La Presse interviews ELAN’s Guy Rodgers: “Effervescence chez les artistes anglos”

Alexandre Vigneault has an excellent column in today’s La Presse about the vitality of Montreal’s anglo arts scene in recent years. He refers to the new book Minority Report: An Alternate History of Quebec’s English-Language Arts Scene (Available through Guernica Editions), and interviews ELAN executive director Guy Rodgers.

I’ve translated the article below. You can read the complete original article on LaPresse.ca.

-Posted by Geoff

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Anglo-Montreal writers are not only numerous, many are popular internationally, including Trevor Ferguson, also known by his pseudonym John Farrow. PHOTO: ANDRÉ PICHETTE, ARCHIVES LA PRESSE

Translated from Effervescence chez les artistes anglos by Alexandre Vigneault for La Presse, 24 November 2011. (Translation by ELAN)

Renowned music scene, award-winning writers, bubbling theatre milieu, anglo-Montreal culture is experiencing a resurgence. This dynamism coincides with the first growth in the number of anglophones in Quebec in the past 30 years, according to the book Minority Report.

During the first half-decade of the 2000s, the number of anglophones rose by 2.7% in Quebec, according to 2006 Census data. The observation represents not only a reversal of the exodus begun in 1976 — it is also one of the factors contributing to the renewal of the Anglo-Montreal artistic scene, according to the essays collected in Minority Report.

“This increase isn’t limited to the artistic community, but among artists there has been enormous growth,” notes Guy Rodgers, director of the English-Language Arts Network (ELAN), an organisation founded in 2005 to bring together Quebec’s anglophone artists. The percentage of artists in the anglo-Montreal community (0.99%) is higher than the Canadian (0.65%) and Quebec (0.56%) averages, as noted in a Canadian Heritage report.

In recent years, the effervescence of anglo-Montreal creation has been emphasized by the international success of Arcade Fire. Minority Reports stresses that this phenomenon is not limited to the music milieu: the theatre scene experienced an unimaginable vitality 25 years ago, writes Marianne Ackerman, and this holds for the litterary community as well.

Kathleen Winter nominated for Orange Prize

Kathleen Winter, a longtime resident of St. John’s who now lives in Montreal, is nominated for the 2011 Orange Prize, a British award for female authors of fiction, for her book Annabel.

Excerpt from The Gazette, April 12, 2011

Two women in Canada have been shortlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize, a British award for female authors of fiction – including a former writer for the children’s TV show Sesame Street.

The six final candidates for the 16th annual Orange Prize were announced Tuesday.

Kathleen Winter, a longtime resident of St. John’s who now lives in Montreal, is nominated for Annabel.

(…) Emma Donoghue, an Irish writer now living in Canada, has been nominated for Room, a tale of a boy whose mother tells him on his fifth birthday, for the first time, that there’s a world outside the room in which they’ve been living.

Continue reading on http://www.montrealgazette.com/…/

Atwater Poetry Project with Gillian Jerome and John Steffler + poetry recording podcasts

Photo credit: Allyson Kukel

Gillian Jerome and John Steffler will be reading at the Atwater Library Auditorium
1200 Atwater Avenue

Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 7:00 pm

Gillian Jerome‘s first book of poems, Red Nest won the 2010 ReLit Poetry Prize and was short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her first book of non-fiction, Hope In Shadows, Stories and Photographs from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (with Brad Cran) won the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award and was shortlisted for a BC Book Prize. She teaches literature at UBC, poetry to kids at inner-city schools, and workshops with Geist magazine, and edits poetry for Event Magazine.
Recently named to the shortlist of the prestigious Griffin prize, poet and novelist

JOHN STEFFLER has also won the Thomas Head Raddall award and the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor-General’s Award for his novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright. His seven books of poetry include the acclaimed 1998 collection That Night We Were Ravenous, which won the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Steffler was Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate from 2006 to 2008. Lookout, his latest collection, was published last spring by McClelland and Stewart.

If you’ve missed seeing poetry readings, you can listen to recordings on the Atwater website

ELAN RAEV Launch Party!

The event, which will showcase the works of 154 artists, is titled Recognizing Artists: Enfin Visible! (RAEV). The launch is free, open to the public and includes refreshments and munchies.

Read More at: MontrealGazette.com

Photography: I’ll Show You Mine

Each image is accompanied by a text written by the owner of the featured Doodiddle signed with only a first name that may or may not be their real names (Inanna? Darine? Phae­dra? Souviens?).

Read More at: MontrealMirror.com

Colleen Curran at the Centaur

True Nature is one of two world premieres included in the six-play subscription season. The other is Morris Panych’s In Absentia, about a woman living alone in a chalet awaiting the return of her husband who has been missing for four years (Jan. 31 to March 4).

While not a premiere, the Centaur production of Haunted Hillbilly promises to be an updated version of an edgy Country and Western musical initially produced at the Segal Studio. Adapted by Graham Cuthbertson from a novel of the same title by Derek McCormack, with music by Matthew Barber and Cuthbertson, this Sidemart Theatrical Grocery creation will be directed, again, by Andrew Shaver (May 8 to June 3).

Read more at MontrealGazette.com

Montreal’s Kathleen Winter on Orange Prize long list

Kathleen Winter

From the Globe and Mail:

Canadian writer Kathleen Winter entered the big leagues yesterday with the announcement that her debut novel, Annabel, had been named to the long list of 20 books competing for the 2011 Orange Prize for fiction by women writers.

Also named to the long list was Irish-Canadian Emma Donoghue forRoom, a worldwide bestseller that beat Annabel for this year’s Rogers Writers’ Trust award in Canada and was nominated for the Booker Prize.

(…)

The short list for the $48,000 prize will be announced April 12, with the winner to be revealed at an awards ceremony June 8.

Read the full article on www.theglobeandmail.com/…

The shaky state of Canadian book publishing

Canadian publishers publish about 90 per cent of Canadian-authored books, as they should, just as U.S. publishers publish more than 98 per cent of U.S.-authored books, as they should. The one significant difference is the size of the market. Ours is about the same as California’s, which makes this a labour-intensive, marginal business – one that has our risk-averse bankers run to the safer havens of foreign real estate, junk bonds and seemingly deep-pocketed developers. That, in turn, makes it hard for local publishers to get lines of credit so they can compete with foreign publishers when they try to retain those few very successful authors by paying them what they deserve.

Read More at: TheGlobeAndMail.com

Do Canadian writers and publishers still stand a chance?

Even in Quebec, home to a robust domestic publishing industry, European Union trade negotiators (no strangers to cultural protectionism) are seeking a foothold.At the same time, our farm system of smaller Canadian publishers and emerging writers needs more support, so that the next Margaret Atwood or Michael Ondaatje can be introduced to the world stage.

Read more at: TheGlobeAndMail.com

English-language theatre is thriving in our schools

There’s a genuine student theatre freebie happening at Centaur Theatre on Tuesday night. That’s when the National Theatre School’s Revealing Talent Tour, which is playing five cities across Canada, will be making its Montreal pit stop. This 25-minute collage of audition pieces is performed by the current graduating class, under the direction of Jonathan Goad, Brendan Healy and/or Sherrie Bie. No charge, and no reservations necessary.

Anyone who took in the National Theatre School’s amazing Greek tragedy kAdmOs – Damned Be the Hands That Did This Thing, directed by Yael Farber, will be eagerly anticipating their next English production: Arctic Ocean, by student playwright Jill Connell, directed by Denise Clarke.

Read more at MontrealGazette.com