| It isn’t really adequate to refer to Calgary writer Fred Stenson as "Calgary writer Fred Stenson." You really should call him "Calgary script writer, anthologist, short-story writer, writing instructor, columnist and so on Fred Stenson."
For many years, the Alberta-born wordsmith has been to writing as Leatherman is to pliers, or Victorinox is to pocket knives. After working for 15 years on his novel The Trade, he was recompensed with admiring reviews and nominations for all the big book prizes, including the Giller and the Impac Dublin Literary Award. But instead of sitting around in a haze of gratification, Stenson just kept on working. Thing Feigned or Imagined, his book on the craft of writing, came out last year. He continues to direct the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre, as he has for the past three years. And now his fourth novel, Lightning, comes along to chronicle the early days of ranching in Alberta.
The novel starts in 1881, just as cattle herding is taking over from fur trading – so it’s all about new beginnings. Stenson reads at the W.R. Castell Central Library on Wednesday, October 1 at 7:30 p.m. The reading is in the library’s John Dutton Theatre and is sponsored by Pages (where Lightning was number 5 on the best-seller list last time I checked). Admission is free.
Like Stenson, Cecilia Frey has been writing and teaching in and around Calgary for years. She is a three-time winner of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta award for short fiction. Her new book, The Prisoner of Cage Farm, is an iconoclastic tale of rural Alberta with a gothic twist. Frey reads at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Tuesday, September 30 at 7 p.m. If you can’t make that date, she’ll also be at the Word on the Street Book and Magazine Fair on Sunday, September 28 at Eau Claire Festival Market. She reads at 1 p.m. in the Authors Tent.
CBC Radio’s Eleanor Wachtel will be at the W.R. Castell Central Library on Thursday, October 2. The host of Writers and Company will read from her new book, Original Minds, which includes conversations with thinkers from Jane Goodall to Jonathan Miller, Arthur C. Clarke to Susan Sontag. Wachtel appears in the John Dutton Theatre at 7 p.m. and, once again, admission is free. |
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