Writers' Guild of Alberta Podcast
Writers' Guild of Alberta
Subscribe
Podcast by Writers' Guild of Alberta
Available episodes
Newest first
Oldest first
5 hours ago
Dorothy Bentley - WGA Online Reading Series
Fort McMurray author Dorothy Bentley introduces her children’s poetry picture book Summer North Coming, followed by a Q&A led by Calgary writer Barbori Garnet.
Dorothy Bentley has been writing poetry sporadically since elementary school, but only recently began submitting it to contests, literary magazines. and publishers. Summer North Coming, published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside in September 2019, was a winner in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo annual “Words in Motion” contest. F&W published the sequel, Winter North Coming, in the same hardcover edition. More of her poetry has appeared in NorthWord, A Literary Journal of the North, Ambrosia Literary Review, and elsewhere, plus forthcoming in the (M)othering Anthology to be released by Innana Press.
*Original Recording Date July 21, 2020*
4 days ago
D.A. VandenBrink - WGA Online Reading Series
St. Albert author D.A. VandenBrink reads from his supernatural thriller The Crimson Dimension, followed by a Q&A led by WGA Summer Programs Assistant and WordsWorth Creative Team member Sadie MacGillivray.
Buy The Crimson Dimension here: https://www.davandenbrink.com/books
D.A. (Doug) VandenBrink is a local author living in St. Albert. He’s a husband, father, and grandfather who works for an Edmonton land development company. He started writing speculative fiction over a decade ago as a hobby, and made the leap to publish his debut novel, The Crimson Dimension, in March of this year. His novel is available online, as well as being carried locally by Indigo West Edmonton Mall and Audreys Books. Response has been great, having received many positive reviews.
*Original air date July 17, 2020*
Feb 22, 2021
Lynn Gale - WGA Online Reading Series
Spruce Grove poet Lynn Gale reads from her new poetry collection l’opacité, followed by a Q&A led by WGA Board Vice President and Write Well Press founder Leanne Myggland-Carter.
Lynn Gale lives in Spruce Grove, Alberta with her husband of 30+ years and spends her days working as the payroll supervisor for the City of Spruce Grove. In July 2017 she started her own business, Windsong Writing and Wellness, offering freelance writing, writing workshops, and wellness classes that blend yoga with writing. Her evenings are filled with writing and teaching yoga. She is working on a juvenile fiction novel, a picture book, and a romance (three separate works, not all in one!). Her publication credits include pieces in Other Voices (2011), Chicken Soup for the Soul: It’s Christmas! (2013), Parkland Poets Outlying Voices Anthology Vols 11 and 111, Edmonton Stroll of Poets Anthology (2020), and Calgary.short-edition.com (2020). Lynn also loves memoir and life stories, kayaking, reading young adult fiction, and a good cup of chai tea!
*Original air date July 14*
Feb 22, 2021
Judith Clark - WGA Online Reading Series
Calgary author Judith Clark reads from her YA novel Under the Radar, followed by a Q&A led by fellow Calgary YA author Janet Gurtler. This is a prerecorded event that premiered on Wednesday, July 15.
Judith Clark is a playwright, novelist, and indexer. After receiving a Master in Library and Information Science (MLIS), she worked as a children’s and young adult services librarian, before taking on several roles with a library automation company. Her past writing credits include two plays: American Woman, performed in Sage Theatre’s IGNITE! Festival (2006); and Code Burgundy, commissioned by the Petro-Canada Stage One New One-Act Play Development Series (2007). Under the Radar is her first young-adult novel. When she isn’t writing and indexing, she explores rural Alberta, reads compulsively, bakes applet arts, dreams of sailing on a tall ship, and wishes that she had a horse.
Feb 16, 2021
Karen Pheasant Neganigwane - WGA Online Reading Series
Anishinaabe author Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane will read from her children’s nonfiction book Powwow: A Celebration through Song and Dance, followed by a Q&A led by fellow children’s nonfiction author Joan Marie Galat. Viewers will have the chance to send questions during the event.
Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane is an Anishinaabe dancer, educator, writer, artist and orator from Wiikwemkoong on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. Her grandparents, maternal and paternal, come from Wiikwemkoong. Her parents are residential school survivors. Karen is an Assistant Professor at Mount Royal University in the Treaty Seven region. She is cross-appointed to the Department of General Education, Office of Teaching and Learning, and the Department of Humanities–Indigenous Studies. She is also in completion of a PhD in Educational Policy Studies/Indigenous Peoples Education with the University of Alberta. Karen lives in Calgary.
Feb 11, 2021
Doreen Vanderstoop - WGA Online Reading Series
Calgary author Doreen Vanderstoop will read from her literary dystopian novel, Watershed, followed by a Q&A led by WGA Treasurer Susan Carpenter.
Doreen Vanderstoop is a Calgary-based writer whose short fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire Magazine and online at Montreal Serai, prairiejournal.org, epiphmag.com, and Alexandra Writers’ Centre, among others. Doreen’s debut novel, Watershed, was published by Freehand Books and released on May 2, 2020. She also sings, plays guitar, and performs stories of all kinds in the ancient oral tradition for audiences of all ages at schools, libraries, seniors’ homes, festivals, conferences, and other special events. Doreen is President of Storytelling Alberta and its Calgary Chapter and a member of Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada.
*Original air date June 30, 2020*
Feb 8, 2021
Amy Leblanc - WGA Online Reading Series
In our first installment of our 2020 online reading series, Amy LeBlanc reads from her debut poetry collection, I Know Something You Don’t Know.
Amy LeBlanc is an MA student in English Literature and creative writing at the University of Calgary and non-fiction editor at filling Station magazine. Amy’s debut poetry collection, I know something you don’t know, was published with Gordon Hill Press in March 2020. Her novella Unlocking will be published by University of Calgary Press in their Brave and Brilliant Series in 2021. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Room, PRISM International, and the Literary Review of Canada among others. She is a recipient of the 2020 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award.
Host: Ellen Kartz
*Original air date June 18, 2020*
Feb 4, 2021
Louise Halfe, Canada's parliamentary poet laureate - CLC Brown Bag Lunch Episode 6
Louise Bernice Halfe, whose Cree name is Sky Dancer, is married with two adult children and three grandsons. Raised on the Saddle Lake Reserve in Alberta, she attended Blue Quills Residential School before earning a Bachelor of Social Work from the University of Regina. She completed two years of Nechi Training in St. Albert’s Nechi Institute: Centre of Indigenous Learning, where she has also facilitated the program. Halfe has been awarded honorary degrees from Wilfred Laurier University, the University of Saskatchewan, and Mount Royal University. As well as serving as Saskatchewan’s Poet Laureate for two years, she’s been a keynote speaker at numerous conferences. In this podcast, Halfe reads to us from her four books, Bear Bones and Feathers, Blue Marrow, The Crooked Good, and Burning In This Midnight Dream. All have received numerous accolades and awards, and will be reprinted next year by Brick Books and Kegedonce Press. A collection of selected poems, Sôhkêyihta (which means “have courage” or “be strong”), was published by Wilfred Laurier in 2018, and an eagerly awaited new collection, awâsis -- kinky and dishevelled will be released on April 1st, 2021, by Brick Books.
Halfe’s poetry earned her a Lifetime Achievement Award from the League of Canadian Poets, and last year, she received the 2020 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. The jury of the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize describe her literary impact in the following way: “Halfe’s poetics refuse the hierarchies of colonial literary critique, instead affirming the equality of the contemporary, the ancestral, and the mythological; holding a multiplicity of cosmologies and quotidian realities as relevant and urgent…” Thus, they go on, “Her work cannot be assimilated in the canon of contemporary Canadian literature; instead, it must be ingested, transforming our collective literature on a cellular level, reimagining our identities, languages, and memories as denizens of Turtle Island.”
Jan 27, 2021
Shannon Webb Campbell - CLC Brown Bag Lunch Episode 5
Shannon Webb-Campbell is a mixed Indigenous (Mi’kmaq) settler poet, writer, and critic. Her books include: Still No Word (Breakwater 2015), the recipient of Eagle Canada’s Out in Print Award, I Am A Body of Land (Book*hug 2019), and Lunar Tides (forthcoming with Book*hug in 2022). Shannon holds a MFA in Creative Writing from University of British Columbia, and a MA in English Literature at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, and is a doctoral student at the University of New Brunswick in the Department of English. She is the editor of Visual Arts News Magazine.
Committed to reparation, self-education, and healing, Webb-Campbell writes out of a deep sense of responsibility to Indigenous communities. Her collection I am a Body of Land, is, as Carol Rose Daniels puts it, “forces readers out of polite conversation and into a realm where despair and hard truths are being told, being heard and finding the emotional strength to learn from it, find our way out and embrace our beauty as Indigenous women.” In Susan Musgrave’s words, this is “Poetry awake with the winds from the Four Directions, poetry that crosses borders, margins, treaties, yellow tape warning: Police Line. Do Not Cross. Poetry whose traditional territory, through colonization, has become trauma and shame. Unceded poetry. Read. Respect. Weep.”
In this podcast, which includes readings from her forthcoming collection, Lunar Tides, Webb-Campbell’s poems range across theory, the legacies of colonialism, kinship, and Indigenous resurgence. Her words follow the rhythms of the body, the water, the cycles of the moon, and long and deep familial relationships amid the profound grief of losing her mother. You can hear, too, her eloquent review of her recommended pandemic reading: Shalan Joudry’s Waking Ground.
Jan 11, 2021
JR Carpenter - CLC Brown Bag Lunch Episode 4
J.R. Carpenter is a UK-based artist, writer, performer, and researcher working across performance, print, and digital media. Born in Nova Scotia, she lived in Montreal for many years before emigrating to the United Kingdom in 2009. Her pioneering web-based works have been presented in museums, galleries, and festivals around the world. She is a winner of the CBC Quebec Writing Competition, the QWF Carte Blanche Quebec Award, Expozine Alternative Press Award, the Dot Award for Digital Literature, and the New Media Writing Prize. Her debut poetry collection, An Ocean of Static, was highly commended for the Forward Prizes 2018. Her latest collection, This is a Picture of Wind, is based on a web-app by the same name and was included in The Guardian’s “Best poetry books of 2020.” She is a Fellow of the Eccles Centre For North American Studies at the British Library and the Moore Institute at NUI Galway. She delivered this podcast reading for the CLC as the 2020-21 Writer-in-Residence at University of Alberta.
Nov 23, 2020
Rebecca Thomas- CLC Brown Bag Lunch Episode 3
The WGA is proud to partner with the Canadian Literature Centre on their Brown Bag Lunch podcasts. The Brown Bag Lunch readings were always a popular in-person event and now they have moved online. The first episode features Rebecca Thomas. Original air date: November 18, 2020.
Oct 29, 2020
Canisia Lubrin - CLC Brown Bag Lunch Podcast Episode 2
Canadian Literature Centre's Brown Bag Lunch reading series. Canisia Lubrin reads from her various collections. Original air date: October 28 2020
Oct 14, 2020
October 14, 2020 CLC Brown Bag Lunch Podcast - Episode 1 - Jen Sookfong Lee
The WGA is proud to partner with the Canadian Literature Centre on their Brown Bag Lunch podcasts. The Brown Bag Lunch readings were always a popular in-person event and now they have moved online. The first episode features Jen Sookfong Lee. Original air date: September 18, 2020.
Mar 4, 2020
March 4- Pierrette Requier
Co-Hosts Rayanne Haines and Matthew Stepanic parlent avec Pierrette Requier, author of DETAILS FROM THE EDGE OF THE VILLAGE (Frontenac House, 2009) and Edmonton's 6th Poet Laureate. As we sip a Merlot by Bartier Bros. paired with Pierrette's poetry, we discuss bilingualism, motherhood, and the upcoming braided poetry event: SHE, THE RIVER.
Dec 17, 2019
Episode 12- masinahikan iskwêwak Storytelling and Cultural Protocol with Joshua Littlechild
Joshua Littlechild is a member of the Ermineskin Cree Nation at Maskwacis. His heritage is of Cree and Sioux ancestry. In this episode discuss Storytelling practices from different cultures and the Cultural Protocol that surrounds knowledge keeping and transferring.
Dec 17, 2019
Episode 13- masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast- Métis Aunties Reflect
In our last episode for this season, we dive into our reflections of the project. Specifically, we discuss thoughts going forward, improvements, what we actually learned. We also discuss the importance of paying for work and acknowledge the information given to us from our amazing guests.
Dec 10, 2019
Episode 11- masinahikan iskwêwak –Academic Publishing and Editing with Chris Andersen
This episode we sit down with Dr. Chris Andersen, the current Dean of the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. We chat about publishing books and articles as an academic; what a career in the academy means for many first generation Indigenous scholars, and creative non-fiction publishing.
Dec 4, 2019
Dec 2. Let's Get Lit: Claire Kelly
Dec 2. Let's Get Lit: Claire Kelly by Writers' Guild of Alberta
Dec 3, 2019
Episode 10- masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast-Burlesque Storytelling with Brittany Johnson
Our conversation this week is with Brittany Johnson, a Métis Ph.d student from the University of Alberta’s department of English and Film Studies. She also performs burlesque under the stage name of Fanny LuPhine; and we talk about the ways that burlesque can be one way that stories are told. We also discuss endometriosis, poetry, creative writing, horror movies and country music.
Nov 27, 2019
Episode 9- masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast- Poetry with Marilyn Dumont
This episode we got the chance to speak with Marilyn Dumont, a Cree/Métis poet from North Eastern Alberta. She has written many works, notably: A Really Good Brown Girl, The Pemmican Eaters, and That Tongued Belonging. Marilyn also teaches creative writing in Native Studies and English at the University of Alberta. We discuss the writing process, what it’s like to have memories captured in writings, and a lot more!
Nov 19, 2019
Episode 8 -masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast- Norma Dunning
Here is our conversation with award-winning author Norma Dunning about her book Annie Muktuk and Other Stories
Please note that this was our first time using Skype for recording, so we hope that the quality of the conversation can help to make up for the quality of the audio.
Nov 13, 2019
Episode 7: masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast with Métis in SPACE SPAce space
An Interview with Chelsea Vowel and Molly Swain, hosts of Métis in Space to chat about storytelling in the podcasting medium.
Oct 29, 2019
Ep. 6 masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast- Predatory Publishing and Cultural Appropriation
What is predatory publishing and what does it have to do with cultural appropriation? It’s just us for this episode as we delve into this topic.
Oct 22, 2019
Episode 5. masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast-Gabrielle LaMontagne
An interview with Gabrielle LaMontagne about her newest project: a Michif picture book about Lac Ste. Anne!
Oct 15, 2019
Episode 4. masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast- Paul Gareau
An interview with Paul Gareau about his experiences writing and editing in academia.
Oct 8, 2019
Episode 3. masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast- Tammy Ball
An interview with Tammy Ball about the book she is currently writing which tells her story of growing up Métis in St. Ambroise, Manitoba.
Oct 1, 2019
Episode 2 masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women - Publishing Zines with Ambrose Cardinal
An Interview with Ambrose Cardinal about his project Nanâtawihiwên, a zine dedicated to Indigenous healing centred around the Medicine Wheel.
Oct 1, 2019
masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast. Episode 1
The WGA is proud to present masinahikan iskwêwak – Book Women Podcast hosted by Tanya Ball, Kayla Lar-son, and Sheila Laroque. This podcast is by and for Indigenous peoples who have an interest in editing, publishing, and writing Indigenous stories. The hope is to inspire Indigenous peoples to share their stories in whatever medium that they enjoy. Episode 1 introduces you to the hosts. https://bookwomenpodcast.ca/
Jun 3, 2019
June 3- Titilope Sonuga
June 3- Titilope Sonuga by Writers' Guild of Alberta
Feb 20, 2019
Feb 20. Let's Get Lit: Kelly Shepherd
Feb 20. Let's Get Lit: Kelly Shepherd by Writers' Guild of Alberta
Jan 24, 2019
Jan 24. Let's Get Lit: Mary Pinkoski
Rayanne Haines and Matthew Stepanic talk with Mary Pinkoski, Edmonton's fifth Poet Laureate and the 2019 Metro Federation Regional Writer in Residence. As they sip the Glenora Breakfast Blend tea from Acquired Taste Tea Company paired with Mary's own bold poetry, they discuss oddly inspiring motivational posters, the value of museums, and the power of the spoken word.
Dec 19, 2018
Dec 19. Let's Get Lit: Anna Marie Sewell
The WGA presents the Let's Get Lit podcast with guest Anna Marie Sewell.
Nov 21, 2018
Nov 21. Let's Get Lit: Jenna Butler
This episode of Let's Get Lit features poet Jenna Butler. Jenna Butler is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; an award-winning collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge the of Grizzly Trail; and a new travelogue, Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard.
Oct 18, 2018
Oct 17. Lets Get Lit: Lisa Martin
The Writers' Guild of Alberta is happy to present Let's Get Lit: A Drunk Poetry Podcast. Edmonton poets Rayanne Haines and Matthew Stepanic talk with guest poet Lisa Martin about her poetry and wine pairing. Lisa's latest book is Believing is Not the Same as Being Saved. Published by University of Alberta Press. It was shortlisted for an Alberta Literary Award for poetry as well as the Edmonton Book Prize.
Sep 29, 2017
The Beauty of Language
Who are we? Why are we here? What is happening in the world? Join the 2016 Borderlines Writers Circle participants as they share why they became writers, their influences, and why writing matters in today's world.
Aug 25, 2017
Canadian Literature, Part 2
Sutina Chou traveled across Canada to collect ways that Canadian identity has impacted Canadian literature, and vice versa. Through interviews with authors, she hoped to contribute more first-hand data to the existing academic literature surrounding the link between literature and identity in a Canadian context. Discover what WGA members had to say in August 2016. This podcast was produced by Michael Macguire and Julie Robinson for the Writers' Guild of Alberta.
Jul 12, 2017
Exploring the Relationship Between Canadian Literature and Canadian Identity, Part 1
Sutina Chou traveled across Canada to collect ways that Canadian identity has impacted Canadian literature, and vice versa. Through interviews with authors, she hoped to contribute more first-hand data to the existing academic literature surrounding the link between literature and identity in a Canadian context. Discover what WGA members had to say in August 2016. This podcast was produced by Michael Macguire and Julie Robinson for the Writers' Guild of Alberta.