Canadian Authors Association CanWrite 2008
Writers write…still believing–to paraphrase Elie Wiesel–in the dream that a word rightly written takes on the power of a deed.
This past weekend, at my first Canadian Authors Association conference, I was brought into contact with these dreamers. To a person, from seers to pop-pundits, these writers still believe that that “thousand-words-worth” a picture may elicit, will still always take you to the heart of what a picture cannot help but conceal. And today, in a world gone media-graphic, the counter weight of this faith is culturally imperative. Why? So we can imagine in contour and save ourselves from the great flattening.
Hats off to these hope-ers. And next time you’re in, say, Audreys Books, pick up a book by a national or local author.
A highlight, among the many highlights, was listening to the winning CAA authors read from their work. The Literary Award winners were: poet Asa Boxer for The Mechanical Bird, dramatist Colleen Murphy – for The December Man, Mark Haroun won the Emerging Writer Award, history writer Robert Wright for Three Nights in Havana, and fiction writer Paulette Giles for Stormy Weather.
What, no pictures on this post? SO disappointing!