BC Book Prizes

Leaving Nelson, Day 4
Posted by Karen Hofmann

One of my favourite cities in BC, and very conducive to writing.

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Nelson, Day 3
Posted by Karen Hofmann

The audience for the Nelson Public Library reading was a great pleasure to read to!  Obviously great support for the arts.  It’s so gratifying to read poetry or fiction to an audience that interacts, laughs, groans, etc. along with you.

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Busy, Tiring… but Fantastic
Posted by Stephen R. Bown

Another busy day of driving today and talking today. I’m amazed how tiring it can be. The school in Vernon was fantastic. The kids were really keen with endless numbers of great questions that kept both Karen and I talking and reading. One student asked several unusual and off-topic questions about zombies and I replied that the only zombie I knew was myself when I hadn’t had my morning coffee yet, but I don’t think he appreciated the joke. I would say that visiting the schools has been just a fantastic experience.
There is one hilarious event that has to be mentioned. It happened yesterday (I think, time seems very fluid on tour). We were discussing Readers Digest and how they like to edit everything in half - Andreas was telling a story of how he once wrote for them. They told him that he was getting the best editing in the world and that people love it that way, really condensed - or something like that. Bryan then quipped that he really enjoyed their novels, the Tale of One City and the Two Musketeers. Very witty, as they say. Tomorrow Kelowna and Vernon.

With students at Pinewood Elementary and their research projects on Captain George Vancouver

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J. Lloyd Crowe Secondary in Trail, BC
Posted by Bryan Pike

We’ve been uploading lots of photos to our Flickr Photostream over the past week and a half. There are lots of Northern tour photos, and here are some great ones from the Southern tour:

Rex reading to the students

Rex and Andreas talking with students after the reading

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Trail and Warfield, Day 2, Southern Tour
Posted by Karen Hofmann

In Trail we spoke at JL Webster Elementary to a group of mostly grade 7 students, with some grade 5 and 6 students.  Grade sevens were knowledgeable about poetry terms (persona, alliteration), and didn’t ask to know the name of the cat.  The teachers attending were enthusiastic writers as well, and contributed greatly to the event. 

We had the afternoon between readings to explore Trail, and I spent some time on the river walk, enjoying the mallards and Barrows goldeneye on the Columbia River, and the swallows above it.  The temperature was 30 degrees.  (But one swallow - or even a small flock - does not a summer make; the forecast is for snow Thursday…)

At the really wonderful Cornerstone Cafe in Warfield for a reading in the evening; a local writing group came.  It sounds like the West Kootenays has a flourishing literary community. 

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Cranbrook. Day 1, Southern Leg
Posted by Karen Hofmann

Stephen and I talked to a group of grade 4-6 children at Pinewood Elementary, These kids had lots of good questions, and participated enthusiastically in poetry exercises.  All wanted to know the name of the cat in the poem “Skewed”  At the public library reading, a chic German woman told me that she enjoyed my reading, but couldn’t get her head around poems that don’t rhyme.  I gave her the usual explanations about English not being rich in rhyming words (as compared for eg to German) and about the rise of Modernism in the first part of the 20th century.  She agreed that the world had “come apart” during WW I, and said she could see how the social and political disintegration could change the form of poetry.  I hope that Ursula will find a century of new poetry opening up for her now!

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A Few Days on Tour
Posted by Stephen R. Bown

We’ve been on tour for a few days, but we’ve been getting get back to the hotel so late that I’ve been too tired to write until now.
I’m so glad I was able to join the BC Book Prizes author tour. My fellow authors Karen, Rex and Andreas, and our intrepid guide Bryan, have been so interesting and entertaining that hours of driving have just melted away and I feel like I’m at an extended dinner party with intelligent and witty companions.The beautiful scenery doesn’t hurt either. I’m familiar with the Kootenays, I love being here, and yet giving our tour talks has added a new dimension to my appreciation for the region. We’ve enjoyed fantastic meals in Nelson and Trail and chatted with interesting and curious people at the events. Sure is hard work! Actually its tiring being on the road for so many hours each day.
I have to admit that talking at the schools for me has been eye-opening and very rewarding. I’ve never visited schools before to give talks because my books are written for adults. My own two kids, Andrew aged 6 and Clara aged 5 (in a few days) are too young to have any real interest in what I write about. But these students, some of whom I believe are studying explorers and George Vancouver in grade five or six, are very attentive and ask the greatest questions. A student at Pinewood Elementary in Cranbrook asked me how exactly we know what illness Vancouver suffered from since he’s dead. Great question! We don’t know anything in history absolutely, of course, but just asking the question is the first step to finding out as much of the truth as we can.
In Trail this afternoon, at J.L. Webster Elementary, a student wanted to know, when I mentioned that Vancouver sailed from London to Pacific America, what was the route by which he sailed around the world. After the talk the students clustered around Karen and I for autographs - I never knew I was so famous !

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Tricks of time and a pickled seal
Posted by Margaret Horsfield

Time is such a trickster, I thought, rather forlornly, a couple of days ago.  It blurs memory, trashes landmarks, changes townscapes.

On Friday we were back in Terrace after visiting Prince George. Back in my former hometown, I again felt lost, adrift.  As I had done when we first arrived in Terrace a few days earlier, I wasted time looking for things long gone.

But that evening in the library, I was thrown a lifeline between past and present, and time came sharply back into focus.  Many of the people there had known me as a child, or in high school, and their warm welcome to all of us, their interest, their support and enthusiasm combined to create a wonderful evening.  I was so grateful to them all for coming.  The tricks of time suddenly didn’t matter, after all.

In the Terrace Library, as on numerous other occasions, the subject arose of family letters, diaries and photographs.  So many people have attics, shoeboxes, files full of old papers, and often we just don’t know how to handle them. What should we do with them?  Do they have any historic value? Are they even remotely important?

At one of the high schools we visited on this tour, after hearing about some of the people in my book, one of the girls in the class asked “What’s so important about those people anyhow?  Why should they be in a book if they’re not famous?”  My answer to her was “Are you important?  Am I?  Is anyone in this room?”

I believe we are all important. We matter. Our stories contribute to the mosaics of our families and communities and our province.  We need somehow to remember these stories, to record them – of ourselves, our parents and grandparents, of our surroundings.  We can tell tales at the kitchen table to our children, write poems or books or plays – but we need to pass on our stories. If we don’t, the stories will be completely obscured, perhaps entirely lost when we die. 

In Prince Rupert on Saturday day, we found ourselves doing readings at the museum, a beautiful structure set against mountains and harbour, filled with light.  This was my kind of place, a repository of community and regional artefacts and documents and photographs.  Talking to the curator Susan Marsden, I was struck all over again by what hard work it is to establish and maintain this kind of facility, and how immensely, incalculably valuable it is, in more ways than one could possibly imagine.

Time tricked me again, in Prince Rupert, though.  Strange and unbidden, a long-forgotten childhood image surfaced in my mind from visits here.  The original Prince Rupert museum was a dark, small, poky place.  A burning question arose in my mind about that original museum,  but I hesitated to ask. I wasn’t even sure if it was based on a real memory. 

“Whatever happened to the pickled seal?”  I blurted out. 

Susan burst out laughing.  Everyone asks about the pickled seal, apparently, even many years after it quietly sprung a leak and had to be cast aside.  It sat in a corner of the old museum, in a large jar, an unearthly whitish green creature, weirdly floating in opaque liquid.  My sister and I found it grotesque and fascinating.

I was relieved to know that the memory was reliable.  Pity about the seal, but there are far, far better items on view in the museum in Prince Rupert, after all!

Our tour has now ended, and we are awaiting our plane home.  Only six days ago we clambered into the van, four writers and Bryan, our tour leader, who did all the organisation, entertainment and driving, exuding good humour and patience all along.  Thank you, Bryan.

We had no idea what this tour would bring. We had no idea of the stories we would hear, or create or gather on this trip – we did not even know, really, what stories we would end up sharing with the people who we met.  I was continually surprised, continually impressed and I know I have learned a great deal, probably more than I realise. 

It may take a while before I can put it all into focus. 

Time will help.  Tricks aside, it usually does.

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My last early morning tour blog
Posted by Katarina Jovanovic

We had our last presentation at the Museum of Northern BC in Prince Rupert last night. What a magnificent finale! First, we travelled completely absorbed by the nature scenery between Terrace and Prince Rupert; we had a really sophisticated lunch in a small restaurant by the water; finally, the reading took place in one of the exhibition rooms with the view to the marina. We had a full house (including the local newspapers) and the audience responded brilliantly. We left Prince Rupert bursting with energy and inspiration. However, this is the end of the tour.

This morning we’ll be home again and Bryan will be driving South. Bryan has been our guide, driver (“Is he your agent?”- one of the elementary school students asked when Bryan came to pick us after the reading) and friend in the past six days and I think that he is just perfect in what he does! Thank you, Bryan.
Getting to know Bryan and my other three pal-authors and having the opportunity to travel North BC and talk to people - was the most precious experience and I will treasure it in the years to come!

We had done so many readings and talks together and heard each others so many times that we almost “knew it all by heart” (we joked one evening in the car while driving to another reading that we could easily switch around and do each other’s presentations). Writers have a reputation of being egocentric and antisocial. In some ways, we really are.We usually have an internal focus: it is what happens in our mind that matters the most. The book tour changed that.We spent days and evenings together and our little tour became a team work. Being so different and having different approaches to writing we all wanted to make those presentations successful and to reach to the people.

For me, this trip was also about nurturing an author within myself. ” I have to write”, that’s what my internal voice yells to me all the time.  I perceive myself as a writer first but, like many authors, I don’t live on writing. I have a full time job and a family and my writer’s role “performs” mostly early in the morning or late at night. Being on a book tour, I have been only an author. All my other roles had been temporarily diminished.

Finally (but most importantly) the tour gave me an opportunity to meet hundreds of primary school students and to talk about my book. I can’t imagine a more powerful experience for the children’s author.

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Prince George/Terrace
Posted by Elise Partridge

Friday April 17

This morning Margaret and I went off to Prince George Secondary, to meet several English classes and a writing class all gathered in the school library.  Margaret was able to show a Power Point presentation full of photographs of Clayoquot figures, boats, and sites – the portly storekeeper; steamers; First Nations girls snacking on herring roe; Tofino’s inaugural hotel (modest); and a sequence she calls “Nuns Having Fun,” including a quartet in habits looking somewhat at a loss while paddling a canoe. Several students approached us after our presentations to describe projects they were working on.
We’ve all agreed that one of the high points of the tour is talking to students who are interested in writing.
Bryan also photographed a cheque ceremony with representatives from one of the sponsors, Integris Credit Union.  I’m very glad to know that many of the sponsors for the tour are donating money to the libraries of the schools we are visiting.  We’re also grateful to the librarians at every place on our route (such as Valerie Kilbey at PGSS) who have shown us such hospitality, and who obviously play such an important role in encouraging students to keep reading. 

On the way back to Terrace, Bryan kept the van humming as always with his excellent sense of humor and with a playlist that ranged from Joni Mitchell to Jamie Cullum to the Magnetic Fields (the last full of inventive rhymes Bryan hoped we would enjoy.  We did!).  Once again Bryan knew where to let us out to forage or roam – first, at a café in Baker Lake with memorable organic fare, and second at Seeley Provincial Park, where photographs were taken, including of a science experiment underwritten by Bryan and courageously performed by Robin.  Apparently if you immerse fizzy mints in a bottle of pop and toss the bottle into the air, it will ascend like a rocket.  Robin inquired if any of the authors present would care to ingest a mint chased by pop – we wondered if we could shoot ourselves to Pluto, or at least be lofted to a better view of the nearest mountain – but, mindful of our evening engagement, we declined.

We docked back in our Terrace Coast Hotel to discover that Margaret had made the front page of the local paper, with a feature article about this Terrace-born-and-raised author inside.  The reading that night at the Terrace Public Library was attended by, among others, many of Margaret’s childhood friends.  Once again we were warmly welcomed by a librarian, Melanie Wilke, with fruit, juice, and homemade cookies.  Katarina gave a marvelously dramatic reading of her children’s book The King Has Goat Ears; I hope she’ll consider making a recording.  Robin read a different section of her novel A Thousand Shades of Blue, and afterward a parent and children’s author, Brenda Silsbe (whom Margaret has known since Grade Three), said that it seemed to “say it all” about parent-teenager conflict. 

Once again today, comparing notes, we concluded that just meeting eager readers of all stripes from this region—students, teachers, librarians and other writers—was very inspiring.

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