Department of English Archives | Research & Innovation

Bruce Jay Friedman plays published by 91��ɫ students

fmaquito — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Oscar-nominated screenwriter and accomplished American playwright Bruce Jay Friedman has a new collection of selected works coming out, and it’s being published by 91��ɫ’s Leaping Lion Books, which is run by students in the Professional Writing Program.

The launch of 3.1 Plays will take place Thursday, March 1, from noon to 3pm, at the Eleanor Winters Art Gallery, 129 Winters College, Keele campus. Friedman won’t be in attendance, but there will be a video message from him specially created for the occasion and 91��ɫ theatre students will perform excerpts from his book.

“Publishing an accomplished writer like Bruce Jay Friedman raises the profile of Leaping Lion Books,” says Alan Borenstein, Leaping Lion Books publisher and fourth-year professional writing student. “We’ve proven that we can work with any calibre of author, and put out a product worthy of your bookshelf.”

��峾��’s four works in 3.1 Plays are known for their sharp, black comedy and a punch of wit, and include the Obie award-winning play Scuba Duba: A Tense Comedy and Steambath. Both were off-Broadway hits. The other two plays in the collection are Sardines and The Trial. The plays are billed as capturing the surreal with a flair that is uncompromised by ��峾��’s ability to write real and flawed characters. His plays have delighted audiences since the 1960s and earned him rave reviews from The New 91��ɫ Times and The New 91��ɫer.

In addition to playwriting, Friedman has published six collections of stories, several novels, as well as a nonfiction collection. His novels include Stern (1962), A Mother’s Kisses (1964), The Dick (1970), The Current Climate (1989) and Violencia! (2002). A couple of his stories were also adapted for film – The Heartbreak Kid and The Lonely Guy.

Fourth-year students in the book stream of the Professional Writing Program of the Department of English, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, are required to take the Book Publishing Practicum course and participate in the publication of a real manuscript, such as ��峾��’s 3.1 Plays.

Bruce Jay Friedman

Just how the opportunity to publish ��峾��’s work came about was serendipitous. “When I was an editor at the University of Chicago Press, I published a collection of Bruce ��峾��’s essays titled Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos. We had been talking about another book, a collection of his plays, when I left Chicago in 2001,” says 91��ɫ English Professor Geoffrey Huck. “When a few years ago I put together Leaping Lion Books for the Book Publishing Practicum at 91��ɫ, I resurrected the idea with him, and he graciously agreed to let us publish.”

Friedman sent several plays and Huck chose four. “I wish we could have included more in the collection, but length – and hence cost – were considerations,” he says. “The students, along with course director Mike O’Connor, have done the rest. I hope other readers will find these plays as delightful as I have found them to be.”

Borenstein says the experience the publishing practicum provides is invaluable. “As jobs have become scarce for graduates in all fields, students are eager for a hands-on education and applicable skills. 91��ɫ’s publishing program simulates a professional working environment, in a program unique to Canada. With changes in how we read and receive information, the publishing industry is asking itself a lot of questions. We are the group of individuals who will provide the answers. That’s exciting.”

Having the opportunity to published ��峾��’s book means a lot, says Huck. “What I think Bruce’s and our other books prove is that the students in the Book Publishing Practicum are highly competent publishers. They are the future of book publishing, and they’re already showing their stripes.”

Everyone is invited to attend the launch. Refreshments will be provided and copies of the book will be available. There will also be a raffle courtesy of Leaping Lion Books sponsors for a chance to win gift certificates to the 91��ɫ Bookstore, gift certificates and merchandise from the Hard Rock Café, sunglasses from Anders & Flynt, tickets from Stage West Mississauga and a makeover from Kliks Beauty Centre. Sponsors also include the 91��ɫ Writing Department, Z-teca Gourmet Burritos, Blueberry Hill, ASRock America Inc. and NZXT Crafted Gaming Armor.

��峾��’s 3.1 Plays is available in print and in e-book format through Kobo Inc.

For more information about Leaping Lion Books, 3.1 Plays or Friedman, visit the Leaping Lion Books �ɱ��ٱ�.��

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Bruce Jay Friedman plays published by 91��ɫ students appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Professor Arthur Redding publishes book about American ghosts

fmaquito — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Haints: American Ghosts, Millennial Passions, and Contemporary Gothic Fictions, a new book by the chair of 91��ɫ’s Department of English, Art Redding, will launch next Wednesday.

Published by the University of Alabama Press, Haints (see YFile, Sept. 14) examines the work of contemporary American authors who draw on the gothic tradition in their fiction, not as frivolous or supernatural entertainments, but to explore and memorialize the ghosts of their heritage.

The launch will take place Oct. 26, from 3 to 5pm, in the Founders Senior Common Room, 305 Founders College, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend. Refreshments will be provided.

Ghosts, Redding argues, serve as lasting witnesses to the legacies of slaves and indigenous peoples whose stories were lost in the remembrance or mistranslation of history. No matter how much Americans willingly or unwillingly repress the truth of their ancestry, their ghosts remain unburied and restless.

Left: Art Redding

Redding, a professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, currently teaches Contemporary American Gothic. He has written about various American literary and cultural figures, from Emma Goldman to Kathy Acker. He is the author of Turncoats, Traitors, and Fellow Travelers: Culture and Politics of the Early Cold War (University Press of Mississippi, 2008) and Raids on Human Consciousness: Writing, Anarchism, and Violence (University of South Carolina Press, 1998).

The event is sponsored by the 91��ɫ Bookstore and Founders College.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Professor Arthur Redding publishes book about American ghosts appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Former 91��ɫ English Professor and acclaimed writer Barry Callaghan will read from his newest book

fmaquito — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:00:00 +0000

As part of the Studio Speaker Series, former 91��ɫ English professor, acclaimed writer, raconteur and provocateur Barry Callaghan will speak about his life as a literary journalist and read from newly published book Raise You Twenty: Essays and Encounters 1964 - 2011, Volume Three..

The reading will take place Wednesday, Sept. 21, from noon to 2pm, in the Paul Delaney Gallery, 320 Bethune College, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Considered one of Canada’s great journalists, Callaghan has received every major award in North America, including more than a dozen National Magazine Awards – seven of them gold – the inaugural W. O. Mitchell Award, the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters Award for Fiction, which he won twice, the Lowell Thomas Award and the Pushcart Prize. He also won Toronto’s One Hundred Outstanding Citizens Award.

Raise You Twenty (McArthur & Company), follows the critically acclaimed Raise You Five: Essays and Encounters 1964-2004, Volume One and Raise You Ten: Essays and Encounters 1964-2004, Volume Two. The series reflects on the significance of literature to the past and to the future and Callaghan prompts readers to think about the function of literature in the digital age. It includes extended essays on Saul Bellow, basketball player Vince Carter, the city of Munich and some of the great writers of the 20th century – Mavis Gallant and John Steinbeck.

Left: Barry Callaghan

Callaghan, who , founded the literary quarterly, Exile, and imprint, Exile Editions, while he was a war correspondent in the Middle East and Africa in the 1970s. He is a novelist, poet and man of letters and his work has been much anthologized.

His works includes The Hogg Poems and Drawings (1978), The Black Queen Stories (1982), When Things Get Worst (1993), A Kiss is Still a Kiss (1995), Barrelhouse Kings: A Memoir (1998), Hogg: The Seven Last Words (2001), Between Trains (2007) and Beside Still Waters (2009).��

The Studio Speaker Series is sponsored by 91��ɫ’s Creative Writing Program in the Department of English, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Former 91��ɫ English Professor and acclaimed writer Barry Callaghan will read from his newest book appeared first on Research & Innovation.

91��ɫ Prof. Barbara Godard remembered with special issue of journal

fmaquito — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, the Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian Literature at the time of her death just over a year ago, was one of Canada’s pre-eminent literary scholars who taught in the departments of English, French, social & political thought and women’s studies, and whose influence was felt far and wide. In commemoration of her scholarly life and teachings, the current issue of Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory has been dedicated to her.

This special issue, Remembering Barbara Godard, is edited by four of her former colleagues and students – 91��ɫ women's studies Professor Eva C. Karpinski, professors Ray Ellenwood and Ian Sowton of the Department of English, and 91��ɫ alumna Jennifer Henderson, now a professor at Carleton University.

A pillar of the 91��ɫ community, Prof. Godard broadly influenced the fields of Canadian and Quebec studies, translation studies, feminist poetics, semiotics and cultural studies. She was also a founding co-editor of the feminist literary periodical Tessera, a contributing editor of Open Letter and The Semiotic Review of Books, and the book review editor for Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies.

She died on May 16, 2010, at Toronto Western Hospital (see YFile, May 19, 2010).

For more information, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post 91��ɫ Prof. Barbara Godard remembered with special issue of journal appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Poetry and art combine in new book launching next week

fmaquito — Fri, 27 May 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Scrawled underneath or to one side of the photographs in a new book by artist Daniel Ehrenworth and 91��ɫ English Professor Priscila Uppal – Curse. Sleep. (That’s the Thing About Trouble) – are bits of an ongoing conversation. Things like: “Protect your heels,” printed in capitals under a photo of a backyard with a swing set and slide with a tiny woman on her back in high heels.

This is the third time Uppal (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04) has collaborated with Ehrenworth, a former fine arts and cultural studies student at 91��ɫ. The book, Curse. Sleep., is a manifestation of an earlier exhibit by the pair and will launch on Thursday, June 2, from 5 to 7pm at Sweaty Betty’s, 13 Ossington Ave., Toronto. The event is free and everyone is welcome. The book is designed by Justin Broadbent.

Written in cursive under another photo with a willowy impression of sunlight against a fence, it says, “My mother still asks about you.” “They’re inner confessions,” says . Unlike the full lyrical poems she wrote for Ehrenworth’s 2003 exhibit Holocaust Dream, which was also made into a book, this time they are brief poetic expressions that help tell the story of a boy and a girl, two halves of the same person, struggling to return to wholeness after an unnamed trauma splits them apart.

Left: Art and poetry run together in the book, Curse. Sleep. (That’s the Thing About Trouble)

“There’s very much a graffiti feel to the writing,” says Uppal. Most of the art from the exhibit is in an eclectic mix of sizes and dimensions, but the writing doesn’t necessary correspond to the piece closest to it. “They are almost free floating between images,” says Uppal. “So the narrative is a little different from the exhibit. They are scattered like a dreamscape, as if you can hear some sounds, but can’t quite make them out. The impact is still haunting.”

It is with this work that Ehrenworth has returned to his photographic exploration of dream states, trauma, sexuality and texture. He is currently at work on Curse. Sleep. (Away Away Away), the second part in the Curse. Sleep. trilogy, expected in 2013.

And Uppal has provided “the verbal subtext, which goes along with the images.”

Right: Artist Daniel Ehrenworth and English Professor Priscila Uppal collaborated on an exhibition, which led to the new book

Uppal’s publications include seven collections of poetry, including the Griffin Poetry Prize shortlisted Ontological Necessities (Exile Editions, 2006), Traumatology (Exile Editions, 2010), Winter Sport: Poems (Mansfield Press, 2010) and Successful Tragedies: Poems 1998-2010 (Bloodaxe Books, 2010). She is also author of critically acclaimed novels The Divine Economy of Salvation (Algonquin Books, 2002) and To Whom It May Concern (Doubleday Canada, 2009); and the study We Are What We Mourn: The Contemporary English-Canadian Elegy (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). She was poet-in-residence for Canadian Athletes Now during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic games. She was dubbed “Canada’s coolest poet” by Time Out London.

Ehrenworth works as both a commercial photographer and a photo-based artist in Toronto, Canada. He has exhibited work at numerous galleries across Canada and was the co-curator of Stranger than Fiction: The Delicate Art of Faking History at the Forest City Gallery in 2007. His artwork has been published in Maisonneuve, Applied Arts, Black and White Magazine, numerous art blogs, and is collected among various private collectors throughout Canada and the United States. He has also won awards for his commercial work.

For more information or to order the book, Curse. Sleep. (That’s the Thing About Trouble), visit ’s website or contact him at dan@dephoto.org.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Poetry and art combine in new book launching next week appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Professor Alison Halsall joins Red Riding Hood popcorn panel

fmaquito — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

The National Post’s included , adjunct professor of English literature at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies]. She has published articles on “South Park” and Harry Potter, and is working on a study of the Victorian legacy in graphic novels:

“ has all the marks of [Catherine] Hardwicke as a director [said Halsall]: sprawling soft-focus tree sequences, slow-motion dream sequences, the fetishization of extreme angst among teens (those exchanges between Peter and Henry are just too funny), and her man-candy shots.

…. I agree that it had no irony, and therein lies the missed opportunity of the film.

…. I enjoyed Julie Christie – the linking of the grandmother with the wolf for much of the film was one of the more intriguing details. Too bad they didn't pursue this. Unfortunately, Red Riding Hood neither rethinks nor revises the fairy tale. It was gory, but if it wanted to produce a gory version of the tale, it could have been even more gory!

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile , 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

The post Professor Alison Halsall joins Red Riding Hood popcorn panel appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Professor Rishma Dunlop and recent 91��ɫ grad are finalists for CBC Literary Awards

fmaquito — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

The long list of finalists for the 2010 CBC Literary Awards has been announced, and 91��ɫ English and education Professor Rishma Dunlop and alumna Kilby Smith-McGregor (BA Hons. ’09) are among them.

�ٳܲԱ��Ǳ�’s Home, Roses, Hauntings and Smith-McGregor’s The Infinity Pool are both vying for top spot in the non-fiction category, along with 24 other finalists. In the poetry category, Smith-McGregor’s Body Temperature is competing against 23 others. The third category in the contest is for short stories.

Right: Kilby Smith-McGregor. Photo by Laura Jane Petelko

Last year, Smith-McGregor won the Writers’ Trust of Canada (see YFile, July 23, 2010), for writers under 35 who have yet to be published in book form. Her work has appeared in Brick, A Literary Journal, the Dublin Quarterly International Literary Review and The Cyclops Review.

She won the Tarragon Theatre’s inaugural , and while at 91��ɫ, the President’s Creative Writing Award for Poetry and the Sylvia Ellen Hersch Memorial Award, both in 2009, and the Sorbara Award in Creative Writing in 2008.

Left: Rishma Dunlop

A finalist for the CBC Literary Awards in 1998 and again in 2009, and winner of the Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry in 2003, is a poet, playwright, translator and essayist. She has several poetry collections, including Metropolis (Mansfield Press, 2005), Reading Like A Girl (Black Moss Press, 2004) and The Body of My Garden (Mansfield Press, 2002). White Album (Inanna Publications, 2008) combines �ٳܲԱ��Ǳ�’s poems with paintings by Suzanne Northcott. Her radio play, The Raj Kumari's Lullaby, was commissioned by CBC Radio in 2005.

Coordinator of 91��ɫ's Creative Writing Program, Dunlop was also the 2009-2010 Canada-U.S. Fulbright Research Chair in Creative Writing at the Virginia Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

The CBC Literary Awards short list of finalists in each category will be announced next Monday, Feb. 28, with the final winners announced by Shelagh Rogers March 24, on CBC Radio One’s "Q", hosted by Jian Ghomeshi.

The first place winner in each of the three categories will come away $6,000 richer, while the second place winner will take home $4,000, courtesy of the Canada Council for the Arts.

To view the complete list of finalists, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Professor Rishma Dunlop and recent 91��ɫ grad are finalists for CBC Literary Awards appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Professor Priscila Uppal named guest editor of Canadian poetry anthology

fmaquito — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

91��ɫ English Professor is busily dog-earing one literary journal after another, scratching notes in margins, bending page corners. The smell of ink fills her Toronto home. She is a poet on a quest as the recently announced guest editor of anthology, sifting through thousands of poems published in 2010 for the 50 best.

Uppal is the fourth guest editor in the anthology’s short history and joins poets Lorna Crozier – editor of the 2010 anthology launched last week – A.F. Moritz from 2009 and Stephanie Bolster from 2008. The anthologies are published by with series editor Molly Peacock, the author of six volumes of poetry, including . It is Canada’s answer to series of anthologies that have been around more than two decades.

Uppal will be looking for poems that stand out, show a facility with language, surprise, precision and clarity of vision. “I like to be given something that offers illumination or a unique experience through the poem,” she says. Something original and different, such as a reinvention of the tradition they’re writing in. “I want poems that are necessary, poems that people can say, this is an author I’m really interested in reading more of, not just another voice like the others,” says Uppal. They need to be vital with complexity of thought, challenging in ways that force her to “think or experience something in a new way…not just a pat delivery of emotion.”

It’s a humbling exploit. “I’ll have to sit and make a lot of difficult choices,” she says. There are some 60 print and online journals and magazines in Canada, some publishing weekly, others biannually. In addition to the 50 best poems, she needs to chose another 50 for the long list, which won't be published, but will be mentioned.

Canada, says Uppal, “still probably has more variety of poetic styles, forms and traditions than other countries – fixed form, experimental and lyric to narrative and spoken word – from such vastly different philosophical, political, esthetic and personal perspectives. We haven’t had this dominating ethos of what it means to be Canadian, so people have been freer to write in a range of traditions.” Much of this comes from Canada’s rich multi-cultural heritage. Poems from a Middle Eastern tradition or a European one next to regionally located poetry, that’s the kind of diversity Uppal (BA Hons. ’97, PhD ’04) hopes will reflect.

Left: Priscila Uppal

The anthology “gives people a bird's eye view” of what Canadian poets have been working on, says Uppal. The series has proven quite popular in the US, where a separate launch is held each year. Tightrope Books is also hoping to introduce the 2011 anthology in the United Kingdom. That could tie in perfectly with Uppal’s gig as the Canadian Athletes Now Fund poet-in-residence for the upcoming 2011 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games in London.

Uppal has eight collections of poetry, including and , which was shortlisted for the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize. She is also the author of two novels, and . Recently, she edited the first-of-its-kind anthology .

By Sandra McLean, YFile writer. Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

The post Professor Priscila Uppal named guest editor of Canadian poetry anthology appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Professors Michael Helm & Priscila Uppal to share International Festival of Authors stage with 91��ɫ alumni

fmaquito — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The 31st International Festival of Authors (IFOA) has started and several 91��ɫ professors and alumni are on the bill.

91��ɫ alumnus (right) (BA ’95) of CBC Radio will host and moderate “Celebrating 40 Years of the Juno Awards”, which will launch the new book Music from Far and Wide: Celebrating 40 Years of the Juno Awards (Key Porter Books, 2010) Saturday, Oct. 23 at 9pm at the IFOA. The event will feature three of the book’s co-authors Karen Bliss, Nick Krewen and Jason Schneider, along with special guests Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo – who wrote the book’s foreword – singer-songwriter Dan Hill and musician Emm Gryner.

The following day, another 91��ɫ alumnus (BA Spec. Hons. ’81) will be at the IFOA as one of three authors participating in The Word Doctors Are In: Master Class on Sunday, Oct. 24 at 11am. Ricci will speak about “What Every Writer Should Know”.

Poet and 91��ɫ creative writing alumna (Hons. BA ’00), editor of The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen (Exile Editions, 2007) and author of the poetry collection Junkman's Daughter (Exile Editions, 2004), will read from her latest collection A Good Time Had by All (Exile Editions, 2010). Strimas, who works at Quill & Quire magazine and for the University of Guelph's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing, will read on Sunday, Oct. 24 at 1pm and again on Friday, Oct. 29 at 8pm.

91��ɫ English Professor (left) will read from his latest book, , Wednesday, Oct. 27 at 8pm, along with the other finalists for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

91��ɫ English Professor (right) will be part of a roundtable discussion with IFOA Ontario in Milton Wednesday, Oct. 27, and will read from her newest work Friday, Oct. 29 at 8pm at the IFOA in Toronto.

The IFOA will once again bring writers of contemporary world literature for 11 days of readings, interviews, lectures, round table discussions and public book signings from Oct. 20 to 30.

For more information, visit the website. You can or call the Harbourfront Centre Box Office at 416-973-4000.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

The post Professors Michael Helm & Priscila Uppal to share International Festival of Authors stage with 91��ɫ alumni appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Upcoming symposium focuses on new directions in Victorian research

fmaquito — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The Victorian Studies Network at 91��ɫ (VSNY) will delve into New Directions in Victorian Research at its third annual symposium this Friday.

Faculty and students from English, history, political science, science & technology, and the Scott Library will discuss their current scholarship during the symposium, which will take place Oct. 22, from 10am to 2:45pm, 203A Norman Bethune College, Keele campus.

The morning session, moderated by Katey Anderson of the Department of Humanities, will start with Alison Halsall of the Department of English discussing “The Polysemic Pliancy of Elizabeth Siddal in H. D.'s White Rose and the Red". The manuscript , had never been published and instead had been tucked away in archives until Halsall's edited version was published last year.

Next on the program will be 91��ɫ student Benjamin Mitchell’s talk on “Somewhere Between Light and Shadow: Alfred Russel Wallace, Spirit Photography and the Trial of Henry Slade”. Wallace was a British naturalist and an associate of Charles Darwin. Scott Library Librarian Scott McLaren will then look at “The Unmapped Country Within Us: New Acquisitions in Victorian Print Culture”.

In the afternoon session, moderated by of the Department of Humanities, 91��ɫ student Constance Crompton will talk about “Building Gentility: Eugen Sandow and Middle-Class Masculine Muscles”. This will be followed by history Professor ’s look at “‘A Strange Dice-Box of a World’: The Transcolonial Careers of Henry Samuel Chapman” and a talk by Melinda Baldwin – “‘I Wish I Were Wise Enough to Understand More of it’: ��ٳܰ��’s Audience, 1869-1880”.

Everyone is welcome to attend.

The VSNY is an interdisciplinary network whose membership spans a range of departments and programs across 91��ɫ. The symposium is sponsored by the Office of the Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

For more information, visit the VSNY website.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

The post Upcoming symposium focuses on new directions in Victorian research appeared first on Research & Innovation.