Literary Primetime and Book Launch
Friday, July 17, 7:30 p.m.
Margaret Greenham Theatre, The Banff Centre · Tickets $10
Box Office: 403.762.6301 or 1.800.413.8368
Presented as part of the 2009 Banff Summer Arts Festival
Describing the non-fiction pieces in Cabin Fever, author and editor Marni Jackson says they “share with us the dirty, addictive, lucrative pull of tree planting in British Columbia, the perils of riding a bike in the city, and they turn rapturous on the subject of Colville Bay oysters.”
To mark the 20th anniversary of The Banff Centre’s Literary Journalism program, the Centre will launch Cabin Fever: The Best New Canadian Non-Fiction on July 17 in the Margaret Greenham Theatre. Published by The Banff Centre Press and Thomas Allen & Son, the anthology represents some of the finest work that has come out of the Literary Journalism program in the past six years.
Cabin Fever includes essays on a strikingly original and global range of topics by some of the best non-fiction writers in Canada: Jaspreet Singh ruminates on life in Kashmir in the age of plutonium; Jeremy Klaszus gets to know his grandfather, a former Hitler Youth who is obsessed with Google Maps; Deborah Ostrovsky explores bilingualism and the “grammar of relationships” after she marries into a Quebecois family; and Taras Grescoe goes in search of “pure” absinthe.
The book also features Megan Williams, Bill Reynolds, Charlotte Gill, John Vigna, Margaret Webb, Jonathan Garfinkel, Penny Kome, and Andrew Westoll, as well as an introduction by Jackson, the current Rogers Communication Chair of the Literary Journalism program.
The first arts journalism program at The Banff Centre was created in 1982 to prepare writers with backgrounds in the arts to become reviewers and critics. In 1989, the program evolved into what it is today, Literary Journalism, a month-long residency for eight accomplished writers, which recognizes the status and raises the standards of non-fiction writing in Canada by providing established journalists with an opportunity to develop and publish a major essay, or to work on a book project. The Literary Journalism program has supported more than 150 writers over the past two decades.
In 1989, The Banff Centre also created the Maclean Hunter Chair in Arts Journalism (now Rogers Communication Chair), which was first awarded to Robert Fulford. Other notable Maclean-Hunter chairs have included Alberto Manguel, Michael Ignatieff, and Rosemary Sullivan. Over the 20 years, the program has attracted a remarkable list of guest speakers and visiting writers including Philip Gourevitch, Stevie Cameron, Barbara Ehrenreich, Deirde Bair, Elena Poniatowska, and Mark Kingwell. This year, guest lecturers for Literary Primetime will be Michael Ondaatje and Susan Swan.
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- More information about Literary Arts at The Banff Centre.
- More information about the 2009 Banff Summer Arts Festival.
