| Those little Amazing Stories books that you see everywhere – and I mean everywhere, from airports to grocery stores – are an amazing local success story in their own right. You may have known Canmore’s Altitude Publishing for its guides to the Rockies. But with these short non-fiction books on Canadian subjects, Altitude has pried open a neglected niche in publishing, then charged straight into the breach with a small army of enthusiastic writers. Four such authors read this week at McNally Robinson: Frances Hern, Linda Kupecek, Joan Dixon and Lisa Murphy-Lamb, who have written the "amazing stories" of Norman Bethune, rebel women, Roberta Bondar and dinosaur hunters, respectively. This could be a good event for the younger readers around your house. It’s on Wednesday, August 25 at 7 p.m.
Then on Thursday, August 26 at 7:30 p.m., local writer Wanda St. Hilaire takes to the McNally Robinson patio to share stories and poems from her "Mexican sabbatical" (just in case you were looking for something or someone to envy).
If you think or write about the arts, you could hardly help but be arrested when Thomas Kean, chair of the U.S. 9-11 commission, recently stated that the worst failing in the months before those attacks was a "failure of the imagination." What, does this mean that the imagination is likely to get a little respect from people more powerful than art-gallery programmers and small-press publishers? As if imagination were something crucial to human prosperity and survival, instead of a silly, "soft" quasi-handicap in a world that prefers "hard data?" Perhaps that day is near.
Meanwhile, for a succinct, thoughtful response to Kean’s fascinating admission, see Dan Brown’s CBC piece "How to Stop the Imagination from Failing," at www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_browndan/20040805. If this is the second time I’ve mentioned Brown in this space, it’s because once again he’s said something in a way I would have liked to have said it myself. |
Copyright ©2004 FFWD. All rights reserved.