CreComm Reading Series

by kipress

I’m pleased to announce the CreComm Reading Series hosted by Red River College Creative Arts. The support of the Canada Council for the Arts has allowed us to bring writers of all genres from outside of Winnipeg into town share their work with students and the public alike.

Each reader will read twice, once at the college during the day, and again at Aqua Books (274 Garry St.) in the evening. Evening readings will feature opening acts by present and former CreComm creative writers.

Daytime readings are in the Roblin Centre at the Exchange District Campus
Red River College, 160 Princess Street.

February 4 • Matt Duggan • College reading 10 a.m  • Room P107

February 4 • Matt Duggan • Evening reading 7 p.m. • with Greg Berg

Matt Duggan graduated from Churchill High School and yet he is delighted to be visiting Winnipeg to read from his most recent novel Cherry Electra. His previous novel, The Royal Woods, is a tall tale for children set in a new suburban subdivision of a prairie city. It was nominated for The Moonbeam Award and the Silver Birch Award. Cherry Electra is about a dirty cottage weekend that culminates in murder. Quill and Quire call it “a satisfying bit of cottage-country gothic”, and the Toronto Star says it “has the delirious quality of a wreck recollected”, and claims that “it’s rare to come across something that is both so sadly astute and so infectiously, vibrantly witty.” The Globe and Mail depicts the novel as “a drug fuelled fratricide” and listed it as one of the Top One Hundred Books of 2010. An anonymous blogger on Amazon call it “one of the most un-Canadian novels I have ever read.” The Winnipeg Free Press didn’t seem to care for the book at all. Cherry Electra is essentially a love story. Matt Duggan teaches high school in Toronto and writes in his basement.

Greg Berg is a transplanted Saskatchewanian living in Manitoba. He is also an aspiring YA writer and full-time communications student upgrading his skills to reenter the working world. He likes CBC, PBS, IFC and enjoys making, and occasionally drinking, different varieties of wine.

February 9 • Julie Wilson • Evening reading 7 p.m. • with Jason Booth

February 10 • Julie Wilson • College reading 11 a.m.• Room A104

Julie Wilson is a professional publishing fan, writer and blogger. The literary voyeur behind the SeenReading.com and the editor of BookMadam.com, she thinks reading looks good on you. She’s also the author of Truly, Madly, Deadly: The Unofficial True Blood Companion (ECW Press) written as Becca Wilcott. Follow Julie on Twitter: @BookMadam @SeenReading

Jason Booth is a graduate of the Creative Communications program. His poetry has been published in The Collective Consciousness, the quarterly journal of The Manitoba Writer’s Collective and the Winnipeg Free Press. He resides in Winnipeg with his wife and percolator.

April 6 • Jonathan Garfinkel • Evening reading 7 p.m. • opening reader TBA

April 7 • Jonathan Garfinkel • College reading 12 noon • Room A104

Jonathan Garfinkel is the author of a book of poetry,  Glass Psalms (Turnstone Press, 2005) and several plays, including Walking to Russia, The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret and
House of Many Tongues. His memoir, Ambivalence: Crossing the Israel/Palestine Divide (Penguin Canada 2007), has been published in
five countries, and his plays have been produced across Canada and Germany. He is the recipient of numerous residencies, including a
year-long fellowship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. He also won the KM Hunter Award for Emerging Artists in 2008. Jonathan currently divides his time between Toronto and Berlin.

Next October: Saleema Nawaz

Saleema Nawaz’s fiction has appeared in journals including Grain, The New Quarterly and PRISM International, and her short story “My Three Girls” won the 2008 Writers’ Trust of Canada / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Her debut collection of short stories, Mother Superior, was released in Fall 2008.

•••

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts
which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada,
qui a investi 20,1 millions de dollars l’an dernier dans les lettres et l’édition à travers le Canada.