This week, Charlotte Gill was announced as the University of Calgary’s new (2008-09) Markin-Flanagan writer-in-residence. Fast Forward spoke to Sina Queyras, the outgoing writer-in-residence, about her experience living and writing in Calgary for a year.

Unlike the past three Markin-Flanagan writers-in-residence (Natalee Caple, Melanie Little and Jaspreet Singh, in chronological order), Queyras is leaving Calgary at the end of her term. What’s more, Queyras was sure she would leave when she’d just arrived, laughing but firmly mouthing “no” at the suggestion during her first Markin-Flanagan reading that she, too, would end up staying here. Yet Queyras has been an active and much appreciated member of the Calgary writing community, holding manuscript consultations, attending a number of events, giving famously graceful and generous introductions to visiting artists, and blogging enthusiastically about many Calgary writers (check out lemonhound.blogspot.com).

While Queyras readily affirms that she never intended to stay in Calgary, she also stresses her desire to live in the city. “I wanted to come and experience Calgary. It was the one city in Canada that I was curious about and had not really had the experience of living in,” she says. “I was curious about it and was curious about what was going on in the writing scene.”

How does Calgary’s writing scene compare to those of the other cities she’s lived in? “It’s not political — that was the biggest difference,” says Queyras. “You know, in New York, everybody’s active in some way. I mean we’re always talking about marches, demonstrating. Here there was an election, and no one talked about it!

“Otherwise, it was very fun, very friendly, innovative, fresh and exciting, just as I’d thought,” she adds. “Very conceptual and abstract. And I felt welcome.”

One of the three projects that Queyras was working on during her stint as writer-in-residence is a collection of short fiction, a part of which was just published as a chapbook by derek beaulieu’s No Press, and launched at Pages last Thursday. The chapbook, titled Nineteen Short Stories by Samuel Beckett, arose from Queyras’s interest in “story.” “I was thinking about the idea of story. What does it mean, ‘story’? When people are talking about it and say, ‘I’m a storyteller’ or ‘I write stories.’ So I started reading Beckett and I tried and I thought, ‘Well, really, these are stories.’ But how can I express that story to someone, how can I express what Beckett was going after to someone who was expecting something completely different? How can I translate that into a more traditional story? Which I didn’t really do [laughs] but I thought a lot about that, about what that would mean.” The chapbook consists of 19 “retellings,” one for each of Beckett’s plays.

Queyras will return to Calgary to read alongside Charlotte Gill at the traditional Markin-Flanagan changeover (September 10 at 7 p.m. in the Engineered Air Theatre in the Epcor Centre — pencil it in). For the interim, here are some nearer literary events.

The Banff Centre’s popular Literary Journalism Conversations kicks off with Wayne Johnston’s talk, titled “How Much of This is True?” in which he examines what constitutes truthfulness in fiction, and where the boundary lies between invention and fact in non-fiction. Johnston speaks at 8 p.m. on Monday, July 7 in the Rolston Recital Hall at The Banff Centre. The event is free and presented as part of the 2008 Banff Summer Arts Festival.

Poetry in the Park is a summertime version of Kirk Ramdath’s Passion Pitch open mic. With no headlining writer (or mic for that matter), Poetry in the Park is a casual and enjoyable poetry gathering. Come share your work or check out that of others. The next gathering will be held Saturday, July 12 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in Riley Park.