The WGA, Freehand and Shelf Life Books Present the 2018 Giller Light Bash in Support of Frontier College
Monday, November 19 | 5:00—9:00pm
Wurst Restaurant | 2437 4th Street SW Calgary, AB
General public $20 | @ the Door $25 if space allows
Also, please note that each individual ticket must be purchased separately.
Tickets: frontiercollege.akaraisin.com/ui/17814/tickets
Our 2018 Giller Light Bash is on! Raise your glass in support of literacy and celebrate one of Canada’s most prestigious book awards—the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Join us for literary debate, social time, a great menu, Guess the Giller contest, a generous array of raffle and silent auction prizes, live screening of the prize announcement—and an exciting panel of local book defenders hosted by CBC’s Russell Bowers. Funds raised at the Giller Light Bash support Frontier College, Canada’s original (and oldest) literacy organization.
Our host and panel of authors this year include Russell Bowers (host), Marcello Di Cintio (defending Washington Black by Esi Edugyan), Lori Hahnel (defending An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim), Fred Stenson (defending Songs of the Cold Heart by Eric Dupont), Karen Hines (defending Motherhood by Sheila Heti), and Calgary’s Poet Laureate, Sheri-D Wilson (defending French Exit by Patrick DeWitt).
The Writers’ Guild of Alberta, Shelf Life Books and Freehand Books have organized Calgary’s 9th annual Giller Light Bash with support from several volunteers including WGA member Janet McMahen and GLB enthusiasts Wendy Fallon and David de Vlieger. Big thanks to our supporters; a list of our silent auction and raffle prize donors will be highlighted here in late October.
Enormous thanks to the businesses who’ve generously donated to our raffle and silent auction table this year including: Urban Barn, Hotel Arts, West Elm, Fleur de Sel Brasserie, BIN 905, La Boulangerie Cafe, Butter Beauty Parlour, Yoga Santosha, Suzette’s Bistro, The Beltliner Diner, Wurst, CKUA Radio, Gorilla Whale, Wild Rose Brewery, Shelf Life Books, Wolf Willow Studio, Calgary Film Festival, Trepanier Baer Gallery, Cookbook Company Cooks, and Dog Gone Running.
HOST
Russell Bowers, Host of CBC Radio’s Daybreak Alberta
Russell Bowers has been a broadcast professional for over 30 years, having hosted radio shows nationally and regionally from coast to coast. He has conducted over 12,000 interviews with political leaders, international figures and the people next door. Noted for his conversational style, Russell has worked as a print columnist, videographer, speech-writer, publicist, and university instructor — and has been an award-winning actor and record producer.
BOOK DEFENDERS
Marcello Di Cintio is the current Author-in-Residence at the Calgary Public Library. He is the author of four books, including most recently Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense,which examines life in contemporary Palestine as seen through the lens of literary culture. Di Cintio’s previous book, Walls: Travels Along the Barricades,won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Di Cintio’s magazine writing can be found in publications such as The Walrus, CanadianGeographic, The International New York Times, and Afar. He is a former writer-in-residence with the Calgary Distinguished Writers Program and the Palestine Writing Workshop, and a featured instructor at the Iceland Writers Retreat.
Lori Hahnel is the author of two novels, Love Minus Zero(Oberon, 2008) and After You’ve Gone(Thistledown, 2014), as well as a story collection, Nothing Sacred(Thistledown, 2009), which was shortlisted for an Alberta Literary Award. A three-time Journey Prize nominee, her work has been published widely in journals in North America, Australia and the U.K.; her credits include CBC Radio, The Fiddlehead, Joyland andThe Saturday Evening Post. Lori currently serves on the board of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta and teaches creative writing in Calgary.
Karen Hines began as a comedienne on theatre’s fringes, and has emerged as an award-winning performer, writer and director. She is two-time finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for her Pochsy Playsand Drama:Pilot Episode,and other citations include three times winning the Writers Guild of Alberta Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award. All of her plays are published by Coach House Books.She has directed the works of other artists including Linda Griffiths (Age of Arousal), adult horror clowns Mump & Smoot, and Michelle Thrush (Inner Elder). Her productions and plays as well as the short films featuring the vapid but acid “Pochsy” have been presented internationally. Karen has performed extensively in Canadian television including three seasons on CBC’s Emmy-winning Newsroom. She is a National Magazine Award-winning writer for her cover pieces for Swerve Magazine, including My Little House of Horrors, which she adapted as Crawlspace, a “dark real estate comedy” she has performed in private living rooms and in theatres from Toronto to Vancouver and which most recently was awarded the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Prize. Crawlspace will be presented at Calgary’s 2019 High Performance Rodeo this January.
Fred Stenson has written 19 books. HIs sixth novel and ninth book of fiction, Who By Fire, was published by Doubleday Canada in 2014 and was longlisted for the IMPAC Award. His fiction titles include the historical novels The Great Karoo, Lightning, and The Trade. The Trade won the WGA George Bugnet Novel Award, The City of Edmonton Book Prize, and the Grant MacEwan Writer’s Prize. It was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Lightning won the Grant MacEwan Writers’ Prize. The Great Karoowas a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Thing Feigned or Imagined, Stenson’s book on the craft of fiction, is available from Banff Centre Press. Stenson was the director of the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre for 15 years. He is a regular columnist for Alberta ViewsMagazine. He was the 2015-16 Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta. He lives in Cochrane, Alberta.
Sheri-D Wilson is the award-winning author of eleven books and the creator of four short films, and she has released three albums which combine music and poetry. She’s known for her electric performance style, making her a favourite of festivals around the world – she’s read, performed, and taught in festivals across Canada, USA, UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Mexico, and South Africa. In her poems, Wilson uses personal narrative to address themes of personal story, social justice, lost languages, bullying, and violence against women and the earth. In 2017, she received her Doctor of Letters – Honoris Causa from Kwantlen University, after launching her new collection of poetry, The Book of Sensations (U of C Press). In 2018 she released a full-length CD of poetry and music called Dragon Rouge.