Hands on: Charlene Diehl

Charlene has been everywhere this week. All over HOT AIR. All over THIN AIR. So it's easy to forget that she's a writer too, that October 7 is as significant, event-wise, as September 19-26.

Because October 7 is when Charlene has the launch for her new memoir, the first book she's published since joining Winnipeg's lit community.

And it's just a coincidence that her sweater matches the cover of her book. Really.

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Out of Grief, Singing is an achingly beautiful account of how a woman comes to terms with the loss of her newborn. After a bewildering series of rapid diagnoses and emergency interventions, Charlene’s daughter Chloe is born. But her too-brief life is spent in the neonatal intensive care unit, and her mother, leveled by an epidural anaesthetic procedure gone wrong, can barely make it to her daughter’s side. In the months following Chloe’s death, more medical crises further complicate matters, making it nearly impossible to even begin the grieving process, let alone return to any semblance of a normal life. But return she does, and with a poet’s ear for language, Charlene Diehl

Charlene Diehl is a writer, educator, critic, teacher and the director of THIN AIR, Winnipeg’s annual literary splash. She has published essays, poetry, non-fiction, reviews, and interviews in journals across Canada, and has to her credit a scholarly book on Fred Wah as well as a collection of poetry, lamentations, and two chapbooks, mm and The Lover’s Handbook. Excerpts from Out of Grief Singing, which appeared in Prairie Fire, won a western Canadian Magazine Gold Award. She was the featured poet in the fall 2007 issue of CV2. When she’s not chasing literary language (or her two speed pre-teens), she edits dig! Magazine, Winnipeg’s little-jazz-engine-that-could.

Hands on: Nora Gould

It's sort of a tradition for me to shoot the hands of the Bliss Carman winner. Apparently, it's also a tradition for me to shoot a blurry picture of the Bliss Carman winner. Sigh...it didn't help that Nora was standing in the doorway of the hospitality suite, on her way out, and kept on saying in her oh-so-wry way, "Are you done yet? Are you done?"

But the moment I want to leave you with is this: in the green room before the Poetry Bash, Nora re-braided her long hair. And so I idly watched her hands comb through all that hair, as she un-made and then re-made a knot of her hair.

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Nora Gould has studied at Sage Hill, St Peter’s, Banff Wired Writing and Piper’s Frith in Newfoundland, and her poetry has appeared in echolocation, The Society, cv2, and The Prairie Journal. She is the 2010 recipient of the Bliss Carman Poetry Award, one of the prizes supported by the annual Prairie Fire Press-McNally Robinson Booksellers Writing Contests. Her winning poem, “Some nights he breathed up all the air,” appears in the summer issue of Prairie Fire, and she will be presented with a replica of Bliss Carman’s ring at the Poetry Bash! Gould writes from a ranch near Consort, Alberta, and volunteers in wildlife rehabilitation with Medicine River.

Hands on: Amy Jo Ehman

Amy Jo is a locavore. Which puts her in the same camp as slow food enthusiasts. But Amy isn't slow. During her lecture, she bumped the mic twice. And while she was graciously chatting with the people wanting her to sign their books, her hands were constantly in motion. I couldn't get a sharp image and I was pestering her and them every instant I stood there, taking pictures...so you get a diptych.

Line of Inquiry: George Murray

George Murray has published poems and fiction in journals and anthologies in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Europe.

His work has been recognized with the PIP Gertrude Stein Award in Innovative Poetry, and has been shortlisted for other awards, including the EJ Pratt Poetry Prize, the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the CAA Poetry Prize.

His five books of poetry include The Hunter, The Rush to Here, and a new collection, Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms (ECW).

He frequently reviews books for The Globe and Mail, and is the editor of the popular literary website bookninja.com.

Murray lives in St John’s, Newfoundland.

1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

I am a somewhat reluctant performer, in that I don't make a lot of big gestures or inflect my voice in that "poet" way some people like to. I just simply read the work at hand, though I am pretty good at joking with the audience between pieces. I like the immediate feedback of the audience energy, but I also like the nerves of getting there. Backstage I'm a wreck, but once on stage, I'm usually fairly okay.

2) What do you want people to know about Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms?

It's fun and has depth and is accessible and interesting to other poets and critics, but also to the general public. Besides the breadth of its content, this range of accessibility is probably the reason I'm most proud of it. I like it when people who got dragged out to a poetry reading (boyfriends, wives, friends of poetry lovers, etc.) come up to me all excited after and say, "Hey, I don't normally read poetry, but I'll read THAT." I hope Glimpse is a good gateway book for people you feel might otherwise be too reluctant (or intimidated) to try reading contemporary poetry.

3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

I've been to Winnipeg several times before, but mostly on business. I've heard great things about the arts and culture community there, and I know the literary community is first rate. I've published a few times in Prairie Fire and CV2, so I hope I have a foot in the door with the locals and see some friends.

4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

I'm reading several novels and a raft of poetry books. Notably: Annabel by Kathleen Winter and Far to Go by Alison Pick, as well as new poetry by Robin Robertson, Seamus Heaney, and Geoffrey Hill.

5) What was your process for writing/editing the aphorisms that make up Glimpse? Did it differ markedly from your process when writing long poems?

With Glimpse, I culled most of the aphorisms whole from old journals. I hadn't even realized I was writing them at first. Once I harvested a critical mass of them (about 1000), I went about sorting and discarding the bad or repetitive ones, and then edited the good ones for craft and brevity. Since then, now I've realized they are part of my writing process, I am much better able to recognize them as they form. So now, when I write an aphorism, it's not by pleasant accident, but generally on purpose.

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George Murray will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:

September 23 - Campus Reading at RRC.
September 24 - Panel, with Sina Queyras.
September 24 - Mainstage, with Ariel Gordon, Nora Gould, Ignatius T Mabasa, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Sina Queyras.

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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.

Hands on: MP part the second

Usually I don't "groom" the hands-on photo set-ups. But Marj's friend wanted to. So I let her.

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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.

Hands on: Marj Poor

Marj Poor, teacher and editor of Prairie BOOKS now. She takes a week off work during THIN AIR. If you go back through the four years of HOT AIR, there are probably several pictures of her, because she's at everything...and because she's at everything, she carries around several book bags. So for this photo, I got her to empty one of her book bags.

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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.

Hands on: Michael Wex

When I explained to Michael Wex why I wanted to take a picture of his hands, he said "sure...I mean, I'm not a tongue and toes man." And then told a story about how he lived down the block from the building that printed those Christmas cards, you know the ones with scenes painted by artists that used their feet or their mouths to paint. How he used to hang around the building, thinking that eventually one of the artists would HAVE to visit...

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Michael Wex is one of the leading lights in the current revival of Yiddish, lecturing widely on Yiddish and Jewish culture. He is the author of three books of non-fiction: Born to Kvetch, a New York Times bestseller; Just Say Nu, a book which offers more Yiddish vocabulary and support; and How to be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck), a happiness manual of sorts. Wex also has three books of fiction: Shlepping the Exile; The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon, Boy Talmudist; and his corrosively funny new novel The Frumkiss Family Business (Knopf). Wex was born in Lethbridge, Alberta, and lives now in Toronto.

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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.

Hands on: Carolyn Smart

We decided to have Carolyn grasp the tree (!) in McNally's newly-renovated atrium because she's all woodsy (i.e. she likes spending great gobs of time outdoors). She also confided that she went around fondling all of the decorative silk flowers/foliage strewn about the store prior her afternoon book chat (mostly to see if they were real...), so it seemed apt.

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Carolyn Smart has published several poetry collections, including Swimmers in Oblivion, Power Sources, and The Way to Come Home. A section of her memoir, At the End of the Day, won the CBC Radio Literary Contest in the Personal Essay Category. In 2009, Brick Books released Hooked, a poetic examination of seven famously obsessive women. Smart came to Canada at the age of six, and has lived in Ottawa, Toronto, and Winnipeg. Since 1983, she has grown lilies and vegetables north of Kingston, Ontario. She is the founder of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and is in charge of the Creative Writing program at Queen’s University.

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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.

Hands on: Simone Chaput

This is a pic of Simone's hands on the lit podium at THIN AIR's opening night at the Oodena. (Oodena! Oodena!) She doesn't rest her hands on the podium when she reads - or grip the sides as some writers do - so this pic is the really the worst kind of artifice. But when you're shooting in the dark, you take whatever light's available...

(Simone reads with her hands clasped in the small of her back.)

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Simone Chaput is a franco-manitobaine born in St Boniface. She has degrees in both French and English literature, and teaches language and literature at the Collegiate at the University of Winnipeg. A two-time winner of Le Prix Littéraire la Liberté, she has four titles in French, all published by Éditions du blé: Incidents de Parcours; Le Coulonneux; Un Piano dans le Noir; and La Vigne Amère. She has also written two novels in English, Santiago and A Possible Life (Turnstone). Chaput has another French novel coming out this fall. She lives in Old St Vital.

Simone Chaput est originaire de Saint-Boniface. Elle a obtenu des diplômes en littérature en français et en anglais, et elle enseigne la langue et la littérature françaises au Collegiate de l’Université de Winnipeg. Elle est l’auteure de quatre livres en français, Incidents de Parcours, Le Coulonneux, Un Piano dans le Noir et La Vigne Amère (Éditions du Blé) et de deux livres en anglais, Santiago et A Possible Life (Turnstone Press). Elle a été deux fois récipiendaire du Prix littéraire la Liberté. Son nouveau roman en français sera publié en automne. Elle vit dans le Vieux Saint-Vital.

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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.

Hands on: Jay Diaz

This is Jay's third year blogging.

Here's last year's bio:

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and stay at home dad. His poetry and prose has been published in dark leisure magazine. Last year he joined the Thin Air collective and has been awaiting the festival’s arrival ever since. He has still only been interviewed by The Uniter once, and is sadly no longer licensed to drive forklift.

Here's 2008's bio:

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.

Hands on: Stacy Doiron

This is Stacy's first year blogging.

I'm looking forward to getting to know her. You should too.

Hands on: Brandon Bertram

This is Brandon's second year blogging.

Here's last year's bio: Brandon James Bertram is an English/Creative Writing student at the University of Winnipeg. He reads, writes, rides bikes, and drinks coffee.