Let’s Party!

TNQ has been publishing the best in new Canadian writing for 30 years. We’re celebrating our “birthday” with a party! I hope you’ll join us in raising a glass to kick-ass Can-lit.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011, 6:30-9:30

The Button Factory, 25 Regina St. South, Waterloo

Get to know our editors and writers. Enjoy a glass of wine and live music by singer songwriter, Shawna Caspi, and listen in while some of our favourite writers share excerpts from best-loved work published in TNQ over the last three decades.

And, let’s not forget, the birthday cake!

Cash bar; Pay What You Can at the door. Space is limited; RSVP ASAP!

Shawna Caspi takes the familiar landscapes of folk songs and hangs them slightly askew, with unpredictable song structures, witty word play, and crooked rhyming schemes. She fills a room with her powerful, expressive voice that moves from smooth, tender tones to wailing blues notes. Her guitar work is complex and complementary, creating a full, multi-layered sound, with an added percussive touch and intricate melodic lines that play off her rich vocals. Known for exploring alternate tunings, Shawna’s years of classical training are evident in her solid musicianship and impeccable fingerpicking. Her latest CD, Paint by Numbers, showcases her clever storytelling and skillful finger-picking guitar style.

We’ll be joined by many fabulous TNQ writers, who will share with us their favourite work we’ve published:

Heather Birrell won the 2006 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland&Stewart Journey Prize for her story,”BriannaSusannaAlana”(TNQ #94) . She is the author of I know you are but what am I?, a collection of stories that was longlisted for Canada’s ReLit Award. Her stories have been shortlisted for both the Western and National Magazine Awards.

Erin Noteboom Bow has been struck by lightning, survived a brain tumor, worked as a particle physicist at at CERN, and was excommunicated from the Catholic church (Lincoln, Nebraska diocese) for campaigning for the ordination of women. She has also written four books: two volumes of poetry, a memoir, and a young adult novel. Erin won the CBC Literary Award for Poetry and this year’s $25K TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award .

As a freelance journalist, Andrew Borkowski has published articles in the Globe and Mail, the Canadian Forum, Quill & Quire, TV Guide, and the Los Angeles Times. His short fiction has previously appeared in Grain, Storyteller, and The New Quarterly (issues 101 & 117). Andrew was nominated for the 2007 Writer’s Trust/McClelland and Stewart Journey Prize and published in Journey Prize Stories 19. His collection of stories, Copernicus Avenue placed 4th in CBC Scotiabank Giller Prize Reader’s Choice contest.

Leesa Dean is currently a Creative Writing MFA student at the University of Guelph. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry has been published in The New Quarterly, Matrix Magazine, Canadian Issues, The Headlight Anthology, and Minority Reports: New English Writing from Québec. In the past year, she has been shortlisted for Matrix Magazine’s Litpop Award for Fiction, the Irving Layton Award for Fiction, and was awarded an honourable mention in the Quebec Writing Competition.

Miranda Hill is a writer of short fiction and poetry, and winner of this year’s Writers’ Trust / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Her first collection of short stories, Sleeping Funny, is forthcoming from Doubleday Canada. Hill is also the founder and executive director of Project Bookmark Canada, a national charitable organization that installs plaques bearing text from stories and poems in the exact physical locations where the literary scenes take place. The organization is working to build a cross-Canada network of installations that celebrate place, fiction, and poetry, enticing Canadians and visitors to read their way across the country.

Claire Tacon’s writing has been short-listed for the Bronwen Wallace Award, the CBC Literary Awards and the Playboy College Fiction Contest. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and is a past fiction editor of PRISM international. Her debut novel, In the Field, won the 2010-2011 Metcalf-Rooke Award.

Rae Crossman writes poetry both for the page and for oral performance. His poems have been published in literary magazines, broadcast on CBC Radio, and displayed on transit systems across Canada. His poems have been set to music by Alfred Kunz, Emily Doolittle, Oliver Schroer, and R. Murray Schafer. In 2007 he was awarded a Waterloo Region Arts Award for his artistic endeavors across disciplines. Rae formerly served as a fiction editor for The New Quarterly.