June 23, 2010
Media contact: Patty Wellborn
Office: 604-795-2819
patty.wellborn@ufv.ca
‘Bridging the Human’ theme for this year’s Literary Café at Harrison
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| Leona Gom |
A novelist, poet, playwright, artist, and two violinists are featured at this year’s Literary Café, an annual Harrison Festival of the Arts event. The “Bridging the Human” theme stems from the idea that life is a series of bridge-building: between self and others, with one’s own humanity, and with the Greater Than Us -- seen and invisible.
Co-sponsored by University of the Fraser Valley Continuing Studies, the Literary Café is a long-established and popular staple event of the Harrison Festival.This year's edition will take place at 7:30 pm on Monday, July 12.
Poet/novelist Leona Gom of White Rock, BC, taught at the Fraser Valley College (now UFV) in its first year. A recurrent theme in her writing has always been losing and finding “home.” Her most recent novel The Exclusion Principle (Sumach Press, 2009) is about astronomy and the discovery of the first extra-solar planets. Her characters look at “home” in a more cosmic sense there. She’ll be reading about that exciting time “when we discovered other planets and had to re-evaluate what ‘home’ meant.”
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| Elsie K. Neufeld |
Elsie K. Neufeld, a poet and personal historian, is endlessly fascinated by how others “get through.” In her work as life-story editor, facilitator, and instructor, she gathers instructions for life from the wisdom of others. Her poems about gardening, death, and acknowledging Mystery help her bridge sorrow and pain with astonishment and reverence. Her chapbook Grief Blading Up was published by Lipstick Press in Fall 2009.
Playwright/poet Joan MacLeod “read in Harrison a million years ago and [remembers] it was a magical night.” Of this year’s theme she says, “It certainly makes sense for what I fumble around trying to do.” A winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award in Drama for Amigo’s Blue Guitar (1990), Macleod’s style has been praised for clarity, humour, emotional honesty and a steadfast moral dedication to the empathies that transform us.
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| Joan MacLeod |
Her dramas are profoundly rooted in real-life challenges to the human spirit, but always avoid sermons and transcend political viewpoints. She uses current events as a staircase to create universal narratives that search out and celebrate our strangenesses, excesses and redemptions. Her play
2000 is set on the margins of Vancouver, and portrays the civilized and the savage aspects of humanity. Her most recent play,
Another Home Invasion (2010), is a one-woman show about an 80-year-old woman looking after her ailing husband when an unwelcome visitor intrudes.
Local singer/songwriter Marilee Jones and Vancouver fiddler Sheila Allan perform songs remarkable for their striking harmonies interwoven with sensuous violin melodies. Their music draws influences from Celtic, Ukrainian and French Canadian dance music. Allan has travelled extensively with the likes of Les Danseurs du Pacific and currently plays with the Vancouver Folk Orchestra. Jones is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and music educator.
http://www.harrisonfestival.com/festival.Hall.gk
By phone: 604-796-3664.
In person: 98 Rockwell Drive, Harrison Hot Springs Mon-Fri, 8:30 am-4 pm.
