Experientially Speaking
Alumni Newsletter of the Sage Hill Writing Experience Vol. 12, Winter 2007
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In this issue: Sage Hill Announcements
Publications, Awards, etc.
Faculty News
Other News
Alumni & Related Websites
Donors
Announcements _______________________________________________________________________
Programs for Summer 2007 and Spring 2008 – Faculty have been selected for the Summer
Adult Experience, to be held from July 23 to August 2, 2007. A new schedule has also been
established for the Poetry Colloquium, which will moved from the fall to May of 2008.
Returning as summer faculty are Nicole Brossard for the Poetry Colloquium, Steven Galloway
for the Fiction Workshop, and Colleen Murphy for Playwriting, along with Robert Currie and
Jeanette Lynes for the Introduction to Writing and Poetry. Robert Kroetsch will be
returning after six years to lead the Fiction Colloquium. New to faculty is Karen Solie,
who will be heading up the Poetry Workshop. This year’s application deadline is April
20, 2007.
The Teen Writing Experience will again be held for five days in July in three Saskatchewan
centres, with Angie Abdou and Ted Dyck in Moose Jaw, Edward Willett and Jo
Bannatyne-Cugnet in Regina, and Pam Bustin and Lloyd Ratzlaff in Saskatoon.
Narrative and Its Discontents, the keynote talk given by Warren Cariou, Guest Writer at
Sage Hill’s 2005 Fall Fiction Colloquium, has been posted on Sage Hill’s
website.
Don’t forget to visit the Featured Alumni section of the Sage Hill site. We’ll
be adding new writers, so check back periodically.
???
Please let us know - In our never-ending attempt to keep the Alumni pages of the Sage Hill
website as comprehensive, up to date, and accurate as possible, we invite you to browse
the site and to please let us know if your name and information (i.e., the year and
program you attended) are in need of revision or if they are missing altogether. If you
have a website to which you would like us to post a link, please notify us of that as
well. NOTE: If you are in touch with someone who has attended Sage Hill but who isn’t
listed in our catalogue of Alumni, please encourage them to contact us. Sage Hill's web
address is www.sagehillwriting.ca and our email address is sage.hill@sasktel.net
Publications, Awards, Etc. ______________________________________________________________
As always, we are delighted to sing the praises of former Sage Hill Experients:
Congratulations to all!
Special Congratulations are offered this year to our faculty members John Steffler and
Robert Currie, who both received laurels this fall. John is the Poet Laureate of Canada,
and Robert has been declared the Poet Laureate of Saskatchewan. We are very excited by the
news, and proud to think that they have contributed their considerable writing and
teaching talents to the Sage Hill participants’ development.
Abbreviations:
Intro – Introduction to Writing Fiction and Poetry;
PW - Poetry Workshop; PC - Poetry Colloquium; FPC - Fall Poetry Colloquium;
FW - Fiction Workshop; FC - Fiction Colloquium; NC - Novel Colloquium; FFC - Fall Fiction
Colloquium;
YA - Young Adult; PL – Playwriting Lab; NF - Creative Non-fiction;
TW – Teen Writing Experience
FAC - Faculty
Note: Only the most recent program attended by an alumnus or faculty member is indicated.
Congratulations also to Kevin Wesequate (2006 Intro), who had his first child, a boy, on
February 13, 2007 in Saskatoon.
?Last year Leona Theis’s (2003 NC) short story “High Beams” was shortlisted
in the CBC Literary Competition. This year she won for her non-fiction entry, “The
Occupations of Muriel Thompson”. Her novel The Art of Salvage was published by Coteau
Books in August 2006, following honourable mention for the Richards Prize for Fiction
administered by the Writers Federation of New Brunswick.
This year the Saskatchewan Playwrights’ Centre’s Spring Festival of New Plays
will take place in Saskatoon in May. Scheduled to be workshopped and given a dramatic
reading are
?Catherine Harrison’s (2006 PL) play The River Valley Sanatorium Ghost Tour,
?Mansel Robinson’s (1995 PL) new work, Trigger Happy, and
?Brent McFarlane’s (2006 PL) The Man from Nantucket.
?Linda Aksomitis (1996 YA) placed second for Children’s/Young Adult in the 2006
Saskatchewan Writers Guild Short Manuscript Awards. Her YA novel, Adeline’s Dream,
was published in 2005 by Coteau Books.
?Oana Avasilichioaei's (2003 PW) poetry collection, Abandon, was released by Wolsak &
Wynn in fall 2005. Oana, a translator as well as a poet, has also recently published
Occupational Sickness (BuschekBooks), a collection of translations of Romanian poet
Nichita Stanescu.
?Brenda Baker (1993 FW) was one of two winners of the 2005 John V. Hicks award for her
book-length fiction manuscript titled Camp Outlook. Judges for this competition were Greg
Hollingshead and Audrey Thomas.
?Pam Bustin’s (1995 PL) play, Saddles in the Rain, has been published in The West of
All Possible Worlds: Six Contemporary Canadian Plays (Playwrights Canada Press, edited by
Moira Day).
?John Livingstone Clark’s (1994 PC) latest poetry collection, Poems from a Broken
Body (Thistledown Press), was short-listed in the poetry category of last year’s
Saskatchewan Book Awards.
?Kathleen Cook Waldron’s (1999 YA) children’s book, Roundup at the Palace
(illustrated by Alan and Lea Daniel), was published by Red Deer Press.
?Sally Crooks’ (2003 NFW and FPC) self-published title That Saturday Night was
nominated in the Non-Fiction category of the 2006 Saskatchewan Book Awards.
?Paulette Dubé (1998 PC) was awarded the second prize for poetry in the 2005 CBC Literary
Awards.
?Eric Greenway’s (1994 FW) The Darkness Beneath All Things (Hagios Press) won the
2005 Saskatchewan Book Award for First Book; he was also short-listed for Fiction and the
Regina Book Award.
?Tracy Hamon’s (2003 Intro) first poetry collection, This is Not Eden (Thistledown
Press), was short-listed in two categories of the Saskatchewan Book Awards, First Book and
the Regina Book Award.
?Brecken Rose Hancock (2004 FPC) was one of the winners of Grain Magazine’s Short
Grain Contest in 2006.
?Jill Hartman (2006 PC) is being cagey about the title of a collaborative work to be
published by Mercury Press in Fall 2007. More later.
?Jacqueline Honnet (2002 FW) has published Limbo, a short story collection, with Turnstone
Press.
?Donna Kane (2001 PC) has recently launched her website: www.donnakane.com.
?A. M. (Adrian) Kelly’s (NC 2001) debut novel, Down Sterling Road, has recently been
published by Coach House Books.
?Katherine Lawrence (2001 FPC) received a nomination in the Poetry category of the 2006
Saskatchewan Book Awards for her collection Lying to Our Mothers, published by Coteau
Books. The title also received honourable mention in the the Alfred G. Bailey Prize
competition in 2005 as a book-length manuscript. Katherine has a chapbook, Split ends
(with art and design by Betsy Rosenwald), recently published by JackPine Press of
Saskatoon. She placed third in the Poetry category of the 2006 Saskatchewan Writers Guild
Short Manuscript Awards.
?Holly Luhning (2005 FFC) was crowned CBC Saskatchewan's Poetry Face-Off winner for the
second year in a row in February. In 2006 she placed second in the national competition,
and was recently recognized as a Promising Young Artist at the Saskatchewan Lieutenant
Governor’s Awards.
?Shanna Mann (2005 TW) placed third for Children’s/Young Adult in the 2006
Saskatchewan Writers Guild Short Manuscript Awards.
?Suzette Mayr (2005 PC) and Mariianne Mays (2001 PC) are two of the writers featured in
Post-PRAIRIE: An Anthology of New Poetry (Talonbooks, Fall 2005).
?Isa Milman (2003 PW) has won the Canadian Jewish News Award in Poetry for her book
Between the Doorposts (Ekstasis Editions 2004).
?Jacqueline Moore (2004 Intro) recently received a Saskatchewan Arts Board grant to work
on a project about prairie folk healers. Her piece “Root Woman,” a chapter of
her folk healers project, won first place in the Literary Non-fiction category of the
Saskatchewan Writers Guild 2005 Short Literary Awards.
?Lisa Moore’s (1993 FW) novel Alligator (House of Anansi), which was short-listed for
the 2005 Giller Prize, has now been nominated for the Orange Prize in its UK edition from
Virago.
?Erin Mouré’s (2001 FPC) Little Theatres (House of Anansi) was short-listed for both
the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award in 2006. It also won the A.M.
Klein Prize for Poetry, QSPELL Awards, in 2005.
?Helen Mourre (1996 FW) took the third prize for Literary Non-Fiction in the 2006
Saskatchewan Writers Guild Short Manuscript Awards.
?Alayna Munce (1997 Intro) recently published a novel, When I Was Young & In My Prime,
with Harbour Publishing.
?Wynne Nicholson (1995 PW) was short-listed in the Poetry category of the 2005
Saskatchewan Book Awards for her first collection, Small Gifts (Thistledown Press).
?Catherine Owen (2004 PW) has recently published her seventh poetry collection,
Cusp/detritus (Beach Holme Press). Her band, INHUMAN, a project influenced by the writings
of Robinson Jeffers, has recently released its first CD, Exeunt Armageddon. (See
Catherine’s website listed below.)
?Curtis Parkinson’s (2001 YA) YA novel, Sea Chase, was short-listed for the 2005
Arthur Ellis Juvenile Crime Award and included on the Manitoba Young Readers choice list
for 2006; Storm-Blast, another YA novel (completed at Sage Hill in 2001), was short-listed
for the 2005-2006 BC Red Cedar Award. Curtis’ YA novel, Domenic’s War, was
released by Tundra Books in Spring 2006.
?Kamal Parmar (2004 FPC) has a poem in the fall 2005 issue of In Medias Res, the literary
magazine of St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, and a poem
forthcoming in an anthology to be published by Ascent Aspirations Publishing of BC. Kamal
is “currently working on a poetry manuscript dealing with the emotional journey of a
poet who travels across to another country.”
?Alison Pick’s (2000 FPC) first novel, The Sweet Edge (Raincoast Books), was a Globe
and Mail Top 100 Book for 2006. Last year she was also awarded the first prize for poetry
in the CBC Literary Awards.
?M. E. Powell (Marie Mendenhall) (2002 PL) has had several recent successes. Dragonflies
Are Amazing!, her children’s non-fiction book, was published by Scholastic Canada in
2006, and she recently signed a contract to write an adult non-fiction book for
Late-Breaking Amazing Stories. Her poem “Spontaneous Combustion” tied for second
place in Pandora’s Collective Summer Dream 2005 contest; her picture book manuscript,
In the Story Garden, won first place in the Saskatchewan Writers Guild’s 2005 Short
Literary Awards (Children/YA category); and the first 12 pages of her novel Photogenic
placed third in the “We Dare You” contest.
?Lloyd Ratzlaff’s (1999 NFW) BackwaterMystic Blues from Thistledown Press was also
nominated in the Non-Fiction category of the 2006 Saskatchewan Book Awards.
?Ruth Roach Pierson’s (2004 FPC) second title, Aide-mémoire, will be published by
Buschek Books in Fall 2007.
?Barbara Sapergia’s (1994 FC) novel Dry (Coteau Books) was short-listed in two
categories of the 2005 Saskatchewan Book Awards, Fiction and the Saskatoon Book Award.
?Sandy Shreve (1999 PC) has recently published her fourth poetry collection, Suddenly, So
Much, with Exile Editions.
?Marie Elyse St. George (1990 PC) received the Saskatchewan Book Award for Non-Fiction for
her collection of drawings and reminiscences Once in a Blue Moon: An Artist’s Life,
published by Coteau Books in 2006. She also received Honourable Mention in the Poetry
category of the 2006 Saskatchewan Writers Guild Short Manuscript Awards.
?Jennifer Still’s (2001 FPC) first poetry collection, Saltations (Thistledown Press),
received three nominations for Saskatchewan Book Awards in 2006 – First Book,
Saskatoon Book Award, and Poetry.
?Vern Thiessen’s (1995 PL) much-acclaimed Einstein’s Gift is included in The
West of All Possible Worlds: Six Contemporary Canadian Plays (Playwrights Canada Press,
edited by Moira Day).
?Kathleen Wall’s (2004 NC) poetry collection, Time’s Body (Hagios Press), was
short-listed for two Saskatchewan Book Awards, Poetry and the Regina Book Award, in 2005.
?Barry Webster (2005 NC) published his short story collection, The Sound of All Flesh,
with The Porcupine’s Quill in October 2005.
Faculty News
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Birk Sproxton (1997 NF) died suddenly of heart failure on March 14, 2007. Birk was the
2006 winner of the Grant MacEwan Alberta Author Award for his creative non-fiction
narrative about Flin Flon, Phantom Lake: North of 54 (University of Alberta Press). He was
very committed to Western Canadian literature, which he taught, wrote and edited for many
years in his role of professor and mentor at Red Deer College. He published two volumes of
innovative poetry, Headflame and Headflame 2, both from Turnstone Press, and edited The
Winnipeg Connection: Writing Lives at Mid-Century (Prairie Fire Press), about Margaret
Laurence, Adele Wiseman and other Winnipeg writers. He will be sorely missed. Donations
can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society, Red Deer Regional Hospital Cardiac Unit, St.
John's College English Department, the University of Manitoba, or Prairie Fire Press.
?Former Sage Hill Board Member Gordon L. Barnhart, editor of Saskatchewan Premiers of the
Twentieth Century (Canadian Plains Research Centre), this year succeeded Dr. Lynda
Haverstock as the Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan.
?BIG CONGRATULATIONS to Steven Ross Smith, Sage Hill’s Executive Director, whose
poetry collection fluttertongue 3: disarray (Turnstone Press) won Book of the Year in the
2005 Saskatchewan Book Awards. fluttertongue 3 was also short-listed for the City of
Saskatoon Award. Steven has recently launched a new website (see listing below). The
latest collection in the series, fluttertongue 4: adagio for the pressured surround, has
just been released by NeWest Press.
?Ven Begamudré (1995 Intro) received a nomination for the 2006 Regina Book Award for his
poetry collection The Lightness Which Is Our World, Seen from Afar (Frontenac Books). He
received the City of Regina Writing Award in May 2006.
?Sandra Birdsell’s novel Children of the Day (Random House Canada) won the
Saskatchewan Book Award for Fiction and was short-listed for Book of the Year in 2005.
?Marilyn Bowering’s (2005 FW) What It Takes to Be Human (Penguin Group Canada) has
been nominated for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize of the BC Book Prizes in 2007.
?George Elliott Clarke (2004 PW), with D. D. Jackson, won a national competition sponsored
by Toronto's Harbourfront Centre to receive one of five possible commissions to create a
new work for the stage. Their winning proposal is an opera about Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
His new collection Black
appeared from Polestar/Raincoast Books in 2006.
?Dave Glaze’s (2005 TWES) children’s book The Light-fingered Gang (Coteau Books)
was short-listed in the Children’s Literature category of the 2005 Saskatchewan Book
Awards.
? Phil Hall’s (2005 Intro) An Oak Hunch (Brick Books) was short-listed for the
Griffin Poetry Prize.
?Gerry Hill (2001 FPC) placed second in the Poetry category of the 2006 Saskatchewan
Writers Guild Short Manuscript Awards.
?Myrna Kostash’s (1998 NFW) radio documentary, Frog Lake Massacre, aired on CBC
Radio’s Ideas on November 21, 2005.
?Robert Kroetsch (2004 NC) is the co-editor, with Jon Paul Fiorentino, of Post-PRAIRIE: An
Anthology of New Poetry (Talonbooks 2005).?
?Shelley Leedahl (2005 TWES) was a big winner in the 2006 Saskatchewan Writers Guild Short
Manuscript Awards. She took first place in Children’s/Young Adult and in Literary
Non-Fiction, as well as winning an Honourable Mention in the latter.
?Sylvia Legris (Sage Hill's former newsletter editor) won the 2006 Griffin Prize and the
Pat Lowther Prize for her collection Nerve Squall.
?Don McKay’s (1999 FAC) Strike / Slip (McClelland & Stewart) has been nominated
for the 2007 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.
?Elizabeth Philips’ (1998 Intro) fourth poetry collection, Torch River, is
forthcoming in 2007 with Brick Books.
?Judith Silverthorne (Keynote Speaker, 2004 TWER) was short-listed for the 2005
Saskatchewan Book Award for Children’s Literature for The Secret of the Stone House
(Coteau Books).
?Art Slade (2001 YA) won in the Children’s Literature category of the 2006
Saskatchewan Book Awards for his young adult novel Megiddo’s Shadow. Art’s
podcasts about writing YA fiction are up on his website (see listing below). Included are
such topics as (in #5) “writing the next Harry Potter and making millions of
dollars.”
?Betsy Warland’s (2003 PW) Only This Blue, a poetic narrative and essay, was
published by The Mercury Press in Fall 2005. Betsy has a new website (see listing below).
Other News
JackPine Press, which publishes chapbooks that are exquisite, limited edition
collaborations of literary and visual art, holds a winter launch in December every year at
Lydia’s Pub in Saskatoon. Included in their list are the aforementioned chapbooks by
Brecken Rose Hancock and Katherine Lawrence (see JackPine’s web address below).
Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre
25-Hour Playwriting Competition - University of Regina, Riddell Centre, May 4-5, 2007
Spring Festival of New Plays - University of Saskatchewan, John Mitchell Building, May
21-26, 2007
Alumni & Related Websites
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?Linda Aksomitis (‘96 YA): www.aksomitis.com
?Brenda Baker (‘93 FW): www.brendabaker.com
?Michael Bryson (‘00 FC) edits the on-line journal The Danforth Review:
www.danforthreview.com
?Susan Andrews Grace (FPC ’95) is both a poet and visual artist; you can check out
samples of her work in both disciplines at her website: www.susanandrewsgrace.com
?NEW Donna Kane (PC 2001): has recently launched her website, www.donnakane.com
?CORRECTION Shelley Leedahl (Faculty): Her correct web address is
www.members.shaw.ca/shelleyannleedahl/index.htm
?NEW Erin Noteboom (PW 2001): You can find her website and Blog at
http://www.vividpieces.net
?NEW Catherine Owen (PW 2004): You can find out more about Catherine’s literary and
musical projects at www.cathowenpoet.150m.com
?In addition to her website Brenda Schmidt (’03 FPC) you might check out
Brenda’s Blog-site, Alone on a Boreal Stage: http://birdschmidt.blogspot.com. And her
website: http://schevv.sasktelwebsite.net/birdart.htm
?Arthur Slade (Faculty and ‘01YA): www.arthurslade.com
?NEW Steven Ross Smith (Exec. Director) has a new website: www.fluttertongue.ca
?Kathy Stinson (’93 FW): www.kathystinson.com
?NEW Betsy Warland (Faculty) also has a new website: www.scoredspace.ca
?Coteau Books: www.coteaubooks.com
?Contemporary Verse 2: www.contemporaryverse2.ca
?Grain Magazine: www.grainmagazine.ca
?JackPine Press, a chapbook press based in Saskatoon: www.jackpinepress.com
?CHANGE OF ADDRESS Prairie Fire’s website is now: www.prairiefire.ca
?Saskatchewan Festival of Words: www.festivalofwords.com
?Thistledown Press: www.thistledown.sk.ca
Donors
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Grow Sage: Angela Abdou, Leise Achtzehner, Shelley Banks, Kimmy Beach, Cathy Beveridge,
April Bosshard, Holly Borgerson Calder, Cam Bower, Wendy Brandts, Sharona Butala, Robert
Calder, Sandra Campbell, Hilary Clark, In Memory of Geraldine and William Clarke, Heather
Crichlow, Sally Crooks, Dawn Curtis, Madelaine Dahlem, Les Dickson, Debora Dobson, John A.
Drummond & Family, Sandy Easterbrook, Catherine Fuller, Ann Goldring, Heidi Greco,
Betty Jane Hegerat, Doris Hillis, Wally Houn, Maureen Hynes, IPSCO, Catherine Jewison,
Beth Jones, Abdul N. Kamal, Elena Kaufman, Anna P. Kernaleguen, Fran Kimmel, Myrna
Kostash, Katherine Lawrence, Shelley A. Leedahl, Sylvia Legris, Alison Lohans, Janice
Lore, Jeanette Lynes, Hannah Main-van der Kamp, Micheline Maylor, Suzette Mayr, Elizabeth
McCallister, Susan McMaster, McNally Robinson Book Sellers, K. Gordon Neufeld, Curtis
Parkinson, Ruth Roach Pierson, Trevor Robertson, J.Jill Robinson, Ingrid Rose, Norma
Rowen, Saskatchewan Writers Guild, Barbara Scott, Dan Shapiro & Marie Lannoo, Sandy
Shreve, Steven Ross Smith, Glen Sorestad, John Steffler, Marie Elyse St. George, Jennifer
Still, R&J Storey, Leona Theis, Geoffrey Ursell & Barbara Sapergia, Rosalee Van
Stelten, Murray Walter, Joseph Zeman, and anonymous donors.
Scholarships and Operations: Coteau Books, H. and J. Storey, Luella Newman, Manitoba
Writers Guild, Prairie Fire Magazine, Wenda McArthur.
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