Catherine Gildiner, James Chatto & Lauren Davis
Tuesday April 5 Knox Presbyterian Church  7:30pm $8.

Catherine Gildiner is the much-loved author of Too Close to the Falls, her funny memoir of an unusual childhood spent in a drugstore on Niagara Falls, NY. She is a practicing psychologist in Toronto who wrote her doctoral thesis on Darwin's influence on Freud. The years she spent reading Freud's entire works gave her the idea for Seduction (Knopf $32.95), a murder mystery set in the Freud Archives in Vienna. Gildiner's wit is still a delight as she follows her two Freudian "dicks" in hot pursuit of the murderer. Kate has been reading the Freud opus while serving a life sentence for murdering her husband; her partner is a former bank robber who also has been offered a chance for a new life as a detective. What was the murdered archivist about to reveal that "would make psychoanalysis obsolete", as he had boasted? We're sure Katherine's reading will tickle your funny bone.
James Chatto made a splash last fall with the cookbook and guide to wines he wrote with Lucy Waverman, A Matter of Taste. He is a restaurant and food writer for Toronto Life magazine. Before this career, Chatto was an actor, a musician, and a renovator of a crumbling villa on the Greek island of Corfu. It is the latter that he writes about in The Greek for Love (Random $34.95). He and his future bride were hooked by a brief ad in the London Sunday Times. The islanders embraced them as locals, not tourists, once they bought their own home and joined in the baptism of their firstborn son. A sensuous evocation of Mediterranean island life.
Lauren B. Davis has won praise for her first novel Stubborn Season, and now for The Radiant City (HarperCollins, $32.95). Paris is the city of the title; Matthew, the main character is a traumatized war correspondent struggling to write his memoirs and face his ghosts. A starred Quill & Quire review calls it "an engrossing and convincing story. Davis's question here is the same one negotiated by Alan Cumyn in Burridge Unbound: how can human beings look into a heart of darkness blacker than Mister Kurtz ever imagined and crawl back to the light again? The Radiant City's answer seems to be that learning to love and writing the truth may be the closest we can get to redemption."

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Sunday April 24 6 to 8pm  Siegfried Hall, St.Jerome's University, U. of Waterloo, Westmount Rd. N, Waterloo, This event is co-sponsored by The Kitchener-Waterloo Record and St.Jerome's Centre for Catholic Experience

 The donations for this event totaled $7731.18 for the Stephen Lewis Foundation for Aids Relief in Africa. The turnout was overwhelming - close to 700 people. Thank you to all who joined in this rare experience.

Words Worth staff: Tricia Siemens,  David Seljak of St. Jerome's, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Chuck Erion, Bronwyn Addico, Cheryl de Slegte.


We are thrilled to be hosting Dr. Kabat-Zinn, bestselling author of Full Catastrophe Living, and one of the most significant advocates for the role of meditation in health. He is the founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic at U. of Massachusetts Medical School, and was featured on Bill Moyer's PBS series, Healing and the Mind. His newest book, Coming to Our Senses (Hyperion, $34.95) is subtitled Healing ourselves and the world through mindfulness. In it he develops the role of mindfulness started in Wherever You Go, There You Are.
 As stress continues to exact a toll on everyday life, people are increasingly turning to ancient, meditative methods, which have been tested by science, to become more focused, healthy, and proactive. Kabat-Zinn has been for decades at the forefront of this mind/body movement and the revolution in medicine and health care it has spawned, demystifying it and bringing it into the mainstream. In Coming to Our Senses, he shares how every human has the capacity to mobilize deep, innate resources for continual learning, growing, healing, and transformation through mindfulness. At its core, the book offers remarkable insight into how to use the five senses plus awareness itself as a path to a healthier, saner, and more meaningful life. Don't miss this rare opportunity to hear a profound speaker, and support Aids relief in Africa at the same time. His website is at jon kabat-zinn

Tuesday May 3   Knox Presbyterian Church  7:30pm $8.

Joseph Boyden has caught the attention of the media with his first novel, Three Day Road (Penguin, $32.) The Toronto Star touted him as the author to watch this spring. In part inspired by the legend of Francis Pegamahgabow, the great sniper of World War One, Three Day Road is a mesmerizing novel told through the eyes of Niska, the last Canadian Oji-Cree woman living off the land, and her nephew Xavier. Her nephew and his friend Elijah travel in their moccasins from Moose Factory to Toronto to enlist. The taunts of the white boys are silenced by the natives' prowess on the rifle range. Once overseas, Elijah becomes obsessed with killing taking greater risks lying for hours between the trenches, while Xavier remains the silent aboriginal, struggling with his conscience and the meaning of war.
Boyden grew up in Willowdale and now divides his time between New Orleans and northern Ontario. This novel will be published in eight countries and was the first acquisition for David Davidar, the new publisher at Penguin Canada. Just when you thought Canadian authors had exhausted the First World War, Three Day Road finds a new twist, warfare from a native perspective. "The novel encompasses a myriad of themes, the motif of death being the foremost, and it parallels the brutal massacre known as the first modern war and the destruction of native culture with subtle poignancy." says Donna Nurse in Quill & Quire. We think that Joseph Boyden will be up for the major literary awards this year.

David Waltner-Toews has read twice before from his poetry collections. In fact, the last time he was the opening act for Katherine Gildiner. This year, the local writer and veterinary college professor, returns with a collection of linked short stories set among the Russian Mennonite diaspora as they journey through India to northern Alberta and Winnipeg. One Foot in Heaven (Coteau, $18.95), like Miriam Toews (Complicated Kindness), uses pathos and humour to explore the struggle between flesh and spirit, between self-definition and the restrictions of a fundamentalist group.

Tamas Dobozy is also a local writer, and professor of English and Film Studies at WLU. He was born in Nanaimo, BC, of Hungarian-Canadian parents and got his PhD in English at UBC. His second collection of stories, Last Notes (HarperCollins $24.95) explores the cultural no-man's-land that many children of immigrants feel trapped within. With wit and a love of the absurd, Dobozy tackles themes of separation, fidelity and the bonds of history.

Tuesday May 10 7:00pm $25 Princess Twin Cinema, 46 King St. N, Waterloo

If you have seen the movie, Kandahar, you will want to be at The Princess Cinema on Tuesday May 10th, to meet Nelofer Pazira who both made it and starred in it. Now a journalist on CBC's nightly newscast, The National, she and her family lived for ten years in Kabul where her father was a doctor during the Soviet-Afghani war. Nelofer survived the violence and Taliban-imposed austerity with her close friend, Dyana. Her family escaped across the mountains to Pakistan and eventually Canada. When Dyana's letters stopped coming, Nelofer made the dangerous return to her homeland in search of her - the basis of the film. A Bed of Red Flowers (Random, $34.95) is her memoir of this life and friendship. 

Camilla Gibb has won praise on both sides of the Atlantic for her first two novels, Mouthing the Words and The Petty Details of So-and-so's Life. Sweetness in the Belly (Doubleday $32.95) is based on Gibb's doctorate work in social anthropology in Ethiopia. Lilly is a white Muslim nurse in Thatcher's London looking back on her life in Haile Selassie's Ethiopia and her clandestine relationship with a young doctor. as the country veers towards revolution, their future together is threatened. "Camilla Gibb is surely one of the most talented writers around." - The London Times.

Two women writing about women's lives in war-torn countries. This event, co-sponsored by The Record, is is to raise funds for the Waterloo chapter of Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (www.w4wafghan.ca). Their annual book sale raises money for girls' schools and other projects. Following the readings, you're invited to see Kandahar in the deep-seated comfort of the Princess Twin.

We are pleased to report the over $1600 was donated to the Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan. They tell us that a year's salary for a school teacher in Afghanistan is $750, so we've paid for two years worth!! Thanks to all who participated, and to The Princess Cinema.
 

Wednesday June15  7:00 pm free, Artery Gallery, 158 King St W, Kitchener - The pre-registration is closed 40 max. 884-2665

Creativity is the focus of Oriah's new book, building on the success of her five previous inspirational bestsellers, including The Invitation, The Call and The Dance. She was last in Waterloo for a dinner event with John O'Donohue in October, 2003.
What We Ache For (HarperCollins $29.95) centres the essential expressions of the human soul - spirituality, sexuality and creativity - on a path that gives fuller expression to our deepest longings and passions. This is a book for those who want to engage in creative work, or for anyone who wants to enhance the creative work they do.
She invites you to a workshop on June 15th in which she'll read some poems and offer you the chance to do some creative writing of your own .Here's a link to her website

Friday Oct 1 2004 Knox Presbyterian Church  7:30pm $7. Anniversary Gala 
We are thrilled to be hosting one of Britain's most important author, Louis de Bernières. Best known for Captain Corelli's Mandolin (1994), he has four other novels which have won Commonwealth prizes. His newest book, Birds Without Wings, is a 625 page epic in which a small Turkish town  is the microcosm of the violent forces, religious, political and interpersonal, that shaped the twentieth century. The book opens with short chapters each narrated from a different town character, the potter, his son, a peasant woman giving birth to a beautiful daughter, the Muslim priest, the Orthodox priest, and so on. Another thread of the story is told through the life of Mustafa Kemel, as he leaves for military school, eventually to become dictator. The Great War and its settlement will destroy the Ottoman Empire and pitch Greeks against Turks, and both against the British, Germans and Russians. The village will be shattered by the loss of its sons to the war, and enforced ethnic relocations and genocides.
The Globe and Mail review says that Birds Without Wings "demands to be read... It would be a terrible thing to have missed a work of such importance, beauty and compassion." In The Record, William Christian wrote: "What makes the work so poignant is de Bernières' exquisite ability to draw complex and fully realized characters about whom we come to care."
On the same program, hear Beth Powning read from her first novel, The Hatbox Letters. Like the author, Kate is a middle-aged woman living in rural New Brunswick. Kate is facing her second winter as a widow, sorting through hatboxes of letters from her grandparents, discovering that her childhood image of their marriage was idealized.
Jeffrey Moore is a young Montreal novelist who's Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain won the Commonwealth first novel Prize. Jeffrey grew up in Kitchener:" lived at 73 Cambridge Avenue -- what a spell-like sound that still has to me -- and went to Smithson Public, my siblings to Eastwood Collegiate. Among the best years of my life. We were then dragged, kicking and screaming, to Toronto. I'm still trying to recover..." The Memory Artists looks at memory - our source of identity -  from all angles: a son with hypermnesia dealing with a mother slipping into Alzheimer's.

Wednesday Nov 3 2004  Knox Presbyterian Church  7:30pm $7.

It took decades for Richard B. Wright to achieve the prominence that his fans felt he deserved when The Weekend Man was published in the early 1970's. The St.Catherines teacher wrote another six novels before The Age of Longing was shortlisted for both the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Award in the mid-Nineties. But it took Clara Callan to win both awards in 2001. Richard read from it as part of our Author Series that year. It is fair to say that Adultery (HarperCollins $32.95), published this September, is long awaited.
A quiet editor from a Toronto publishing house travels to the Frankfurt Book Fair. An indiscretion with a pretty young colleague seems quite out of character: why risk losing his happy marriage and charming daughter back home? But when Denise fails to return to the car, site of their tryst on the Devon coast, a moment of violence shatters both their affair and his home life. A fall from grace, a search for forgiveness, all told in Wright's subtly layered, consummate story telling.

"Long awaited" also applies to Helen Humphreys. We presented her with our Words Worthy Award in 2002 for The Lost Garden, about a wartime horticulturalist. Wild Dogs (HarperCollins $28) takes place in Humphrey's hometown of Kingston. Six people gather at the edge of the woods every evening, calling to their dogs that have turned wild. Each of them struggles with their own demons, and the distance between wildness and belonging. Her luminous and sensitive writing have produced another unforgettable story.

Rhea Tregebov grew up on the prairies. She has published five children's picture books, six books of poetry and has edited several anthologies of essays. Alive Poems Selected and New (Wolsak & Wynn $15) showcases her past twenty years.
 Until the fall of 2004, she lived in Toronto where she taught Creative Writing for Ryerson Continuing Education and worked as a freelance editor of adult and young adult fiction as well as poetry. In September, 2004 she moved to Vancouver where, in January 2005  she will begin work at Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

Tuesday Nov 23 2004 Knox Presbyterian Church  7:30pm $7. Three women, three very different books, three powerful voices.

Linda McQuaig has a strong reputation as a feisty social critic and contrary thinker. Conrad Black once suggested that she be horsewhipped, a remark that failed to restrain her. She visited Kitchener in 1995 to read from Shooting the Hippo (Death by Deficit and other Canadian Myths). She has taken on the wealthy and powerful, from Brian Mulroney to globalization. (six books in all, from All You can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism, through to her most recent, Behind Closed Doors: How the Rich Won Control of Canada's Tax System and Ended Up Richer). Now she examines the real story behind the invasion of Iraq, and the impending threat of global warming. It's the Crude, Dude (Doubleday $35.95) goes after the oil-military complex that duped the American public and the media with the search for WMDs. The big oil companies, which heavily donated to the Republican Party, are after control of the most lucrative untapped oilfields left on earth. No one seem to question our insatiable addiction to oil. McQuaig states that by 2003, almost entirely because of the SUV, the overall fuel economy of North America's vehicles, after two decades of improvement, had started to deteriorate. This is despite mounting evidence that greenhouse gas emissions coming from SUVs were one of the fastest-growing parts of the problem. Her book is a wake-up call to both the political and ecological crises that we face.

Heather Mallick is a journalist who, like Linda McQuaig, you either love or hate. I turn to her columns in The Saturday Globe and Mail first, and whether it’s buying shoes or skewering George Dubyah, her iconoclasm is often hilarious and always engaging. Now we don’t have to wait for Saturday: she has published a collection of short essays, anecdotes, and lists in a “pillow book” called Pearls in Vinegar (Penguin $25). Mallick’s sophisticated tastes lead me to assume she grew up in Paris or London. Would you believe Norway House in the chilly reaches of northern Manitoba? She was born there and lived in other remote corners of Canada including Kapuskasing and Porte-aux-Basques. Her father was a surgeon working for the federal government. For her essay on her hunger for books as a child, go to www.penguin.ca. And prepare to be charmed by her bright wit and brighter insights.

If Heather Mallick is an iconoclast, Katherine Barber is an “eclecto-clast” when it comes to words, a serious logophile and lexicographer. She is the editor-in-chief of both the original Canadian Oxford Dictionary ($59.95), and the second edition, published this summer, and serves as The Word Lady on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning. Educated at Winnipeg and Ottawa, Barber started her career as a translator, and reviser of the Bilingual Canadian Dictionary at the University of Ottawa. In 1991,she established the Oxford University Press dictionary project in Toronto and continues to take delight in the eclectic range of uniquely Canadian words, terms like "double-double" that we leave other English speakers perplexed. Although Waterloonatic didn't make it into the CanOx, Waterloo, the city, did: "a city in SW central Ontario, forming a conurbation with Kitchener, which lies immediately to the southeast." Conurbation...hmmm, better look that up.

Tuesday Nov 30 2004 Knox Presbyterian Church  7:30pm $7.

We are delighted to host Wayson Choy for the first time. Jade Peony, his first novel about Vancouver’s Chinese community, shared the Trillium Award in 1995 with Margaret Atwood. All That Matters (Doubleday $35.95) is a continuation of the story of Kiam-Kin and the Chen family in the 1930s and 40s, and the struggle to balance the old traditions and language with the attractions of the dominant English culture. Children who lose their ‘Chinese brains’ are called ‘bamboo stumps’ by the elders because of the hollow emptiness within. When war breaks out, should the young men return to Manchuria, or try to enlist where their ethnicity is not accepted in the Canadian forces?
Wayson’s own life parallels that of Kiam-Kin’s, with some startling twists. After doing a radio interview in 1995 about Jade Peony, he received a call from a woman who had babysat him as a child. At the age of 56 he learned that he had been adopted. The unleashed feelings and memories led to his memoir, Paper Shadows, which won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction in 2000. He has retired from teaching English at Humber College and volunteers with literacy and AIDS groups.
The depth of feeling in All That Matters evolved from a profound source. While Choy was writing it, he had a severe asthma attack, leading to a coma and more than one heart attack. As he recovered, he gradually discovered how terrible it had been for his friends and family. Though he had seen loved ones die of AIDS or cancer or old age, this made him realize more about the power of simple acts of decency, and on the “deeper level, of connection between people,” something he went on to explore in the novel.

 Susan Swan is a novelist, journalist and York University professor with six novels to her credit, including The Wives of Bath (which was made into the movie, Lost and Delirious) and Stupid Boys are Good to Relax With. Her books have been published in over sixteen countries. What Casanova Told Me (Knopf $34.95) has two parallel stories: in 1797 Venice, Casanova persuades the female cousin on American President John Adams to accompany him to Athens and Istanbul; her 20^th-century descendent is travelling to Venice for her archaeologist mother’s memorial service. Alberto Manguel says:  “Her work is a subversion of both the historical and documentary voice which she believes operates under the pretense of being factual and only reflects what we want to see. In subverting these voices, she forces us to look at another reality, a deeper reality which is rooted in something archetypical. Her interest in freaks, in the gothic, in the apocalyptic, are all ways of lending a narration to contemporary myths."

Catherine Bush is, like Wayson Choy, a writer whose new novel is informed by her experience of pain, in this case, due to migraine headaches. Claire’s Head (M&S, $32.99) is her third novel following the much-acclaimed Rules of Engagement and Minus Time. It is psychologically charged tale of a migraine sufferer and her sister. Rachel, Claire’s journalist sister, has gone missing. Has the pain pushed her over the edge? The search via neurologists and New Age healers, will take Claire and Rachel’s ex-lover to Montreal, Europe, Las Vegas and Mexico. Marni Jackson, author of Pain, writes that “Science tries to measure it, but perhaps only literature can truly map the boundaries of pain, and its jealous dominion over us. In this suspenseful modern love story, Catherine Bush has also given us a wonderful fictional counterpart to Oliver Sacks’s classic study, Migraine.”

Saturday Dec 11 2004  in store
Hockey fans may get tired of staring at a blank screen this season, but publishers hope to keep them distracted with another league’s worth of hockey books. Ted Mahovlich is the bestselling author of The Big M, a biography of his father Frank. Triple Crown (HarperCollins $35.) is about Marcel Dionne who ranks third only to Gordie Howe and Wayne Gretzky in overall points. Both author and superstar will be at Words Worth on Saturday, Dec. 11^th from 10:30 to 11:30 to sign books.

SPRING 2004

In the spring of 2004, Words Worth hosted or sold books for 13 author events, involving some 18 authors! Click here for the full lineup.
 We hosted Russell Smith, Merilyn Symonds, and Miriam Toews at Waterloo Public Library on May 6th.The June 2nd event with Jane Jacobs at First United Church drew over 650, our biggest crowd ever. She was interviewed onstage by The Record’s Terry Pender. At 88, she speaks somewhat slowly but always eloquently, and uses an old-fashioned ear horn to assist in hearing questions from the crowd. (see photos below) Jane was interviewed onstage by Terry Pender, KW Record reporter. She also answered questions from the those in attendance and signed books. These photos were taken by Carl Hiebert, for Tamarack, the Institute for Community Engagement.

 

 

 

 

Two events at St Jerome’s University also drew overflow crowds. Karen Armstrong on Feb.27th spoke of her life as a nun, teacher, broadcaster and theological historian (The Spiral Staircase) as a series of fortunate failures. Romeo Dallaire’s talk of the genocide in Rwanda on May 28th moved the audience to tears. He stuck around for two hours afterwards to connect personally with those getting books signed.
Instore events ranged from local authors Carrie Snyder and Ian Darling, to our poetry marathon on April 17th, to a lineup stretching out the door for former Waterloo teacher, Heidi Jardine, on June 19th.