Summer plans

Posted on May 14, 2013 by john threlfall

It’s summer, which means the majority of our Fine Arts faculty have broken free of the classroom and are now engaging on their own creative research or practice. As always, here’s a quick roundup of what various faculty members are getting up to this summer.

Lewis Hammond & Monteverdi

Come August, new School of Music director Susan Lewis Hammond will be researching Claudio Monteverdi and music of the baroque period at the University of Toronto. Her travel is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant and the results will appear in two forthcoming books from Routledge Press: Claudio Monteverdi: A Research and Information Guide and Music of the Baroque: History, Culture, Performance.

Over in History in Art, the husband-and-wife research team of Marcus Milwright and Eva Baboula will be tackling the last phase of their SSHRC-funded fieldwork in Greece, continuing their search for Ottoman-period buildings and hydraulic engineering in the Peloponnese. Milwright also plans to spend some time in the Linden Museum in Stuttgart working on the Egyptian puppets in their collection. However, his main task for the summer—and forthcoming study leave—will be to complete a book on the seventh-century mosaic inscriptions in the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.

Busy digital media technician and filmmaker Dan Hogg is heading off to the Cannes Film Festival in May with his new short film Floodplain—and you can watch the trailer here. Created in association with equally busy filmmaker, Writing grad and returning Cannes guest Jeremy Lutter (whose Joanna Makes A Friend was at Cannes last year) and based on a story by Writing grad and current Can-lit star D.W. Wilson, Floodplain has been invited by Telefilm Canada as part of their annual Not Short on Talent short film program. Check out this short interview with Hogg, written by fellow Writing grad Will Johnson on his dandy Literary Goon blog. Floodplain stars Victoria-based actor Cameron Bright (Twilight, X-Men 3) and Sarah Desjardins. But as if that’s not enough, Hogg is also currently writing Rip My Heart Out, a tongue-in-cheek creature feature for Movie Central.

Writing professor David Leach will be working “with six or so students” to produce issue #2 of their well-received Concrete Garden urban agriculture magazine—which will also feature a bigger print run—and will shortly be launching the Campus Confidential anthology. And, muse willing, he’ll be finishing up his second book, which currently has three working titles: Look Back to Galilee, The Shouting Fence, or Who Killed the Kibbutz? On the international front, Leach will also be giving a paper and workshop on sustainable suburban design at the International Communal Studies Association conference being held at the spectacular Findhorn Ecovillage in northern Scotland. (Keep a sharp eye open for the fairies!)

The always busy performer and head of Voice for the School of Music, Benjamin Butterfield, has a full lineup of international activities this summer, including performing at the Aldeburgh Connection as part of Toronto’s Britten Festival, singing with the Bach Choir of Bethlehem at the Bach Festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, participating at the local Friends of Mengo Hospital Africa Benefit in May, and appearing with the American Classical Orchestra at New York City’s Lincoln Center for a concert of Mozart and Rossini Arias/ Duets. Butterfield will also be part of the Summer Vocal Programs faculty at the Opera on the Avalon in Newfoundland, Opera Nuova in Edmonton, the Vancouver International Song Institute and the Amalfi Coast Music Festival in Italy.

Music instructor Anita Bonkowski will be on tour performing in Western Europe throughout June, before she returns in July to teach her summer film music course Let’s Go To the Movies. She’ll also be performing at both Butchart Gardens (July 13 and August 7) and Filberg Festival in Comox (August long weekend). All this in addition to her regular weekly gigs and more summer performances with various groups and ensembles.

History in Art professor Erin Campbell is also currently on study leave, finishing up her book on “Old Women and Art in the Early Modern Italian Domestic Interior.” (There is absolutely no truth to the rumour we just started that Meryl Streep will be starring in the book’s film adaptation.) She’ll also be heading to Bologna, Italy, for a few weeks in June to do some research and reconnect with the art. Send us a postcard!

Theatre instructor Leslie Bland is finishing the editing of his all-female comedy series She Kills Me for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and is in the process of putting together the financing for his feature-length documentary Gone South: How Canada Invented Hollywood, created in association with writer Ian Ferguson. Also on Bland’s summer to-do list is attending the Banff World Media Festival, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and working a number of writing projects.

Busy new Writing professor Kevin Kerr is heading into a new production with his always groundbreaking Vancouver-based theatre company, Electric Company. The new piece is called You Are Very Star and it’s being staged at Vancouver’s HR MacMillan Space Centre & Planetarium. “We’re billing it as a transmedia event that plays with the boundaries of where theatre begins,” explains Kerr, who conceived the project and is co-writing it. “Participants start their journey with the piece prior to performance in an online encounter. The play then continues through public and private exchanges with the audience through social media, and in performance the two-act structure takes the audience on a bit of time travel—back to 1968 and ahead to 2048—and in the middle invites them on a narrative scavenger hunt inside the space centre building.” If you’re in Vancouver, You Are Very Star June 12 – 29. Also stay tuned for a production of Kerr’s Governor-General’s Award-winning play Unity (1918) at Phoenix Theatre next season, which he will be directing himself.

In addition to helping her Writing 420 filmmaking class crowdsource the funds they need to complete their current project, ‘Til Death—directed by Connor Gaston—Writing professor and busy filmmaker Maureen Bradley will be making her own feature film. Bradley was recently announced as one of four winning teams for the National Screen Institute’s Features First initiative, and her project will be going in front of the camera this summer. Stay tuned for details!

Kirk McNally (centre) with his group The Krells (photo: Darren Stone, Times Colonist)

Finally, School of Music audio specialist and recording engineer Kirk McNally will be recording a CD project with adjunct faculty member Colin Tilney on harpsichord this summer. “This will be the fourth project that Colin and myself have collaborated on,” says McNally, who has previously recorded Preludes and Dances for a French Harpsichord, Fugue: Bach and his Forerunners, J.S. Bach: The French Suites and Froberger 1649. “I’m also working with Dave Broome and a student from the joint major program in music and computer science to realize an online ‘library’ of the school’s concert recordings—similar to the DIDO slide library. It will be a secure, streamable presence for the School’s recordings on the webpage.” (This project is a follow-up to the Fall 2012 class Special Studies: Project in Digital Media Storage & Dissemination.)

Edugyan & Price at Russell’s

Posted on May 13, 2013 by john threlfall

Good news for local literature lovers—not only is Russell’s Books expanding again, but they’re also kicking off a new reading series! In an age where independent bookstores seem to be vanishing faster than space in newspapers for book reviews, it’s great to see a local outfit like Russell’s breaking new ground.

Edugyan & Price

As part of their latest expansion, Russell’s Books is now opening Russell’s Vintage, which collects all their antiquarian books in one handy spot—the former Fort Café location, downstairs at 742 Fort Street. Better still, Russell’s Vintage will also offer a stage which will host a new reading series. This week, the series kicks off with multiple award-winning author Esi Edugyan (Half-Blood Blues) and local poet and novelist Steven Price (Into That Darkness), plus poet Marita Daschsel, at 7pm Tuesday, May 14.

Like Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane for the next generation, the husband-and-wife team of Edugyan and Price both hail from the Writing program and have both taught for the Writing department. (They’ve even been nominated for the same award at the same time.) Come on out and support them on Tuesday night . . . after you vote. And you are going to vote, right?

Recent awards roundup

Posted on May 8, 2013 by john threlfall

History in Art professor Marcus Milwright‘s recent win of the 2013 Craigdarroch Silver Medal for Excellence in Research isn’t the only award-winning news in the Faculty of Fine Arts of late.

Lorna Crozier (Gary McInstry)

Recently retired long-time Writing professor Lorna Crozier—a multiple award-winning poet (including her own Craigdarroch award) and former chair of the Writing department—was just named the co-winner of the 2013 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. The award was established in 2003 to recognize B.C. writers who have contributed to the development of literary excellence in the province. Lieutenant Governor Judith Guicho presented the award to Crozier as part of the B.C. Book Prizes gala at Government House on May 4; she shares the award with young adult author Sarah Ellis.

As the jury noted, “The committee for the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence quickly agreed that among many strong candidates, two were outstanding—and, as quickly agreed, there were no grounds to choose between these two most deserving giants in their field. Both are prolific, both are recipients of numerous awards, both are passionate advocates for their literary genre and for Canadian writing, both are internationally recognized, both tirelessly mentor their literary children, and both bring the strength of oral tradition to their writing. … Both bring the highest honour to the Lieutentant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.”

That same event saw Bill Gaston—the current chair of the Writing department—win the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for his latest novel, The World. (Ironically, former student and Writing alumni Yasuko Thanh was also nominated in the same category as Gaston for her acclaimed short story collection, Floating Like The Dead.) Gaston was previously nominated for the Ethel Wilson Prize for his 2006 short story collection Gargoyles, which earned him a nomination for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. (Hmm, could a 2013 GG nom be in the cards for The World?)

And in other Yasuko Thanh news, Floating Like the Dead has also been named one of five finalists (out of 29 submissions) in the 2013 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Now in its 16th year, the $10,000 Danuta Gleed is administered by the Writers’ Union of Canada and recognizes the best first English-language collection of short fiction by a Canadian author. This year’s jury includes authors Alexander MacLeod, Carol Malyon and our own Bill Gaston.

Mark Reid with Shania Twain (Photo: AEG Live)

Meanwhile, over in the School of Music, alumnus Mark Reid has been named Teacher of the Year by MusiCounts, the music-education charity associated with the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS). The award, one of the highest honors in Canadian Music, was presented to Reid by country music superstar Shania Twain at a private ceremony in Las Vegas. Reid also received $10,000, which he will put toward his post-graduate studies; he is currently pursuing a master’s degree from Chicago’s Vandercook College to add to his Bachelor’s degree in music education from UVic. Reid has been teaching at Vancouver Technical Secondary School for the past seven years, and those students will receive an additional $10,000 in instrument inventory as part of the CARAS award.

In other Music news, the Canadian University Music Society (CUMS) announced that recent UVic Master’s graduate, Robert Hansler, is one of the recipients of their 2013 Student Composer Competition. He has worked primarily with Dániel Péter Biró and John Celona in the pursuit of his Master’s degree in composition. The jury selected his “Broken Branch” as one of two outstanding pieces to share first prize; both pieces will be performed by School of Music faculty members as part of a concert of contemporary music to be presented on Friday, June 7 at the Phillip T. Young Recital Hall.

And fourth-year School of Music student Lynne Penhale recently had the opportunity to attend the 19th Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. The meeting, chaired by iconic Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, offers a select group of 14 emerging composers from around the world the opportunity to exchange ideas about contemporary music. “It was the most enriching experience of my life!” says Panhale. “I learned more about society, myself and music in an experience which seemed to have lasted three weeks but was really only one.” Each composer came prepared with a three-minute piece composed for the 23-instrument ensemble-in-residence, Orkest de Ereprijs. Participants engaged in rehearsals, lectures, and lessons with composers Martijn Padding, Richard Ayers, Dmitri Kourliandski, Carola Bauckholt, and Ted Hearne. “As intense a learning experience this was . . . my favourite learning experience was getting to engage with the other young composers, and being completely inspired and challenged by everyone’s individual strengths they had brought with them,” says Penhale, who thanks UVic’s School of Music for supporting her in this opportunity.

In other student award news, recent Visual Arts BFA graduate Bronwyn McMillin received the 2013 Royal Canadian Academy of Arts C.D. Howe Scholarship for Art and Design as part of the BFA graduation exhibit Work. The Howe Scholarship is awarded annually to allow the recipient the opportunity “to pursue further formal study in a discipline represented by the RCA membership. These opportunities in Canada or elsewhere should enable recipients to develop further their studio practices while gaining a deeper understanding of the historical precedents and contemporary issues relevant to their discipline.”

Fellow BFA graduates Carson Wronko, Emma Palm and Won Seok Seo also received the Visual Arts Achievement Award, funded by the office of the VP Academic and Provost, Dr. Reeta Tremblay. And busy Writing MFA student Connor Gaston has been nominated for a Leo Award in the “Best Student Film” category for his TIFF & VFF screened short film, Bardo Light.

CNA winners Bhandar & Annand

Two other Writing students—Lukas Bhandar and Vanessa Annand—were both named winners of the 2013 Community Journalism Scholarships, courtesy of the Community Newspapers Association. Also among the winners at the recent BCYCNA Ma Murray Community Newspaper Awards were Writing alumni Nathalie North of the Saanich News (First Place, Arts & Culture Award) and Monday Magazine‘s Danielle Pope (First Place, Business Writing Award; Second Place, Environmental Writing Award).

Finally, current Writing student Vin Fielding has been awarded honourable mention in the short fiction category of The Fiddlehead‘s annual literary contest. His story, “All Bones Recovered,” appears in their current issue. It was originally workshopped in Writing instructor Matthew Hooton’s class, and Hooton describes it as “gorgeous writing, and one of the most arresting opening scenes I’ve encountered. I still think about it nine months after first reading it.”

Congratulations to all!

—With files from Kristy Farkas

Anne Heinl now officially excellent

Posted on April 23, 2013 by john threlfall

With her ready smile, sympathetic ear and vast storehouse of campus knowledge, Anne Heinl may be the most important person a Fine Arts student ever meets. Now, the veteran undergraduate advising officer has been honoured with the Award for Excellence in Service, presented by UVic president David Turpin at 2013’s Distinguished Service Awards.

Award for Excellence in Service winner Anne Heinl (UVic Photo Services)

“I’m very honoured that I received this award,” says Heinl. “I’d like to thank the people who put my name forward and wrote the reference letters: the Dean’s Office, especially Samantha Knudson and Lynne Van Luven, the faculty and staff who wrote letters of support—they did a lot of work and that’s the only reason my application was looked at and approved.”

“But it’s not just me—there’s also all the people I work with,” she continues. “I’m doing a good job because I have a great team: Maureen and Beth in Records, the people in Admissions, Norm Thom, each of the Fine Arts department secretaries . . . I kind of feel embarrassed about the award being just for me. Everybody works hard; I don’t see myself as special.”

Heinl, who has worked at UVic for 22 years, had been in Earth and Ocean Sciences for two years when she was hired as secretary to then-Dean of Fine Arts Tony Welch. “Advising students just started as a side thing off my desk back then,” she recalls, noting that each department had their own undergrad advisor. It was a later Dean, Giles Hogya, who created her position.

Heinl started out working with 750 students; she now deals with about 1,500 and sees everyone “at least once . . . but some I see every month. It’s important for students to know that they can come and talk to me anytime; the door is always open for what they want to do, what they want to change.” And given her role, it seems inevitable that she would form lasting connections. “I have a whole batch of letters and cards from parents and students,” she chuckles. “Because you’re not just helping them with their academic life, you’re also helping them find what they need on campus: counseling, a letter for a job . . . I’m even starting to see the kids of parents who were students. A mother just emailed me the other day saying that her son is coming to UVic—and I was her advisor!”

Sometimes Anne takes the idea of serving students literally!

In addition to her advising duties, Heinl also works with policy and curriculum committees, recruiters, transfer credits, appeals and the Senate Committee on Re-registration and Transfer—all of which is what makes her so valuable, says Acting Dean Lynne Van Luven. “She is truly a repository of knowledge about process, history and especially curriculum. One is never afraid to ask her a question—nor to seek her advice in a complicated matter involving student grades or academic concessions. Her support is immediate and unstinting.”

Heinl’s biggest reward? Helping out with the robing ceremony for graduating students each year. “It gives me great pride to see that—they’ve done it, they’ve accomplished it, they’re off to bigger and better things,” she says. “I love having them leave satisfied, with smiles, feeling they can conquer anything. Or having students come back and say ‘You really helped me through my degree, I couldn’t have done it without you’—which they could have, of course, but it’s great to feel you’ve made a difference in someone’s path.”

Heinl says she learned this commitment to students from her days working with Tony Welch and the late Jean Shannon. “Tony was the one who expected the Dean’s secretary to be compassionate and be there for students, to advocate for students. Tony was really in tune with student needs, and knew that’s why we’re here. And Jean’s influence was where that attitude really started for me—that told me why we were here, why we’re doing it. She was the one who really encouraged me. Without them, there is no university.”

Heinl still sees this “students first” mandate as being the key to the overall university experience. “We should all be open and receptive and helpful,” she says. “As soon as a student comes in with a problem, we have to stick with it until it’s solved; it’s really important to not say, ‘Sorry, that’s not my job’ or ‘I’m busy’. We should be here for the students all the time. We need to make sure they have a good experience and their education is what they expect, and what they should have.”

All of which explains why she feels more like a team captain than the star quarterback. “It’s never just one person who makes things so good,” Heinl insists.

But it can be one person who makes all the difference in a student’s life.

Writing student named Alumnus of Honour

Posted on April 11, 2013 by john threlfall

Department of Writing student Anna-Maria Landis has been named Alumnus of Honour for Victorious Voices, Victoria’s annual Secondary School Slam Championships.

A high-energy youth poetry festival that is widely recognized in the poetry community as one of the most inspiring and entertaining events of the year, Victorious Voices runs April 15 to 17 in Victoria and will feature performances not only by Landis but also Youth Poet Laureate and fellow Writing student Aysia Law.

Anna-Maria Landis

Landis, a first-year Writing student, has maintained her ties with Reynolds Secondary School through her weekly coaching sessions with their current slam team. “I’ve been encouraging them to keep writing, helping them to become a cohesive team, to think outside the box,” says Landis. “I’m trying to keep that poetry motivation alive at Reynolds; it’s important to have older students going back, for them to have those role models.”

It must be working, as the Reynolds slam team just came in second at Hullabaloo, the annual provincial youth poetry slam. “It’s pretty amazing how supportive other students are of hearing their friends read poetry,” she continues. “It kind of blows my mind.” She says slam is the ideal vehicle for high school expression. “All those hard feelings, those things that make you feel like a melodramatic teenager, you’re able to get out at a slam.”

Landis says she was inspired to begin performing poetry during her years at Reynolds thanks to visits by noted spoken word artists like The Fugitives and Shane Koyczan, who were brought in by English teacher Brad Cunningham. “I wasn’t even in his class,” she laughs, “but then I started going to [local slam collective] Tongues of Fire—that really sparked the interest for me—then we started our own slam team at Reynolds.”

She continues to be surprised by the level of support for spoken word at Reynolds. “We would have open mics at lunch hour and it was insane—a hundred high school students would come out and watch people read poetry,” she recalls. “Having that community from the get go gave a sense of momentum; you could express yourself through poetry. Most people in high school don’t usually perform poetry, it’s more a private thing.”

Landis and Law are not the only UVic students who will be performing new work at Victorious Voices; also among the six others on the bill for the April 16 “Still Victorious” Alumni Showcase is two-time Victorious Voices champion and former Reynolds student Zoe Duhaime, who is now studying “healthy sexuality, women’s studies, philosophy and English at UVic (but admits she spent most of this year “messing around in vague but wonderful Humanities courses”). And Writing grad Danielle Pope is one of the judges for the Finals.

Back on campus, Landis entered this video poem about her at-times difficult relationship with her mother in this year’s UVic Diversity Poetry Contest. “It was a huge risk the first time I performed it,” she admits. “But you get that taste of writing about people you know, which is scary, because of how it can affect them. Then it became the poem I was really known for, and I heard from a lot of moms who said they needed to hear things from that perspective.”

As for her career in the Writing department, Landis says it was a foregone conclusion. “My goal in life is to write and I knew if I was going to do anything academic that wasn’t writing, I’d get distracted from that goal,” she says. “Writing is my priority, and I’d heard so many good things about UVic’s program.”

But surprisingly, she isn’t focusing on poetry at this point. “I don’t know if I could do poetry in an academic setting,” she says with a chuckle. “A lot of the skills I’ve been learning seem to lend themselves more toward fiction. I find it really hard to confine poetry to the page; I like spoken word as a venue better.”

Victorious Voices: Semi-finals are at 7pm Monday, April 15, at the Victoria Event Centre on Broad Street. Still Victorious, the Alumni Showcase, starts 7:30pm Tuesday, April 16 at Solstice Café. Finals, featuring an opening poem by Victoria Poet Laureate Janet Rogers and the Alumnus of Honour Showcase, starts 7:30pm Wednesday, April 17 at the Event Centre.

Alumni names in the news

Posted on March 18, 2013 by john threlfall

There’s been a flurry of Fine Arts alum popping up in the media of late. Here’s a quick roundup.

Who will win in the Gaston versus Thanh showdown?

It’s Gaston versus Thanh! Who will win?

Writing grad Yasuko Thanh has been named as finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize in the BC Book Prizes for her debut collection —and she’s up against none other than Department of Writing chair Bill Gaston. Thanh has been tapped for her debut collection of stories, Floating Like The Dead, while Gaston is named for his latest novel, The World. Also on the shortlist for the BC Book Prize’s Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize is Writing alum and former Writing instructor Patricia Young for Night-Eater, her 11th book of poetry.

Thanh also continues to make news thanks to the revealing news about her appearance in the 2014 PEN nude author’s calendar. The latest coverage appeared in the Times Colonist, hooked to her participation in The Malahat Review‘s upcoming WordsThaw event on March 23.

Jessica Kluthe (photo: Edmonton Journal)

Three other Writing alumni in the news: grad-turned-Writing professor Joan MacLeod‘s new play The Valley was just announced in the Globe and Mail as being part of the lineup for Tarragon Theatre’s new 2013-14 season. CBC CanadaWrites Short Story Prize shortlister Eliza Robertson now has a Q&A up about the story that landed her a spot in the popular CBC writing contest; this is her third time entering, and first time as a finalist—fingers crossed for the whole “third time lucky” thing! And Jessica Kluthe continues to attract attention with her first book, Rosina, the Midwife—check out this Edmonton Journal article.

Nathan Medd

Over in Theatre, busy Phoenix alum Nathan Medd was just announced as the new Managing Director of the National Arts Centre’s English Theatre in Ottawa—a real feather in anyone’s cap. “I feel extremely honoured to be taking on this role with the National Arts Centre—the Team Canada of the performing arts!,” he says.

The move sees Medd leaves his position as managing producer of the nationally recognized Electric Company Theatre in Vancouver—whose artistic director and founding member is none other than new Department of Writing prof Kevin Kerr. Among Medd’s other achievements (theatre program coordinator with the BC Arts Council, the Canada Council’s Theatre Assessment Committee, Vancouver’s arts assessment juries, etc.) are stints with both the Belfry Theatre and Intrepid Theatre, where he helped establish downtown Victoria’s immensely popular Metro Studio.

Will Jasleen Powar make it to MuchMusic?

In other Phoenix news, current Theatre student Jasleen Powar has made it to the top 40 in MuchMusic’s VJ Search competition. (Phoenix alumna Melanie Karin had also been on the longlist, but got knocked out.) Will Powar make it to the top 20? Vote for her here and help her make the cut!

Also on the television beat, Phoenix grads Peter Carlone (half of the sketch comedy team Peter ‘n Chris) and Mack Gordon have applied to be on the first-ever Canadian edition of The Amazing Race—you can watch their hilarious audition video here. The cross-Canada version of the race-around-the-world reality show will air later this year on CTV. And Phoenix grad and Theatre SKAM co-founder Amiel Gladstone is back in Victoria directing Pacific Opera Victoria’s upcoming production of Tosca.

Amy Wood

Staying in the media spotlight, recent School of Music alum Amy Wood made it through the first three rounds of voting in CBC’s Searchlight competition for the Best New Canadian Artist, earning a spot in the top five for the Victoria region before getting bumped. While at UVic, Amy studied voice with Music prof Benjamin Butterfield, but started playing and singing at the piano at a very young age. She now describes songwriting as an “obsession,” saying, “I can’t not write and lately it hurts not to sing for others.”

Wood is currently planning the release of an EP as well as a full-length album and is in the midst of covering song requests on her YouTube-based Sunday “Request Booth”. (Interesting side-note: Wood’s Searchlight submission was actually recorded in the UVic studios and mixed by one of School of Music Audio Specialist/Recording Engineer Kirk McNally‘s student recording techs.)

Finally, three Visual Arts alumni—Stephanie Aitken, Katie Lyle and Shelley Penfold—are featured in Drama of Perception, the latest exhibit at Deluge Contemporary. Aitken currently teaches at Langara College and Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Penfold lives and paints in Vancouver, and Lyle received a fair bit of attention last year when she was named the honourable mention winner in the 14th Annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition for her oil painting, “White Night.” She earned a cheque for $15,000 and her painting was added to RBC’s 4,000-piece corporate art collection.

Drama of Perception is also curated by Visual Arts prof Sandra Meigs, and runs to April 13 at 636 Yates.

Writing grad makes CBC shortlist

Posted on March 12, 2013 by john threlfall

Department of Writing grad Eliza Robertson has been announced as one of five finalists in CBC’s 2013 Short Story Prize.

Eliza Robertson (photo: Will Johnson)

Robertson’s story ”L’Étranger” was selected from over 2,400 short stories that were submitted from across the country. Her name appeared on the longlist in the company of fellow Writing grads Yasuko Thanh, Judy LeBlanc and former Writing instructor Holly Nathan, but only Robertson made the final cut. She is also the only BC entry, with two each of the other four shorlisted English-language authors coming from Alberta and Ontario. (French entries get their own contest, which you can check out here.)

The winner will be announced on Monday, March 26, but you’ll able to read the shortlisted stories on the Canada Writes site, where one new story will be published each weekday morning alongside a short Q&A with the finalists—and you can read Eliza’s Q&A here. Once all five stories have been published, you will be able to vote for your favourite (voting begins March 15).

The winner, as selected by the CBC Short Story Prize jury, will be announced on Monday, March 26. Jury members this year include fellow UVic Writing grad and Giller Prize-winner Esi Edugyan, plus Lawrence Hill and Vincent Lam. The Grand Prize winner will receive a cash prize of $6,000 (courtesy the Canada Council for the Arts), plus a two-week writing residency at The Banff Centre and will be published in Air Canada’s enRoute magazine. The other finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.

This is hardly the first time Robertson has made the news. After picking up The Malahat Review’s 2009 Far Horizons Award, she was shortlisted for 2010’s Journey Prize and won the 2010 PRISM International fiction contest; Robertson was also one of the student creators of the 2011 Leo Award-winning web series, Freshman’s Wharf, and received the Booker Scholarship to attend England’s University of East Anglia.

According to their website, the “CBC Literary Prizes are the most important prizes awarded to unpublished literary work in Canada. They bring visibility to authors who are beginning their writing career and help promote the careers of well-known Canadian writers.”

Words on the street

Posted on March 6, 2013 by john threlfall

Three notable literary efforts of note coming up in the next week, courtesy of some of our mighty fine Fine Arts writers, plus one snazzy event near the end of the month.

• First up is The Valley, the latest play by Department of Writing professor and Siminovitch Prize-winning playwright Joan MacLeod. Previously known as What To Expect, MacLeod’s latest play kicks off the 27th annual Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays at Alberta Theatre Projects. The Valley is a fictional story about a troubled teenager who has a confrontation with a police officer on the SkyTrain in Vancouver, which reverberates throughout the community, sweeping both families up into a storm of emotion, opinion and conflict.

The idea for The Valley came from the case of Robert Dziekanski, who died after being hit by RCMP with a Taser at Vancouver Airport in 2007. “One of Joan’s great specialties is responding to something in the headlines”, says Vicki Stroich, interim artistic director for Alberta Theatre Projects. (CBC Calgary chose it as one of their top three picks of the week here—the part about MacLeod begins around 2:32.) As humane, thought-provoking and relevant as her other plays like Another Home Invasion and The Shape of A Girl, MacLeod continues to earn the Toronto Star‘s description of her as “one of the most important playwrights working in Canada today.”

The Valley runs March 6 – April 7 at Calgary’s Alberta Theatre Projects. Alas, there is no local date as of this posting.

Jan Wood

• Next up on March 11 is a new play reading by Department of Theatre prof Jan Wood, who will be presenting a staged reading of her new work Sacrifices as part of the Belfry’s SPARK Festival. Here’s the official description of Sacrifices: “Each person makes allowances and negotiates compromises in order to exist…but at what cost? Sacrifices examines the choices that an ordinary woman makes to balance career, family and self-fulfillment. In revealing her story, Medina exposes the tiny sacrifices that have led her to commit her ultimate sacrifice, an act universally condemned and abhorred. Part myth, part mystery, Sacrifices tells of a struggle for personal fulfillment in a world where a thin veneer can separate sanity and madness.”

Sacrifices will be read by Wood and noted director and playwright James Fagan Tait (The Life Inside) at 7pm Monday, March 11 at the Belfry—for free!

Jessica Kluthe

• After that comes a UVic double-bill on March 12, with Lorna Crozier and Department of Writing alum Jessica Kluthe will be discussing the importance of place in stories as part of the popular reading series At The Mic. Crozier will likely be reading from her latest, The Book of Marvels, but Kluthe is launching her first book, Rosina the Midwife. Described as a “lyrical memoir,” Kluthe is writing about her great-great-grandmother Rosina, a Calabrian midwife who was the only member of the Russo family to remain in Italy while her kin left in search of work. Between 1870 and 1970, twenty-six million Italians left their homeland; many of them never returned.

Kluthe’s writing has appeared in The Malahat Review, among other magazines, her 2012 essay “Scattered” won the Other Voices creative non-fiction contest, and she is currently working on a novel. She teaches advanced business writing at Grant MacEwan and is on the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension. Also on the bill for the evening is award-winning author and mystery writer George Szanto.

At The Mike runs 7pm Tuesday, March 12, at Chronicles of Crime, 1048 Fort Street.

• The Department of Writing is also well-represented at the upcoming all-day Malahat Review event WordsThaw 2013. Their first annual spring symposium, WordsThaw features three daytime panels and a literary reading in the evening. Panels include “Zoom In, Zoom Out: Focus on Fiction” moderated by Amy Reiswig with Writing instructor John Gould and busy alum Yasuko Thanh, plus Daniel Griffin; “A Sustainable Feast: The New Food Writing” moderated by Don Genova, with Rhona McAdam and Kimberley Veness; and “In our Names: Writers on Poverty,” with panelists including retired Writing prof Patrick Lane, current instructor and 2012 City of Victoria Book Prize winner Madeline Sonik, plus Sylvia Olsen.

The evening reading, “Words on Ice,” features the Malahat Review‘s UVic 50th Anniversary Prize winners Pamela Porter, Laura Kraemer, and Katherin Edwards, as well as Writing chair Bill Gaston, soon-to-retire professor Lorna Crozier, new(ish) professor Lee Henderson, plus local writers Marilyn Bowering and C. P. Boyko.

Earlybird rates for a full pass includes all panels and literary reading are $30/$40 (until March 13) and can be purchased from their website. All full passes include a one-year subscription to The Malahat Review or an extension of your current subscription.

WordsThaw runs 10am-10pm Saturday, March 23, in room A240 of UVic’s Human and Social Development building.

Fine Arts at IdeaFest

Posted on February 25, 2013 by john threlfall

IdeaFest is coming up soon at UVic and Fine Arts is all over the programming this year!

With more than 50 ideas worth exploring, UVic’s second annual IdeaFest looks pretty exciting. Running March 4-15 in every corner of campus, this free festival connects you to experts working on the kind of ideas that really can change everything—whether you’re a rocket scientist, artist, gamer, zombie fan or something else entirely.

New and emerging research will be brought to life in panels, workshops, exhibits, lectures, performances, film screenings and tours. Ideas up for discussion run the gamut of political upheaval, creativity, heart health, Canada’s north, urban planning, big data, #IdleNoMore and whether or not English should emerge as a global language—just to name a handful.

Take a few minutes to browse through the full program on the IdeaFest 2013 website— the hardest part will be deciding which idea to start with!

Here’s a quick breakdown of what Fine Arts has on tap:

• Enacting the Artist / Researcher / Educator: Six UVic applied theatre graduate students engaged in a theatre-based PhD research project will discuss utilizing playbuilding as qualitative research, as well as a variety of theatre conventions as a way to generate, interpret and (re)present data. The result is a devised play about enacting the artist/researcher/educator with a post-show dialogue. 2-4pm Monday, March 4, in room 109 of the Fine Arts building.

• Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards: Celebrate some of the outstanding research produced by the 2012 Jamie Cassels Undergraduate Research Awards scholars at this day-long presentation of their work. Here’s a list of who’s representing Fine Arts, but you can read abstracts of their research here: Sara Fruchtman, Alexandra Macdonald and Christine Oldridge (History in Art), Stewart Gibbs, Sarah Johnson and Jennifer Taylor (Theatre), Bronwyn McMillin and Willie Seo (Visual Arts), Claire Garneau and Liz Snell (Writing). The JCURA runs 11am-3pm Wednesday, March 6, in the SUB’s Cinecenta, Upper Lounge and Michele Pujol room.

• Mini Film Fest: Join some of the Department of Writing’s emerging filmmakers for a screening and discussion of several recent, award-winning student films—including the Leo Award-winning web series Freshman’s Wharf, and Connor Gaston’s recent TIFF and VFF-screened short, Bardo Light. 7:30 pm Thursday, March 7, in room 162 of the Visual Arts building.

• Sonic Lab: Join UVic’s contemporary music ensemble as they present two compositions that explore the sound itself as musical material. Imagine a brick wall with a human figure painted on it, which can be taken apart & rebuilt as a fence or a house—meaning the parts of painted body would show up in an unexpected context. The same happens here, where usual & unusual sounds will be taken apart and put together in a new context. 8pm Friday, March 8, in the Phillip T Young Recital Hall.

• “Have you ever had an idea?” Get in on this interactive, community-involving project aimed at enabling ideas to be more accessible and more attainable. Participants become part of Victoria’s biggest idea—a giant run-on sentence created by texting, calling or e-mailing in their ideas. It all culiminates in an installation with video & audio components of real-time projection, discussions, idea-counseling, etc. 7-10pm Friday, March 8, in room A111 of the Visual Arts building.

• “Games Without Frontiers: The Social Power of Video Games”: Join professors, grad students, undergraduates, high-school students, local game designers and curious citizens of Victoria at this mini-conference to explore, discuss and marvel at the power of video-game technology to bring people together and improve the world. Faculty and students will give demonstrations and offer a Q&A about the innovative use of “gamification” techniques in their research, including games that help to improve the lives of children with autism, teach about First Nations treaties, combat obesity and explore the ocean floor, among others.

Don’t miss the Minecraft documentary

Other events will include demonstrations of new games by students and local designers, a “journalism game jam” to apply game tools to improve public-service reporting, various competitions and panels of local experts to debate the power, the pitfalls and the future of game design. The UVic student music ensemble Flipside will also be performing a selection of video game soundtracks (1:30-3pm), and Cinecenta will be hosting a screening of the documentary Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, a look behind the scenes of the popular online game, with an Orion-sponsored talk and Q&A with the Portland-based filmmakers from 2 Player Productions to follow—that’s at 7:15 pm Friday, March 8, at Cinecenta. Games without Frontiers runs 11:30am-6pm Saturday, March 9, in the David Strong building.

• “Is There Still Potential for Human Creativity?” A good question, and one which promises a lively back and forth at this Fine Arts discussion panel featuring Jennifer Stillwell (Visual Arts), George Tzanetakis (Computer Science-Music), Lee Henderson (Writing), Victoria Wyatt (History in Art), Jonathan Goldman (Music). Moderated by the Times Colonist‘s Dave Obee. 7:30pm Monday, March 11, in B150 of the Bob Wright Centre.

• Fine Arts PechaKucha: Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled.

• Intergenerational Theatre for Development in India: After being displaced by the 2006 tsunami, a new community in India is using Applied Theatre to reconnect its citizens. The creation of an intergenerational theatre company to perform the stories of seniors and rural youth of the Tamilnadu community has the potential to create lines of dialogue across generations by positively highlighting the life experiences of residents of Tamaraikulam Elders’ Village and students of the Isha Vidhya Matriculation School. Theatre PhD student Matthew Gusul recently visited India and will tell the story of this developing project. 4:45pm Thursday, March 14, in the Phoenix Theatre’s McIntyre Studio.

Writing alum update

Posted on February 19, 2013 by john threlfall

Seems hardly a month goes by when there isn’t news about Department of Writing alumni earning some kind of accolades.

Shoemaker (centre, with bat) and her Iowa Writers’ Workshop softball team at their annual Fiction vs Poetry game

First up this time around, Writing grad Jeanne Shoemaker was recently named one of the winners of the latest Pushcart Prize for her short story, “Sonny Criss.” Originally published in the Iowa Review, Shoemaker’s western was originally written as a way of avoiding an essay assignment. “I wrote ‘Sonny Criss’ while at UVic,” says Shoemaker. “I workshopped it with Lorna Jackson.” You can read a brief interview with Shoemaker here.

Shoemaker, who received her BA from UVic back in 2002, went on to receive her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 2010. “Sonny Criss” was published in the Iowa Review in 2011 and currently appears in the Pushcart Prize 2013 Anthology. But just to prove that persistence is anything but futile, Shoemaker says her manuscript was rejected 40 times before being accepted. “I kept sending it out because I felt I had something to say with this story, something I discovered while writing it,” she told the Iowa Review. “I had recreated a world that doesn’t exist any longer—a world I miss terribly.”

Marjorie Celona

Also just announced is word that Writing grad Marjorie Celona is a finalist for the $7,500 Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Celona, of course, is up for her debut novel Y, which received rave reviews when it debuted last fall, and earned a spot on the prestigious Waterstones Eleven list. Past winners of the First Novel Award include the likes of Michael Ondaatje, Nino Ricci, Rohinton Mistry, Anne Michaels and Joseph Boyden. The winner is announced on April 24. Fingers crossed!

Arno Kopecky with his new book

Meanwhile, busy alum Arno Kopecky tackles the Enbridge pipeline in the February issue of Reader’s Digest and asks the $273 billion question: is the payoff worth the risk? Kopecky also recently launched his first nonfiction book, The Devil’s Curve: A Journey into Power and Profit at the Amazon’s Edge—which the Georgia Straight reviewed as “a vivid example of immersive journalism” and “a trenchant critique of both our representatives and of us [as Canadians].” Arno was also one of the alumni authors featured at last fall’s All-Star Alumni Reading night.

And if you check the longlist for the CBC Short Story Prize, you’ll find four familiar names included: Writing grads Yasuko Thanh (for “Dolls”), Eliza Robertson (“L’Étranger”), Judy LeBlanc (“The Truth About Gravity”) and former Writing instructor Holly Nathan (“Breathing in Siberia”). Thanh made headlines not so long ago for winning the Journey Prize and publishing her first collection, Floating Like The Dead, while Robertson was in the news for both her Booker Scholarship and winning various writing prizes, and LeBlanc won the recent Antogonish Review fiction contest.

While, yes, this is only the longlist—the shortlist is announced the week of March 11—it’s still gratifying to see so many UVic names appearing there.

Page-turner Yasuko Thanh

And speaking of Yasuko Thanh, word is the much-tattooed mom will be one of 12 authors to doff their duds in the new Bare it for Books 2014 charity calendar, due out in October 2013. (What, nobody asked Bill Gaston?) All proceeds will go to PEN Canada, an organization that supports freedom of expression in Canada and around the world. “The fact that there’s an organization out there, fighting for people’s freedom of speech, well that’s great,” the future Miss July told the the Coastal Spectator recently. “And I want to support that any way I can.”

As reported in the National Post, the inaugural Bare It for Books calendar will feature past winners of the Giller Prize, the Booker Prize, the Journey Prize, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and CBC’s Canada Reads—specifically, Angie Abdou, Trevor Cole, Farzana Doctor, Dave Bidini, Miranda Hill, Daniel MacIvor, Terry Fallis, Sachiko Murakami, Vincent Lam, Saleema Nawaz, Yann Martel and, of course, Thanh.

When Coastal Spectator writer and fellow Writing alum Will Johnson asked Thanh how she feels about appearing alongside Life of Pi author Yann Martel in the calendar, her answer was characteristically frank. “It feels friggin’ awesome!”

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UVic's Faculty of Fine Arts: Thinking with the right side of your brain

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