Banff Centre for the Arts: Introducing the Program in Literary Journalism

This summer, from July 4 to July 16, Banff is offering a new program, Literary Journalism. Meetings are in-person on the Banff campus. Self knows one of the instructors, Charlotte Gill.

Self was at Banff Writers Studio, seven years ago, when she was just starting her novel, and the feedback she got from her mentors was invaluable. She wishes she could enroll for this program, as she’d do anything to get back to Banff again, but she’s not a journalist. (The only caveat was that she got fat. They give you a food allowance at the start, and there are five eateries to choose from. By the end of the five weeks, everyone in her program was complaining how much weight they’d gained. Then we had to pose for group pictures, which was really embarrassing.)

At the MacLab, she once sat one table over from k. d. lang — exciting, except she didn’t find out until after k.d. lang left. Part of the Writer’s Studio is giving a public reading, and self signed up for the very last day. She was so nervous, she had to drink a glass of wine beforehand. The story she read from was “Sand,” and had — profanity! There was some restless movement from the audience when she uttered the first word. After that, only laughter. So great.

btw, it took a while, but “Sand” finally found a home last year, in Pembroke Magazine:

Banff Centre’s Literary Journalism 2022 program encourages the exploration of new ideas in journalism and experimentation in writing. Designed to challenge and stimulate, the program aims to inspire creative pieces of nonfiction and to assist the writers in their completion. A preeminent space for long-form journalism, this residency emphasizes the strengths of thorough and articulate reporting, distinctive storytelling, and literary devices.

Application Deadline: March 9, 2022

Complete information can be found here.

Calling All Emerging Writers!

Enter the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction

Deadline: 1 May 2021

This contest is specifically for writers who have yet to publish their fiction in book form. Submit your short story (maximum: 3,500 words) by 1 May 2021 at 11:59 p.m. PDT for a chance to win $1000 (Canadian) and publication!

Entry fee is discounted and comes with a one-year print subscription to The Malahat Review.

$25 (Canadian) for each entry from Canada; $30 (Canadian) for each entry from the USA; $35 (Canadian) for each entry from elsewhere.

Go here for full contest guidelines.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: WATER

It rained in the San Francisco Bay Area! Finally! Rain was expected in OCTOBER.

Anyhoo, it’s mid-morning, sun’s out, rain stopped. So self is documenting.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week is, fittingly, Water. Woo hoo!

A few other water photos from around WordPress:

• Harbourfront, Lake Ontario
• Various sites, England and Canada: Blast Beach, Wallington, Seaham, Sunwapta Falls
• Ho Chi Mien Square and Nova Scotia’s Bras d’Or Lake
• the River Weaver, southern Cheshire, England, mid-1980s
• the River Ribble, Lancashire, at the point where it meets the Irish Sea

Stay safe, dear blog readers. Stay safe.

The Pacific Rim Review of Books: Self Wants to Eat/Read Everything

Issue Twenty-Three, Vol. 12 No. 1

 

 

Explorers of the North

Self has always been fascinated by explorers, which is why she’s writing her novel about 18th century missionaries. She also has a very long story (32 pages currently, and nowhere near done) about an alien invasion in the Bering Sea. That story is all about Ice, but every day she reads various scientific reports about the disappearing glaciers so she feels mild concern that if she takes too long to finish this story, the context of the physical setting will cease to make any sense.

Today, she reads about the Penny and Barnes ice caps on Baffin Island, and about the Laurentide ice sheet that once covered much of North America. She learns that Baffin Island was known to the 11th century Norse of Greenland and Iceland, and that Baffin Island is postulated to be the Helluland of Viking sagas.

She also reads up on Sir John Franklin. The two ships that were lost during his fourth and final Arctic expedition were named the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus. The HMS Erebus was a 372-ton Heclaclass bomb vessel, built in Wales in 1826. The wreck has been located, in Queen Maud Gulf. The wreck of the HMS Terror lies under the water of Terror Bay. (Who names ships Erebus and Terror? Isn’t that like asking for trouble?)

She reads that Georgian Bay has 30,000 islands. Fresh in her mind is the fate of Kat, in the novel she just finished reading, Tim O’Brien’s In the Lake of the Woods. Who sets off alone in a small boat and becomes lost and lost and more lost.

She learns about the Jesuit mission of Saint-Marie, founded on Lake Huron in the 17th century.

She reads about Lewis and Clark and about rivers like the Columbia and the Hood, which she has seen, long ago, on a driving trip north that started out in San Francisco and hugged the coast of Oregon and Washington.

And she also reads about Celtic and Norse mythology, in a book she found in son’s room.

So many books, so little time!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

 

 

 

Freedom! Thinks the 21-Year-Old Narrator

And then Tim O’Brien says, Not so fast.

The border with Canada is so close, all the narrator has to do is get to the other side of a river.

• My conscience told me to run, but some irrational and powerful force was resisting, like a weight pushing me toward the war. What it came down to, stupidly, was a sense of shame. Hot, stupid shame. I did not want people to think badly of me. Not my parents, not my brother and sister, not even the folks down at the Gobbler Café.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

Sentence of the Day: “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien

At some point in mid-July I began thinking seriously about Canada.

Links to Other Earths

English fields in Chris Beebart’s What’s (In) the Picture?

Beautiful paintings by Pain(t)h.D.

Beautiful picture of High Park, Toronto in crafts.feelings

A day at Griffith Island, Port Fairy in Sukies Original

Earth Day community tree-planting in Do What You Wish

Anjung Kampiun’s picture of Kaolin Lake, Indonesia

Protect our Earth. Once her resources are used up, they can never be replaced. Never.

Impregnable Quebec: MONTCALM AND WOLFE, pp 531 – 532

At this point, with less than a hundred pages to go, the Battle for Quebec is finally, apparently going to happen.

Quebec’s location requires the British forces to storm uphill. It’s bad enough they have to storm at all, but — uphill?

To make things worse, Wolfe, the British commander, is taken ill (almost on the eve of the attack, of all the bloody ##@@!!) and has to stay in bed for five days.

Meanwhile, the French have planted small detachments (with cannon. And guns) on each declivity. So that once the British get through one line of fire, they’re met by another. All coming from above.

But the British have to attack because: 1) winter is approaching; 2) months in the Canadian wilderness have significantly weakened the British Army. Wolfe, the British commander, knows it’s now or never (Self is so impressed with this commander that she gave his name to one of the characters in The Rorqual, her horror story-in-progress.)

At this critical juncture, the British are able to send a small detachment of soldiers to a hill overlooking the city. So now this small British detachment (very wee: something like only 150 men) is able to see directly into the town, behind the ramparts, from above. The British are able to reinforce this detachment by sending ships, ships that go undetected by the French. (The French fully expected the challenge to come from the front because they believed that the hills behind the city were impregnable.)

But, let’s not underestimate British determination! Not to mention Parkman’s eye for the droll anecdote!

The 22 ships are joined by “a diminutive schooner, armed with a few swivels and jocosely named The Terror of France.” She sails by the city “in broad daylight.” The French, “incensed at her impudence . . .  begin blazing at her from all their batteries.” Still, the schooner is able to “pass unharmed” whereupon the schooner salutes the British commander “triumphantly with her swivels.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.

P. 443, Montcalm and Wolfe: OMG, Self Can’t Even

So here you have the British and the French armies, hiding in the woods from each other. The British commander (Rogers) forbids lighting fires at night, and orders absolute silence.

Apparently, this “absolute silence” order does not seem to apply to officers because on the morning “of the 8th of August,” Rogers and a lieutenant named Irwin “of the light infantry” decide to settle a wager “by firing at a mark.” The shots reach the ears of four hundred and fifty French and Indians, hiding in the woods.

Having settled the wager “at about seven o’clock” in the morning, Commander Rogers orders his troops forward. They find a narrow path (Indian of course) that requires the soldiers to march “in single file.” The British commander is about “a mile behind” the lead. (Self is trying to imagine a single file of soldiers stretching a mile. That’s quite a line!)

Suddenly “a Caughnawaga chief” appears, seizing the officer in the lead and “dragging him into the forest.” The Indians also seize a lieutenant and three privates.

When Rogers realizes what is happening, he endeavors with all his might to get to the front, but since he is a mile back (how fast can a horse with a man riding on its back travel, self wonders irrelevantly), he does not get there in time.

(Self must have paid extra attention during history class. She remembers learning that this was how Gaul managed to destroy the Roman Empire: by forcing the centurions to engage in forests, forests that were wholly unfamiliar. Or mebbe it wasn’t history class. Mebbe it was the movie Gladiator)

Self is imagining the terrible fate that awaited the men dragged by the Indians into the woods, but apparently one of these survived because he wrote an account of his ordeal:

They “stripped him naked, tied him to a tree, and gathered dried wood to pile about him.” He was saved only by a sudden onset of rain. And afterwards he was ordered freed by another Indian chief.

Phew! This book is such a roller coaster ride!