gritLIT 2014

I might be biased, since I'm on the committee, but gritLIT is one of the best festivals Hamilton has to offer, and it starts tomorrow! We're so excited to welcome a Writer's Trust Fiction Prize winner, a Journey Prize winner, a handful of punk rockers, and the winner of the 2013 Giller Prize to this year's celebration of writers, reading, and books. Visit gritlit.ca for more information.

Here's the complete schedule. Hope to see you there!

Thursday, April 3rd, 2014

7:00pm — Poetry

gritLIT partners with the Hamilton Poetry Centre to welcome celebrated poets Julie Bruck (Monkey Ranch) and Adam Dickinson (The Polymers).

8:30pm — Murder Was the Crime

Peter Robinson (Children of the Revolution), D.J. McIntosh (The Book of Stolen Tales) and Debra Komar (The Lynching of Peter Wheeler) share tales of murder and suspense in an evening of fictional and true-life mysteries.

Friday, April 4, 2014

7:00pm — Family Matters

Jump into the offbeat, sometimes hilarious world of family dysfunction with Ray Robertson (I Was There the Night He Died) and  Nancy Jo Cullen(Canary).

8:30pm — An Equal and Opposite Reaction

Michael Winter (Minister Without Portfolio), Emma Donoghue (Frog Music) and Catherine Bush (Accusation) delve into the lives of characters whose worlds are forever changed by events beyond their control.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

10:30 am — Literary Salon with Michael Winter

Join one of Canada's most celebrated authors for light refreshments and a lively round-table discussion about books, writing and the Canadian publishing industry.

This event takes place at the Mulberry Street Coffeehouse, 193 James St. N.

Registration is limited.  Registration fee: $20/$15 for gritLIT members

10:30am — Writing Workshop: Writing from the Prompt

Critically-acclaimed novelist Catherine Bush shows writers of all levels how to use prompts to dig deeper, become more open and find the playful exuberance at the heart of all great writing.

Registration is limited.  Registration fee: $20/$15 for gritLIT members

1:00pm — The Mother and Child Reunion

Memoirists Jowita Bydlowska (Drunk Mom) and Priscila Uppal (Projection: Encounters with MyRunaway Mother) share tales of struggle and recovery.

2:15pm — gritLIT Contest Winners

Two winners of last year's gritLIT writing competition, Alexandra Missettand Raymond Beauchemin, share excerpts from their winning works.

Admission is free.

3:00pm — Lives of Girls and Women

Krista Bridge (The Eliot Girls), Jennifer LoveGrove (Watch How We Walk) and Lauren B. Davis (The Empty Room) examine the lives of extraordinary women fighting to discover their own identities.

7:00pm — In Conversation with...Teenage Head

Graham Rockingham sits down with members of Teenage Head and with author Geoff Pevere to discuss Gods of the Hammer: The Teenage Head Story.

8:30pm — Putting the grit in gritLIT

Celebrate the work of two of Canada's grittiest and most interesting literary voices: Craig Davidson (Cataract City) and Lynn Coady (Hellgoing).

Sunday, April 6, 2014

10:30am — Writing Workshop: First Things First

Journey Prize finalist and novelist Krista Foss guides you through the process of developing a first novel from inception to publication.

Registration is limited.  Registration fee: $20/$15 for gritLIT members

10:30am — Writing Workshop: Telling Our Own Tales

Author Denise Chong examines the task of turning knowing family stories into telling them and focuses on the power and flaws of memory and issues of privacy and respect in bringing these stories to the page.

Registration is limited. Registration fee: $20/$15 for gritLIT members

1:00pm — A Book to Take Us Worlds Away

Travel from a small town in 1950's Yugoslavia to the badlands of the wild west with novelists Nicole Lundrigan (The Widow Tree) and Natalee Caple (In Calamity's Wake).

2:15pm — All About the Hammer preview

Local novelists Hugh Cook (Heron River) and Janet Turpin Myers (Nightswimming) share their stories in a preview of this evening's All About the Hammer event.

Admission is free.

3:00pm — Different Voices, Different Lands

Join Denise Chong (Lives of the Family), Saleema Nawaz (Bone and Bread) and Dannabang Kuwabong (Voices from Kibuli Country) for a fascinating reading and discussion about identity and the impact of cultural heritage on the stories we tell.

7:30pm — Closing Night with LitLive: All About the Hammer

gritLIT partners with LitLive for a gala closing night celebrating the recently-published works of seven Hamilton authors. Presenters include Chris Pannell (A Nervous City), John Terpstra (Brilliant Falls), Jeffery Donaldson (Slack Action), Amanda Jernigan (All the Daylight Hours), Marilyn Gear Pilling (A Bee Garden), Amanda Leduc (The Miracles of Ordinary Men) and David Haskins (This House Is Condemned).

This event takes place at Homegrown Hamilton, 27 King William St.

This is a pay-what-you-can event.

Gifting Local

A Hamilton Christmas (1967): Photo courtesy of the Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives

The book nerd in me loves giving books almost as much as I love receiving them. They’re relatively inexpensive, they lack the awkward corners that make some gifts impossible to wrap, and choosing the perfect book gives a gift a personalized touch.

If you’re anything like me, you still have a few names to cross off your holiday shopping list, so here’s a list of local reads to make your last-minute shopping a little bit easier.

For the Crime Lover on Your List …
Beach Strip by John Lawrence Reynolds
(Read an excerpt here)

For the Poetry Lover on Your List …
Naked Trees by John Terpstra
(See review here)

For the Graphic Novel Lover on Your List …
Hamilton Illustrated by David Collier
(More information here)

For the History Lover on Your List …
The Good Doctor by Vince Agro

For the Little One on Your List …
Giraffe and Bird by Rebecca Bender
(See Rebecca reading from her book here)

For the Child-At-Heart on Your List …
A Child’s Christmas in Hamilton by Ryan Moran
(More information here)

For the Young Adult on Your List …
Small Medium at Large by Joanne Levy

For the Non-Fiction Lover on Your List …
Empty Cradle by Diana Walsh

For the Short Story Lover on Your List …
Sleeping Funny by Miranda Hill

For the Fright Lover on Your List …
Haunted Hamilton by Mark Leslie
(See photos from the Hamilton launch here)

Quotable: Beach Strip

"My father said that when he was a boy in the 1950s, excursion boats steamed across the bay from the city during the summer, carrying people to the beach strip amusement park, where picnic tables were set among trees near the shore and kids played on a safe, sandy beach. No one we knew went to Florida in the winter or to the northern lakes int he summer. No one we knew could afford it. Everything they needed for fun was on the beach strip. I suspect many of the old people who live on the strip today were once kids who rode the excursion boats to the amusement park back then, giddy with anticipation for rides on the merry-go-round, the ponies, the Octopus, and the Ferris wheel. The rides are gone, but the people remain, maybe because their goal as children was to always be near those long-gone amusements on the strip, and living here in rented rooms and peeling-paint cottages is the only ambition they truly achieved in their lives.

— John Lawrence Reynolds, Beach Strip

Photos courtesy of the Hamilton Public Library, Local History & Archives

Reading Local: Naked Trees by John Terpstra

When I was young, maybe under ten, I appreciated trees far more than I do today.

In youth, trees fuel imagination. Branches cast eerie shadows on walls and drum against windowpanes. For my sister and I, branches were pillars, holding up mismatched sheets, when we built forts. We climbed trees, knocking crab apples to the ground, careful not to land on them when we descended.

I still remember the smell of walnuts on my hands after collecting buckets of them, my grandfather following behind us on his tractor, so they wouldn’t get stuck in the blades. The same grandpa gathered abandoned nests, still clinging to trees, for us to wow our peers with at school. The three of us would go on hikes, finding shelter on the soft and needly ground beneath pine trees.

Each fall, when the leaves exploded into colours like they are right now, in classrooms and at home, we’d press leaves between sheets of wax paper, the residue clinging to our hands. We’d paint autumn trees, dipping our brushes into red, orange, yellow, brown, and gold paint.

Today, three medium-sized trees jut from the lawn of my apartment building, but I could hardly describe them. Despite the unique characteristics of each type of tree, I couldn’t tell an ash from a chestnut, or a maple from an elm.

Hamilton isn’t a city one would quickly associate with trees, but local, award-winning writer John Terpstra, himself a woodworker, does. In 1990, he wrote Naked Trees, a collection of prose and poetry that has recently been rereleased by Hamilton publisher Wolsak and Wynn. Terpstra’s words are accompanied by, fittingly, woodcuttings by Ontario visual artist Wesley Bates.

Inspired by what is missing from Native Trees of Canada by R.C. Hosie, a volume that gives the names and identifying features (shape, leaves, bark, habitat) of trees, Terpstra’s goal is to write about the experience of trees, which he does with great passion.

Many of the trees, all deciduous, in Terpstra’s collection predate the buildings that line our city streets, yet they are in constant conflict with urbanity. Terpstra writes with affection about urban trees that are pruned to accommodate overhead wires and the limbs of trees that are “neatly sliced” by chainsaws. In the continuous battle between nature and urbanity, there is no clear winner. In one piece, a branch cuts through power lines after being sliced from a tree trunk, cutting electricity on its way down.

“The silver maple stood between the house and the street, overhanging both. But it made a tactical error this past winter when it dropped one of its branches during the storm,” writes Terpstra. “The branch cut through the power line on its way down, so we lost the electricity for a few hours, and landed on the street, completely blocking traffic.”

Naked Trees subtly urges readers to pay more attention to the maples, walnuts, and other trees that punctuate Hamilton's urban landscape, not simply walking by them, but pausing to enjoy them for both their strength and fragility.

Sometimes a certain book is perfect for a certain time of year. There are books I reread every Christmas, and some that are best read on a beach in the summer. Autumn, and the "liberation of leaves," are important themes in the second half of Naked Trees, making it the perfect read for these shorter, cooler days, accompanied with some apple cider and maybe a pumpkin loaf.