Join us for the virtual launch of Eugene Stickland's First and Last!

The event will take place on Zoom. Please register
here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwlceygrTgsGdRRG5Xqj32zJNdbeFW9L5Bl

First and Last is a comedy by Calgary-based playwright and novelist Eugene Stickland. Musician Lenny returns from a West Coast tour to find his girlfriend gone and his apartment empty. Past the deadline for his new album, Lenny struggles to compose new material. In the midst of his heartbreak and while trying to write his next album, people begin to show up at his door to move into the apartment--victims of a con. A young couple, a hipster, a synchronized swim team and two refugees all lay claim to the same sanctuary--Lenny’s apartment.

A few words about himself by Eugene: I grew up in Regina where I eventually worked on an MA in English at the University of Regina, which was interrupted when I went to Toronto to complete an MFA in Playwriting at York University. Following that, I wrote plays in Toronto for a number of years for the Act IV Theatre Company while at the same time working in a number of communications-related positions, including the editor of the Frontier College Press. After a brief stint back in Regina in the early ’90’s, at which time my daughter Hanna came into the world, I moved to Calgary in 1994, and enjoyed a 10 year stint as Alberta Theatre Projects’ playwright in residence, writing 6 plays for the company in that time, along with others for other theatres across Canada. After leaving ATP, I became a feature columnist for the Calgary Herald for the next five years while at the same time continuing to write plays for other theatres. My plays have been produced around the world in several different languages. Queen Lear, which I wrote in 2009 for Calgary actress Joyce Doolittle on the occasion of her 80th birthday, went on to other productions in other cities, including a two year run in Istanbul and throughout Turkey (in translation). I am currently working on several new projects, including a volume of poetry, “Nocturnal Emissions,” a new play, “Those White Things in the Ocean,” and I’ve just completed a novel, “The Piano Teacher,” which I plan to publish on Blurb in the spring of 2015. I am the writer in residence at Calgary’s St. Mary’s University College and I teach a special communications course for internationally educated professionals, mostly from the world of medicine, at Alberta Business and Educational Services. I live in downtown Calgary, proudly without a car. I’m an avid cyclist and in winter a happy enough rider of public transportation.

Join us for the virtual book launch of Marcello Di Cintio's DRIVEN: THE SECRET LIVES OF TAXI DRIVERS! Hosted by Biblioasis, Shelf Life Books, and Glass Bookshop.

We'll be streaming live on Facebook and on YouTube on Thursday, May 13 at 7 PM MDT / 9 PM EDT. More info here. 

Event details TBA. The video link will be shared closer to the event date, so RSVP to stay up to date.

ABOUT DRIVEN:
In conversations with drivers ranging from veterans of foreign wars to Indigenous women protecting one another, Di Cintio explores the borderland of the North American taxi.

“A taxi,” writes Marcello Di Cintio, “is a border.” Inside every cab is a space both private and public: accessible to all, and yet, once the doors close, strangely intimate, as two strangers who might otherwise never have met share a five or fifty minute trip. In a series of interviews with Canadian taxi drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqui National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country, Di Cintio seeks out those missed conversations, revealing the untold lives of the people who take us where we want to go.

ABOUT MARCELLO DI CINTIO:
Marcello Di Cintio is the author of four books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades which won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize, and Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense – also a W. O. Mitchell Prize winner. Di Cintio’s magazine writing has appeared in publications such as The International New York Times, The Walrus, Canadian Geographic and Afar.

Learn more about DRIVEN: http://biblioasis.com/.../driven-the-secret-lives-of.../ 

This is session 2 of 2. The Shelf Life Books Youth Zine program is an opportunity for youth (ages 9+) to explore self-publishing practices with the guidance of professional artist, Carlan Savage-Hughes. The participants will explore alternative forms of story-telling, comic drawing and visual communication. They will come away from this program with new book-binding and folding techniques that they can use to make their own zines at home!

This program will take place on Zoom; please register on Eventbrite here! This event will be pay-what-you-can; all proceeds will go to the artist!

Because this is an online program, participants will be expected to provide their own materials. Suggested materials include:
-Paper
-Drawing/colouring supplies
-Needle and thread (for May 16th workshop only)
-Collage material— old magazines and glue (recommended but not required)

What is a zine?
Popularized by the DiY movement of the 1980’s, zines are small, self-published magazines made to be easily distributed and shared. They can be created with a variety of intentions, such as activism, sharing one’s art, poetry or experimental writing. For examples, check out Shelf Life Books’ zine selection!

Who is Carlan?
Carlan Savage-Hughes seeks to make visible the divine, doing so by tracing the poetics of objects, images and relationships. Her additional facilitation and curatorial practices are centred around strengthening independent arts communities as an act of resisting the capital-driven values of the art world. A Mohkinstsis (Calgary) born artist, Carlan recently graduated from Emily Carr University with a major in Fine Arts and a minor in Social Practice and Community Engagement. 

IMPORTANT: You will need to register for the event to receive the Zoom login info. Link coming soon!

WHAT: The Single Onion presents five excellent poets: David Bateman, Laurie MacFayden, Natalie Meisner, Billeh Nickerson, and John Williamson.

WHEN: Thursday, May 20, 7:00 pm (MST)

About the readers:
David Bateman is a performance poet and painter who received his PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Calgary in 2001. He has four collections of poetry form Frontenac House Press (Calgary) including the collaborative long poem 'Wait Until Late Afternoon' written with novelist and poet Hiromi Goto. His first novel, DR SAD, was published by University Of Calgary Press in November of 2020. He currently lives in Toronto, and has taught creative writing and literature at various post secondary institutions across the country: University of Calgary, Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario), Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design University (Vancouver), Thompson Rivers University (Kamloops).

Laurie MacFayden is an award-winning writer, visual artist and journalist who has lived in Edmonton since 1984. In addition to three books of poetry published by Frontenac House, her work has appeared in Alberta Views, The New Quarterly, FreeFall; and been performed in Edmonton's Loud & Queer Cabaret, the Skirts Afire Arts festival, and Calgary's Q the Arts cultural festival. Her short story Haircut won the Howard O'Hagan prize at the 2017 Writers Guild of Alberta literary awards.

Natalie Meisner, our city’s current Poet Laureate, is a multi-genre award-winning writer who grew up on the South Shore of Nova Scotia and has been based in Calgary since 2000. She began her career as a writer in the spoken word and indie theatre scene in Halifax, has had plays produced across the country, and now writes and teaches literature and creative writing at Mount Royal University (MRU) where she also serves as Director of Changemaking facilitating community and university arts-based projects in social justice and social innovation. Her latest book of poetry, Baddie One Shoe, is a sequence of performance poems that pay homage to women renegades of the past who fight the power with laughter.

Billeh Nickerson is a Vancouver-based author, editor and educator whose sixth book, Duct-Taped Roses, was recently published with Book*hug Press. He is Co-Chair of the Creative Writing department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC. In his spare time he likes to collect airline barf bags. He lives and loves in East Vancouver.
John Williamson is a poet and educator from the city colonially known as Calgary and previously as Mohkínstsis. Prior to Covid he was busily doing features in support of his 2019 chapbook Broken and Strong: Family Fragments. A spoken word and page poet John competed with the Calgary team for the national team poetry slam title in 2018, has featured at many events in Alberta, and has published poems in several journals including High Shelf Press and Prairie Journal. In other genres John’s PhD thesis The Case of the Disappearing / Appearing Slow Learner, written as a detective novel, won the University of Calgary’s Chancellor medal and has been republished in the Journal of Applied Hermeneutics. John did not have a particularly productive experience during the early to mid times of the plague but is trying to get back into the art that inspires and nurtures him.

The Single Onion takes place the third Thursday of the month, nine times a year. Our event schedule can always be found at:
www.singleonion.com.

For the most up-to-date Single Onion news, check us out on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/singleonion

We gratefully acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets, and the Calgary Arts Development.

The Scenic Geology of Alberta is “a treasury of easy-to-grasp geoscience about Alberta’s best-loved landscapes.” – Ben Gadd, author of Canadian Rockies Geology Road Tours

Join us on this Zoom talk hosted by Shelf Life Books. Dale Leckie will guide you to select scenic sites in and beyond Calgary, telling the story of Alberta’s landscape evolution. Register here: http://ow.ly/IBaF50Ey1rX

His new book features trips to Edmonton, Calgary, Crowsnest Pass, Elk Island National Park and more, taking you to explore volcanoes and glaciations long past. This guide includes stops along well-travelled and not-so-well-travelled routes that the curious would be wise to seek. Leckie blends storytelling with science, history and art to breathe new life into the geology of the landscape.

DR. DALE LECKIE is an award-winning geologist internationally recognized for his contributions to geology. With degrees in Geology and Geography, he has worked in the Rocky Mountains for much of his career. Dale lives in Calgary.

Dale’s first book Rocks, Ridges, and Rivers: Geological Wonders of Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks (2017) was Finalist in the 2018 High Plains Book Awards and won an Honorable Mention 2018 Best Guidebook (Popular Category) by the Geoscience Information Society.
“The Scenic Geology of Alberta is … a cultural and scientific excursion. Beautifully illustrated and mapped, a companion to hikes and rambles, it will galvanize the imagination, as much a history of Alberta as it is an interpretation of rocks and land formations.” – Aritha van Herk, CM, AOE, FRSC. Writer, editor, critic. 

In Nest City, Beth Sanders argues that our linear ways of thinking about, organizing and planning our cities do not meet the true nature of cities and complex and messy systems. There are no simple solutions to the challenges we face. At a time when understanding the relationship between our physical, economic and social habitats is essential, Sanders sets forth an approach to work with the disruptions of our times.

The city habitats we make for ourselves are as good as we choose to make them. If they're not good enough, it's up to us to improve them. Messiness and uncertainty are opportunities for improvement. What contributions do we wish to make to our cities?

This gathering has three purposes: to celebrate the news that Nest City is a finalist for the Robert City of Edmonton Book Prize 2021, to share a bit about Nest City with you, and as a wee community, explore the implications for our contributions, to our cities.

This event will take place on Zoom. Please register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUqdOiorTwsE9P8_brvnk3BnW4keRwAPZ9c

What to expect:
Celebration
A few bits of reading from Nest City
Conversation with friends (new and old) to explore the reading
For more information about Beth and Nest City, please visit bethsanders.ca.
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Beth Sanders MCP RPP is an award winning city planner who works with citizens, city government, business and community organizations looking for practical ways to navigate the complexity of city life, so they can hear each other and make better cities.