2007 Spring Author Series
Mark your calendars, drop by
the store for tickets. Tickets for
the readings are $8.00, One dollar from each ticket goes to The Record's Literacy
Fund.
Call 519-884-2665 or 1-888-241-7546 to reserve. All
readings take place at 7:30pm.
Knox Presbyterian
Church is at 50 Erb St West, corner of Erb and Caroline in Waterloo.
Parking is available beside the church (enter via Dupont), or across Erb St. at Waterloo Square.
Afua Cooper & Lawrence Hill
Monday February 19 Knox Church 7:30 pm $8.
proceeds to The African Women’s Alliance of Waterloo Region
The year 2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Britain. Modern-day Canadians think that slavery was an abomination found only in the American South, and we pat ourselves on the back from being the freedom land at the end of the Underground Railroad. The abolition movement, begun by Quakers in England, promised freedom to slaves in the American colonies who were loyal to the crown. Their reward was in the form of land grants in Nova Scotia but many who arrived after yet another perilous sea voyage were cheated out of their entitlement. In fact, the French and British colonies in the Maritimes and Upper and Lower Canada in the 1700s were also practicing slavery.
Dr. Afua Cooper is a Canadian historian and poet. The Hanging of Angélique (HarperCollins $24.95 pbk) explores this little-known chapter in early Canadian history. Angélique is an indentured Portuguese-born slave woman accused of starting a fire that burned much of Montreal in 1734. Under hideous torture which broke her legs, she confessed to the crime and was executed after her trial. Her life story comes out under cross-examination. Cooper's research reveals that slavery was legally and culturally endorsed for a couple of centuries in pre-Confederation Canada. In fact, Angélique's story is the oldest slave narrative in the New World.This book was a finalist for the 2006 Governor General's Award for nonfiction.
Afua Cooper holds a Ph.D. in African Canadian history, with specialties in slavery and abolition. She is the co-author of We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History, which won the prestigious Joseph Brant Award for History, and Underground Railroad - Next Stop Toronto. She is also one of Canada’s most versatile poets and has published five volumes of poetry, including the acclaimed Copper Woman. Dr. Cooper has taught history at the University of Toronto.
Lawrence Hill is the son of a black father and a white mother who came to Canada hoping to escape the enduring racism of their native United States. Growing up in the predominantly white suburb of Don Mills, Ontario in the sixties, he was greatly influenced by his parents’ work in the human rights movement. Much of Hill’s writing touches on issues of identity and belonging: Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada; Any Known Blood a novel about five generations of an African-Canadian-American family; Some Great Thing; Women of Vision: The Story of the Canadian Negro Women’s Association and a children’s book, Trials and Triumphs: The Story of African Canadians. Hill has also just written The Deserter's Tale (Anansi $32.95), an as-told-to memoir of a deserting soldier's experience in Iraq. Joshua Key, a patriotic family man from Oklahoma, went to war believing unquestioningly in his government's commitment to integrity and justice. What he saw in Iraq transformed him into someone who could no longer serve his country.
His newest novel is called The Book of Negroes (HarperCollins, $34.95). Here's what Afua Cooper says about it: "Lawrence Hill, a cultural and spiritual descendant of West African griots, has used his vast storytelling talents to create an epic story that spans three continents. Book of Negroes recites the pain, misery, and liberation of one African woman, Aminata Diallo, who was stolen from her homeland and sold into American slavery. Through Aminata, Hill narrates the terrifying story of slavery and puts at the centre a female experience of the African Diaspora. I wept upon reading this story. Book of Negroes is courageous, breathtaking, simply brilliant."
from The Book of
Negroes:
Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not
trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. Crossing water never
improved my life, always worsened it. If you, Dear Reader, have an African
hue and find yourself led toward water, seize your freedom by any means
necessary . . . and cultivate distrust of the colour pink.
David Buckland
Wednesday March 14 Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 101 Queen St North, Kitchener, 7 pm free
In a rare collaboration Words Worth Books, Kitchener–Waterloo Art Gallery and rare Charitable Research Reserve are co-hosting British photographer and film maker David Buckland at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery for a showing of his film Art from a Changing Arctic. David will also be speaking about his book Burning Ice: Art and Climate Change. Admission is free.
Buckland has spent
the past seven years leading expeditions to Cape Farwell on his 100 year
old schooner in an effort to bring awareness to the public on climate
change.
Buckland’s film will have its premiere Canadian showing next Monday at the
Montreal International Film Festival before he arrives in Waterloo Region
to show the 60 minute film at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery on
Wednesday, March 14 at 7pm.
David Buckland is an international ambassador for rare Charitable Research
Reserve in Cambridge. “We felt this was a perfect opportunity to bring
David to this region when he was already visiting Canada. We are the only
area outside of Montreal to have the chance to view his film and having
this at the Kitchener–Waterloo Art Gallery seemed like a perfect fit” says
Patti Leather, Acting Executive Director and Manager, Community Relations,
rare Charitable Research Reserve.
Buckland’s photos have been collected by the Metropolitan Museum in New
York; Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the National Portrait Gallery in
London, England.
The rare Charitable Research Reserve is this community’s window on the
world of our environment. It is a local treasure with a link to our past-
913 acres comprising 6 of 8 pre-settlement landscapes and artifacts going
back over 9,000 years- and to our future with its programs that engage the
best minds, local and international, to discover not only solutions to
environmental issues, but also to anticipate the next set of questions. The
most senior scientists and the youngest members of our community are all
engaged, offering some hope that we may yet save the planet.
Words Worth's most
most recent collaboration with the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery was last
February with a talk and slide show by Ross King, winner of the 2006
Governor General’s Award for non-fiction, for his book Judgment of
Paris.
Tuesday March 20 Knox Church 7:30 pm $8.
Dr. Vincent Lam is the author of
last year's Giller Prize winner, Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Tales
(Doubleday $17.95 pbk). He was the youngest, and the only first-time,
author to win Canada's most prestigious fiction award. This book has sold
amazingly well across Canada since the award was announced last November -
roughly twice as many copies in the same time frame as previous winners.
Dr. Lam is an emergency physician in Toronto where he was involved in the
SARS crisis. He has also written non-fiction: The Flu Pandemic and You.
Bloodletting and Other Miraculous Cures is an astonishing literary debut, a
collection of mature and intricate stories connected through the
relationships that develop among a group of young doctors as they move from
the challenges of med school to the intense world of emergency rooms, evac
missions, and terrifying new viruses.
Vincent grew up in Ottawa and London in a family of expatriate Chinese from Vietnam. He studied medicine at the University of Toronto. While serving as doctor on an Arctic cruise he met Margaret Atwood who kindly read some if his stories and proceeded to mentor him and recommend him to Doubleday Canada. His first novel, Cholon, Near Forgotten, will be published this year. Bloodletting is also to be made into a television drama series.
Saturday March 24 in store 2:00 pm free
Raised in the Ontario communities of Bancroft, Sioux Lookout and Stayner, where his father served postings as a small-town police officer, Chris Banks took his BA at the University of Guelph, a Master’s in Creative Writing at Concordia and an education degree at Western. He currently works as an English and Creative Writing instructor at Bluevale Collegiate Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. His first collection of poetry, Bonfires, was published by Nightwood Editions in 2003, followed by Arrows & Sparrows (Biblioasis) in 2006.
The Cold Panes of
Surfaces ($16.95) is the moving collection of poems rooted in the
pastoral tradition of Wordsworth, Frost and Wallace Stevens. The Cold Panes
of Surfaces describes the Southern Ontario landscape of trains, lakes,
moose and pine with unflinchingly sharp image and metaphor. In so doing, he
brings to it a distinctly modern edge, meditating on "the rent we are
paying to the planet for our waning lives." Here, beetles become "child
kamikazes... a wallpaper of yellow-winged flames" and the planet is a
"Museum of Natural Beauty." Banks takes imaginative leaps into the worlds
of a magician's assistant, a fifteenth-century Japanese poet, and the Muse.
Most of all, these poems eloquently describe childhood, loss in all its
forms, the vagaries of relationships, and being "a sullen young man /
caught in the world’s fist."
Joseph Simons first published book, Under a Living Sky, is about a homemade doll and a family in crisis in Depression Era Saskatchewan. The book won the 2006 Family Friendly Book Award in the
Under A Living Sky is set in 1937,
near the end of the Great Depression. Farms in Saskatchewan were very, very
poor, and 11,000 went bankrupt that year. Money was so tight that only the
oldest child would receive a new article of clothing for Christmas. In this
story, the oldest daughter gets new shoes for Christmas and the younger
daughter gets a homemade doll. This makes the older sister jealous because
their parents made the doll with their own hands. The oldest daughter
eventually buries her sister's doll in the snow.
“This volume should be considered a basic text for Christian disciples who
want to shape their politics with a consciousness of the reign of God.”
—John A. Lapp in the Foreword
John H. Redekop’s biblically focused consideration of church-state relations weighs the challenges of political involvement for Christians. Drawing on decades of writing about public policy issues in Canada and the United States, Redekop affirms politics as an appropriate arena of Christian service and government as an institution established by and accountable to God.
John H. Redekop is the author of three books and scores of articles on public policy, and has edited three books of essays. For many years he was a panelist on the Canadian TV show Cross Currents and its predecessor, The Stiller Report. Redekop was president of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. He was a professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University and at Trinity Western University. Redekop was elected city councillor in Abbotsford, British Columbia, in 1999 and served until 2002.
Ishmael Beah
Thursday Apr 19 Luther Village 730 pm $10. proceeds to Project Ploughshares. Ticket holders may buy the book for $25. (regular $28.57 incl.GST)
Luther Village is at 139 Father David Bauer Dr, Waterloo (519-783-3710), next to the Waterloo Recreation Complex. The entrance to our event is via the Sunshine Centre: drive to the back of the property. additional parking is available at Westmount Mall.
Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier of
Sierra Leone, recounts his descent into violence and inhumanity in
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Douglas & MacIntyre
$26.95). He tells his story with literary force and heartbreaking
honesty, and what surfaces is a hopeful belief in humanity.
At the age of 12, Ishmael Beah experienced a grievous loss of
innocence when a rebel army moved through his village in Sierra
Leone. After months of running for survival, he was coerced into
battle and—pumped up on drugs and wielding an AK47— he committed
heinous acts of violence. Three years later, UNICEF pulled Beah from
the killing fields, he was put through a difficult rehabilitation
process and, after further political upheaval, he fled the country.
Beah is now twenty-six years old and a writer living in New York. His straightforward recounting is pierced
with a child’s honesty and innocence and gives startling insight into
the realities of warfare. Ultimately, his memoir is a plea to stop
the practice of using children to fight wars.
It is estimated that in the more than fifty violent conflicts taking
place world-wide, there are some 300,000 child soldiers involved.
Militia and government armies alike use horrifying, calculated
methods to draw children into these conflicts. “In such
circumstances, everyone is capable of going beyond their own
humanity” says Beah, “I wrote this book to shed light on how and why
children are recruited into wars, how they are made into killers and
how through rehabilitation they can take back their lives.” Beah
continues, “Only through a deeper insight of the issue can we act to
end the practice forever…. My book is one story amongst others that
have yet to be told, demand to be told.”
Beah is a member of the Human Rights Watch Children’s Rights Division
Advisory Committee and has spoken before the Council on Foreign
Relations, the Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities (CETO)
at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, and many other NGO panels
on children affected by war. He has also spoken before the United
Nations on several occasions.
“A Long Way Gone is one of the most important war stories of our
generation. The arming of children is among the greatest evils of the
modern world, and yet we know so little about it because the children
themselves are swallowed up by the very wars they are forced to wage.
Ishmael Beah has not only emerged intact from this chaos, he has
become one of its most eloquent chroniclers. We ignore his message at
our peril.”
-- SEBASTIAN JUNGER, author of A Death in Belmont and A
Perfect Storm
This event drew
over 400 people. The evening began with drumming, and an African
libation ceremony, led by Nii Addico. Ishmael explained why he wrote
the book and read from two passages, one from the killing fields and
one from his idyllic childhood in Sierra Leone before the violence.
The Record's Liz Monteiro interviewed Ishmael onstage, followed by
questions from the audience. More than 120 copes of his book were
sold either that evening or prior to it. A cheque for $2500 was
presented to Project Ploughshares from the admission proceeds.
Saturday April 28 2:30 pm in store, free
Nerve Language (Pedlar Press,
$20) centres on the Memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber, perhaps the most
written about and articulate of mental patients. His Memoirs formed the
basis of Freud's theory of paranoia, and was the basis of Bleuler's
definition of schizophrenia (which is till operative today). In 1894, he
had become a high ranking judge in Leipzig before being plunged into
breakdown. He entered an asylum voluntarily but after six months was
committed by his wife, his doctor and his former employer, at which point
his worst experiences began. Nonetheless, he also began to work towards his
release, which he achieved on appeal to the very court in which he was once
the President.
During his madness (and even after his release), he believed God spoke to
him directly by way of what he called nerve language. His God had become
the two central gods of ancient Persia. He believed that a terrible
disaster had befallen the universe and that he was the last
person alive. His task was to restore the cosmos by nerve contact with
divine rays. In order for this to occur he had to enter the world of female
voluptuousness which would unman him.
These poems enter this world of mad logic and real thought, of immense
suffering, of vision and transformation, where love and freedom are just
over the horizon of dark and clashing light.
Brian Henderson is the author of nine collections of poetry,
including a deck of visual poem-cards, The Alphamiricon. He has published
articles, reviews, and poetry in many literary magazines He is the director of Wilfrid Laurier
University Press and lives in Waterloo. There is only a little madness
in the family.
Linda McQuaig & Heather Mallick
Holding the
Bully's Coat Canada and the U.S. Empire (Doubleday $34.95) is
Linda McQuaig's latest book
of political analysis and commentary. As the Bush administration has turned
the United States into a belligerent and lawless force in the world, the
Canadian government has followed in close step. Attempting to please our
powerful neighbour, Ottawa has abandoned Canada’s traditional role as a
leading peacekeeping nation, and instead adopted a more militaristic,
warlike stance, battling insurgents in Afghanistan as a junior partner in
the U.S. “war on terror.”
Ottawa has also abandoned Canada’s traditional attempt to be a fair-minded
mediator and conciliator, most notably in the Middle East conflict. And,
under the government of Stephen Harper, Canada has joined the United States
in becoming a leading obstructionist in worldwide efforts to deal with
climate change — perhaps the most urgent issue on the international agenda.
The switch in direction evident in these positions has redefined the way
Canada operates in the world, transforming our country into a helpful
assistant to an aggressive U.S. power, increasingly out of sync with our
European allies and with the rest of the world.
As in all her previous books, Linda McQuaig strips away the comforting
illusions peddled by those in our elite. With her trademark combination of
research, analysis, irreverence and passion, McQuaig shows how the elite
has pushed us down a path with far-reaching consequences for us as a
nation, and for our ability to find our own way in the world.
Journalist Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for taking on the
establishment. Author of seven Canadian bestsellers and winner of a
National Newspaper Award, she has been a national reporter for the Globe
and Mail, a senior writer for Maclean’s magazine and most recently a
political columnist for the Toronto Star.
Cake or Death (Knopf Canada $29.95) is a brilliant new book from
Heather Mallick, one of Canada’s most popular columnists – a
no-holds-barred riposte to the mess we’ve made of things.
"Mrs. Tittlemouse is heaven in a sponge mop. I read Beatrix Potter’s books
as a child and love her paintings, her stories, her home-boiling of
squirrels so her watercolours could be anatomically exact. But most of all,
Beatrix Potter made domesticity desirable. All right, she didn’t, but she
domesticated me. Personal order has become my badge and it’s the only thing
that really works with melancholy." Heather Mallick is sorely disappointed.
The world has not turned out quite the way she had hoped it would. But
rather than retreat from it, she takes the world head on, fearlessly and
formidably on her own terms.
In a new work of entirely original writing, we have Heather unplugged (some
might even say unhinged), and uncensored from the restrictions of her Globe
and Mail column writing. As her many fans have come to expect from her, she
is incisive and outrageous, whether she’s cataloguing the many situations
and items in our daily lives that we are told we should fear, teaching us
how to cope with people we just can’t stand (ruthless mockery is the key,
really, says Heather) or writing about the valuable life lesson to be
learned from one of her childhood heroes: Mrs. Tittlemouse, the original
domestic goddess.
A candid reflection on the complicated state of our lives and our world
today, viewed through the lens of Heather’s inimitable wit and outlook on
life, Cake or Death: The Excruciating Choices of Everyday Life will provoke
and delight readers.
Heather Mallick’s first book, Pearls in Vinegar: The Pillow Book of
Heather Mallick, was a national bestseller. She has worked as a
reporter and columnist at the The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, as chief
copy editor at the Financial Post and as review editor at the Sunday Sun in
Toronto. She lives in Toronto. Her
latest columns
can be found at CBC's website.
Linda and Heather last read for a Words Worth audience in
November 2004.
Children will dive into the fantastic adventures of Ridley Bluefox (Lobster Press $8.95)– a famous fisherman who has never met a fish he couldn’t catch. When he hears about the uncatchable flying fish of Fortune Falls, he is determined to capture one and land himself on yet another cover of Fishin’ Fabulous magazine. Although Ridley is warned not to pursue these rare flying fish, he has the steadfast spirit of an
explorer and will not rest until a flying fish is on his hook. Armed with magical bait and an ancient map, he travels across land and sea, meeting curious characters along the way. But the ultimate challenge is waiting for him at Fortune Falls. Will his fishing skills be enough to save him from becoming the prey? Ridley’s story is a thrilling fantasy, with “fishnotes” throughout to help readers with the more challenging vocabulary.
Much like Ridley, author Carrie Percy has a thirst for adventure. Her feats include riding an ostrich in Africa, bicycling with giraffes in Dhikololo, and eating rattlesnake in Quebec City. An elementary school teacher, Carrie lives in Cambridge with her husband and new baby. This is her debut novel for young readers.
Who knew that reading
about zoonotic diseases could leave you energized, hopeful and better
informed. No scare tactics, no doom & gloom –instead, an insightful read
that counteracts the frenzy surrounding the increasingly common idea that
nature and society are rife with bioterrorists.
Author Dr. David Waltner-Toews believes that all living things on this
planet are one big dysfunctional extended family of species, where most
bacteria, viruses and parasites are actually beneficial and necessary; we
ourselves have evolved from microbes and are comprised of them.
Acknowledging the interconnectedness of our lives with those of the
organisms around us and recognizing that a global approach is essential is
fundamental to our ability to truly understand how the interaction of
species enables the spread of various diseases that people get from other
animals.
The big killer infections—measles, tuberculosis, and smallpox—have come to
us from animals and have decided they like us better. Other diseases, such
as rabies, poker players’ pneumonia, and dum-dum fever, visit us now and
then, but they really prefer their animal homes. Then there are the
“emerging” diseases, like mad cow disease, SARS, and avian flu, which have
dropped in to check us out; we don’t know whether they will take up
permanent residence or if they are just passing through.
The Chickens Fight Back (Douglas & McIntyre, $22.95) reflects the author’s involvement in research and
the development of effective solutions, as he presents the various groups
of animal diseases, explains what it is about our lifestyle and our
environment that encourages them to visit, and offers suggestions for how
to keep them at bay. Its up-to-date information is both timely and
reassuring in light of recent health scares around the world. As Dr. Waltner-Toews says “I don’t see myself as a worried bystander.”
Dr. Waltner-Toews is a veterinarian and epidemiologist specializing
in diseases people get from animals. He is a professor at the University of
Guelph, founding president of Veterinarians without Borders/Vétérinaires
sans Frontières-Canada, and author of numerous books of poetry and
nonfiction. He lives in Kitchener and appeared before Words Worth
audiences in 2000 and 2005.
Words Worth Books is
hosting a Harry Potter Party to (literally) end all parties to celebrate
the final book in the series! Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be
released on July 21st and our party will be held on Friday, July 20 from
9:15 to midnight. To make this night even more memorable the party will be
at the Waterloo Regional Children’s Museum,
10 King Street West, Kitchener. The celebration is free for Potter fans if
you purchase a copy of the book in advance from us (20% off). Ticket
holders will be sorted into their Hogwarts Houses and their prefects will
guide them through the Top-Secret Hogwarts activities. Let the excitement
begin!! (Dressing up is extremely encouraged!)
We hosted over 220 kids and parents at this event, with activities for the four Hogwarts Houses: a reading from the end of the previous book, a mad science display, Hagrid teaching about mythical creatures - a mermaid, a huge spider, and a hippogryph (all thanks to Queen of Hearts Costumes), and a tarot reading. At midnight the closely-guarded boxes of Deathly Hallows were finally opened. Click here for photos.
By Sept. 7th, we've sold 500 copies
of the final volume, of which 27 were with the adult cover.