WRITING FROM THE FAMILY The Perils and Pleasures of Fictionalizing Your Family

TUES APRIL 14
7.30p.m.-9.00p.m.
Hamilton Room, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

Novelist and cultural critic Hal Niedzviecki explores the tradition of using family as your muse. Do you end up with more powerful, believable characters? Can you avoid cliche in the process? Will your parents ever speak to you again?
Suggested reading:
Please read the story
Sometime Next Sunrise by Hal Niedzviecki
from the short story collection Look Down, This is Where it Must Have Happened (city lights)
available free at
https://www.taddlecreekmag.com/sometime-next-sunrise
in advance of attending.
Please bring your own favourite examples of works by authors who are fictionalizing their real life families.

He is the author of eight books including the collection of short stories Look Down, This is Where it Must Have Happened (City Lights, April 2011) and the nonfiction book The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors (City Lights, 2009). The Peep Diaries was made into a television documentary entitled Peep Culture produced for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He is the current fiction editor and the founder/publisher of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts, (Hal’s writing has appeared in newspapers, periodicals and journals across the world including the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Playboy, the Utne Reader, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Toronto Life, Walrus, Geist, and This Magazine. Niedzviecki is committed to exploring the human condition through provocative fiction and non-fiction that charts the media saturated terrain of ever shifting multiple identities at the heart of our fragmenting age.

Links:
Home page and blog: http://www.alongcametomorrow
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HalNiedzvieckiwriter
Twitter: http://twitter.com/halpen
Magazine: http://www.brokenpencil.com

THE IMPORTANCE OF TELLING STORIES THAT RARELY GET TOLD

TUES MARCH 10

7.30p.m. -9.00p.m.

Hamilton Room, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library 

RADHA S MENON is the winner of Toronto Fringe New Play Contest 2015. Born in the East and brought-up in the West and founder of Red Betty Theatre, Radha S Menon worked as an actor in theatre and television. Her work has been produced at many festivals by theatre companies in Canada and the U.K. The Washing Machine, finalist of the Woodward/Newman International Playwriting Prize 2012, had sold out crowds at Next Stage Festival 2012. Ganga’s Ganja was awarded an honourable mention for the Herman Voaden Playwriting contest. A short play, Marooned curated for multi-disciplinary Lost Soles Festival was produced at London Design Festival 2013 at Covent Garden. Award-winning play Rukmini’s Gold  had a staged reading at Tristan Bates Theatre (London, U.K) in February in development with Kali Theatre’s Talkback 2015 directed by Trilby James.

Literary Collage: The Virtues of Themed Story & Poem Collections

TUES FEB 10 (Note change in room location)
7.30p.m.-9.00p.m.
ROOM A, 4th floor Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library
Having recently edited two themed short story anthologies for Seraphim Editions--In the Wings: Stories of Forgotten Women, and Engraved: Canadian Stories of World War One--BERNADETTE RULE invites you to consider (and bring examples of) what is gained when stories or poems are collected on a single theme.  Rule has had seven collections of poetry published.  In 2015 Seraphim will bring out her new poetry collection, Earth Day in Leith Churchyard: Poems in Search of Tom Thomson. Rule won the 2014 Short Works Prize for Literary Non-Fiction for "A Layer of Ghosts" (Hamilton Arts & Letters #6) She also hosts Art Waves, an arts-interview program on 101.5 The Hawk every Sunday from 7p.m. to 8p.m.

FROM ATTIC SCRAPS TO GLOSSY VOLUME (How to gather family letters, stories and diaries to create a published book)

TUES JAN 13
7.30-9.00p.m.
Hamilton Room, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library 
Valerie Nielsen recently launched Over the Top - A Love Story. It was a “novel” handwritten by her grandmother, Grace Wilkinson about her rocky courtship and marriage to a soldier in the days leading up to the WW1.

Valerie, with the help of her husband Bob, has edited it, added family photos and published it for family, friends and hopefully wider audience.

Valerie has a book of poetry Green Light and leads creative writing workshops and retreats.

OUR STORIES ON A DECEMBER EVENING

TUES DEC 9
7.30-9.00p.m.
Hamilton Room, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

Expect to be surprised and delighted when stories are read aloud on this December evening. LitChat’s annual tradition goes on with an invitation to everyone who wishes to read a short piece of writing in the presence of willing listeners.
                                      
            

CANADIAN SOLDIER-WRITERS OF WORLD WAR ONE: A CELEBRATION

TUES NOV 11
7.30p.m.-9.00p.m.
Hamilton Room, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library 

ROBERT NIELSEN was born in Vancouver and attended University of Alberta (B.A.) and University of Guelph (M.A.). His thesis on Canadian fiction of World War One resulted in his company Potlatch Publication publishing Generals Die in Bed by Charles Yale Harrison, a book long out of print but now an international bestseller. His anthology Canadian Children’s Annual became a Canadian tradition for a dozen years. Other books include War and Revolution, an anthology (Thomas Nelson & Sons), the biography Garney Henley: A Gentleman and a Tiger, Total Encounters: The Life and Times of Mental Health Care Centre Penetanguishene (McMaster University Press), and Athlete’s Foot: or How I Failed at Sports, finalist for the Leacock medal for humour. He has taught for many years in the McMaster Certificate in Writing Program. Bob lives in Stoney Creek with his beautiful wife Valerie on the shores of balmy Lake Ontario.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

TUES OCT 14
7.30-9.00p.m.
HAMILTON ROOM, CENTRAL BRANCH, HAMILTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

How do we reach truth by means of made up stories?
When does embellishment go too far?
Jean Rae Baxter will talk about historical fiction and memoir, keeping in mind a quotation - “Truth may be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor”.
Jean Rae Baxter has written two short story collections and a murder mystery. A Hebrew translation of her stories was published in Israel in 2013. Her three young adult historical novels have won awards in Canada and the United States. A fourth, The White Oneida, has just been released in September.