Supercrawl 2015: Day One

There's something in the air in the days and hours that lead up to Supercrawl, and I'm happy that this year Supercrawl and the Ottawa Folk Festival don't coincide, so I'm home for the fun. As expected, a little rain didn't keep Hamiltonians away from Supercrawl on a very soggy Day One. 

Read (or listen) local at Supercrawl at these listening hubs put on by the Hamilton Arts Council's Literary Arts Committee. 

Living Arts: A Thousand Doorways

This article originally appeared as part of the Hamilton Arts Council's Living Arts series. 

My sister went missing from the Burlington Public Library when she was somewhere between the ages of five and seven. This isn't my witty way of telling you she "got lost in a good book." Rather, she did quite literally go missing after a presentation in the basement auditorium of the Central Branch. She was under my not-so-watchful eye, and she simply slipped away. The police were called. My mother's face was streaked with tears as she shouted things like "Someone could have taken her all the way across the border by now!"

Nobody took my sister over the border. She got separated, and she did exactly the thing parents tell their children not to do during "stranger danger" conversations. She left the library and found my parents' station wagon in the Central Branch's large parking lot. This is where we eventually found her.

This isn't my first memory of the library. It probably isn't even in the first ten. But it certainly stands out as one of the memories I won't likely forget.

In April, I had the amazing pleasure of introducing one of my favourite writers -- Richard Wagamese -- at his literary salon at gritLIT: Hamilton's Readers and Writers Festival. Over the hour and a half that followed, Wagamese shared with us stories of homelessness, poverty, and finding his voice as a writer. He also told us stories about his relationship with libraries, and inevitably, it forced me to reflect on my own.

"Every book I ever opened had a thousand doorways in it," said Wagamese, speaking in particularly about the time he spent at the St. Catharines Public Library where librarians "were always there for me." Before he was a celebrated writer, he was homeless, hungry, and thirsty for knowledge. My memories of libraries come from a more privileged place; however, I share Wagamese's hunger for books and fondness of libraries.

The Burlington Public Library's Central and Aldershot branches were both second homes to me as a child. The Aldershot branch is where I sat cross-legged for storytime and where I counted jelly beans in canisters in hopes of taking the whole thing home. The shiny beige plastic chairs would likely seem miniature to me now, but back then they were the perfect place to sit and decide which books to bring home.

In the summer, Central Library was a weekly, sometimes daily, destination. My appetite for books was never more acute than during the BPL's summer reading program. For every five books read, I collected a prize, and I've been a competitive reader since. I've moved half a dozen times in the years since then, but I still have my summer reading program record sheets, and they're invaluable to me. They're keepsakes of the summers I met Amelia Bedelia, Cam Jansen, and the Rosso family (from my all-time favourite children's book, Ten Kids, No Pets).

There are at least a hundred stories I could share about the role of libraries in my life, but here are only a few: Always the budding historian, in elementary school, I connected to the library's copy of Encarta and listened to the speeches of dead presidents. I checked out a hardcover copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz more times than I can count, and it was at that school library that I transcribed the lyrics to Michael Jackson's Heal the World to be sung at a school assembly. In middle school, I accessed the Internet for the first of a million times, and a whole new world was at my fingertips.

In high school, the library was the place I pretended to study because it was easier to hide than to try to make friends. The school library is where we turned on the news to watch the World Trade Centre towers fall. It's the place where we held a memorial for two students who died too young fifteen years ago today. At the Carleton University library, I devoured copies of The Village Voice, reading about concerts I couldn't go to and movies I couldn't see.

It's been years since I've visited the BPL, but for eight years now, I've had a new home at the Central Branch of the Hamilton Public Library, a place I first visited by bus in high school in search of Leonard Cohen CDs and a little bit of freedom. I do a lot of my freelance work, writing articles like this, tucked in a corner of the library's fourth floor.

It must come as no surprise that I spent eight years editing children's books, and even more as a reader, writer, and reviewer. It will come as no surprise that I pity my travel partners, because each new destination means another library (or libraries) to visit.

"One of the things we need to give to our children is that the culture of books is the best place to be in," said Richard Wagamese at gritLIT's literary salon. It goes without saying that I couldn't agree more.

[Edited to add: Here are the Burlington Public Library summer reading lists that started it all:]

Lists of my summer reading in the early 90s. I wonder if anyone from @burlingtonpl remembers these! pic.twitter.com/DnLOTRqkjT

— Jessica Rose (@NotMyTypewriter) July 17, 2014

LivingArts: Resolutions

This post originally appeared on the Hamilton Arts Council's LivingArts Blog.

I learned a new word over the holidays. Tsundoku is a Japanese noun meaning "leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled together with other unread books." It's a stunning word, and it, briefly, prompted a New Year's Resolution.

A handful of months ago I bought a house, moving from Durand to Hamilton's Stinson neighbourhood. The move went smoothly, with the exception of one thing. Well, hundreds of things to be exact -- the many books I've accumulated over thirty years as a reader and ten years as a book reviewer.

"I hope you like this place," said my better half, "because I'm not moving these books again for a very long time." Besides realizing that books are a pain to move, I realized another thing. I've never read many of the books that line my bookshelf.

Enter my logical New Year's Resolution. Instead of adding more books to my collection, I should read the books I've been neglecting for years, right? This seemed like an obvious resolution -- for about five seconds.

What writers need is support from their local community, meaning a moratorium on buying books is the last thing I should have. For an arts community to thrive, artists need to feel supported, and they need to be able to support themselves. It's important to buy books, and it's even more important to buy books by local authors.

We tend to look inward when we make New Year's Resolutions. In past years, I've made (and broken) promises to eat healthier, to further my career, and to travel more. I've made resolutions to better myself, but not my community. This year I'm going a different route. I'm going to be more generous with my resolutions, making promises that will support others in the arts community.

I know this sounds expensive. Supporting artists financially isn't always possible, but there are other ways to be supportive. That said, here are my 2015 resolutions.

1. Read more books by local authors, both books I've bought and books from the library.

2. Attend more lit events! Almost every week there are book launches and readings in #HamOnt, and they're often free or pay-what-you-can.

3. Spread the word. I always have good intentions of reviewing local books, but reviewing gets buried on the list of things I want to do but don't.

4. Be vocal! A local writer whose work I've reviewed emailed me the other day, and her encouragement went a long way. In an age of twitter and Facebook, it's often easy to tell someone when you appreciate his or her work. This year I'll do more of that.

There. Now that my resolutions are posted on the Internet, I have no choice but to hold myself accountable and make them a reality.

Happy reading, #HamOnt!

City of Hamilton Arts Awards

A few weeks ago, at the Hamilton Literary Awards, Stephanie Vegh (Executive Director of the Hamilton Arts Council) let us all in on a terrible secret. Last year, there were zero nominations in the category of Literary Arts at the City of Hamilton Arts Awards. Zero. With a wealth of literary talent in this city, that just should not happen.

The 2015 Arts Awards are now open and accepting nominations. Visit www.hamilton.ca/artsawards for all the information you need. Let's not let another year pass without honouring an established and emerging artist in Hamilton.

Living Arts: Writing is a Lonely Business

This post was originally posted as part of the Hamilton Arts Council's Living Arts series.

When Tyler Keevil collected his 2014 Journey Prize from the Writer’s Trust of Canada earlier this month, he’s quoted as saying something that resonates with many writers. “Writing is a lonely business,” he said.“So, it means a lot to connect with the community.”

Every writer has his or her own writing process, but for many, creativity and solitude are connected. As words, ideas, and characters percolate in a writer’s mind, a quiet workspace, isolated from people, ringing phones, and other distractions, can be essential. Personally, I like to be surrounded by the whirr of a coffee shop’s espresso machine or the hum of voices at a local pub while I work, but despite this background buzz, I still work alone. It’s not a bad form of isolation. It’s voluntary and often temporary, but it’s isolation nonetheless.

When I jotted down Tyler Keevil’s quotation, I found myself circling what I thought to be the key word — community. I started to picture Hamilton’s writing community as a collective of individuals, each inhabiting a solitary space that can sometimes get lonely. And I started thinking about my own role in this community and how much it has changed since I moved into my first Hamilton apartment in 2008.

Back then, I thought in order to meet people who shared my interest in the literary arts, I had to put myself out there. I had to network. And for this introvert, face-to-face networking is anything but easy. I associate networking with standing in the dimly lit corner of a book reading or launch party, doing the dance I always do, thinking to myself: I should go talk to that person. I should go introduce myself. Instead, I awkwardly nibble on the free cheese. (Yes, many book launches have free cheese). Needless to say, this form of networking didn’t get me far. However, online networking is what helped me shake the feeling of isolation I felt in the first two years I lived in Hamilton.

You can tell a lot about a person from their social media outlet of choice. For me, my weakness is twitter. On twitter I found a social circle of writers and editors (and booksellers, reviewers, librarians, and readers). I was a skeptic, but in the quiet moments when isolation bred loneliness, tweets about what I was reading and what I was writing were welcomed breaks. Eventually, twitter became something more. It became a space to share ideas, offer encouragement to others, engage in discourse, and meet people feeling the same gnaw of isolation.

A decade and a half ago, parents and teachers warned us that only predators lurked online. But in the past handful of years, the relationships I’ve built through networking online have grown to exist outside the world of 140-character or less tweets. Some of the Hamilton writers and editors I first met on twitter have become my close friends and my support network. And that network continues to grow, all because of a social network I almost chose to dismiss.

Living Arts: So, I Have This Idea for a Book

I'm lucky enough to be taking part in a new project created by the Hamilton Arts Council called LivingArts Hamilton. In short, "LivingArts Hamilton aims to improve the capacity of professional artists in the Hamilton region to develop and sustain their careers by creating resources that will address knowledge gaps in the creative sector and increase awareness among audiences. Community focus groups in six discipline-specific arts areas – literary arts, music, theatre arts, visual arts, arts education and public art – will play a central role in identifying the challenges and needs of their respective sectors. The following article originally appeared on the Hamilton Arts Council website. 

“So, I have this idea for a book.” If you’re a writer, an editor, or a publisher, you’ve heard this one before. I’ve heard it dozens — maybe one hundred — times. It’s the common follow-up to my answer to the question “What do you do?” It doesn’t matter that I usually reply with “I work in educational publishing” or “I edit kids’ books.” Any mention of the word “publishing” and suddenly somebody is telling me his or her brilliant idea for a post-Apocalyptic zombie novel or the next (but so much better) Fifty Shades of Grey.

I’m not complaining. I like these exchanges. I love hearing about people’s artistic aspirations and learning about the ideas that percolate in their heads. As Neil Gaiman once wrote, “You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.” I love hearing stories about how people transmit these ideas to a page.

It’s the question that inevitably follows that I don’t look forward to. “Do you mind taking a quick look?” As an editor, I’m trained to be critical. I’m trained to dissect words and their meanings, and this is rarely a quick task. But here’s the thing. A lot of times I do the thing I know I shouldn’t do. I say yes.

I’m the first to chime in against unpaid internships. When WestJet solicited local musicians to play free concerts, billing it as a “performance opportunity,” I was livid. Yet, I’ve written blog posts, classified ads, copyedited menus, and taken a “quick look” at proposals, grant applications, and essays all in the name of friendship.

This article is starting to feel like a confessional.

As writers, editors, and publishers, for the most part, we do what we do because we love doing it. But writing and editing aren’t our hobbies. They’re our careers. And in order for them to be valued that way, we (I!) need to say no.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me to read a short story she had written, and I found myself apologizing for accepting her cheque. Her response was perfect.

“I truly believe people should be paid for their work.”

And she was right. Words have power, and being paid for writing or editing words is essential.

Speaking of words with power, Tom Kreider perfectly summed up why we need to say no to working for free in his 2013 editorial “Slaves of the Internet, Unite!”

“Do it for your colleagues, your fellow artists, because if we all consistently say no they might, eventually, take the hint. It shouldn’t be professionally or socially acceptable — it isn’t right — for people to tell us, over and over, that our vocation is worthless.”