FFWD Weekly
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Bookends by Harry Vandervlist Sid Marty's long career as a writer and park warden led to his popular previous books, Leaning on the Wind and Men For the Mountains. Now he's launching Switchbacks: True Stories from the Rocky Mountains, at Pages on Monday, November 15 at 7:30 p.m. Maybe you've noticed how Bookends concentrates on fiction, poetry books, maybe sometimes a play. Sometimes a bit of history or biography. Oh there are lots of other books, and book events, out there – cookbooks, how-to books, and self-help books abound. Their sales often keep local bookstores and small presses afloat. Thank you, cookbooks, Chicken Soup, and Celestine Prophecies. However, this little corner of the print world doesn't generally focus on those books, or on your coffee-table-type printed matter either. Except that this week a couple of photo books are being launched at Memorial Park Library, a charming venue and a library branch threatened with closure. So demonstrate how beloved the branch is, and pack the place for a slide-show launch of Canada: Our Century, and Images of Our Inheritance. The second has photos and essays drawn from a cross-country pilgrimage. That's Tuesday, November 16 at 7:30 p.m. at Memorial Park Library, right behind the cenotaph. If you keep telling your friends you could write better Ally McBeal episodes, then get started. There's an info session on screenwriting basics at Indigo in Signal Hill Centre, Thursday, November 11 at 8 p.m. This Remembrance Day week, don't forget Once Upon an Elephant, Ashok Mathur's surprising novel of intercultural detective work in Calgary. Mathur will read, discuss and sign at Owl's Nest Books (815A - 49th Avenue SW) on Tuesday, November 16 at 7:30 p.m. The Alexandra Writers Centre (922 - 9th Avenue SE, door #3) invites the public to attend the launch of Growing Up, a new chapbook of postcard stories by member and writer AnneIna Mitchell on Sunday, November 14, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. From all over the city, faxes slip silently into the contemplative precincts of our penthouse eyrie high atop the regal Bookends Tower. All of them advertise appearances by James Pawlik. It's odd. Publicity for book events is generally so hit and miss that one week all three Bronte sisters could return from the grave and give a one-night-only reading attended by four people lucky enough to have heard of the event. Then the next week, a first-novel reading gets publicity rivalling that accorded to visiting evangelists. Pawlik, oceanographer and former Calgarian, has written a "bio-technothriller" novel called Sea Changes, and he's at the Bankers Hall Book Co. on Friday, November 12 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.; then at Pages on Kensington that night at 7:30 p.m.; then Smithbooks in South Centre from noon to 3 p.m. on November 13; and at Coles in TD Square on Monday, November 15 from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Somehow I'm getting a very "gift book for Dad" vibe from all of this. Are you a Writers Guild of Alberta member? The deadline for your submission to the 2000-20001 writer's directory is November 19, so don't miss out.

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