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Calgary festivities prove you CAN go home again
Tonight’s the night John Rae turns up in Calgary. The Arctic explorer will be there in spirit, anyway, for my talk at the U of C. The event, sponsored by Clan MacRae, helps kick off the 2013 Calgary Highland Games. Today’s Calgary Herald ran a terrific piece by Chris Nelson, headlined Clan Macrae leads the…
Read MoreThe Great VIA-Rail Book-Launch Extravaganza
OK, that may be putting it a bit grandly. But yes, come October, we propose to launch 50 Canadians Who Changed the World with a cross-Canada, multi-event, book-launch extravaganza. HarperCollins Canada and VIA Rail are co-operating to make this expedition happen. Starting from Toronto on October 12, accompanied by my wife, Sheena, and detraining as…
Read MoreUniversity of Calgary Celebrates Arctic Explorer
John Rae festivities set for Canada, Orkney
John Rae has legs. His contemporaries knew that. They hailed him as the greatest snowshoe traveler of the Victorian era. Here in the 21st century, the peerless Arctic explorer has been carrying Fatal Passage overland for more than a decade. He has turned it into my all-time bestselling book, and for that I am grateful.…
Read MorePlanting a flag for Creative Nonfiction in Canada
It happened in Halifax. They came to plant a flag for creative nonfiction. OK, OK, they came to begin writing their first books. But they did come from across the land, from as far away as Vancouver, and even from across the border, from Washington. And at University of King’s College, under the leadership of…
Read MoreNova Scotia native overcomes a damaging revelation
Veteran author Harry Thurston capped a climactic literary evening at the Grad House in Halifax by reading from a memoir about losing a big, two-hearted river. The Nova Scotia native, who is slated, as vice-chair, to become chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada, gave a bravura performance, and so managed to overcome the damaging…
Read MoreCash in your chips, take a sharp left, and hit the beach
Gotta love an article that turns up in today’s Globe and Mail. It’s all about turning failure into success, and in it we find Our Hero talking about 50 Canadians Who Changed the World. “In researching my new book, I came across all kinds of creative ways to respond to failure. The revelations included: 1.…
Read MoreNova Scotia Literary Mafia Emerging from Shadows
First we had Stephen Kimber reading from What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five. Book due: this autumn. Tonight we had Dean Jobb (above) with Prince of Fraud, a book about a Gatsby-esque Ponzi artist who hid away in a dazzling mansion in the backwoods of Nova Scotia after defrauding…
Read MoreQueen of the Low-Res MFA turns to mothers, daughters
The final “mentor” reading of the new program in Creative Nonfiction at University of King’s College featured Lori A. May, probably the world’s leading expert on low-residency MFA programs. In fact, she has written a book about them: The Low-Residency MFA Handbook. Later, May would dazzle with a reading about mothers, daughters, and family relations.…
Read MoreIn the heat of the battle that IS Creative Nonfiction . . .
In the heat of the battle that IS Creative Nonfiction, Our Hero trades war stories with fellow writers Marq de Villiers, David Hayes, and (below) Havard Gould. You can see the fight in their faces. Every one of these warriors is ready to lead the charge over the next ridge.
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