SeaWords literary figures headline public reading, August 5
The Confederation Centre Public Library is hosting a public reading featuring Erika Ritter, Christy Ann Conlin, Beth Powning, and Bonnie Stewart on Thursday, August 5, at 7 pm in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.
"We are pleased to have the opportunity to partner with Seawords, the Art Gallery and our Friends of the Confederation Centre Public Library to present these four women writers and look forward to an entertaining evening," said Trina O'Brien Leggott, Chief Librarian at the Confederation Centre Public Library.
The four literary figures are presenters and moderators at the SeaWords Creative Writing Institute, a one-week workshop, August 2 -6 , staged and sponsored by the University of Prince Edward Island and the L.M. Montgomery Institute.
The annual event aims to educate creative writers about the technical and business aspects of their craft while immersing them in invaluable time one on one with knowledgeable and successful authors of our time. Jackie Kaiser, one of the top literary agents in Canada, is also presenting at the workshop.
Refreshments will be provided at the public reading by the Friends of the Confederation Centre Public Library and the women will read from their current works, which will also be available for purchase.
For more information on either the reading or registering for the workshop, email seawords@upei.ca.
About the ‘readers':
Erika Ritter is a novelist, playwright, essayist, and radio broadcaster from Toronto. She is also a public speaker and stage performer, with plays and prose widely produced throughout the world. Her latest novel, The Dog by the Cradle, The Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human-Animal Relationships, was a finalist for the Writers Trust Non-Fiction prize (2009) and a nominee for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction (2009). Some of her other works include The Great Big Book of Guys, The Hidden Life of Humans, and Automatic Pilot.
Christy Ann Conlin is a best-selling novelist, and a widely published essayist, travel writer, and short-story writer from Nova Scotia. Her debut novel, Heave, was a national bestseller and one of The Globe and Mail's top books of 2002. Her second novel, Listening for the Island, is forthcoming and her fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. The story-telling Conlin also writes children's books and is currently collaborating on a collection of ghost and shipwreck stories for children with her brother, Dan Conlin, a historian at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
Beth Powning grew up in a small New England town, but has been living in New Brunswick since 1972. She lives in an old farmhouse and, with her husband, runs a pottery business. She is the author of two novels, The Hatbox Letters and The Sea Captain's Wife, several photography books, and two works of non-fiction, Shadow Child and Edge Seasons. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. In 2006, The Hatbox Letters earned her a nomination for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Booksellers' Choice Award (Atlantic Book Awards).
Bonnie Stewart is an award-winning blogger from Prince Edward Island, happy to have returned home after a 15-year round-the-world hiatus. An educator, writer, and editor, Bonnie is also a doctoral student in the UPEI Faculty of Education. Her work explores what it means in the 21st century to know, identity, branding, loss, and not looking away. Her blog, cribchronicles.com, won the Best Personal Blog category and came second in the Best Overall Blog category in the 2009 Canadian Blog Awards. Bonnie was recently honoured as BlogHer's Voice of the Week.
