COUNTRY NOIR: BRAD SMITH in CONVERSATION with GRAHAM ROCKINGHAM

TUES JAN 8 2019

7.30p.m.-9p.m.

LINC classroom, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

BRAD SMITH was born and raised in the hamlet of Canfield, in southern Ontario, a couple of hours from Toronto. After high school, he worked for the signal department of the Canadian National Railway for three years, and then got a chance to work on a rail project in South Africa. Upon returning from Africa, Smith worked all over the place - Alberta, British Columbia, Texas - at a variety of jobs. Farmer, signalman, insulator, truck driver, bartender, schoolteacher , maintenance mechanic, roofer, and so on. He became a carpenter and built custom homes in Canada. He still works as a carpenter when not writing. He now lives in an eighty-year-old farmhouse near the north shore of Lake Erie.

Novels:

RISES A MORAL MAN – 1990 – Penumbra Press

ONE-EYED JACKS – 2000 – Doubleday Canada

ALL HAT – 2003 – Penguin Canada

BUSTED FLUSH – 2005 – Penguin Canada

BIG MAN COMING DOWN THE ROAD – 2007 – Penguin Canada

RED MEANS RUN – 2012 – Simon & Schuster Canada

CROW’S LANDING – 2013 – Simon & Schuster Canada

SHOOT THE DOG – 2014 – Simon & Schuster Canada

ROUGH JUSTICE – 2016 – Severn House

HEARTS OF STONE – 2017 - Severn House

THE RETURN OF KID COOPER – 2018 – Skyhorse New York 

Screenplays:

ALL HAT – premier Toronto International Film Festival 2007

FADING FAST – Bravo TV 2009

OUR STORIES IN DECEMBER

TUES DEC 11
7.30p.m.-9.00p.m.
LINC classroom, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library.
Everyone is invited to bring and share a story for this December evening.

DIVIDED with LINDA FRANK

TUES NOV 13

7.30-9.00p.m., LINC classroom, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

Linda Frank's fourth book of poetry, published by Wolsak & Wynn this spring, is called Divided. Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. She has been short listed for the Pat Lowther Award and won the Bliss Carman Award.

Linda will discuss research and poetry. How do you research when writing a poem? Can facts be lyrical? Are facts truth in poetry? Can poetry tell the truth without fact?

PAUL LISSON on Anniversaries: HAL magazine, 10th Year / Short Works Prize, 5th Year

TUES OCT 9

7.30p.m.-9.00p.m.

4th floor, LINC classroom, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

Paul Lisson was born in the north end of Hamilton into a family of union card carrying steel workers who played in bagpipe bands.

Poet and archivist. Winner: Hamilton Art Award for Visual Art and Writing (1997); and for Arts Administration (2017). Winner: McMaster University Rand Memorial Prize for Accomplishment in Print. Paul was, for many years, the Librarian in the Programming Department at the Hamilton Public Library and organized hundreds of concerts, exhibitions, and talks. Co-founder with Fiona Kinsella and Peter Stevens (1963-2015) of Hamilton Arts & Letters magazine. Co-founder of the Short Works Prize for Hamilton writers.

Paul’s first full-length book of poems, The Perfect Archive, will be published by Guernica Editions in 2019.

HOMEWORK: LOCALISM IN AND AGAINST THE SPACE OF FLOWS

TUES SEPT 11
7.30-9.00p.m.
LINC classroom, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

Innis spent a lot of time wondering “Why do we attend to what we attend to?” Our attention is increasingly divided between the space of places and what Manuel Castells calls the space of flows, the apparently fluid and encyclopedic space beyond our screens.  We will consider a few works of fiction in which this city is depicted, and also some of the blogs which have arisen in the space of flows to direct attention to the city’s places. Is the space of places freer than the space of flows? Citizens living under censorious regimes sometimes resort to “inner emigration.” Does it make any sense to think about defecting from the global aggregation of attention in the space of flows to dwell only in the space of places?

Shawn Selway is a Stelco-trained millwright and the author of “Nobody Here Will Harm You”, a book about the evacuation of Inuit from the Eastern Arctic to the Hamilton Mountain Sanatorium during the sixties. His writing has appeared in a variety of journals and on the local civic affairs blog, ”Raise the Hammer”. He is currently an active member of the Hamilton Tenants Solidarity Network. Don't agonize, organize.

"I WRITE THE SONGS "

TUES JUNE 12
7.30p.m. - 9p.m.
LINC classroom, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

LAURA KEATING is a Hamilton-born singer-songwriter who engages audiences with her personal stories which are the framework of vibrant melodies. When Keating plugs in her acoustic guitar, away she goes, on a journey to the heart of life; soothing the soul and waking up the mind.
Let Me Tell You is her debut album.
laurakeatingmusic.com

AUTUMN GETTY on A Mystery Topic on Poetry

TUES MAY 8
7.30p.m. -9.00p.m.
LINC classroom, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

AUTUMN GETTY is the trans female author of two books of poetry published by Nightwood Editions. Reconciliation won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Hamilton and Area Arts Council Award for poetry and was nominated for the Trillium Award for Poetry. The Winnipeg Free Press named her second book, Repose, one of the top ten books of poetry published in Canada in 2008. She has also received the Hamilton Arts Award for Literature and was nominated for the Premier's Award for Excellence in the Arts as an emerging writer.

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ – ROSS BELOT

TUES APR 10

7.30-9.00p.m., LINC classroom, 4th floor, Central Branch,Hamilton Public Library

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ – How I ended up doing a latish life MFA in California, what I did, what I learned about writing and life

Ross Belot is a photographer, documentary film maker, columnist on energy and climate change for iPolitics.ca and a poet. His first collection, Swimming in the Dark, was published in 2008 by Black Moss Press. He was a finalist for the 2016 CBC Poetry Prize. He has had multiple residencies at the Banff Centre for writing and photography, published poetry in literary journals and had a poem selected for Best in Canadian Poetry in English 2013.  After over three decades in the oil industry he took early retirement in 2014 and concentrated on his creative endeavours.  This somehow led to an MFA at St Mary’s College of California working with top American poets, Brenda Hillman and Matthew Zapruder. He took six months after graduating from that program to fully experience the Bay area and the West Coast. 

HORROR IN HAMILTON

TUES MAR 13   CANCELLED TONIGHT because of illness.
                                             

7.30p.m.-9.00p.m.        

LINC classroom, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library                              

                           

What is horror literature and why does Hamilton need it? David Neil Lee, author of the Hamilton horror novel The Midnight Games (Wolsak and Wynn 2015), maintains that at its best, horror can be a literature that explores and extends our relationships with our bodies, with our pasts, and with the natural world.

Last year, David Lee completed a PhD in English at the University of Guelph. As a double bassist, he has performed in Hamilton with Gary Barwin, Dave Gould, and in a trio with Chris Palmer and Connor Bennett. His YA novel The Midnight Games won the Hamilton Arts Council’s 2016 Kerry Schooley Award for regional literature. His other books include the novel Commander Zero, the award-winning Chainsaws: A History, and the jazz studies The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field and Stopping Time: Paul Bley and the Transformation of Jazz. He lives and works in Hamilton.

THE SHORT STORY: SOME REMARKS ON TECHNIQUE

TUES FEB 13

7.30p.m.-9.00p.m.

4th floor, LINC classroom,
               Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

SHOWEY YAZDANIAN has contributed as a journalist to Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Guelph Mercury, The Lawyer’s Weekly, and others. She is the author of the novella Loopholes, which won the 2015 Ken Klonsky Award; her work has also appeared in the story collection Footprints for Mothers and Daughters. Showey grew up in Toronto and holds a Ph.D. in the physical sciences. Read more at www.showey.net