2008 Winter- Spring Author Series

This is our 24th year of bringing authors to Waterloo book lovers. (See below  for the full roster). Mark your calendars and 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 Town Square.  
 

Chris Turner

After the fierce warnings and grim predictions of The Weather Makers and An Inconvenient Truth, acclaimed journalist and national bestselling author Chris Turner finds hope in the search for a sustainable future.

Point of no return: The chilling phrase has become the ubiquitous mantra of ecological doomsayers, a troubling headline above stories of melting permafrost and receding ice caps, visions of catastrophe and fears of a problem with no solution. Daring to step beyond the rhetoric of panic and despair, The Geography of Hope points to the bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.

With a mix of front-line reporting, analysis and passionate argument, Chris Turner pieces together the glimmers of optimism amid the gloom and the solutions already at work around the world, from Canada’s largest wind farm to Asia’s greenest building and Europe’s most eco-friendly communities. But The Geography of Hope goes far beyond mere technology. Turner seeks out the next generation of political, economic, social and spiritual institutions that could provide the global foundations for a sustainable future–from the green hills of northern Thailand to the parliament houses of Scandinavia, from the villages of southern India, where microcredit finance has remade the social fabric, to America’s most forward-thinking think tanks.

In this compelling first-person exploration, punctuated by the wonder and angst of a writer discovering the world’s beacons of possibility, Chris Turner pieces together a dazzling map of the disparate landmarks in a geography of hope.

Check out the Geography of Hope's website. Chris was on CBC's The Hour with George Stromboulopoulos on Dec. 6th.

Chris Turner is the author of the national bestseller Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation. His culture and technology reporting for Shift magazine earned him four National Magazine Awards from 1999 to 2003, including the 2001 President’s Medal for General Excellence, the highest honour in Canadian magazine writing. His writing has also appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Independent, the Sunday Times, Time, Canadian Geographic and Utne Reader. He lives in Calgary.

James Raffan

Emperor of the North - Sir George Simpson and the Remarkable Story of the Hudson's Bay Company (HarperCollins, $34.95)

The adventure-filled story of the legendary Hudson’s Bay Company is inextricably linked to the formation of a Canadian nation stretching from sea to sea to sea. In an absorbing and lively new book on The Bay, James Raffan explores the forces that molded a man, a company and a country.
"James Raffan joins the ranks of Pierre Berton and Peter C. Newman with this rollicking adventure story of the Hudson's Bay Company and its larger-than-life governor, Sir George Simpson." --Farley Mowat

James Raffan is one of Canada’s foremost authorities on canoeing and wilderness experience. He is the author of two bestsellers: Fire in the Bones: Bill Mason and the Canadian Canoeing Tradition and Bark, Skin and Cedar. He has also published Tumblehome, a collection of meditations on the wilderness. He appeared at the Princess in 2002 for his book, Deep Waters, about a canoeing tragedy in 1978 on Lake Tamiskaming.

Karolyn Smardz Frost, Lorna Goodison, Carol Duncan

Lorna Goodison

Carol Duncan

From Harvey River (McClelland & Stewart, $29.99) by Lorna Goodison
In this spellbinding memoir of her Goodison's forebears, we meet a cast of wonderfully drawn characters, including George O’Brian Wilson, the Irish patriarch of the family who married a Guinea woman after coming to Jamaica in the mid-1800s; Doris’s parents, Margaret and David, childhood sweethearts who became the first family of Harvey River; and their eight children. In lush, vivid prose, textured with the cadences of Creole speech, Lorna Goodison weaves together memory and mythology to create a vivid tapestry. She takes us deep into the heart of a complete world to tell a universal story of family and the ties that bind us to the place we call home.

Lorna Goodison’s From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her People has won the 2008 B.C. Award for Canadian Non-fiction. This national prize is Canada’s largest literary non-fiction award ($40,000).  She is the author of eight books of poetry, including Travelling Mercies, Controlling the Silver, and Goldengrove: New and Selected Poems, and two collections of short stories. She has received much international recognition, including the Musgrave Gold Medal. Born in Jamaica, Goodison has taught at the University of Toronto and now teaches at the University of Michigan. She divides her time between Ann Arbor and Toronto.

Wilfrid Laurier professor Dr. Carol Duncan, will be presenting Black Church Studies (Abingdon $27.99) a book that she co-wrote examining African-American perspectives within Christian theology. Dr. Duncan, a professor in the Religion & Culture Dept. at Laurier, has long been recognized as a major contributor to both the local and national Black community. She has received various awards for her contributions and recently spent a year as a Research Associate Professor at Harvard Divinity School.

Sandra Gulland
the dress!

Mary Swan

Mistress of the Sun (HarperCollins $32.95) is the newest book by the author of the internationally acclaimed Josephine B. trilogy/ This is another deeply enchanting historical novel, this one based on the life of an extraordinary horsewoman, Louise de la Vallière, the brave and spirited child of minor nobility who, against all odds, grows up to become one of the most mysterious consorts of France’s King Louis XIV, the charismatic Sun King.

Set against the magnificent decadence of the 17th-century court of the Sun King, Mistress of the Sun begins when the eccentric young Louise falls in love with a wild white stallion and uses ancient magic to tame him. This one desperate action of youth shadows her throughout her life, changing it in ways she could never imagine. Unmarriageable and too poor to join a convent, she enters the court of the Sun King as a maid of honour, where she captures— and then tragically loses—the King’s heart. Mistress of the Sun illuminates, through the resurrection of a fascinating female figure from the dark corners of history, both the power of true love and the rash actions we take to capture and tame it.

Sandra Gulland’s previous work brought Josephine Bonaparte magnificently to life in three bestselling novels beginnihg with The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. Gulland spent many years researching Mistress of the Sun. She and her husband live half the year near Killaloe, Ontario, and half in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Visit her online at www.sandragulland.com.

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The Boys in the Trees (Henry Holt, $15.50)

'This is a mesmerizing novel, that can truly claim to be filled with a 'terrible beauty.''-Alice Munro
Newly arrived to the countryside, William Heath, his wife, and two daughters appear the picture of a devoted family. But when accusations of embezzlement spur William to commit an unthinkable crime, those who witnessed this affectionate, attentive father go about his routine of work and family must reconcile action with character.
 A doctor who has cared for one daughter, encouraging her trust, examines the finer details of his brief interactions with William, searching for clues that might penetrate the mystery of his motivation. Meanwhile the other daughter's teacher grapples with guilt over a moment when fate wove her into a succession of events that will haunt her dreams.
In beautifully crafted prose, Mary Swan examines the volatile collisions between our best intentions-how a passing stranger can leave an indelible mark on our lives even as the people we know most intimately become alienated by tides of self-preservation and regret. In her nuanced, evocative descriptions a locket contains immeasurable sorrow, trees provide sanctuary and refuge to lost souls, and grief clicks into place when a man cocks the cold steel barrel of a revolver.
A supreme literary achievement, The Boys in the Trees offers a chilling story that swells with acutely observed emotion and humanity.

Mary Swan was born in Wingham and has lived in Guelph, Ont. since 1982. She won the O.Henry short story award in 2001. Her first novella, The Deep, was published in 2002.
 

Raj Patel

For those with enough money—and that’s most of us in wealthier countries—life is good. We can eat almost anything we want, regardless of where it comes from, what season it is or how much it costs. The world is our dish, laden with more foods than we’ve ever seen in history and more calories than we know what to do with. A continent away, there are more bloated bellies, but this time from malnutrition—seemingly due to a scarcity of food. But these two contrasting worlds are linked, deeply and inextricably. In a timely look at the entire global food chain, Stuffed and Starved (HarperCollins, $32.95) asks us to think about the way our food comes to us, to understand how our supermarket shopping makes us complicit in denying freedom to the world’s poorest and to recognize how we ourselves are poisoned by our choices.

Raj Patel, an author uniquely qualified to take a long, broad view of world food production, looks at food systems—the machine most of us don’t even know exists—and the web made up of corporations, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, farmers’ groups, government agencies and corporate lobbyists. From farm to fork, Patel travels to rural collectives in Brazil, investigates the all-powerful distribution networks, serves up the specific journeys of coffee, soy and high-fructose corn syrup, and visits the kitchens of fast-food restaurants. What he uncovers is the shocking story of commercial greed and helpless hunger that is a key ingredient in everything we eat.

Stuffed and Starved is one of the most shocking investigations into the “haves” feeding off the “have-nots” and a compelling look at how we all suffer the consequences of a food system cooked to a corporate recipe.

RAJ PATEL was educated at Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University. He is currently a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland, California, a visiting researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He has worked for the World Bank, interned at the WTO, consulted for the UN and been involved in international campaigns against his former employers. This is his first book. Visit Raj Patel at www.stuffedandstarved.org.  Watch a trailer for the book here.
 

Alison Pick, Tim Lilburn & James Gordon

Alison Pick

Tim Lilburn

James Gordon

Wednesday  April 9 Princess Twin Cinema 7:00pm $8.00
46 King St N, Waterloo

Alison Pick, who grew up in Kitchener-Waterloo read from her second poetry collection, The Dream World. She was joined by Tim Lilburn, one of Canada's best-known poets, and Guelph folksinger, James Gordon. The Q&A was facilitated by Susan Scott, from The New Quarterly.

Alison Pick’s writing has appeared in The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and enRoute Magazine. Her first collection of poems, Question & Answer, was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award and the E.J. Pratt Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award. In 2002, Pick won the Bronwen Wallace Award for most promising Canadian poet, and her poetry has gone on to win the National Magazine Award and the CBC Literary Award. Her first novel, The Sweet Edge, was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of the Year. Alison Pick lives in Toronto.

The Dream World (McClelland & Stewart, $17.99) was written over a five-year period during which my partner and I moved from the mainland to Newfoundland and back again. To change place is to stir up the concept of home, both real and imagined: homes inhabited, homes lost, homes we only ever longed for. Landscape is a door that opens onto desire, and many of these poems come from the struggle for belonging, in a particular location and in the physical world in general. This is my third book, and I was interested in exploring the frontiers of language, the place where words fall down in the face of the numinous, where both our feelings and what lies beyond human experience seem fundamentally unsayable. Finally, I was reading as widely as possible in the Humanities during the writing process, and I wanted to push the life of the mind up against poetry (which for me had previously been an intuitive and visceral enterprise). The Dream World is a collision of thought, feeling, and imagination, a world with borders wide enough–I hope–to encompass it all. -- Alison Pick
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I wrote the poems in Orphic Politics  (McClelland & Stewart, $17.99) between 2003 and 2007. This was a difficult time for me. I got quite ill, was hospitalized, and had a number of surgeries. I also developed an auto-immune condition that made walking difficult. I had never been sick like this before, never lived in the country of the ill, and my health problems went on for a couple of years. The poems respond to all of this. After a while, being sick felt like an orphic immurement. I began to think of other diseases in me that might be in need of healing, noological disorders — a loneliness for things, for example, the residue of colonialism. How to transform these? I subjected myself to the theurgic art of poetry.  -- Tim Lilburn

Tim Lilburn’s six previous poetry collections include Kill-site, winner of the Governor General’s Award, and To the River, winner of the Saskatchewan Book Award for Book of the Year. His poems have been widely anthologized. His latest collection of nature essays is Going Home - ecology, desire and identity (Anansi $19.95). He lives in Victoria, where he teaches at the University of Victoria.
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Based in Guelph, Ontario, James Gordon is known to many North Americans as the founder of Canada's premier folk group Tamarack. With this durable trio he toured every corner of the continent, recorded fourteen albums, and made countless television and radio appearances. He has become well-known for his original songs about Canada's identity and heritage. He was a regular songwriting contributor to the CBC radio programmes "Ontario Morning" and "Basic Black". He has also released numerous solo albums for adults and children, composed works for symphony orchestras, co-written a popular series of "Jim and Dave" family musicals and written music for theatre, dance and film. His original folk opera "Hardscrabble Road" debuted in 2003. These days James tours North America and Great Britain as a solo act or accompanied by Sandy Horne on bass and Marion Linton on fiddle. He produces CDs for other artists at his Pipe Street Studios.

James will be sharing his latest project, a five-CD collection of stories and songs form his career touring: The Highway and I. ($30.) Visit his website.
 

Carl Honoré

Under Pressure- Rescuing Childhood from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting (Random $32)

From the bestselling author of In Praise of Slow comes a fascinating and urgent look at childhood today and how we are raising a generation of overprogrammed, overachieving, exhausted children.

For generations of children, growing up was a pretty simple business: you went to school for a few hours a day, you dabbled in hobbies and sports, and the rest of the time you played. Or maybe you just day-dreamed. Carl Honoré explains how our modern approach to children is backfiring: our kids are fatter, more myopic, more injured, more depressed and more medicated than any previous generation. By using children as a way to relive our own lives, or as a way to make up for our personal shortcomings, we have destroyed the magic and innocence of childhood. Under Pressure is not a parenting manual but a call to action; we must do better for our children.

Using fascinating anecdotes about obsessive parents (including one about the father of a tennis player who drugged all his child’s opponents), solid research and personal insight, Honoré explains the over-parenting phenomenon, dispels myths and rallies for change in clear and persuasive prose. Topics explored include the use of technology as babysitting, how enrolling children in hours of extracurriculars every week can do more harm than good and how we underestimate the resilience of our children at the expense of their freedom.

Carl Honoré is the bestselling author of In Praise of Slow. Originally from Edmonton, he lives in London, England, with his wife and two children.
 

Saturday April 19 Knox Church 7:30pm  CANCELLED

Shakespeare's Wife (McClelland & Stewart, $36.99, April 8) is a polemical, ground-breaking study of Elizabethan England that reclaims Ann Hathaway’s rightful place in history.

Little is known about the wife of the world’s most famous playwright; a great deal, none of it complimentary, has been assumed. The omission of her name from Shakespeare’s will has been interpreted as evidence that she was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake from which Shakespeare did well to distance himself.

Yet Shakespeare is above all the poet of marriage. Before him, there were few comedies or tragedies about wooing or wedding. And yet he explored the sacrament in all its aspects, spiritual, psychological, sexual, sociological, and was the creator of some of the most tenacious and intelligent heroines in English literature. Is it possible, therefore, that Ann, who has been mocked and vilified by scholars for centuries, was the inspiration?

Until now, there has been no serious critical scholarship devoted to the life and career of the farmer’s daughter who married England’s greatest poet. Part biography, part history, Shakespeare’s Wife is a fascinating reconstruction of Ann’s life, and an illuminating look at the daily lives of Elizabethan women, from their working routines to the rituals of courtship and the minutiae of married life. In this thoroughly researched and controversial book, Greer steps off the well-trodden paths of orthodoxy, asks new questions, and begins to right the wrongs done to Ann Shakespeare.

Germaine Greer is a writer, academic, and critic whose bestselling books include The Female Eunuch and  The Whole Woman. Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her ground-breaking The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her overnight into a household name and bringing her both adulation and criticism. She is also the author of Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984); and The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991). She gained her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1967 with a thesis on Shakespeare’s early comedies and has taught Shakespeare at universities in Australia, Britain, and the United States. She lives in northwest Essex, England.

Barrie Wilson

Friday May 2    Siegfried Hall, St.Jerome’s University 7:30 pm free slideshow and on-stage interview with Neil Carver

How Jesus Became Christian (Random House $32.95)

How did a Jewish rabbi from Galilee become a Gentile God-human? Who was Paul, really? Since he never met Jesus and rarely quotes him, what connection does Paul have to the movement? Why did early Christianity separate from its parent religion, Judaism? Would Jesus recognize the religion that bears his name today? Why was Mary the Mother of Jesus elevated and Mary Magdalene demoted within early Christianity? Why did Christianity espouse anti-Semitism?

Barrie specializes in investigating puzzles such as these about early Christian origins. His book, How Jesus Became Christian, explores the fascinating Christification process that explains many of the mysteries of early Christianity -- how the image of Jesus was made over as a Christ and how the religion of Jesus was hijacked by a religion about the Christ. 
Wilson is a Professor of Humanities & Religious Studies, York University. He has taught biblical studies for the past twenty years. This is his first book for a general audience.

Visit  BarrieWilson.com.
Michael Valpy profiled the book in the Globe & Mail ,March 15 (subscription required).In it, Wilson claims the differences between Jesus' and Paul's teachings point to two different religions. "One of the merits of my book is that I try to show how Luke in the Book of Acts tries to marry the two." ..." I distinguish three early forms of Christianity, all of which have different impressions of Jesus - the Jesus Movement or Ebionites [lead by his brother James], the Gnostics and then Paul's form of early Christianity."

James Orbinski

An Imperfect Offering - Humanitarian Action for the 21st Century (Doubleday, $35)

“As Albert Camus wrote, the doctor’s role is as a witness–to witness authentically the reality of humanity, and to speak out against the horrors of political inaction. . . . The only crime equaling inhumanity is the crime of indifference, silence, and forgetting.”
—James Orbinski

In 1988, James Orbinski, then a medical student in his twenties, embarked on a year-long research trip to Rwanda, a trip that would change who he would be as a doctor and as a man. Investigating the conditions of pediatric AIDS in Rwanda, James confronted widespread pain and suffering, much of it preventable, much of it occasioned by political and economic corruption. Fuelled by the injustice of what he had seen in Rwanda, Orbinski helped establish the Canadian chapter of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders/MSF). As a member of MSF he travelled to Peru during a cholera epidemic, to Somalia during the famine and civil war, and to Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

In April 1994, James answered a call from the MSF Amsterdam office. Rwandan government soldiers and armed militias of extremist Hutus had begun systematically to murder Tutsis. While other foreigners were evacuated from Rwanda, Orbinski agreed to serve as Chef de Mission for MSF in Kigali. As Rwanda descended into a hell of civil war and genocide, he and his team worked tirelessly, tending to thousands upon thousands of casualties. In fourteen weeks 800,000 men, women and children were exterminated. Half a million people were injured, and millions were displaced. The Rwandan genocide was Orbinski’s undoing. Confronted by indescribable cruelty, he struggled to regain his footing as a doctor, a humanitarian and a man. In the end he chose not to retreat from the world, but resumed his work with MSF, and was the organization’s president when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

An Imperfect Offering is a deeply personal, deeply political book. With unstinting candor, Orbinski explores the nature of humanitarian action in the twenty-first century, and asserts the fundamental imperative of seeing as human those whose political systems have most brutally failed. He insists that in responding to the suffering of others, we must never lose sight of the dignity of those being helped or deny them the right to act as agents in their own lives. He takes readers on a journey to some of the darkest places of our history but finds there unimaginable acts of courage and empathy. Here he is doctor as witness, recording voices that must be heard around the world; calling on others to meet their responsibility.

Dr. James Orbinski is a past international President of Médécins sans Frontières (MSF). He accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 on behalf of MSF. He is a Research Scientist and Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine and Political Science at St. Michael’s Hospital and the University of Toronto. He is a founder of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, a not-for-profit pharmaceutical research and development entity focused on the diseases of the South. He recently founded Dignitas, an organization focused on community based treatment, care and prevention of HIV in the developing world. Dr. Orbinski lectures internationally on humanitarianism and global health. He's also the subject of a new NFB documentary - "Triage".
 

 autographed books available

Collecting First Editions
A signed first edition from our author events can be a valuable investment. The attention heaped on Joseph Boyden’s novel Three Day Road may point to its future value. Signed copies of titles in the first edition from past authors who have appeared at Words Worth such as Yann Martel, Andrew Pyper and Miriam Toews now routinely trade at many times more than their initial cover price.

What is a first edition?
A first edition is the first printing of a book. First editions differ from subsequent printings as they are by definition the closest edition to the author's original work. Publishers vary in the ways they identify their first editions. A signed first edition can become a special and valuable book for the owner.
Readers sometimes become interested in collecting when books become important objects that they wish to own admire and preserve. These bibliophiles develop a passion for an author's work or subject area wishing to create a fine and complete collection of work. To collectors the first edition is the most desirable and valuable edition.  Regular patronage of our spring and fall reading series (and of course regular visits for signed editions!) is an excellent way to build and maintain a library of both enduring quality and value.

Twenty-Four Years of Author Events

It was November of 1984 when the late WO Mitchell read for us at Waterloo Public Library. We had dinner with him before the reading at the restaurant at what was then The Seagram Museum. He was impressed with the large hall there and suggested we use it for future readings. We took his suggestion and held many events there even some with a breakfast time slot. Over the years we've used The Canadian Clay and Glass Museum Waterloo Stage Theatre and uptown churches: Emmanuel First United and more recently Knox Presbyterian. On many occasions we linked a new author (e.g. Jane Urquhart in 1986) with someone more established (Timothy Findley). Almost 200 authors (not counting kids' authors) have been hosted by Words Worth Books.

Here's a chronological list of most of the authors of adult books. Many of these names are displayed as a border around the ceiling of the bookstore.