Ottawa International Writers Festival, Spring Edition
| April 26, 2012 | to | May 1, 2012 |
Founded in 1997, the Writers Festival celebrates the world’s best writing from home and abroad with a diverse program that presents interactions with leaders in the worlds of science, history, poetry, politics, spoken word, economics, drama, fiction, biography, music and more. Since 2004 the Festival has consisted of two annual Editions, Spring and Fall.
Festival Information:
General information: 613.562.1243
General information email: info@writersfestival.org
Location: Knox Presbyterian Church, 120 Lisgar Street(at Elgin)
Ticket: http://writersfestival.org.tickets.html
Volunteers: http://www.writersfestival.org/about/volunteers
On the Web:
Website: http://writersfestival.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ottawa.writersfest
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/oiwf/pool
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheWritersFestival
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Writersfest
Others: http://vimeo.com/ottawawritersfest
Map:
Ottawa International Writers Festival, Fall Edition
| October 20, 2011 | to | October 25, 2011 |
Canada’s Festival of Ideas since 1997. The Writers Festival celebrates the world’s best writing from home and abroad with a diverse program that presents interactions with leaders in the worlds of science, history, poetry, politics, spoken word, economics, drama, fiction, biography, music and more. Since 2004 the Festival has consisted of two annual Editions: Spring and Fall.
As reported in the Ottawa Xpress, “Basically, if you’ve thought about it, The Writers Festival has invited someone to discuss it.”
Festival Information:
General information: 613.562.1243
General information email: leslie@writersfestival.org
Location: Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank (at Sunnyside) and Southminster United Church, 15 Aylmer Ave (at Bank St.) with select events at other locations.
Tickets: http://writersfestival.org/tickets.html
On the Web:
Website: http://writersfestival.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ottawa.writersfest
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/ottawawritersfestival
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/oiwf
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheWritersFestival
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Writersfest
Discussion Forum: http://oiwf.squarespace.com
Map:
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Craig Kielburger: ‘The world needs your kid’
Joyce MacPhee, Epoch Times
Craig Kielburger says the world needs your kid. He should know. As youngsters, Craig and his brother Marc started an organization called Free the Children. The organization’s mission is to empower children in North America to help their peers around the world.
Fifteen years later, Free the Children is thriving and to date has built 500 schools and implemented more than 2,000 alternative income projects in 45 developing countries.
Kielburger, 27, spoke at the Ottawa International Writer’s Festival about a book he wrote with his brother Marc Kielburger and Ottawa Citizen journalist Shelley Page. The book is titled The World Needs Your Kid: How to Raise Children Who Care and Contribute
Full article: Craig Kielburger: ‘The world needs your kid’
Free the Children’s Kielburger at Ottawa’s Writer’s Festival
Pam McLennan, Epoch Times
During the last 14 years Kielburger finished his education and founded Me to We, an enterprise that includes outreach trips and selling books and organic clothing. Fifty percent of monies raised by Me to We go to Free the Children and the other half to running the business.For his efforts Craig has received the Order of Canada, the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child (also known as the Children’s Nobel Prize), and numerous other awards from around the world including the Nelson Mandela Human Rights Award.
He is author of “Free The Children,” “Take Action!: A Guide to Active Citizenship,” “Take More Action,” and, the New York Times bestseller “Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World.”
Kielburger will be at the Ottawa Writers Festival on Oct. 24 to talk about “The World Needs Your Kid: How to Raise Children Who Care and Contribute,” his latest book that he co-authored with his brother Marc and Shelley Page, an award winning journalist and mother of two.
Full story on the Epoch Times website: Free the Children’s Kielburger at Ottawa’s Writer’s Festival
Not just any Talking Head at the Writers Festival
Migneault | Apt613
David Byrne isn’t just a visionary musician however. He also happens to be an activist. It’s his activism, and more specifically his love of cycling, that will bring him to the Ottawa International Writers Festival on Friday. Earlier this year Byrne, a lifelong cyclist, published his book called Bicycle Diaries. You can bet his talk at the festival will focus on the book, which aims to promote cycling as a transportation alternative to motor vehicles in the world’s cities.
If you like cycling and the Talking Heads you can catch David Byrne at the Ottawa Writers Festival Friday October 23 at 6:30p.m. Tickets are $15 and $10 for students and senior citizens. The talk is free for festival members and Carleton students. The talk will take place at Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities at 314 Saint Patrick Street.
Full post on Apt613: Not just any Talking Head at the Writers Festival
Drac is back: Dracula sequel sets original apart from today’s ’sparkly vampires’
Chris Lackner, Canwest News Service
Where: Ottawa International Writers Festival, St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities, 314 St. Patrick St.
When: Oct. 25, 8:30 p.m.
While today’s vampires seem more intent on wining us than dining on us, something truly wicked this way comes. Again.
That seemingly toothless pretty-boy Edward Cullen better start baring his fangs, and True Blood’s Bill Compton may want to go elsewhere to do his brooding and down his synthesized blood: Drac is back — and with him, a reminder that true vampires are far more monster than man.
Just when the pop cultural craving for all-things-vamp seems like it couldn’t get anymore bloodthirsty, Dracula is returning in a sequel to Bram Stoker’s classic. Dracula: The Un-dead, co-written by Canadian Bram Stoker descendant Dacre Stoker, will be released today. Stoker reads later this month at the Ottawa International Writers Festival.
Read the full article on the Ottawa Citizen website: Drac is back
Writers Festival October Events Update
Two more great events coming up on Wednesday night at Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities (314 Saint Patrick at Cumberland):1. Wednesday, October 14 @ 6:30 PM
THE CASE FOR GOD with KAREN ARMSTRONG
Hosted by Jim Creskey
2. Wednesday, October 14 @ 8:30 PM
NOW OR NEVER with TIM FLANNERY
Hosted by Jay Ingram
Then on Tuesday, October 20th at 8:00 PM, it’s the OTTAWA BOOK AWARDS AND LAMPMAN-SCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRY at Library and Archives Canada (395 Wellington Street). This is a free event and promises to be a wonderful evening.
After that, we’re back over to Saint Brigid’s for the Festival itself which runs from October 21 to the 27th. If you have yet to check out the schedule, it’s all online here. Some amazing talent will be participating so we hope to see you all week long!!
Tickets are available by phone at 613.562.1243, on our website or in person from Nicholas Hoare, Collected Works and Octopus Books.
Two quick notes:
1) Apostolos Doxiadis has had to cancel his appearance, so his event with Christain Bök on October 24th has been cancelled.
2) The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands has been forced to cancel the book reading event with the authors of The Occupied Garden, due to the ongoing strike at the Canadian War Museum.
Writers Festival: October Events
Here is a reminder about five more great preview events leading up to the Fall Edition of the Ottawa International Writers Festival taking place October 21 to 27, 2009.
Tickets for the October 14 events (as well as Festival Passes and Tickets) are available by phone at 613.562.1243, on the Ottawa International Writers Festival’s website (www.writersfestival.org) or in person from Nicholas Hoare, Collected Works and Octopus Books.
1. Saturday, October 3 @ 6:00 PM
A Life A Legend A Filmmaker
A free event at Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street.
The late Ottawa filmmaker Frank Cole is the only human being to cross the Sahara Desert alone. On another crossing he was mysteriously murdered. But he left us his extraordinary films about life and death.
Come celebrate the book launch of Life Without Death: The Cinema of Frank Cole. An evening of words, images, music and surfboards. The event will be hosted by Tom McSorley and Rick Taylor. Also the Canadian Film Institute will screen the Ottawa premiere of Korbett Matthew’s documentary on Frank Cole The Man Who Crossed The Sahara, with Matthews in attendance.
2. Wednesday, October 14 @ 6:30 PM
THE CASE FOR GOD with KAREN ARMSTRONG
Hosted by Jim Creskey
Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities, 314 Saint Patrick Street
From the bestselling author of A History of God and The Great Transformation comes a balanced, nuanced understanding of the role religion plays in human life and the trajectory of faith in modern times.
3. Wednesday, October 14 @ 8:30 PM
NOW OR NEVER with TIM FLANNERY
Hosted by Jay Ingram
Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities, 314 Saint Patrick Street
“What is our purpose as a species? How does the Earth work?”
Tim Flannery is one of Australia’s leading thinkers and writers. An internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, Tim’s books include the definitive ecological histories of Australia (The Future Eaters) and North America (The Eternal Frontier). He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. As a field zoologist he has discovered and named more than thirty new species of mammals (including two tree-kangaroos) and at 34 he was awarded the Edgeworth David Medal for Outstanding Research. His pioneering work in New Guinea prompted Sir David Attenborough to put him in the league of the world’s great explorers and the writer Redmond O’Hanlon to remark, “He’s discovered more new species than Charles Darwin.”
4. Tuesday, October 20 @ 8:00 PM
AWARD PRESENTATIONS:
OTTAWA BOOK AWARDS AND LAMPMAN-SCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRY
A free event at Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington St.
The City of Ottawa and ARC Poetry Society are pleased to invite you to attend a celebration of Ottawa’s vibrant literary scene, in conjunction with the Ottawa Writers Festival Fall Edition. Award presentations will be made to the winners of the Ottawa Book Awards and the Lampman-Scott Prize for best book of poetry, with short readings by the winning authors. Join us for a reception following the award presentations and meet the outstanding authors who have been nominated for these prestigious prizes. RSVP: infoculture@ottawa.ca
And last but not least, on Thursday, October 15 at 6:30 PM, Writers Festival’s friends at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands are presenting The Occupied Garden with Kristen den Hartog and Tracy Kasaboski at the Canadian War Museum. For free tickets please call Rosemieke van de Meerendonk at 613.237.5031 x225.
Two takes on the future of books: Taylor and Doctorow
Kate Heartfield, The Ottawa Citizen
On Monday night, I was the host for an Ottawa International Writers Festival talk and Q and A session with author Cory Doctorow, who talked mainly about why he gives his books away for free online and why he thinks overzealous licensing and digital-rights-management are evil. What I found really interesting was the first few minutes of his talk (which you can hear in the two YouTube clips below [available on the originating article] or by visiting the writers festival’s channel, where you can also see the Q and A with me that followed the talk, which I didn’t bother to embed here). In these clips, he speaks of “sentimental book fetishism” as an asset – which might surprise Taylor, since Doctorow’s part of that new generation he decries; he’s got ear-buds hanging around his neck. What threatens that healthy sentimentalism, according to Doctorow, is not “electronic gadgetry”, but the people who don’t understand electronic gadgetry, who are afraid of it and who are trying, through anti-piracy rules, to license books and control access to them.
Read more and view video @ Ottawa Citizen online: Two takes on the future of books: Taylor and Doctorow
Margaret Atwood blogs about her trip to Ottawa
Ottawa Event September 22: St. Brigid’s Centre for the Arts and Humanities with the Ottawa Writers’ Festival
Ottawa, Canada’s ambilingual capital city, with its borders and border-crossings, its officials and its official secrets. I was born in it almost seventy years ago, spent the first five winters of my life in it, and, with mittens on strings, fell off my two-runner skates on the Rideau Canal, super-chilling my tiny toes and fingers. Now here I was again. So this is where I got my multiple personality, I thought. Sacré bleu!
Having left the Novotel – chosen by publicist Ashley Dunn for its greenery, heralded by a strange lobby display that showed some deer on a table and a seal sleeping on a Novotel bed – hmm, have you ever smelled one?-I arrived at St. Brigid’s, an early 20th C. Cathedral now being gradually and painstakingly restored as an Arts and Humanities Centre – I admired, not only the astonishing backdrop made of old plastic bags and duct tape and lit so it resembled an abstract stained-glass window, but also the slates with Gardener slogans written on them. Then we were put through a brisk rehearsal by Director Jan Irwin, with the music sung by the exceptional Calixa Lavallée Ensemble. (Helpful hint: Calixa Lavallée was not a girl but a man, and he wrote “O Canada,” the Canadian National Anthem.) The Choir Director is Laurence Ewashko, but the actual conducting for this performance was done by young Mark Wilkinson, who was not only extremely enthusiastic but extremely flexible. He looked like an angel that had been stretched – short, he wasn’t – and the Ensemble followed his every sinuous move with rapt attention, as did I.
The full blog entry can be read on Margaret Atwood’s The Year of the Flood blog: Ottawa Event September 22
