Featured Artists—2012
Cabot Trail Writers Festival
This year's lineup of authors exemplifies diversity in writing styles and techniques, but each author is intently focussed on history as a primary source of inspiration. If you like your history, too, read on. We think that you will be inspired by thoughts of hearing and talking with these folk this fall.
Wayne Johnston
WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and
raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. He worked as a reporter for
the St John's Daily News
before committing full time to writing.
Wayne's first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley (Oberon Press 1985), won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel award for best first novel published in the English language in Canada that year. The Divine Ryans (McClelland and Stewart 1990) was adapted to the silver screen; Wayne himself wrote the screenplay.
Shortlisted for the 1998 Giller Prize, Governor General's Literary Award, and Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction prize, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (Knopf 1998) is on the Globe and Mail's list of the 100 most important Canadian books ever published. The best-seller The Navigator of New York (Knopf 2002) was shortlisted for the 2002 Giller Prize.
Wayne's memoir Baltimore's Mansion (Knopf 1999) won the ultra-prestigious Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction, and his most recent novel, A World Elsewhere (Knopf 2011) was a 2011 Giller nominee. Wayne recently won the $25,000 Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Prize, which recognises his entire body of work.
"Rich, irresistibly readable prose… a deft intelligence and a rare sense of what's truly interesting to tell about life." — Richard Ford, Pullitzer-prize-winning author of Independence Day
Visit Wayne on the web at waynejohnston.ca
Kate Beaton
Graphic artist KATE BEATON was born in Mabou, Nova
Scotia. She studied History at Mount Allison University, and has
lived in places from coast to coast since, from Victoria to New
York to Toronto. In 2008, she made her cartooning a full
time job, and in 2011 her comics were collected into the
best-selling book, Hark! A Vagrant
(Drawn and Quarterly 2011).
Kate enjoys a huge on-line readership for her razor-witted, historically charged comics (according to the Paris Review, her web site gets more than a million hits a month). She has been published in such magazines as Time Magazine, the Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Harper's Magazine.
Her book, Hark! A Vagrant, is a joyous and often irreverent journey through history. It is the 2012 winner of the Doug Wright Canadian Cartooning Award for Best Book, and is on Quill and Quire's top-five list for Book of the Year, Non-fiction. As a graphic artist, Kate brings a new dimension to our Festival.
"Hark! A Vagrant … is a delicious gallimaufry that makes mock of cows sacred and profane with equal relish." — Martin Levin, Globe and Mail
Visit Kate's amazing blog
beatonna.livejournal.com
and her web site harkavagrant.com
Stephen Kimber
STEPHEN KIMBER is an award-winning
writer, editor, and broadcaster. He is the author of eight
books, including the novel of Africville,
Reparations, short-listed for
the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the Crime Writers
of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel, and
Flight 111: The Tragedy of the
Swissair Crash.
As a broadcaster, Stephen has been an Ottawa-based current affairs producer for the CTV Television Network, and a producer, writer, story editor, and host for numerous CBC television and radio programs. His work has appeared on national programs ranging from television's Rough Cuts to radio's Sunday Morning.
Stephen brings a wealth of experience from a career spanning the world of writing, clearly illustrated by a partial list of publications that have included his work: Canadian Geographic, Financial Post Magazine, The Literary Review of Canada, Maclean's Magazine, Chatelaine, The Globe and Mail, the Coast, and the Atlantic Business Magazine. A Professor of Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, Canada, Stephen currently teaches creative non-fiction, newspaper reporting and editing, and online journalism.
On Reparations:
"A terrific legal
thriller…" — Shelagh Rogers
"Stephen Kimber has
delivered…" — Lawrence Hill,
author,
The Book of Negroes
Visit Stephen on the web at stephenkimber.com
