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Bookends by Harry Vandervlist According to Carol Shields, the idea of longing for home drives a lot of contemporary writing. You can take "home" in a large, metaphorical sense here, i.e. the place where you can be who you really are. That home may not be your literal birth home, of course. In fact, it may be even further away from there than Brandon Teena ever got from Lincoln, Nebraska in the poignant Oscar-winning film Boys Don’t Cry. In a talk at the Glenbow Museum on Sunday, April 9, Shields will present an exhibit she created, and give a talk entitled "Jane Austen Comes Home, about these ideas in Austen’s work. It’s all part of the Glenbow’s series entitled Face Forward: Six Canadians Confront the Millenium. Tickets are available in advance only, and Shields’s talk is at 3 p.m. Call 268-4110 or go to the Glenbow’s info desk to order. Oh, and if you miss the talk, the exhibit runs until May 22. Somehow she finds the time, between teaching at the U of C and just generally living life, to write. Calgary writer JoAnn McCaig launches her first work of fiction (she recently published a scholarly book on Alice Munro) at Pages on Thursday, April 6 at 7:30 p.m. Entitled The Textbook of the Rose, McCaig’s book may be a series of short stories, or it may be a novel. This makes a person think of Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women, which had the same ambiguity. But unlike anything Munro is known for, McCaig’s book is a medieval romance. This makes a person think of Umberto Eco and his The Name of the Rose. These associations inspire curiousity, yes they do. To help increase awareness about the plight of illiterate adults and children throughout the world, the Calgary branch of Oxfam has organized a week of author readings and a band night at the Wildwood pub — and response from local authors has been great. Readings include: Rajinderpal S. Pal and Barb Scott at the Signal Hill Indigo, April 3 at 7.30 p.m.; Bob Stallworthy at Annie’s Bookstore, April 4 at 7.30 p.m.; Fred Wah and Rosemary Nixon at Socrate’s Corner Bookstore, April 5 at 7.30 p.m.; Catherine Simmons-Niven at The Book Company, April 6 at noon; Marie Jakobar and Elizabeth Haynes at Socrate’s, April 6 at 7:30 p.m.; Ali-Al Rumaith and Shirley Fitzpatrick at the Wee Book Inn (tentative), April 7 at 7:30 p.m.; and Pal, Sheri D.Wilson, Shane Rhodes, Claire Harris and Christopher Wiseman at Books and Books, April 8 at 7:30 p.m. The band night at Wildwood (2714 - 4th Street S.W.) is April 8, and has an impressive lineup of local musicians playing from 3 p.m. to close. For more information on the Oxfam campaign, check out the Web site at www.oxfam.ca The Alexandra Writers' Centre presents a free public reading this week by their Writer-in-Residence Faye Reineberg Holt. Entitled "Crossing Boundaries," the reading will include work-in-progress and previously published writing, and is scheduled for Friday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. The Centre is at 922 - 9th Avenue S.E., and you should go in via door #3. Spring courses will also be starting soon at the centre: there’s a registration night on Friday, April 7 at 7 p.m. For details about the workshops, courses on getting started in writing, publishing your work and writing for kids, call 264-4730 or look at http://www.writtenword.org/awcs/course.html. While you’re at the useful writtenword.org site, check out the Calgary Writer’s Association prizes for various types of writing. Currently the Arrol Award for Non-fiction remains open to entries. The deadline is April 15. For details see http://www.writtenword.org/cwa/index.html

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