Bookmark host Ken Davis

Last week, Fast Forward ran a story poking fun at Ed Stelmach (“Who are your favourite Alberta artists, Ed?”). Stelmach’s Bush-like knack for embarrassing himself was even more egregious than usual on this occasion— at a press conference hyping the government’s new arts policy (30 per cent funding increase for the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, increased incentives for private funding), the premier was asked by staff writer Jeremy Klaszus to name his favourite Alberta artists. Stelmach stumbled and bumbled out a non-answer for a couple of minutes, unable to come up with the name of a single writer, singer, painter, whatever.

We all had a good laugh, our suspicions about Stelmach’s deep-seated philistinism confirmed. But Ken Davis, the host of CKUA’s new books and arts show Bookmark, and a longtime figure in the Alberta publishing industry (most recently as treasurer of the Book Publishers Association of Alberta), just sighs a little when he hears the story. “I’m not even gonna take the easy shot,” he says. “It’s not too surprising — [culture] hasn’t really been on the radar of the government.”

While Davis is adopting a wait-and-see approach to the Tories’ new culture policy (“Who’s going to be controlling those dollars, what are the policies and procedures attached to those dollars going to be?”), he’s hopeful that it will mean a turnaround for the province’s beleaguered publishing industry. “The way I hope it plays out is both publishers and writers can get more of the support they need to stay here,” he says. “Book publishing has been taking it on the chin for years — we’ve lost six, seven, eight, nine significant publishers in the last few years. It’s getting to be, ‘Will the last one left turn out the lights?’”

Davis is hopeful that Bookmark itself will be able to play a small role (or a big one) in reviving the province’s literary reputation. “We’re going out of our way to find and interview people from across the spectrum of what you’d called literature,” he says. “We’re not being snobby about it. There’s not some highbrow level we feel we have to nail for it to qualify for the show.”

The first few episodes of Bookmark do run the gamut — Davis will talk to Yardley Jones and Spyder-Yardley Jones, father-and-son authors of the bestselling Bachelor’s Guide To... books on one episode, and little-known B.C. author Angie Abdou on another. There’ll be a two-part tribute to W.O. Mitchell, as well as a piece about Calgary performance poet Sheri-D Wilson. “Anything that’s fascinating about the book world in Alberta we want to touch,” Davis says. “I like that [Prairie literature] is becoming more emboldened, if you will. There’s not a shyness that nobody will want to read this stuff anymore.

“Doing this show is going to be a great discovery,” he adds. “I’m going to be learning right alongside everyone else what’s going on.”

Bookmark airs Sundays at 12:30 p.m. on CKUA, 93.7 FM.