The CreComm Reading Series presents student talent

WINNIPEG, Feb. 23 – On Saturday, starting at 4 p.m., five second-year Creative Communications (“CreComm”) students from Red River College will read excerpts from their most recent writing at Aqua Books in Winnipeg. They have been working on the writing they will share since September 2010, and many of the excerpts have been recently published in print or online.

Amanda Hope is a first-time novelist who fell in love with the written word as soon as she learned to read. She is a graduate of the University of Manitoba – where she majored in History and English – and is also a soon-to-be graduate of the Creative Communications program at Red River College in Winnipeg. This is her debut novel, and it was written to honour and celebrate the life of her great-aunt.

Jennifer Hanson is a lifelong movie lover who has been blogging for the past nine years. Her project – 200 Movies, 1 Woman, 1 Blog – was a natural way to combine her two passions. She lives in Winnipeg with her parents and younger brother.

Danielle Conolly is a CreComm student who writes things sometimes, when she's not cooking or hobbling around on crutches because she's a klutz.

Stacia Franz is a gifted gymnast and swimmer who also indulges her creative side through her blog, "Have You Hugged Your Server Today?" Recognizing the larger story behind the blog, Stacia embarked on a novel-length description of the serving experience, which you'll hear this evening. In her spare time, this soon-to-graduate CreComm student has a passion for fashion, fine food, and world travel.

Lisa Tachan is a self-proclaimed vampire expert who has spent the last six months working on a high school play that is a parody of both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Twilight Series. In her spare time – when she isn’t busy with schoolwork – Lisa enjoys acting, dancing and chasing around sparkling-skinned boys.

Event Details:

Date: February 26, 2011
Location: Aqua Books; 274 Garry Street (between Graham & Portage)
Time: 4:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. (approx.)
Note: Students will be available for questions following the readings.

About the CreComm Reading Series
Red River College's Creative Communications ("CreComm") program is the training ground for Manitoba's professional communicators. The CreComm Reading Series curated by K.I. Press brings writers of all genres to Winnipeg. Opening acts are current and former CreCommers with creative works in progress.

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

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For more information, please contact:

Karen Press
Instructor, Creative Communications
Red River College
949-8316
@kipress
kipress.wordpress.com

Understanding really great sentences

Each week in Advanced Creative Writing class, a few students are required to give a short presentation on a chapter from Francine Prose’s book, Reading Like A Writer.

Last week it was my turn, and my presentation was about sentences.

I admitted to my classmates, and I’ll admit here, that I found the chapter to be quite long and boring. There were so many examples of ‘great sentences’ that I found myself lost among the ‘great sentences.’ Sure, there were a few authors that stuck out – such as Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway – but overall, the chapter didn’t impress me.

What I did find interesting, however, was how the chapter started. Prose recounted a conversation between a young author and his publisher. The author was gushing about how his goal was to create really great sentences, and the publisher was rolling his eyes.

Francine Prose, the author of my textbook.

It’s easy to say, “I want to create great sentences.” It’s very difficult to actually do it.

I started thinking about sentences a moment ago when I opened a copy of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. The book was a Christmas present, and I am finally getting around to reading it. When I flipped to the first chapter, this is what I read:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…

So that’s where that quote is from! It’s so famous, and I’ve heard it so many times, but I didn’t know what it was from or who wrote it.

One of the original covers of the novel.

As I kept reading the passage I was taken aback by how beautiful the sentence was. It flowed together in such a perfect way that I – the reader – went through a number of different emotions as I worked my way through the passage. In short, the opening paragraph in A Tale of Two Cities is quite possibly one of the most beautiful sentences I’ve ever read.

I wish I had read the passage before I did my presentation in class, and I feel like I have learned a lot about sentences just by reading a few short lines The entire book isn’t written in the same, beautiful format, but there are many parts that have made me stop and go ‘oooh.’

I’m sure that all authors want their work to stop readers in their tracks and make them contemplate some aspect of their own lives. I know I do. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s incredible.

Words are beautiful. So are sentences.

*Images taken from Google.

Welcome to Advanced Creative Writing class

This term, I am taking Advanced Creative Writing at school. So far, it is one of my favourite CreComm classes to date. For three hours every Friday morning, a small group of us sit around a table, drink coffee and critique each others work. It's fantastic.

One of our projects for the class is to maintain a blog called 'The Gemini Unjournal.' Each week, a few classmates post excerpts of work from other students. We also post information about book readings and other activities that will take place during the semester.

I am currently working on my post about Lisa Tachan's vampire play, Slaying Edmund. I checked out the blog and realized a classmate of mine posted an excerpt from my book. If you would like to read it, click here.

Welcome to the CreComm Reading Series...

WINNIPEG, Feb. 1 – on Friday, starting at 7 p.m., author Matt Duggan will read an excerpt from his latest novel – Cherry Electra – in front of a live audience at Aqua Books. He will be joined by Greg Berg, a second-year Creative Communications (“CreComm”) student who is currently working on finishing his first science-fiction novel.

Matt Duggan graduated from Churchill High School and 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.

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.

The evening Aqua Books reading will be preceded by an afternoon reading at Red River College’s Exchange District Campus at 10 a.m. in room P107.

Event Details:
Date: February 4, 2011
Location: Aqua Books - 274 Garry Street (between Graham & Portage)
Time: 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. (approx.)
Note: Mr. Duggan will be available for questions following the readings.

About the CreComm Reading Series
Red River College's Creative Communications ("CreComm") program is the training ground for Manitoba's professional communicators. The CreComm Reading Series curated by K.I. Press brings writers of all genres to Winnipeg. Opening acts are current and former CreCommers with creative works in progress.

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

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For more information, please contact:

Karen Press
Instructor, Creative Communications
Red River College
949-8316
@kipress
kipress.wordpress.com

The above is one of the series posters. If you spot one around, take a look!