Wednesday, February 18/09 7pm FREE Aqua Books
Open Road, Open Mic
Hosted by poets Colin Smith and Chandra Mayor
Bring your poetry and fiction, your non-fiction and your props, to this night of open mic readings in celebration of poet and performer Al Purdy.
Colin Smith is the author of two books of poems: 8 x 8 x 7 (San Francisco: KRUPSKAYA Books, 2008), and Multiple Poses (Vancouver: Tsunami Editions, 1997). Exists in Winnipeg, and is one of the organizers for the Speaking Crow poetry series. Was a contributor to and survivor of August 2008's N 49 15.832 -- W 123 05.921 Positions Colloquium, a week-long avant-garde poetics extravaganza put on by the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver, and for which there is thus far no t-shirt emblazoned with a catchy slogan.
Chandra Mayor is a Winnipeg writer and editor. She is the author of August Witch: poems (short-listed for four Manitoba book awards, and the recipient of the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book), Cherry: a novel (shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, and winner of the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award), and her new short-story collection, All the Pretty Girls. The recipient of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Writer, the former Writer-in-Residence at the Winnipeg Public Library, and a mentor in the Sheldon Oberman Apprentice Program, she has widely published fiction, memoir, non-fiction, and poetry in magazines and anthologies. She has taught writing workshops for all age groups and at all levels, in multipurpose rooms, university classrooms, and VIA Rail smoking cars.