Looking for Trouble? Now you've found it...

I don’t often go looking for trouble – I’m so clumsy, I wouldn’t need to look far. Simply crossing the street on my way to school ended in a broken leg not long ago. But tonight, trouble’s exactly what I’m looking for – it’s the first Mainstage talk at Thin Air, and I’m excited.

Now, let me draw your attention to the empty stool at the far end of the stage at Manitoba Theatre for Young People’s Cargill Hall. This stool represents a brave woman who is not here tonight, and is not, in fact, free to be anywhere tonight. Nasrin Sotoudeh, human rights lawyer, journalist, and Iranian citizen, has been in prison for one year of her 11-year sentence. For speaking out, for interviewing people about things her government would rather keep silent, she has been jailed. This stool is for her – and the petition, just outside the doors, is for her freedom.

The Empty Chair for Nasrin Soutoudeh - and the seating from EQ3.

There are a lot of signatures on that petition: the Hall is nearly full. Only the seats in the very back  are vacant. The evening is being filmed for a podcast, so that anyone who couldn’t attend in person can still catch some of the magic. Charlene Diehl takes the stage to welcome us and share some family wisdom about Trouble, the title and theme of the evening. Her mother’s grandmother counselled relatives with the line “Don’t borrow trouble,” which I think meant that everyone had their own troubles and there was no reason to take on other folks’ into the bargain. Diehl’s paternal grandfather was slightly more of an optimist, reminding her at age 11 that “The things you worry about the most are the least likely to happen.”

So what is trouble, anyway? What is being broken? What is being fixed? Diehl gives us these questions to guide us, and then the evening’s guests set us loose on the path to trouble.

Wayne Tefs is introduced as a writer of ‘docu-fiction’, the blending of real events with a writer’s own embellishment. Bandit, Tefs’ book about salesman Ken Leishman, is an ode to a ‘Troublesome Hero.’ Tefs knows where to have his audience, his quiet leathery voice saying “Ken’s trouble was, he was too pretty. Some of you may’ve had that problem – I never did, so I had to use my writer’s imagination.” He has just stepped out of a western, in his checked shirt, vest, jeans, and that soothing weathered voice. “Don’t shake the reins of a running horse, as the man says,” is one of the character's sayings, and I think that shaking those reins certainly sounds like trouble! But Tefs’ hero has enough trouble already: he's good-looking, charismatic and ambitious – qualities that attract jealousy, causing the other crabs to pull you back into the bucket.

Margaret Macpherson reads next. She hails from Edmonton but grew up in Yellowknife, where she heard the harrowing story of a stranded bush pilot, and the hard choices he made to survive, at a very young age. The story stayed with her and eventually inspired Body Trade, her newest book and the tale of two young women and the difficult choices they make to survive what was meant to be a vacation. Despite the grim plot, the two women have compelling personalities as we hear the story from first one, then another point of view. “Tanya’s obsessed with showering,” complains the more laid-back Rosie. Tanya has complaints of her own about her friend’s naiveté: “She’s like a friggin’ sheep in a lion den or whatever the hell.” Tanya is a bit more of a partier than her quiet friend, and the more she imbibes, the funnier her thoughts.

When Robert J. Sawyer takes the stand, he begins with a joke. The difference between a professional, full-time writer and a large pepperoni pizza? The pizza can feed a family of four. The joke gets some “aww” noises from the crowd, but it’s clear to all of us that Sawyer, with many awards under his belt, could probably best several pizzas in that department. He’s to be admired as much for the ideas in his books as for the prose in them. For example, the excerpt from his newest book, Wonder, introduces a sentient computer mind’s thoughts on faith. “It takes humans time to digest things – literally and figuratively,” observes Webmind. “I was curious what a human might have to say to his god. Prayer was a channel I could not monitor.” “Knowing was not the same as understanding.” What would a sentient computer mind use as a signature to its emails? “Having a good conversation is like having riches.” – Kenyan Proverb.

Break and conversation time!

After the end of Act 1, Sawyer seems only too happy to be confronted with a worn copy of Illegal Alien, a previous novel, for signing. “Don’t get caught!” he writes inside the jacket, cheerfully affirming that he will sign any and all of his works that I may have stowed within my bag. Two books later, I turn grinning to talk to Wayne Tefs, who explains his use of his own father’s voice to capture the voice of Leishman’s generation, getting tiny mannerisms so correctly that I could hear Leishman in my head, though I’d never met the man or read the book. And though Margaret Macpherson is seeing this edition of Body Trade for only the second time – the first time was only a week ago! – she says she’s at home with the characters, having spent four years with them! I sneak a fabulous piece of chocolate cake with mocha icing, a very fitting birthday cake for Thin Air’s 15^th.

Act 2 begins with Lynn Coady – yes, the brilliant columnist. She’s reading from her book The Antagonist, and in a fitting twist the title refers to her protagonist Gordon Rankin, commonly known as ‘Rank.’ Rank wants to run from his past, only to find that a former college classmate has published a book exposing said past. Angry and wounded, Rank sends a series of emails to the friend, Adam, and the emails form Coady’s book. In them, Rank appears to be desperate for redemption, trying to set the record straight with Adam, but what he’s really searching for is god, or God. From the witty excerpt read by Coady, who nails Rank’s voice perfectly, we learn that Rank may indeed find Who he’s looking for, but probably not what he expected at all.

Elizabeth Hay introduces her mother before introducing her book. At age 91, and suffering from Alzheimer’s, she nonetheless remembers quite clearly her high school principal, and these remembrances took root to form the principal in Hay’s new novel, Alone in the Classroom. The book begins at a slow, comforting pace, with a young schoolteacher’s wry appreciation for a French textbook edited by “Ferguson and McKellar, those two great Frenchmen,” and surprise at an older colleague who “scratched her scalp with a pencil so often that there were scribbles.” But things take a chilling turn when Principal Burns, nicknamed Parley for his grasp of French, takes particular notice of a young student and keeps her back, alone, after school…Here, we’re left hanging over the cliff as Hay thanks us and returns to her place on one of the sofas.

Long after the event has been officially concluded, people are still lingering, chatting over wine, cheese, and alphabet-shaped pretzels. “Having a conversation is like having riches” is the spirit of Thin AIR, and I can’t wait for more.

n  Danielle Conolly

Women need Women

Women need women. I don’t know if it’s the shared complex experiences we encounter in a lifetime or the innate desire to talk about them but we need each other.

As a kid and a youth, I always related more with boys. They were easy going, less dramatic and you always knew where you stood with them. Girls historically have hurt me much deeper with their fair weather friendships and backstabbing gossip, it scarred so much more than rejected love ever did. Perhaps it was the competition of being a girl that made it so hard. Being poorer, worse dressed and taller than most of my peers I felt perhaps, that I couldn’t compete.

That changed when I met a woman my age, in grade ten, who was raised by a woman who was raised by a woman. I don’t mean that in a single parent way, but in a strong female role model way. She was genuine, non-catty, wise and graceful. Competitively I could not compete with her either, not in looks or smarts or athletic ability but somehow we found common ground. She wasn’t like the other girl friends I’ve had because she was a young woman.

I later on just after high school, in my ‘light bulb’ years, realized that this competition of beauty and wealth was a scam, patriarchal society keeping us women apart. A great ploy set out by religion and politics to keep us women in our places, segregating us from each other by training us to size each other up, come up with a hierarchy and treat one another accordingly as either lesser or greater than. Upon that realization I set out to fight the system, I will find equals, real women and make my own tribe. Megan Francis, recently reminded me of the importance of this in her book The Happiest Mom. She dedicated a whole chapter in her 10 step program to making other woman friends as part of becoming a balanced woman. Not just one or two woman friends but a LOT of them on varying levels of friendship, one to serve each need and for you to serve them in return.

Reading books like Anita Diamont’s Red Tent and Ami McKay’s The Birth House, while pregnant with my first child I developed a passion for natural childbirth, midwife care and the history of women as a separate tribe from the men. Women supporting women the way only women who’ve traveled the road of motherhood before are able, either directly or from empathetic distance.

Men have their own tribe of hunters, gatherers and tackling tasks of physical strength and it’s a beautiful thing when members from each tribe unite but there are things about being a woman that no one else can understand.

There is comfort in shared experience. When in crisis management training I was told that to feel normal is often the solution to any personal crisis. To know that someone else has been through or is going through what you’re experiencing helps a person feel like part of this earth when they feel most lost.

In this age of technology and women in mixed roles, these tribe-like relationships with other women outside of our immediate family is not as common. Still you find it hidden in plain sight on Facebook groups and counter culture networks of parents who seek out from their isolation and find the comfort of others in their situation or similar.

Women need women for this reason. The journey from childhood into adolescence, young adulthood, maturity and old age is an epic hormonal roller coaster for a female and the best way to survive it is to bind together with a network of women and find your tribe.

When asked to blog for Kim Anderson’s event tomorrow evening at the Millennium Library for the ThinAir Festival I was beyond motivated. Her book, Life Stages and Native Women: Memory Teachings and Story Medicine, sounded by even the smallest of description, like something I would be greatly interested in. Upon reading only the acknowledgments and the forward of the advanced reading copy, which I was honoured to have, I was already so inspired to write my perspective from a urban culture still clinging to ancient ways.

I can’t wait to meet Kim tomorrow, hear her speak and continue reading her thesis.

- Leah Edmonds, guest blogger

The Nooner with Wayne Tefs

I raced up the stairs towards the Carol Shield’s Auditorium at the Millennium Library to attend The Nooner with Wayne Tefs. His book, Bandit, fictionally chronicled the life of Ken Leishmann, also known as the Flying Bandit, who was a bank robber of sorts in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

A man in his early-30s sat at the back of the room, his arms relaxed and draped across the backs of the chairs beside him. Another sat at the front, a decorative pillow cushioned his back. There was a rather tall man with grey hair, whose face I couldn’t see, even though he asked several questions of the author. I believe he wore glasses.

There were few women amongst the crowd, maybe eight at best. There was a striking woman in head to toe black who strolled across one side of the auditorium in heels. A woman in a lime-green blazer with silver-hair told Tefs how her husband was a bus-boy at a “chicken and ribs” restaurant once frequented by Leishmann. The auditorium suddenly filled with laughter.

The Nooner is an opportunity for all Winnipeggers, and Manitobans, to sit, relax and listen. To be read to. Who doesn’t like to be read to? Remember when we were children, how we looked forward to story time in school? Think of THIN AIR’s The Nooner like a grown-up’s story time.

But these aren’t your kid’s nursery rhymes. 

--Tammy W. Karatchuk

Monday at THIN AIR…

It’s our first full-day of the festival and we hope that you’ll join us! Every weekday during festival week is jam-packed with a number of different events to choose from.

The Nooner (Millennium Library, 12:15 – 12:45 p.m.) is a quick and free literary hit that can be enjoyed over the lunch hour.

The Afternoon Books Chats (McNally Robinson, 2:30 – 3:30 p.m.) offer some stimulating company for your mid-afternoon coffee break zone. And yes… also free.

The Big Ideas series (Millennium Library, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.) gives you something to chew on before you head home for dinner. And, you guessed it… free, free, free!

Each weekday also includes both rural and campus tours, and ends with a Mainstage presentation featuring a collection of the day’s presenters.

So who do you want to see today?
Manitoba Reads finalist Wayne Tefs presents his latest novel, Bandit, at The Nooner and teams up with Elizabeth Hay for the Afternoon Book Chat. Wayne and Elizabeth are joined by Lynn Coady, Margaret Macpherson and Robert J Sawyer on the first evening Mainstage show at MTYP.

You might also want to check in with Winnipeg writer, Dave Kattenburg. He’ll kick off the Big Ideas sessions with a discussion about Foxy Lady, the true story of how several free-spirited adventurers – including one Canadian – fell victim to the Khmer Rouge in 1978.

Dave Kattenburg - go see him!

For all the details, visit thinairwinnipeg.ca. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @WPGTHINAIR, because we’ll be live-tweeting from most events!

Opening Night under Open Sky

Thin Air turns 15 in the fall chill. Oodena Circle’s great acoustics ring with birthday applause as festival director Charlene Diehl thanks employees, founders, and volunteers. A young boy in a yellow & green football jersey clambers among the circle’s standing stones while the evening crowd fills the staircase/bleachers, settling onto blankets and folding chairs. (I sat on my Thin Air tote bag – alas for the blanket still sitting in my car!) Two young girls are enjoying ice cream cones despite the wind, as a couple in shorts strolls by. Am I the only person here at The Forks tonight who feels cold?

A board member brings greetings from the mayor, a short speech. Did he write it himself, in honour of a festival for writers? Is Mr. Katz a writer, too? Clare McKay speaks next, giving the history of Oodena. Archaeological records indicate that Oodena was a meeting place, and the ground for Inn at the Forks was a treaty site for five tribes, as far back as 6,000 years. The voices from Oodena tonight will mingle with those from the past.

The board chairwoman is up next, telling a beautiful story about the importance of being read to, or reading aloud to someone. In the story, a father promises his daughter that he will read aloud to her for 10 minutes every day, for the next 100 days. When they reach 100 days, father and daughter agree to continue for another 1000. What happened when they reached that milestone? They kept going, without setting another limit. This story calls to mind my father and I, who read every book in the Little House on the Prairie series aloud together when I was in elementary school. Apparently my voice is soothing (or boring?) because as I grew up, he requested that I read those books to him if he was sick or unable to fall asleep.

First of five authors is David Alexander Robertson, renowned for his graphic novels: a stand-alone biography of Helen Betty Osborne; and a series about residential schools and their effects, called Seven Generations. He is shivering in just a dress shirt, slacks and tie, as Diehl introduces him and remarks “Education and conversation are the best ways to combat racism and sexism.”

Powerful words, and what follows is even more powerful – a love poem read aloud by Robertson in the style of freestyle rap, embracing Winnipeg and Riding Mountain National Park. This poem resonated so heavily with me because I remember spending summers with my family at the same Thunderbird Bungalows mentioned by Robertson! I wonder if we met as kids…and then I am away, under the spell of Robertson’s voice. “You are a kite in the breeze…and I will tie you to my wrist so you’ll follow me wherever I go.”

Sue Sorensen reads second and I remember her strong voice from my second-year English seminar at UW a few years back. She’s reading an excerpt from her new novel, which “is not called ‘A Large Harmonica,’” she informs the crowd, to much laughter. A Large Harmonium is set in a place that is Winnipeg and yet not Winnipeg, and the scene she reads – about the perils of attempted sign vandalism – is witty, funny, and somehow sad. As she describes it, her book revolves around a husband and wife who are both professors at the same university, and “Little Max, their hellion child.” Sorensen isn’t sure where her book will travel, but is looking forward to interpretations. “We’ll wait until the students of the future take this on,” she says.

Rhéal Cenerini is author number three. His writing has been part of Cercle Molière’s repertoire, and his latest book offering is titled in Mitchif, a truly Canadian language that combines French and Cree. Cenerini is also in touch with his Italian heritage, and the story he weaves for us is about his grandmother, Amabilia. Called “Ode to a Stranger,” the piece reflects the isolation this woman felt as she was transplanted into a harsher climate across two continents and one ocean. It seemed for Amabilia to have been a journey in which her soul never caught up with the distance her body had travelled: alone on farmland, away from neighbours, giving birth to ten children without a doctor’s help, and never learning French nor English – this was Amabilia’s Canada. Nor did the place seem to have accepted her – Cenerini points out to his audience that her tombstone is crumbling into the hill it rests upon, and her name is misspelled on it.

“She writes for kids of all ages,” is Diehl’s introduction of author Anita Daher, and it is fitting. Daher’s voice has a sprightly energy as she enters the mind of a busking mime in her short story “Thinking Inside the Box.” Through first-person narration from our nameless protagonist, we learn that he ran away from home, misunderstood by his well-meaning mother. He befriended a mime who taught him the tricks of the trade, as well as how to ‘open a window, make yourself a sandwich, and leave the way you came.’ Though it doesn’t sound like life has been a bed of roses for our mime, his tone suggests that he has found a way to live life at his rhythm. ‘Inside is in-finite,’ he says, to explain that the mind is a huge huge place for all kinds of imaginings, but society pares that space down as we get older – if we let it.

Darkness has fallen, and George Amabile, the fifth and last but not least reader of the evening, expresses his happiness with the ambience. I blink – is it really dark? I find that not only are the Oodena stairlights shining, but almost no one else has budged from their places. It may be windy, but we are all under the same spell. Amabile’s new book, Dancing with Mirrors, is due to be published within days, so he shares his poetry with us. First is a winter poem, “Zen and the Art of Cross-Country Skiing.” Having cross-country skied as a child, I shivered at the aptness of the line ‘…wind like raw silk through the lungs.’ The rhythm of his poetry is akin to jumping from a huge bank of snow left behind by a grader – and then he shifts to a summer poem about sailing Lake Winnipeg, ‘an open-air school for one.’

I am still lost in that image of summer, still caught in the sun-warmed sails, when the final round of applause signals the end of the evening. Diehl invites the audience to come and speak with the authors, but only a few brave souls have accepted this invite as I take my leave. Come out and talk to the writers! I want to shout, having met a few of them just prior to the opening night ceremony. They love language, and they enjoy sharing ideas.

I look forward to many more days of idea-sharing at Thin Air.

--Danielle Conolly, guest blogger

Sunday at THIN AIR…

After a year of reading, planning and attending to a million tiny details, Winnipeg’s 15th writers festival will finally begin tomorrow evening at 7:00 p.m.

The Opening Night performance will take place at Oodena Celebration Circle at The Forks. Oodena has been a gathering place for centuries, and it is the perfect place for festival-goers to come together and celebrate the power of words to create connections and build community.

A talented line-up of local writers will share new work on this special opening evening. It’s your chance to hear George Amabile, Rhéal Cenerini, Anita Daher, David Alexander Robertson and Sue Sorensen, all bringing to life their sense of this place.

For all the details, visit thinairwinnipeg.ca. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter at @WPGTHINAIR, because we’ll be live-tweeting from most events!

A date with director Charlene Diehl

When did you start writing?
“I wrote some stories when I was a little kid, and a handful of poems when I was a late teen, but mostly I read and read and read. I actually fell in love with poetry when I was about 13. Even then, I loved the feel of mystery and potency in that kind of language.
Also, the musicality.

I didn't really start writing poems until I was partway through my Master's thesis on E.E. Cummings, when my advisor Dennis Cooley said, "Where are your poems? Nobody cares this much about poetry without having a drawerful at home!" In truth I didn't have a drawerful, but I continue to be grateful for that nudge.”

How did you decide what you wanted to write about?
“Oh man, I never really know what I'm going to write about! A lot of my writing these days is creative non-fiction -- mostly musings about writing, music and mothering. The pathways always surprise me, which is generally how I know if the pieces are working or not. The more planned they are, the deader they tend to be.

With larger projects, like poem suites, I'm often the last to figure out what I'm doing -- I watch them emerge rather than decide what I'm writing about. Usually I'm toying with an image or a writing challenge, but I'm also exploring something elusive -- one of those big meaning-of-life (or nature or love or power or death) questions.

Sometimes life hands you material too. When my baby died, I knew at some level that I would have to write about that experience. At first, that was a reporting-from-hell enterprise: with the lamentations collection, I was recovering my voice and my language, both of which had been shattered by that loss.

As I became stronger and healthier again, I began to realize that I could share my story with others as a way of extending some support to other bereaved people and those who care for them. My memoir, Out of Grief, Singing, was written over a long period, and I realized when I released it last year that I had also been extending a hand back to my own devastated self as well. Grief is one of the most human of experiences, yet in our culture it's also one that frightens people. If we all shy away from it, we don't have an opportunity to discover that grief can also generate great beauty & joy.”

Probably my favourite picture of Charlene...

How do you usually write? 
“Have you met me?! I'm not sure "usually" applies on any front, least of all writing!

These days, I mostly write to deadline – and there are many of them. I lean toward late-night writing flurries, partly because I love the late hours of the day, partly because my life quiets down enough then to follow those inner voices.

My most treasured writing times are when my poet self gets all revved up by an idea or an image. Then writing just takes over and fills up every available crack of time for several days in a row. Those visitations are absolutely unpredictable and (sadly) infrequent.”

What advice could you provide to someone attempting to publish his or her first piece?
“Read a lot. Write a lot. Seek out every opportunity to get mentored -- take classes and workshops, and meet regularly with other writers who are more accomplished than you are and who will speak truthfully.

Attend readings. Learn everything you can from the word zone around you. Really understand that you will always be a beginner because the art form will always be unfolding ahead of you far faster than you can master it. (Thank heavens!)

Write until you no longer care a whole lot about getting published -- the experience of writing has to be far more crucial to you than the experience of being published. (It's kind of like looking for a date: if you stop pushing for that desired outcome and really put your energy into becoming strong and happy and self-sustaining, you're going to be a lot more appealing...)

Practically speaking, be reasonable about your expectations. Submit your work to places which publish similar material. Prepare your submission carefully, mail it off, take a couple of days to feel jittery and excited, then get back to your desk and start making something else.”

If you could meet one writer, who would it be and why?
“Only one?! Yikes! I'm going to say William Blake. My first experience of being profoundly rewritten by someone's work happened when I was plowing through one of Blake's epic long poems. I think of that experience as the advent of adulthood for me --he literally changed the way I think.

Every now and then I revisit a shorter long poem, The Marriage of Heaven & Hell, to be inspired by his creative fire, but also to be reminded that powerful writing engages our personal, social, political, and spiritual selves. Blake was wildly eccentric -- he indulged in many curious behaviors, including regular conversations with angels. If he were alive now, I suspect he'd be highly medicated, but that intensity and drama animate his writing, allow us to feel the pulse across a couple of centuries. I admire the courage it requires to be so fully alive, than capture it in poems and images.”

Charlene Diehl is the associate editor of dig! magazine and the director of THIN AIR, Winnipeg’s annual literary festival. Her last book is a memoir, Out of Grief, Singing.