MY HANDS ARE MISSING!

ok, not actually. they are right here, helping me type. I simply used that line as hook, to get you to keep reading my post.

I was the outcast who couldn't make our hot air meeting and I happened to notice that there are lovely pictures of everyone else's hands but mine.

that's fine. totally fine. I'm not even crying right now or anything. ##imabigsensitiveliar

In fact, i think it fits perfectly into my role this year. Like others, I am back again, trapped in the endless lure of the writers festival, and more then that, the seduction of being a blogger. Who knew blogging could be sexy. And seductive. While I too may have spent all last year thinking "There is no way I can volunteer again this year", as soon as Ariel was like "hey Courtney, wanna blog" I was like

"YES!!"(in my head)

but in an attempt to play it cool, simply said "Sure, whatever."

It has become, like Stacey mentioned, a ritualistic part of fall in the city.
But decididly, my role this year needs to change. I am bored with my ramblings on the deep and meaningful interpretations of authors and stories.

Mostly I'm interested in improving my spy skills. Imagine Gossip Girl meets Veronica Mars.

If the pop culture reference is lost on you
## noteveryonewatchesasmuchtvasme

it basically means don't be alarmed if you see me lurking around, in dark corners, with sunglasses and my notebook. Rest assured that I'm just engaging in my spy mission. I will be watching the festival, and the festival goers, with the sole purpose of figuring out why you people keep coming. And what you do while you are here.

Pay no attention to me. This is important data for you to know. it may help you figure out something about yourself. Though i may need to interview you. don't be alarmed. its all completely annoymous. Except for the part where I put it on the internet.

Number one spy fail: telling you about my spy plans. ##imnotreallyaspy

I would love to tell you about the events I plan on attending, but due to the nature of my mission, I'm not able to.

hint: where the rivers fork.
over and out.

* * *
Courtney Slobogian was born in Winnipeg and likes it that way. She is a writer/understated activist/ irreverent feminist.

Some of her work can be tracked down in quiet corners of the internet.

She co-hosts a radio show on CKUW called Tiger Lilies are Poisonous, dislikes cotton socks and is currently working on developing her spy skills.

Blogatrix

I'll admit it: after four years doing the HOT AIR blog, I'm officially a blogatrix.

That mostly means I'm bossy. But also that I've carried laptops, camcorders, cameras, and phones into THIN AIR events and trained them on THIN AIR festival staff/authors/volunteers.

Inevitably, one of the days of the festival, I forget batteries and the device in question takes a dirt-nap, mid-event. Inevitably, I start to sag mid-festival and either miss or am egregiously late to an event I'd circled and underlined earlier in the week.

(I like it when the venues have back doors, so I slip in without being noticed. I also like it when the venues serve tea. So that the sag is slightly less pronounced.)

Before this degenerates any further, I'll offer a snippet of advice or two on how to get the most of your festival.

My ABSOLUTE favourite events at THIN AIR? The afternoon book chats, for their shocking yet consistent intimacy.

The nooners are anything but intimate, given the venue (the Carol Shields Auditorium at the Millennium Library), but they're always interesting.

The campus readings get you up close and personal with the authors if you can figure out getting to events during the day and can navigate the various campuses. Campi? (I have to admit, the U of M is still too far away for me to bother...)

In terms of authors, I particularly want to see/hear Carolyn Smart, Sandra Birdsell, David Bergen, Michael Lista, and Joan Thomas...

...but I will admit that the author I'm most looking forward to seeing/hearing is myself. Which sounds ABSOLUTELY awful, but reading at THIN AIR has been a dream of mine for as long as I've been attending the festival. I'm so honoured that me and my book are being included and more than a little nervous I'll fuck it all up.

Heh.

* * *

Ariel Gordon has two chapbooks to her credit, The navel gaze (Palimpsest Press) and Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 (Rubicon Press), and this spring, Palimpsest published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump. She recently won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer at the Manitoba Book Awards. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.

September Air

When I walk down sidewalks now, autumn, true autumn in this city is Thin Air, is about writing, words, and a clean slate, a time to be less small and more brave. The air is different, catches you, wakes you up. Our pendulum days that chill you to the bone but for mugs of tea, and the was-just-wearing a sarong-last-week, but-I-didn't-get-to-Gimli-yet, frost-could-wreck-the-last-stalks-of-rhubarb, I-have-no-idea-where-my-winter-coat-is-and-I-refuse-to-find-it, kind of cold. The kind of air that only lasts a few breaths of days, before winter hits and we're on to other things, survival. The air where for a few days our world seems suspended.

September. Pull on your wool sweater. Lock the door behind you. Step into the chilly evening, already surprisingly dark. Not in too much of a rush. Feel crisp, clear air through you. Breathe in memory, exhale present.

Head over to Main Stage.

I remember my first Thin Air: 2006. I had just moved to Winnipeg and had only been here a month, and I knew exactly one person in the city. I didn't know anyone in the writing community, but back east Anne Simpson had tipped me off about the existence of Winnipeg's writers' festival. I came across one of the glossy, free programs and that was that. I couldn't tell you what writers I saw at Main Stage that week the first year. I was just happy to be somewhere, literally in from the cold, and listen to someone speaking their own words to a warm audience. I could sit at the back with my toque pulled over eyebrows, drink my glass of white, wear an ugly plaid shirt from the 90s, and no one minded. I didn't have to say anything. I just had to be there. That's something, and it felt pretty important, good, hopeful. For someone who felt like she had no place in this city, for one week out of that year I had one.

All those years we groan about the end of summer, the sadness in the pit of stomach, the coming of September, school, whatever that might mean for you... maybe that's still there a bit.... But one of the best things I've learned in Winnipeg so far is that September doesn't have to be a time of endings necessarily; it is one of beginnings.

Thin Air had a hand in turning that one over in my head for me, drawing me in and linking me with this city when it could've been easier to leave, head for higher, warmer ground.

The air is pretty damn good here, I'd say.

What is it to you, September air?

Hope to see you at the festival!

**

Stacy drove to Winnipeg in two days and five hours from Clydesdale, Nova Scotia. She only planned to stay for a year, but it has been four already, because this city keeps you, holds you. Though she works at a corporate publishing company, she has learned about writing, art, urban living, praying mantis kung fu, cycling, goddesses, and the middle while here. She hopes to figure something out about preserving, wool, gentleness, Mandarin, and movement. And, always, poetry. For the duration.

It's not that bad

Maybe it was the cigarette I smoked with Gregory Scofield, or the proposition I received from Jon Paul Fiorentino, or the time I met George Elliot Clarke, but I rather liked my first Thin Air experience. Maybe it's the cheese. Or maybe I am brainwashed. But for whatever reason, here I am again.

Psychotropic drugs or no psychotropic drugs, I'll be there. Watching, listening, wondering, photographing, drifting, blogging. And ignoring my (formal) education for a few days.

So you may see me at the library for the nooners, or you may see me in the audience at the mainstage or more likely lurking in the shadows by the wine and cheese bar, or you may see me downtown at the university taking in the events there, but you won't see me at opening night. I'll leave that one for Jason to battle on his own.

And you know, he could be right, I may very well be brainwashed, or better yet drugged. But who knows? He is, after all, only the second best poet to come out of Hastings Junior High.

****

Brandon James Bertram is a perpetual student. When he's not at the university you might find him going casually about his business in his West Broadway apartment or spending his leftover student loans on beer at Cousins. He sometimes reviews music for the Uniter and his poetry has been published in Rhubarb magazine. He might graduate with a bachelor's degree next year.

This Festival is a Big Jerk

This festival is a big jerk. Ya, that’s right I said it. It’s a big jerk. I thought after last year we were letting bygones be bygones, but this festival holds a vendetta longer than the nastiest, car scratchingest, where’d my cat go?, ex-boyfriend or girlfriend anyone have ever had. Let me explain.

You see, last year I tried to be a good boy. I tried to write nice little posts about how quaint everything was. I tried to make amends for the mass hysteria caused by my first year’s posts. Even though it wasn’t my fault I got some bad information about the festival using psychotropic drugs to enslave and fleece this city’s literarily inclined public, I still tried to make nice.

But they couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. No, they had to go digging around in my past and find some nefarious way to make me pay. They needed revenge. They needed Ismaila Alfa.

Ya, that’s right, first they trick me into doing this blog thing again, then they go and get Ismaila Alfa for opening night. I know you’re probably wondering what that sweet, foggy voiced, young man responsible for the traffic on CBC has to do with anything, but let me tell you, we all have pasts.

You see, there once was a little boy who really liked sports, especially football and basketball. Now this boy wasn’t the fastest, or the jumpiest, but he had heart. He worked hard, made both teams and things were good. However, there was another boy who also liked sports, like football and basketball. Now this boy was the fastest and the jumpiest boy there was and he even had heart too. So naturally, he also made both teams. But what a sad day it was when the poor boy who only had heart realized that because he only had heart he would forever ride the pine, and watch the fastest and jumpiest kid get all the girls. Though you wouldn’t think it from seeing me now, that poor little boy with heart was me. And that fastest, jumpiest kid...you guessed it, Ismaila Alfa.

Now as time went on, I eventually came to grips with the fact that my sports dreams were over. I decided to take up something I knew no athlete would even want to beat me at. I took up poetry. I thought the failures of my past would be buried in the accolades I would receive as being the best poet ever to come out of Hastings Junior High. Evidently, the festival felt it necessary to rob me of that delusion too. Let’s check the scoreboard:

International Writer’s Festival Reading Gigs

Ismaila Alfa 1

Jason Diaz 0

And the best poet ever to come out of Hastings Junior High is....Ismaila Alfa!!

He’s probably still faster than me too.

Now please, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Ismaila is in on this. He was a good guy. And the warm hug in his voice as he informs me that Osborne is backed up to Jubilee, tells me he still is. He’s just being used as the festival’s pawn. But not me, not anymore.

If Ismaila goes down with a bad hammy opening night, I will not be stepping in to read. Hear that festival, I’m out. Your scheme won’t work. I’ll write your blog, tweet your twitters and eat your room temperature cheese, but if you think for a second that I’m going to let you make me feel like I should quit poetry like I did sports by making me the back up again, you’ve got another thing coming. Dig up whoever you want. Being a poet is my life. It’s what I do. It’s the only good reason I have for working in a bookstore at the age of thirty five when I have four kids. It’s all I’ve got.

Anyway, psychological warfare, that’s why the festival is a big jerk. See you opening night.

PS I’m sneaking into the comp room this year and I will not be there getting Ismaila water. Take that Festival!

* * *
Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer, bookstore employee and handyman (the bookstore business isn't as stable as you'd think). His poetry and prose has been published in dark leisure magazine. He has no idea why he keeps working for these meanies and volunteers coaching basketball to all the artsy kids in Wolseley so they never have to sit on the bench. He has a wife and many children.