| The poetry of Tchitala Nyota Kamba reflects a lifetime of experience with African culture.
Born in Kinshasa, Congo, she studied in Montreal and Belgium, then worked as a programmer and director at the National Theatre of Gabon. Now, after work in film, radio and television, she’s teaching at the University of Calgary and at the Alliance Française de Calgary.
It’s at the Alliance Française that she will read her poetry on Thursday, February 19 at 7 p.m. The free recital will be conducted in French, and includes musical and dance interludes by Valérie Dupré. The Alliance is on the second floor of the Memorial Park Library building, 1221 Second Street S.W. Call 245-5662 or see www.afcalgary.ca for more information.
Consider this an early warning for late-blooming writers: you have until March 15 to be considered for this year’s $5,000 Brenda Strathern "Late Bloomers" Writing Prize. Like Strathern herself, who began writing in her 40s, you must be over 40 and you must be working on the completion and publication of your first book. If your book has already been accepted for publication, congratulations – but that makes you ineligible for this particular competition.
If you do fit the description, submit 10 to 20 pages of your work, typed and double-spaced, with page numbers. However, do not include your name or other identification on the pages. Identify yourself in a separate cover letter with all your contact information. Send all that to The Calgary Foundation, The Brenda Strathern "Late Bloomers" Writing Prize, 700, 999 Eighth Street S.W., Calgary, T2R 1J5. For full details call 802-7700 or see www.thecalgaryfoundation.org.
A Hard Witching & Other Stories, University of Alberta creative writing grad Jacqueline Baker’s collection of stories set in Saskatchewan’s Sand Hills, is among the nominees for this year’s Writers’ Trust of Canada Great Literary Awards. Other notable fiction nominees include Gil Courtemanche for A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali and Barbara Gowdy for The Romantic. Among the non-fiction nominees are J. Edward Chamberlin for If This is Your Land, Where Are Your Stories? and Brian Fawcett for Virtual Clearcut: or, The Way Things Are in My Hometown. The winners of all the rather well-funded prizes under the Writers’ Trust umbrella – including the Journey Prize for short fiction and the Drainie-Taylor Prize for biography – will be announced (just a few short days after the Oscars) on March 3 in Toronto. Previous laureates include Calgarians Peter Oliva (the 1999 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for The City of Yes) and Ken McGoogan (the 2001 Drainie-Taylor Prize for Fatal Passage). |
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