"The series is��open to the 91��ɫ community, as well as��members of the��public, and makes for the best Tuesday night date I can think of," says 91��ɫ humanities Professor Gail Vanstone. "Where else are you going to hear some of Canada's most exciting literary figures for free other than attending the Canadian Writers in Person Lecture��series."

The series features 11��Canadian authors who will present their work,��respond to questions from the audience and��sign books. All��readings are part of��a degree credit course on Canadian literary culture offered by the Culture & Expression Program in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. You don't have to enrol in the course to attend the readings.

This year features an eclectic mix of new and established writers.

Author Zoe Whittall has been called “…the cockiest, brashest, funniest, toughest, most life-affirming, elegant, scruffy, no-holds-barred writer to emerge from Montreal since Mordecai Richler…” by The Globe and Mail will kick off the reading series on Tuesday. She will read from the��Lambda award-winning Holding Still For As Long As Possible. Award-winning poet Karen Solie will present her��collection of poetry, Pigeon.��

Don McKay has published 10 previous works of poetry and is the��winner of��several awards, including the 2011 Griffin��Poetry Award and��two Governor General’s Literary Awards for Poetry. He will read from his newest collection, Paradoxides.��James Bartleman, a Canadian diplomat, author and��the 27th Lieutenant Governor of Ontario (2002 to 2007), will read from his��compelling debut novel, As Long as the Rivers Flow, which explores the consequences of Canada's residential school system. 91��ɫ alumna Suzanne Desrochers returns to her alma mater to read from her bestselling novel,��Bride of New France, a rich and imaginative novel about a young French woman who must survive the harsh landscape of the new world.��

Suzette Mayr is the author of four novels. She will��read from��Monoceros, which was long listed for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize.��The Perfect Order of Things is the title of Canadian journalist David Gilmour's book. It��speaks to a man's journey back in time to reexamine those critical moments that created him. 91��ɫ Professor��and poet Patricia Keeney will read from First Woman, a collection of poetry that continues her personal journeys inward and across the world.

Renowned Canadian writer Esi Edugyan will read from her��award-winning novel,��Half Blood Blues,��an electric, heart-breaking story about music, race, love and loyalty. It��won the��2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Patrick deWitt will read from his��second book, The Sisters Brothers, which��was also shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the 2011 Governor General's Award for Fiction (English language).

Irish born playwright, author and literary historian Emma Donaghue��will read from her bestselling novel Room, which won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Room was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and the 2010 Governor General's Literary Awards and was the winner of the 2010��Irish Book Award.

For more details and the complete schedule of writers’ appearances, visit the Canadian Writers in Person website or��contact Professor Gail Vanstone at ext. 33957.

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

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Notable Canadian environmental poets , and are the keynote speakers for the public forum, which will take place Friday, Oct. 21, from 6 to 8pm, at the Gladstone Hotel, North Ballroom, 1415 Queen St. W., Toronto. The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited.

Right: Brian Bartlett

Each of the authors will read from their work and discuss the socio-political responsibility of writers in modern, ecologically precarious times during the public forum. Bartlett is the author of five collections of poetry, including��The Watchmaker’s Table,��as well as��Wanting the Day: Selected Poems, which won the 2004��Atlantic Poetry Prize. Ruffo, whose work is influenced by his Ojibwe heritage,��is the author of At Geronimo’s Grave and Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney. He��has also penned plays, works of nonfiction and��was the writer and director for the film, A Windigo Tale,��which won best picture at the American Indian Film Festival last year in San Francisco.

Wong's work��looks at the relations��among contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology and decolonization. She is the author of poetry collections Forage and Monkeypuzzle and��co-author of Sybil Unrest.

The academic conference��will be held the next day on Saturday, Oct. 22 at the Gladstone Hotel, from 9am to 7:30pm. Paid registration for the conference is required before Oct. 14. Although admission for 91��ɫ students��is free, they still must register in advance.

Left: Rita Wong

The conference will feature scholarly discussions and include diverse panels of academics, graduate students and writers presenting their own work on topics, such as ecopoetics, environmental literatures, indigenous politics, writing and more. Molly Wallace of Queen’s University will offer the closing keynote address, “Averting Environmental Catastrophe in Time: Speculations on Temporality, Risk and Representation”.

Some of the questions the event will probe include: How do literary works – poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction – make a unique contribution to Canadians’ understanding of, and responses to, environmental issues? How does the history of Canadian literature suggest a history of environmental activism, and vice versa? Why does poetry matter for nature? And, how does fiction incite and influence actions in the more-than-human world?

Environmental literatures engage the world differently than do environmental policies and ecopoetry embodies and inspires different modes of action, says FES Professor Catriona Sandilands, Canada Research Chair in Sustainability & Culture and��the event’s co-organizer with Ella Soper, FES postdoctoral Fellow.

Right: Armand Garnet Ruffo

The question then becomes, says Sandilands, what does this reflection and action add to environmental politics in Canada? How, for example, do indigenous peoples’ struggles over the materiality and meaning of land suggest different kinds of environmental stories to underpin an ecological public culture? How can a regional or national ecopolitics benefit from closer attention to diasporic literatures? How are ecological literatures and politics jointly embedded in globalizing relations of race, gender, class, colonialism, sexuality and ability?

Writing workshops will take place Sunday, Oct. 23 at the Gladstone Hotel, from 9:30 to 11:30am. It will be a day of hands-on writing activities led by Bartlett, Ruffo and Wong, as well as FES doctoral candidate Amanda Di Battista. At the workshops, participants will be encouraged to create their own pieces of poetry or prose that might contribute to a politics of voice locally, nationally and/or globally. Participation is included in advance conference registration or contact Green Worlds for alternate arrangements.

The event is sponsored by 91��ɫ’s Sustainable Writing Laboratory and the Faculty of Environmental Studies with the support of the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada.

For more information, for a full schedule of events, or to register, e-mail grnwrlds@yorku.ca.

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

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Multimedia experiments often use short texts because readers seem unlikely to tolerate long passages of type in a video or interactive environment. "Maybe the chunk is not the chapter; maybe the chunk is the paragraph, and one paragraph can lead to more, different paragraphs," says Caitlin Fisher, Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture at 91��ɫ [Faculty of Fine Arts], who used that approach in her 2001 multimedia novella These Waves of Girls. "People have been figuring out how to get their message onto a single screen. It makes some writing better and some writing worse."

91��ɫ's Fisher agrees that the issue is how to draw the reader through the text. "It's interesting to say maybe people would navigate your novel like a game environment," she says. "People find a game environment compelling. [But] does it always have to be a puzzle or maze? Could great writing draw you through it?... We don't have serious writers experimenting with it."

Fisher also notes how seductive video is, hoping books will not simply be replaced by some version of interactive film or augmented reality. "We have this push that all literature can become movies. Everyone can cheaply make and edit moving pictures. It is pushing out interesting experiments in writing."

"I'd be happy to purchase an $80 electronic novel that promised to take me places I hadn't been before, but it's a hard sell," says Fisher, who wants to see writers making technology work for them rather than technology shaping the form. "It is crucial writers be there asking what kind of tools might be useful...and not just accept what computer science hands them."

Posted by Arielle Zomer, research communications officer,��with files��courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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