak part in WNDX's 5th anniversary!

The fun begins on September 30 and continues to October 3.

WNDX, a non profit organization, places special attention on the most innovative and ground-breaking work by Canadian filmmakers and video artists, with a special focus on the work of Manitoba and prairie artists. 

Jaimz and the programming committee - Cecilia Araneda, Irene Bindi, Jenny Bisch, Solomon Nagler and Heidi Phillips - consider all moving image art practices, including film, video, performance, installation and new media forms.  They celebrate the impetus to create in motion picture as a means of artistic expression and bring to the forefront works that may be overlooked by the mainstream.  

WNDX is a film festival that was created by filmmakers, in support of filmmakers.

Check out their website for the latest news. 

Any questions?  

Contact Festival Coordinator, Jaimz Asmundson, at info@wndx.org

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Aqua Books: Unequal Harvest

As part of Best of Fest 2010, the Winnipeg Fringe hit Unequal Harvest, starring Kami Desilets and Brent Hirose, will be performed at Aqua Books on September 29.  

The play begins at 7:30 p. m. and runs to 8:30 p. m.

Tickets are $10.

Playwright Geoff Hughes wrote Unequal Harvest to draw attention to the global food crisis. 

In the style of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, local artists Kami Desilets and Brent Hirose present 8 stories to explore how starvation affects people as close as your back yard and as far as the grasslands of Kenya. 

"...an urgent and compassionate call to understand the real lives and people behind the appalling statistic of a billion people going hungry,"  Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved.

They will provoke the activist in you.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

U of M Mediated Cities Atmosphere 2011

Every year the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Architecture hosts a symposium in the series Atmosphere.

They would like to invite proposals for academic papers, panels, presentations of film, video and other media, and creative works/public events in association with the symposium. 

A detailed Call for Proposals in both English and French is available at the symposium website. 

Deadline is Oct. 15.

Participants will be notified by the end of October. 

Creative projects are required to confirm a venue in writing by the end of November, 2010.

The event will take place February 3 to 5, 2011.

Confirmed guests include Edward Dimendberg, Daniel Doz, Janine Marchessault, Leonie Sandercock and Eunate Torres-Modrego.

These symposia explore the intangible dimensions of architecture and the city: those difficult to pin down, document, record with conventional instruments and methodologies.

Atmosphere 2011 will focus on Mediated Cities, the image of architecture, space, and place in cinema and other media.  There is a long history of "city films" which have portrayed the experience of modern urban life. 

Today that history is updated as cinema is supplemented by new forms of media: video, internet, portable media, and so on.  

These new forms of media emerge from and articulate shifts and developments in architecture and cities as well as global geographies, technologies and politics. 

They include imaginary as well as documentary narratives. They are also being incorporated, rapidly, into the practice of all design disciplines.

The symposium will be presented in partnership with the U of M Department of English, Film and Theatre, the Winnipeg Film Group and Video Pool.

Atmosphere is seeking funding to assist some participants to attend the symposium. 

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

90 Second Quickie Film Contest

Come join the Winnipeg Film Group for the screening of the submissions to the second annual 90 Second Quickie Film Contest.

It was designed to challenge filmmakers to create micro films.  All submitted films will be projected outside on the 35’ x 13’ high-resolution screen at the Media Panel at the corner of Portage and Main.

The screening will take place on Saturday, September 25, from 10:00 p. m. to 11:30 p. m.

It is part of Nuit Blanche, Winnipeg's Saturday Night Festival of the Arts as part of Culture Days, September 24 to 26.  

Bring your own chair and prepare to be entertained! 

• This contest is open to all Canadians interested in submitting a short film. 

• Prizes awarded including $300 First Place Cash Prize (provided by On Screen Manitoba)

Culture Days is a collaborative pan-Canadian volunteer movement to raise the awareness, accessibility, participation and engagement of all Canadians in the arts and cultural life of their communities.

For more information contact Monica Lowe 

at monica@winnipegfilmgroup.com 

or (204) 925-3452

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

FIRST FRIDAYS at Don Pedro’s

It's First Fridays time!! 

Crack out the sombreros! 

First Fridays are still happening  from 5:00 p. m. to 7:00 p. m. at Don Pedro's - Authentic Mexican Grill, 114 Market Avenue. 

Beginning in October, First Fridays will become an exclusive event to On Screen Manitoba and Winnipeg Film Group members. 

Non-members will be charged $10 at the door. 

WFG members please remember to bring your membership cards.

Guest of a member (one per member): $5 

SEE YOU THERE!

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

The Winnipeg Radical Book Fair

Meet local publishers at the annual Winnipeg Radical Book Fair September 25 and 26 at the Broadway Community Centre. 

Times:

September 25 - 11:00 a. m. to 5:00 p. m.

September 26 - 12:00 a. m. to 4:00 p. m.

Aside from a weekend of excellent workshops and a bevy of table vendors (including Fernwood, Mondragon, War on Music and many more) Fernwood authors Gord Hill, David Hugill, Elizabeth Comack and Nahanni Fontaine will be speaking. 

There'll be workshops, books, music and food.

So, I don’t think I need to tell you that you shouldn’t miss it. 

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Save Money, Help Animals

If someone in a yellow jacket rings your doorbell, please answer.

It could mean money-saving deals, a donation to The Winnipeg Humane Society and a chance to enter a draw for trip for 4 to Disneyland.

The package contains $370 of completely free gift certificates, including:

- A free pizza from Panago

- A free tax return from Liberty Tax Service

- A free pony ride and maze admission to Amaze in Corn

- A free 2 week pass to Shapes Fitness Centres

The price of the package is $25, of which $5 will be donated to The WHS.

Canvassing will run throughout the Fall.  The MediaScene team members will be wearing bright yellow jackets with WHS and MediaScene logos, as well as picture ID badges. 

The gift certificate packages are also available at The WHS Gift Shop, located at 45 Hurst Way.

To contact MediaScene’s campaign headquarters call 883-2812.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Winnipeg International Writers Festival

Winnipeg International Writers Festival welcomes: 

Sandra Birdsell at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People on Sept. 22 at 8:00 pm where she will be discussing Family Business with Sharon McCartney, Uma Parameswaran, Craig Francis Power and Michael Wex. 

On Sept. 23, Sandra will be at the Nooner at the Millennium Library at 12:15 p. m., and then on to the Portage la Prairie Regional Library at 7:00 p. m. 

On Sept. 24, she will be at Brandon University for a reading at 11:00 a. m. 

On Sept. 23 at 4:00 p. m. George Murray will be at the Downtown Red River College and on Sept. 24 at 2:30 p. m. at the University of Winnipeg in a panel with Sina Queryas. 

On Sept. 24 George will also be at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People at 8:00 p. m. for the Poetry Bash with Ariel Gordon, Nora Gould, Ignatius T. Mabasa, kevin mcpherson eckoff, and Sina Queryas.

Allan Stratton will be taking part in the School Program where he will be discussing his latest novel, Borderline, which looks at friendship in the face of racial profiling. 

The film based on Allan's novel Chanda’s Secrets is entered by South Africa as its official entry for the 2011 Academy Awards.  

Look for Judith Keenan on the Mainstage for Celebrating Paul Quarrington at the Manitoba Theatre for Young People on Sept. 25 at 8:00 p. m. 

Judith is Executive Producer of BookShorts Inc./BookShorts Literacy Program.  She produced her first video in 1994 and now has to her credit hundreds of video news features, 20 short films and an 8-episode national TV series.

With roots that go back to the late 1980s, Winnipeg’s irrepressible Aboriginal Writers Collective will be performing at the AfterWords at Aqua Books on Sept. 24 at 10:30 p.m. 

Come and meet Duncan Mercredi, Jordan Wheeler, Shayla Elizabeth, Maeengan Linklater, Marie Annharte Baker, Trevor Greyeyes, and Katherena Vermette.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

McNally Robinson: Ross King's Defiant Spirits

On Monday, September 20, from 7:30 p. m. to 9:00 p. m., you're invited to McNally Robinson Booksellers to see Governor General Award–winning author Ross King, author of Defiant Spirits, The Modernist Revolution of the Group of Seven.

He will be in conversation with Amy Karlinsky on the turbulent years during which a group of young Canadian painters went from obscurity to international renown. 

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Aqua Books: Soapbox Open Mic with Kerry Ryan

Every third Tuesday of the month, Aqua Books presents their open mic series, Soapbox, hosted by Kelly Hughes. 

Soapbox starts at 7:00 p. m. and consists of 2 open-mic sets and a short break in between.  This is Winnipeg's only cross-genre open mic series. 

Bring your fiction, memoirs, fragments, poetry, songs, and anything you've written for your 4 minutes of fame.

On September 21 Soapbox will feature Aqua Books' Writer-in-Residence, poet Kerry Ryan. 

Kerry Ryan's first collection of poetry, The Sleeping Life, was published in 2008 and nominated for the Aqua Lansdowne Prize for Poetry in 2009.  She has had poetry published in a number of journals, including Prairie Fire, Grain, Room, CV2 and Carousel. Her second collection, Vs., is forthcoming this fall. 

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Aqua Books: One Good Marriage

As part of Best of Fest 2010, the Winnipeg Fringe hit, Sean Reycraft's One Good Marriage, starring Matthew TenBruggencate and Mel Marginet, will be performed at Aqua Books on September 22.  

The play begins at 7:30 p. m. and runs to 8:30 p. m.

Tickets are $10.

One Good Marriage is the powerful story of a young married couple’s extreme isolation.  

Linking loneliness and the institution of marriage, the play underscores our need for a broader community, and also reveals the ways in which a community may limit our perceptions of who we can be in the world. 

Through the experience of a tremendous loss, Steph and Stewart are forced to re-examine themselves.  They come to find a reinforced sense of the importance of genuine connection. 

Playwright Sean Reycraft sends us a complex message, highlighting the difference between security and stagnancy, intimacy and co-dependency.  With wit and insight, Reycraft shows us that facing ourselves can lead to what is best about us: our capacity to love. 

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Winnipeg Model Railroad Club's Annual Train Show

Click here for the location for the 2013 Winnipeg Model Railroad Club's Show.

You once had a train set but your Mum gave it away?  

October is a dandy time to begin again.  

The Winnipeg Model Railroad Club will be hosting their
Great Winnipeg Annual Train Show and Flea Market
at the Mennonite Brethren Collegiate, 180 Riverton on
Saturday, October 16 from 10:00 a. m. to 5:00 p. m. and
Sunday, October 17 from 11:00 a. m. to 4:00 p. m.

Admission is $3 per person or $5 per family.

  

Everyone is welcome to browse and buy.  

Funds raised will go toward the Autism Society.  

Neat.  A way to have fun and help some kids.

For more information, contact 

Ken Epp at (204) 663-1226 

or e-mail tombband@shaw.ca

On Sunday Barbara Lange, editor of Through the Window of a Train: A Railway Anthology, will be there. 

Through the Window of a Train: A Railway Anthology collects stories from thirty Canadian authors (including the late Sheldon Oberman). These stories retell the significance of the railway - or a single journey taken - in the lives of ordinary Canadians. 

Dotted with junction and siding names, engine numbers, and routes, this book is a must for the rail enthusiast.

Editor Barbara Lange grew up in a railway-flavoured world in England. Her father, Richard Hurrell, worked for the London North Eastern Railway. As an adult Barbara travelled daily from her home in Brentwood by diesel-electric train and Tube to reach her office in London. 

She immigrated to Canada in 1978 and didn't set foot on a train for years. Since then she has travelled on VIA's The Canadian between Vancouver and Toronto, on The Ocean to Halifax, and to Churchill on The Hudson Bay Line. Barbara lives in Winnipeg with her husband, Larry (Smiley) Lange, a retired CNR carman from Transcona.

*****

Can't make it to the  Annual Train Show?

Please come to the Winnipeg Model Railroad Club meeting,
held on the second Friday of each month.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

One Year Anniversary!!!!

Happy Birthday to Winnipeg is Better Than Chocolate!!

And thank you for visiting with me, whether you're a daily, weekly or occasional guest.

I can't believe that a year has flown by.  As I wrote on my first posting, Winnipeg is Better Than Chocolate is a continuation of a radio show I did with Sophie Kolt on the University of Winnipeg's campus and community radio station, CKUW 95.9 FM. 

Better Than Chocolate was a Thursday morning program serving the Winnipeg community an interesting and varied radio smorgasbord packed with Winnipeg happenings, news, music, humor and local personalities.  

We were voted People’s Choice for Favourite Spoken Word Show in 2008. 

Not bad for our 1 year run!! 

Originally I planned to do just 3 postings a week.  

Silly me...  I thought that would be enough to keep up with what is happening in Winnipeg, along with thoughts, recipes and short light pieces on everyday topics.

There's just way too much happening in our fantastic city for 3 postings.  There is indeed a plethora of things to see and do in Winnipeg. 

In July blogger started keeping track of which postings get the most hits.  The Molotov Circus in Winnipeg was the most popular.  Who knew?  Also there was quite a bit of interest in postings on dog care and recipes.  Duly noted.  More pet care and food, coming right up.

I'm also amazed at learning where you live.  I mean, I expected Canada and the United States.  I have relatives in New York.  But, I was completely floored to learn that people in Germany, Ireland, China, the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, Argentina, Denmark, Japan, Sweden and Eritrea have dropped by to see what's happening in Winnipeg.

This really is a global village!!

Winnipeg is Better Than Chocolate has also been included in Canada's search engine Canadian Planet/Manitoba as an Arts and Culture blog.  

Just checked and Winnipeg is Better Than Chocolate is on their first page.  

Thank you, Canadian Planet.

I also want to thank everyone who's sent me news to include in Winnipeg is Better Than Chocolate.  

Please, keep those e mails coming.

This blog wouldn't be anything without your news. 

I'd also like comments.  Really.  It's easy to do.  Just click on Comments and write.  Tell me what you want to know about.  Happenings, news, recipes, anything.

Let me know how I'm doing.  

This is your blog.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Feed My Lambs Street Mission Fundraiser

The grassroots Feed My Lambs Street Mission provides food, compassion, friendship and hope to homeless persons.  

They are having a fundraiser: 

A Bud, Spud & Steak 

Friday Sept. 24 from 6:00 p. m. to 9:00 p. m.
Canad Inns Polo Park 

Tickets are $15, available until Wednesday evening, September 22.

Call Bob Buchanan  255-5137

or e mail   bob.buchanan@shaw.ca

They'll have some great silent auction packages and a 50/50 draw.  

Muralist Tom Andrich is donating his time doing caricatures in exchange for donations.

The Mission was the vision of Hilde Purdy who, in the Fall of 2007, made 75 sandwiches and took them to people on the street.  She recognized there were many disadvantaged people who had fallen outside the reach of existing outreach programs.  

Today the Mission provides free hot meals and sandwiches to 150 to 200 people on the street Tuesday and Friday evenings as well as a hot breakfast on Sunday mornings.  They also provide extra food for those who ask for their lunch the next day.

  

During the colder months the breakfast is indoors at the Red Road Lodge as Breakfast and a Movie.

Feed My Lambs Street Mission has done advocacy work for those who have come to them with their needs. 

The Mission gives away warm clothing to those in need.  They also run mobile Food Banks to the working poor in various areas around the downtown, particularly in North and South Point Douglas.  They have provided food to other agencies. 

The Mission is resource rich due to great volunteers and some terrific partners as sources of food, but they are cash poor.

Please support them. 

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Culture Days with Kelly Hughes Live!

Culture Days, running from September 24 to 26, is a free, interactive celebration of arts and culture from coast to coast to coast.  This fall, Canadians will participate in thousands of free events that bring creators and the public together to celebrate the creative vitality of our communities. 

Visit the Culture Days website to choose from the plethora of wonderful talent that we have right here in Manitoba. 

Winnipeg's only live talk show, Kelly Hughes Live! will bring you all the trappings you've come to expect from a television talk show - comedy, music and celebrities - as part of Culture Days. 

On Friday, September 24, 7:00 p. m., host Kelly Hughes will interview writer John Kendle and producer Chris Burke-Gaffney at Aqua Books located at 274 Garry Street.

John Kendle is the Editor of UPTOWN magazine and the managing editor of Canstar Community News.  He is also father, boyfriend, sports fan, book nut, news nerd and music geek. 

Chris Burke-Gaffney is a Canadian songwriter, producer and artist manager.  He started his career as singer/bassist for The Pumps.  He signed his first record deal as a teenager and toured the country with acts like Triumph, Guns N' Roses, and AC/DC.  

In his twenties, he wrote his first top-ten single Miracle for Orphan. The song continues to receive heavy airplay on classic rock radio. 

Songs written by Burke-Gaffney have been used in numerous movies and television shows including Chicago Hope, Malcolm in the Middle, The Real World and Providence. Burke-Gaffney also oversees CBG Artist Development and Vatikan Records.

This activity is not wheelchair accessible.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

FemFest 2010: On the Edge

Starting on Saturday, September 25, at 2:00 p. m., FemFest 2010: On the Edge will be presenting plays at Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film, 400 Colony Street.  The plays will continue through to Saturday, October 2, at 11:00 p. m.

FemFest 2010 is a festival of one-act plays by women playwrights from across Canada, with an emphasis on emerging artists.

The festival will also feature 2 evening cabarets, an interative reading and q & a with local and national playwrights, in addition to 2 one-woman shorts.   

They are showcasing the following: 

From Toronto

dub-poet d'bi.young in she 

Tanya Pillay in All of Him 

From Calgary

Lindsay Burns in The Vajayjay Monologues 

Alice Nelson and Jacqueline Russell in RAUNCH: The Rise of the Female Chauvinist Pigs! 

In-House Productions include: 

Kayak by Jordan Hall from Toronto. 

Generation Nexxt, An evening of contemporary scenes for young women, coordinated by Winnipeg's Cairn Moore. 

No Offense... An interactive theatre piece, developed by Sarasvati Productions and Fringe Benefits Theatre. 

There will also be readings of new scripts in development:

Primrose Madayag Knazan's Breast Milk, Best Milk

Cairn Moore's Shiksa

FemFest was inaugurated in June 2003 and continues to receive an enthusiastic response from both the artists and the community.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

Writers' Union of Canada: Group Signing

Come to Grant Park in the Atrium on Saturday, September 18 at 1:00 p. m. and meet some of Winnipeg's best authors. 

The authors are there to meet you and sign copies of their works.

This special signing, which is being organized by The Writers’ Union of Canada, features many Union members signing their latest books including:

Anita Daher: On the Trail of the Bushman 

Doreen Pendgracs: Before You Say Yes…: A Guide to the Pleasures and Pitfalls of Volunteer Boards 

Michael Van Rooy: A Criminal to Remember

Armin Wiebe: Tatsea

Uma Parameswaran: A Cycle of the Moon 

Deborah Froese: Out of the Fire 

Sarah Klassen: A Feast of Longing 

Steve Benstead: Driving Blind 

Gabriele Goldstone: The Kulak’s Daughter 

The Writers’ Union of Canada is a national organization of professional writers that works to advance conditions for all writers and to foster writing in Canada.  The union was founded by writers more than 30 years ago to work with governments, publishers, booksellers and buyers to improve the position of Canadian writers.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!

On the Same Page - the Panel

Aqua Books, 274 Garry Street (between Graham and Portage), will be hosting the shortlisted authors for On the Same Page, Manitoba's biggest book club, in a panel discussion moderated by Shaw's Joanne Kelly. 

The discussion will take place on 

September 18 from 7:00 p. m to 9:00 p. m.

They'll also be giving away copies of the shortlisted books throughout the evening!!!

* * *

The selected books are:

An Ordinary Decent Criminal by Michael Van Rooy

Beautiful Girl Thumb by Melissa Steele

The Dead of Midnight by Catherine Hunter

Juliana and the Medicine Fish by Jake MacDonald

* * *

Michael Van Rooy writes for documentaries, magazines, newspapers, and the Internet.  Michael won the 2006 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, and the 2009 John Hirsh Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer.

Melissa Steele won the 1999 John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Writing.  She has taught writing and literature and worked as a radio journalist.  Her fiction has appeared in journals including Prairie Fire, Zygote and City Magazine.  She is the author of 2 story collections, Donut Shop Lovers and Beautiful Girl Thumb. 

Catherine Hunter is a teacher, editor, critic, poet, and avid reader of thrillers.  She is the author of 3 books of poetry, 3 novels, and 1 novella.  Currently she is a professor at the University of Winnipeg where she teaches English and creative writing.  

Jake MacDonald is an award-winning author of 6 books, a short story writer and a journalist.  His memoir, Houseboat Chronicles, won 3 awards, including the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize.  His feature articles have been published in Saturday Night, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s and Canadian Geographic among others.  His most recent book was Grizzlyville: Adventures in Bear Country.

Have a great day.  How can you miss - you're in Winnipeg!