Wednesday, December 14 | 7:00—11:00pm
Rose & Crown Pub & Restaurant | Private room upstairs
1503 4th St SW, Calgary
FREE for WGA members
Non-members $5 at the door (cash only)
Seating is first-come, first served.
PLEASE RSVP ON FACEBOOK
Kick back and relax with your literary friends over a pint of cheer and some complimentary comfort food. Cozy up to the crackling wood burning fireplace and enjoy three dynamic readings by authors Arun Lakra, Rea Tarvydas and Susan Ouriouwith singer/songwriter Christie Simmons. Do some holiday shopping at Shelf Life Book’s pop-up bookstore in the cozy alcove. New this year: Raffle prizes to help raise funds for WGA programs! We are grateful to the following businesses and artists for their generous prize donations: West Elm, Butter Beauty Parlour, Steeling Home, The Tea Factory, Best Buy on 17th Ave, Shelf Life Books, Cedar Mountain Studios, Headkandi, Majesty Industries and more! Please bring TWO non-perishable food items for the Calgary Food Bank.
Thank you for your support.
Arun Lakra is an eye surgeon, writer and father. He wrote a play called Sequence that won a few awards including the Betty Mitchell Award, the Calgary Theatre Critics Award, the Woodward Newman Drama Prize, the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama, and the Alberta Playwriting Competition Grand Prize. Sequence was also shortlisted for the STAGE International Script Competition, where the judges included Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners. In the world of film, his feature film script, Voices, won the Praxis Screenplay Competition is presently in development. Arun is currently finishing post-production on a short film, Probability, based on his play, Sequence. He has also written a book on laser eye surgery, a supernatural thriller screenplay, a song to protest the demotion of Pluto (unsuccessful), and innumerable illegible prescriptions.
Susan Ouriou is a Calgary-based writer and literary translator. Her first novel Damselfish was short-listed for the Georges Bugnet Fiction Award and the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Award in 2004. Her translation Pieces of Me earned her the Governor General’s Award for Translation in 2009 and she was short-listed for the same award again in 2015 for her co-translation Stolen Sisters—The Story of Two Missing Girls, Their Families and How Canada Has Failed Indigenous Women. Her newest novel Nathan, was released in October.
Christie Simmons is a Calgary-based singer, songwriter and musician. She pens her own songs in the folk tradition and has worked with several fiction writers to adapt their published novels or short stories into song as well. Christie has performed her own work at numerous venues in and around Calgary over the past several years. She also plays guitar, occasionally ukulele and sings lead and harmony vocals with My Son Ted, a local upbeat folk/fusion Celtic and sundry group. She has also played and sung backup for artists such as Cori Brewster, Joanna Drummond, Roger Duncan and Steve Goodchild. In the past, she played and toured with the June Bugs—an all female (at the time) bluegrass/folk group, and with traditional Celtic band Grafton Street.
Rea Tarvydas has had stories published in various publications including The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, and Grain magazines. Tarvydas won the 2012 Brenda Strathern “Late Bloomers” Writing Prize (curated by the Calgary Foundation and presented at Wordfest). Tarvydas’s debut book of short stories, HOW TO PICK UP A MAID IN STATUE SQUARE (Thistledown Press) has just been released this fall! Please visit her website reatarvydas.com.