Everything you need to know…

We’ve created a post dedicated to outlining each of the events offered at THIN AIR 2011 (in case you want to start planning which ones you’ll attend now)!

AFTERNOON BOOK CHATS (free)
Monday through Friday, 2:30 – 3:30 p.m.
The Atrium
McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park

The Afternoon Book Chats are the perfect excuse for a coffee break! The Atrium at McNally Robinson Booksellers takes on a café ambiance for this series of relaxed conversations about writing.


BIG IDEAS (free)
Monday through Friday, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Carol Shields Auditorium
Millennium Library, 251 Donald St

Experience your brain on steroids! End your afternoon with writers who are tackling some of the big ideas of our place and time—and who are open to hearing your thoughts as well. The Carol Shields Auditorium is just off the overhead walkway at the Millennium Library.


THE NOONER (free)
Monday through Friday, 12:15 – 12:45 pm
Carol Shields Auditorium
Millennium Library, 251 Donald St

The Nooner is a quick literary hit to charge you up for the rest of your workday. Unplug from the office for half an hour and join us at the Millennium Library—the Carol Shields Auditorium is just off the overhead walkway. Donations welcome.


THE RURAL TOUR (free)
Every year, THIN AIR reaches out to readers in communities beyond the city limits.


THE WRITING CRAFT
Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – noon
Carol Shields Auditorium
Millennium Library, 251 Donald

Each year, THIN AIR includes opportunities for writers to further develop their skills. This year’s topic? Connecting with writers who’ll take you to the next level.


THE CAMPUS PROGRAM (free)
The campuses throw open their doors this week, welcoming writers and audiences to connect around new words and ideas. All events are free and open to the public—catch as many as you can!

This year, writers will perform at Brandon University, Canadian Mennonite University, the University of Manitoba, the University of Winnipeg and Red River College.


THE MAINSTAGE
Monday through Saturday, 8:00 p.m.
Manitoba Theatre for Young People
Shaw Performing Arts Centre, The Forks

Join us each evening at the Shaw Performing Arts Center at The Forks for a showcase of great new writing. McNally Robinson Booksellers has an on-stage bookstore featuring THIN AIR writers. We offer bar service, and to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary, we’ll have birthday cake every night too!

Tickets are $12 ($10 for students/seniors), available at the door. A THIN AIR Festival Pass is a bargain: you get access to all ticketed events for only $35. Knock off another $5 if you have a THIN AIR Club Card. Passes are available at McNally Robinson or at www.thinairwinnipeg.ca.

Elizabeth Hay’s ‘Alone in the Classroom’

Have you ever read a novel that moves you so much you can’t decide if you want to smile or cry?

Elizabeth Hay’s most recent novel – Alone in the Classroom – is a tender and honest tale that takes place across three generations. It highlights issues that most people can relate to, including love, hate and jealousy. More importantly, the novel teaches readers that the actions we take will always affect the next generation.

About the novel…

Beginning in a small prairie school in 1929, a young schoolteacher – Connie Flood – attempts to help a struggling student. Observing them and darkening their lives is the principal, Parley Burns, whose strange behaviour culminates in an attack so disturbing its repercussions continue to the present day.

Connie’s niece, Anne, tells the story. Impelled by curiosity about her dynamic, adventurous aunt and her more conventional mother, she revisits Connie’s past and her mother’s broken childhood. In the process, she unravels the enigma of Parley Burns and the mysterious (and unrelated) deaths of two young girls.

Alone in the Classroom is meant to be read slowly. It is filled with detailed and often poetic language that makes settings, seasons and characters come alive. Throughout the novel, there are also references to classic literature – such as Tess of the D’Ubervilles and Pride & Prejudice – which make it even easier to picture events and people the way Hay wanted them to be seen.

If Alone in the Classroom is your first experience with a novel by Hay, you won’t be disappointed. The plot is both realistic and elaborate, a format that keeps the reader interested until the final pages.

About the author…

Elizabeth Hay is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. She has been a nominee for the Governor General's Award twice – for Small Change in 1997 and for Garbo Laughs in 2003 – and won the Giller Prize for her 2007 novel Late Nights on Air. In 2002, she received the Marian Engel Award, presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada to an established female writer for her body of work — including novels, short fiction, and creative non-fiction.

Come to her presentation at THIN AIR 2011 and learn more about this famous author…

‘Irma Voth’ by Miriam Toews

For anyone who is a fan of Miriam Toews’ writing – and even for those who haven’t read her before – Irma Voth is a novel that is worth purchasing, reading and keeping on the bookshelf.

Set in Mexico in a small Mennonite community, 18-year-old Irma Voth has just married a Mexican boy despite protests from her family. Their union might have resulted in a happy ending, except a year later he leaves her alone and without an income.

Just when things seem impossible, a film crew arrives in Irma’s community. Suddenly finding herself immersed in a modern world that is both foreign and forbidden, Irma’s life completely changes.

Irma Voth is Miriam Toews sixth book, and it is filled with both emotion and humour that keeps the reader engaged and invested in the main characters. Toews was born and raised as a Mennonite in Steinbach, and her knowledge and experiences make Irma’s character very realistic.

A picture of Toews...

Toews 2004 novel – A Complicated Kindness – was her breakthrough title. It spent over a year on the Canadian bestsellers list, and won the Governor General's Award for English Fiction.

The novel, about a teenage girl who longs to escape her small Russian Mennonite town and hang out with Lou Reed in the slums of New York City, was also nominated for the Giller Prize and was the winning title in the 2006 edition of Canada Reads.

THIN AIR 2011 is very proud to have Miriam Toews at the festival this year.

If you would like to follow her on Twitter, click here.

Losing a child will never be easy…

Loss – no matter what form it comes in – can be a truly devastating experience. Every single person experiences loss in a different way, and it takes a tremendous amount of courage to recover from the grasp of sadness and despair.

Two books that will be featured at THIN AIR 2011 deal with a type of loss that is difficult for most to even comprehend – the loss of a child.

In Kalila, author Rosemary Nixon chronicles the lives of a young husband and wife whose joy collides with devastation when their daughter's premature birth comes with the news of her congenital heart condition. The story shifts perspectives from husband to wife, and takes the reader through the isolating days spent at the hospital and the fearful days trying to obtain normalcy at home.

The House with the Broken Two: A Birthmother Remembers - written by Myrl Coulter - is an intimate and honest look at the closed adoption system of the 1960s. The author is forced to give away her first-born child, and for 37 years she is left yearning, hoping and praying that they will one day be reunited.

Both books are heartfelt, genuine and chronicle the true stories of the authors who have written them. For Nixon, it took fifteen years and two continents for her to finish writing her story. For Coulter, it was only after reuniting with her son that she could propel her tale forward.

Nixon and Coulter have faced loss in very different ways, yet through sadness they both found the courage to write their stories and share them with the world. Meet both authors at the festival this year, and experience firsthand how loss can gradually give way to unwavering courage.

Gabe Foreman thinks about people

Every person is different, yet we are all still people.

Gabe Foreman’s reference book – A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People – attempts to define who and what people are through a collection of poetry that is unique, funny and engaging.

While not every person may understand the collection as a whole, there is something for everyone. Some insightful poems include: Bridesmaids, House-Sitters and Transplant Survivors. More off-kilter, quirky poems include: Entomologists, Organ Donors and Snoops.

The collection is definitely worth a read, and it’s something that you’ll pull off the bookshelf and return to again and again.

Gabe Foreman is a part-time tree planter living in Montreal. His writing has appeared in a number of literary journals, including Grain, The Fiddlehead and Event. His work has also been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, and he will be a featured writer at THIN AIR 2011.

Could the Internet take over the world?

Everyone knows that the Internet is a vast network of information. It connects people to each other, and is designed to make everything in our world easier and more accessible.

But, if the Internet were to be controlled by one person, place or thing, what would happen to the world as we know it?

In Robert J. Sawyer’s most recent novel – Wonder – an all-seeing, all-knowing program named Webmind has the ability to monitor, influence and interact with every aspect of the Internet simultaneously. Through Webmind’s Twitter account, email address, website and instant messaging systems – all of which he set up himself – he can literally control every single thing that is on the Internet.

A pretty scary concept when you really think about it…

Wonder is the final novel in a three-part series about Webmind. The creator of the program is a 16-year-old formerly blind girl named Caitlin. She desperately wants Webmind to continue to exist, even when the US Government makes it clear they will do anything possible to destroy her invention.

At the heart of the novel is one, important question: Could the Internet take over the world if it becomes too powerful? It is a question that seems terrifying to consider, but one that becomes very real after reading Wonder.

He looks fun...

Science fiction writer and futurist Robert J. Sawyer has been interviewed over 250 times on radio, over 250 times on television, and countless times in print. He lives in Mississauga, Ontario.

Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history — and the only Canadian — to win all three of the world's top Science Fiction awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo, the Nebula, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

Follow Sawyer’s blog by clicking here, and don’t forget to follow him on both Twitter and Facebook. We’re proud to have him at THIN AIR 2011, and can’t wait to hear what we know will be an entertaining presentation!

Looking forward to Waubgeshig Rice

You may not know the name, but you’ll definitely recognize the face.

Before returning to his home province of Ontario in May of 2010, Rice was a well-known reporter for CBC Winnipeg.

He is both broadcast journalist and author, and he will return to Winnipeg in two months to promote his debut work of fiction, Midnight Sweatlodge.

Midnight Sweatlodge tells the tale of a group of people who have come together to experience a sweatlodge. Some are there for the first time, others are veterans, but everyone has a story to tell.

If you don’t know a lot about what a sweatlodge is, or what the ritual entails, don’t worry. Rice explains it clearly in the first few pages, which helps the reader envision what is taking place.

As the novel progresses, we learn about four individuals and their stories. The first story tells the tale of a happy family living with 300 others on a small island in the middle of one of the Great Lakes. Unfortunately, the family is disrupted by a tragic accident.

The second story, Solace, follows a troubled teenage boy who lives on a reservation and come from an even more troubled family. Both his parents’ drink heavily, and in a moment of decision the boy must make a choice that will doom himself but save his two younger siblings.

In Bloodlines, an Aboriginal man and a Caucasian woman in a long-term relationship attempt to overcome the barriers placed on their multicultural relationship. And in the last story, a young husband and father battles between his drinking problem and his desire to have faith.

At 85 pages, Midnight Sweatlodge is a quick read. Its length, however, has nothing to do with its impact, and the reader remains engaged from first page to last. The overall message is one of struggle and survival, but with a sound reminder that having faith is the first step to mending a damaged soul.

If you want to check out Rice’s personal blog, click here. You can also follow him on both Facebook and Twitter…

Be sure to get connected, because he’ll be in Winnipeg in a few months for THIN AIR 2011!

Haven't you heard of Guy?

It is impossible to make a list of important and influential Canadian writers without including the name Guy Vanderhaeghe. He has over 75,000 hits on Google, and has written many fantastic novels.

One of his novels – The Englishman’s Boy – was made into a five-part miniseries and aired on CBC. With a list of credentials like that, we’re very lucky to have him at THIN AIR 2011.

Vanderhaeghe’s newest novel – A Good Man – is yet another display of his immense talent. Here is what it’s about:

Wesley Case, a former soldier and son of a lumber baron, seems unable to find his destiny or escape history. Unresolved anger lingers following the American Civil War; conflict with aboriginal peoples creates tension between the US and Canada; and even Case’s newfound love for the beautiful widow, Ada Tarr, inflames the jealousy of a quiet, but deeply disturbed, Michael Dunne—part paid thug, part psychopath.

Case’s confession of love also forces a confession of another kind; the revelation of an incident in his military career that resulted in his split with his family, his finance, and the end of his life in the East. At the same time, simmering resentments, political and personal, explode in a spectacular confrontation between native peoples and the American government as well as a violent resolution of Dunne’s plan for revenge against Case as he ever more feverishly imagines himself a contender for Ada Tarr’s affections.

The novel concludes with a scene of pastoral harmony—a metaphor for a new order and the final passing of the lawless individualism of the old West.

A Good Man is a large novel, but don’t let its size dissuade you. It is an interesting and gripping page-turner that you won’t want to put down, and each new chapter introduces new characters, historic scenes and emotional turmoil that will keep you hooked until the very last pages. It’s worth spending time reading, and so are Vanderhaeghe’s other titles.

Lynn Coady – author, award-winner and amusing individual

It isn’t every day that a single novel can make you laugh, cry, scream, sigh and berate the characters, but Lynn Coady has a gift. Her most recent novel – The Antagonist – is a perfect example of a story that will force you to stop, think and throw your own life under the microscope.

Coady’s newest novel was the first I picked off a teetering stack when I started my new position at THIN AIR. It was initially the title that drew me in. The Antagonist. That can’t be good. I turned to the back cover and read what the novel was actually about, and here’s what it says:

Against his will and his nature, the hulking Gordon Rankin ("Rank") is cast as an enforcer, a goon -- by his classmates, his hockey coaches, and especially his own "tiny, angry" father, Gordon Senior. Rank gamely lives up to his role -- until tragedy strikes, using Rank as its blunt instrument. Escaping the only way he can, Rank disappears.

But almost twenty years later he discovers that an old, trusted friend -- the only person to whom he has ever confessed his sins -- has published a novel mirroring Rank's life. The betrayal cuts to the deepest heart of him, and Rank will finally have to confront the tragic true story from which he's spent his whole life running away.

With the deep compassion, deft touch, and irreverent humour that have made her one of Canada's best-loved novelists, Lynn Coady delves deeply into the ways we sanction and stoke male violence, giving us a large-hearted, often hilarious portrait of a man tearing himself apart in order to put himself back together.

Who wouldn’t be interested by that? Deciding I simply had to read Coady’s novel first, I turned on a light, flipped to the first page and was immersed in Rank’s world by the end of the first chapter. There is something in The Antagonist that I believe everyone can relate to, and Coady’s writing style is both quirky and engaging.

In case you don’t know much about her, Coady’s literary success with The Antagonist is no surprise. She has previously written four novels and numerous anthologies. Her first novel – Strange Heaven – was published when she was 28 years old and went on to be nominated for the Governor General’s Award.

Even if she’s not busy working on a new novel, Coady is always writing. She writes for The Globe and Mail’s Group Therapy column, where she delivers the final word on relationships problems. Coady also maintains her own personal blog, which is both energetically written and hillarious.

If you’re interested in checking out her column, click here.

If you’re interested in Coady’s blog, click here.

Look for The Antagonist in bookstores in the fall – published by House of Anansi – and be sure to visit Coady at the festival this year.

A collection of stories by Clark Blaise

I am a big short story reader. Literary journals such as Prairie Fire, Event and CV2 have always been my choice reading materials, and I can usually be found with some sort of short story collection tucked into my purse.

When I stumbled upon The Meagre Tarmac, a novel written as a collection of short stories by Clark Blaise, I immediately picked it up and started to read.

Blaise is no newcomer to writing, and he has written more than 20 books of fiction and non-fiction. He has taught both writing and literature at Emory, Columbia, NYU and UC-Berkley, to name a few. In 1968, he founded the postgraduate Creative Writing Program at Concordia University. In 2010, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, an extremely important distinction that isn’t just given to anyone.

With a background like that, I knew The Meagre Tarmac was going to be good…

It begins with three stories about the Waldekar’s, a family originally from India who has spent the last 20 years in the United States. Gradually, the collection begins to include a host of other, interesting characters. The last story features an Indian businessman who is both very lonely and very rich.

Throughout the collection, the characters are stuck between doing what they want to do and doing what they are required to do. Even though all of the main characters come from Muslim backgrounds, they are all different in their personal beliefs. Choosing to step away from one’s upbringing is a monumentally difficult task, but for some, a necessary action on the road to becoming an individual.

Blaise currently divides his time between homes in San Francisco and New York, so we’re truly lucky to have him as a presenter at THIN AIR 2011!

Analyzing ‘Niko’ by Dimitri Nasrallah

Dimitri Nasrallah is no stranger to civil war.

He was born in Lebanon in 1977 as the country was rife with opposition and discontent, and it was the only environment he knew as a young child. In 1981, his family went into exile, living in Athens, Kuwait and Dubai before immigrating to Canada in 1988.

Currently, Nasrallah lives in Montreal. His first novel – Blackbodying – was published in 2005. It recounts the exile stories of two Lebanese citizens as they trek to Canada. Both have very different experiences as they attempt to find their places in a new world.

Nasrallah’s most recent novel – Niko – chronicles the life of six-year-old Niko Karram. After his pregnant mother is killed by a car bomb in Lebanon, his father Antoine decides to leave the war torn country. Throughout a twelve-year odyssey that leads them across seven countries, Niko has difficulty growing up and becoming an adult in a society he feels he can’t truly be comfortable in.

Overall, Niko is written in a simple yet poignant tone. It mainly tells the story from Niko’s perspective, but occasionally shifts to the thoughts and experiences of other characters. This seems to be a technique used to fill in information that is necessary to advance the story but unknown to the main character. The perspective shifts are slight and gradual, making it easy for the reader to follow one point of view and then another.

The content of the novel is so similar to the life events of Nasrallah that it almost reads like an autobiography at times. Certain scenes – such as Niko’s first days at a new school in Canada – are so compelling that it’s easy to picture a young Nasrallah sitting amongst a diverse group of students who’ve just arrived in a new country for the first time.

Whether or not the novel is in fact based on Nasrallah’s life is a question that will have to wait to be answered until his appearance at THIN AIR 2011 in September…

To view this post on the THIN AIR blog, click here.