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February 2012

Tuesday February 7, 2012
Bryden MacDonald's Whale Riding Weather at the Sex Festival

Wednesday February 8, 2012
Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje and Daniel Brooks - Theatre Passe Muraille

Thursday February 9, 2012
bill bissett: problematics - UFV

Thursday February 9, 2012
The Long Poem Workshop - Jay MillAr

Thursday February 9, 2012
Problem Child & The End of Civilization - George F. Walker - Telus Studio Theatre

Thursday February 9, 2012
Moving Along - Chris Craddock - Roxy Theatre

Wednesday February 15, 2012
Write Here Readers Series - North Island College

Thursday February 16, 2012
2012 Gabriola Poetry Festival

Friday February 17, 2012
House - Daniel MacIvor - The ARTS Project Theatre

Saturday February 18, 2012
HOME FRONT, a reading series - Sharon Thesen

Thursday February 23, 2012
Talking Stick Festival presents In a World Created by a Drunken God

Friday February 24, 2012
Galiano Literary Festival - 2012

Saturday February 25, 2012
red diva projects - Marie Clements, Michelle St. John, Women from DTES Centre

Tuesday February 28, 2012
The Leisure Society - Trafalgar Studios - UK

March 2012

Thursday March 1, 2012
Fred Wah - Versefest in Ottawa

Thursday March 1, 2012
Gordon - Morris Panych - Revue Stage

Thursday March 1, 2012
Where the Blood Mixes - Kevin Loring - Remai Arts Centre

Friday March 9, 2012
Ms Thing - Vancouver Women in Film Festival - Embracing the Darkness

Saturday March 10, 2012
How To Write A Poem For The Queen: a workshop with the Parliamentary Poet Laureate

Wednesday March 21, 2012
BellaLuna's Fresco - Lucia Frangione - Shadbolt Centre and Cultch

Friday March 23, 2012
Words on the Water - Campbell River Writer's Festival 2012

April 2012

Friday April 13, 2012
Bordertown Cafe - Kelly Rebar - Toledo Repertoire Theatre

Thursday April 19, 2012
Down Dangerous Passes Road - Michel Marc Bouchard - Encore Theatre

Tuesday April 24, 2012
The Real World? - Michel Tremblay -Tarragon Theatre

Monday April 30, 2012
M.A.C. Farrant at Banff Centre in 2012

Posted: Thursday February 2, 2012

Jerry Wasserman on Studio 4 with Fanny Kiefer

Professor and Head, UBC Dept. of Theatre and Film, Jerry Wasserman speaks with Studio 4 Host Fanny Kiefer about saving the Videomatica library and current plays around Vancouver.

Wasserman is also the editor of Modern Canadian Plays, the 5th edition of which is forthcoming from Talon.

Posted: Thursday February 2, 2012

Whale Riding Weather Hits the Sex Festival!

Bryden MacDonald’s Whale Riding Weather will be at the Sex Festival, February 7th through the 12th. A finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, this is a love story in which a faded queen finds his mind slipping away from him along with his young lover, who meets a new, even younger man.

Here’s what the Georgia Straight had to say:

“The characters in Whale Riding Weather remind me of those Catholic pictures of Christ opening his chest to show us his sacred heart—except that this time Christ’s gay, he’s in his underwear, and he’s really, really drunk.”

Posted: Wednesday February 1, 2012

A Preview of Chris Craddock's Moving Along

From February 9-26 at the Roxy Theatre, award-winner Chris Craddock shares snapshots of his past while confined to an “Electro-Chair” equipped with lights and all-new sound which he controls himself to dramatic effect.

Posted: Wednesday February 1, 2012

Jeff Derksen reading from Dwell at Capilano College

Jeff Derksen read from Dwell at Capilano College in November 1993.

Posted: Tuesday January 24, 2012

8th Fire: Drew Hayden Taylor

To further explore Aboriginal culture, CBC Books is presenting a series of video interviews with authors, playwrights and storytellers to discuss how their heritage influences and inspires their work. This week, they talked to Drew Hayden Taylor, novelist, playwright and contemporary storyteller.

Posted: Tuesday January 24, 2012

Promo Video for Carmen Aguirre's Blue Box

Promotional video for Carmen Aguirre‘s Blue Box, an upcoming world premiere theatre piece produced by Nightswimming, in association with Neworld Theatre, which will appear May 1-12, 2012 at The Cultch in Vancouver.

Posted: Monday January 23, 2012

An Interview with Fred Wah

Angela Jung (yellowrainbootz) caught up with Canada’s new Poet Laureate Fred Wah after the Hapa-palooza Festival, and they discussed what it was like for him growing up and how that influenced many of his works, including Diamond Grill.

Posted: Friday January 20, 2012

Jillian Fargey In Absentia

(Jillian Fargey in Mark Leiren-Young’s The Green Chain)


Centaur Theatre is set to present the world premiere of In Absentia on January 31, another stirring oeuvre by Morris Panych, recipient of numerous awards including two Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama.

The cast includes Jillian Fargey, who plays a woman whose husband has been abducted while on a business trip to Columbia. The Vancouver-based actress might be new to the Montreal stage but she has worked with Morris Panych on several occasions. Fargey is an eight time Jessie Nominee and a two-time Jessie Award winner (including Best Actress for her performance in George F. Walker’s Problem Child).

As Roy Surette, Centaur Theatre’s Artistic and Executive Director indicates, “Panych admires her talent and the passion she brings to her character. ‘The writer and director are only the beginning of the acting process; the initiators. Jillian carries the character in her heart. She is deeply connected to the piece; that’s what a great actress does.’”

In Absentia will be available from Talonbooks this Fall (2012).

Posted: Thursday January 12, 2012

Ryan Beil, Classically Trained Actor DVD Intro

Ryan Beil’s Masterclass in Acting Method DVD is created by Weekend Leisure with Ryan Beil and GIANTS Comedy.

On January 14th Ryan will stage “Self-Quest,” a play he wrote in high school, as the centerpiece of GIANTS III, which will also feature Charles Demers, Adam Pateman, the Ryan and Amy Show, Fancy Pants Improv, and a great deal more. For tickets for GIANTS III visit http://tickets.thecultch.com/show.asp.

Seriously, Ryan Beil is acclaimed for taking on the role of Billy Bishop and 17 other characters in Billy Bishop Goes To War. He totes knows what he’s doing!

Posted: Wednesday January 11, 2012

Eric Peterson Nominated for ACTRA for Billy Bishop!

(Photo of Eric Peterson courtesy of Canadian Press)


Eric Peterson and Christopher Plummer, Canadian actors who move fluidly between stage and screen, have earned ACTRA Award nominations for their roles in theatre productions that were captured on film.

ACTRA Toronto, the largest branch of the union representing Canadian performers, announced nominees for its 10th Anniversary ACTRA Awards on Tuesday.

Plummer is a contender for his Tony-winning portrait of U.S. actor John Barrymore in the stage production Barrymore, which was made into a feature film after its 2011 revival in Toronto.

Peterson is a finalist for Billy Bishop Goes to War, the acclaimed Canadian stage musical about a First World War flying ace that he co-created in 1978 and has taken across the country. In recent years, he and collaborator John MacLachlan Gray revised and restaged the show.

It also became a movie, which aired on CBC-TV on Remembrance Day 2011.

Posted: Monday January 9, 2012

Librettist and Playwright John Murrell Returns to the Stage

(Photograph by: Rachel Psutka, Calgary Herald)


The first new play in a dozen years from Canadian dramatist, translator and librettist John Murrell, Taking Shakespeare is the eccentric and compassionate story of an unlikely threesome.

Murrell himself plays Prof, who is sixty-seven years old and stuck in a job he hates at a small university. His only good friend is William Shakespeare. Murph is twenty-four years old, out of focus, lost in his life. He’s never had a really close friend. There is no logical reason why their worlds should ever collide.

William Shakespeare is four hundred and fifty years old with hundreds of millions of friends. He is the improbable agent who brings Murph and Prof together for a few tutoring sessions, shaking up their lives through comedy, tragedy and a hunger for human understanding.

Taking Shakespeare runs January 10-28, 2012 at High Performance Rodeo in Calgary.

Posted: Tuesday January 3, 2012

Meg Tilly Hailed By Critics' Choice Spotlight Awards

(Photo of Meg Tilly courtesy of thestar.com)


Victoria theatre writers have singled out Meg Tilly for best performance in a professional production for the 2010-11 season.

The Critics’ Choice Spotlight Awards cited Tilly’s performance as Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, which was staged last summer by Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre and took three top awards. It was voted best professional production and Brian Richmond won for best direction.

Tilly is next set to star in Tarragon Theatre’s production of “The Real World?” by Michel Tremblay, which will start in April in Toronto.

Other winners in the annual Critics’ Choice Spotlight Awards include Narda McCarroll, who achieved the best set design for The Trespassers at the Belfry Theatre, Jacob Richmond‘s Ride the Cyclone for best musical production and Daniel MacIvor‘s Inside for best new play.

Posted: Tuesday January 3, 2012

The Rap Guide to Evolution! on MSNBC

Baba Brinkman discussing The Rap Guide to Evolution! on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC in 2010.

Posted: Friday December 23, 2011

All Is Flesh! Is Here!

We are happy to report that All Is Flesh is now available!

This book collects in one volume Governor General’s Award-winner Hugh Hazelton’s English translations of Yannick Renaud’s brilliant first two books of poems, Taxidermy and The Disappearance of Ideas, first published by Éditions Les Herbes rouges in Montreal.

The release of All Is Flesh marks a milestone for Talonbooks: although we have a long history of publishing French-to-English translations of works of fiction and drama, All Is Flesh is the first translation to be included on our poetry list.

Sometimes they both hear music. Usually their eyes lock, they
stare at each other, cover their ears so as not to hear what the
other might say. Usually the music, which governs the game,
without which the game wouldn’t exist, accompanies silence.
Their only companions, sighs on both sides.

Posted: Thursday December 22, 2011

The Leisure Society In Vogue

(Photo courtesy of Grazia Daily)

It’s not every day we run across one of our titles in Vogue.

There is certainly International buzz about Vogue cover girl Agyness Deyn, who will make her stage debut in February as a promiscuous “free spirit” in François Archambault’s “toxic comedy”, The Leisure Society.

The play will be performed at the ‘intimate’ Trafalgar Studios 2 in London, February 28 through March 02, 2012.

Posted: Tuesday December 20, 2011

Fred Wah Is Our Poet Laureate!

(Fred Wah doing his thing at the Talonbooks Bash for Karl and Christy Siegler)


We are delighted to announce that Fred Wah has been appointed Canada’s new Parliamentary Poet Laureate!

Of his seventeen books of poetry, is a door received the BC Book Prize, Waiting For Saskatchewan received the Governor-General’s Award and So Far was awarded the Stephanson Award for Poetry. In addition, Sentenced to Light was a finalist for the 2009 ReLit Award for Poetry.

Posted: Monday December 19, 2011

Adeena Karasick at post_moot

Adeena Karasick performs at the post_moot convocation 2010 at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, April 2010.

Posted: Friday December 16, 2011

Real Vancouver Writer's Series - 2nd Anniversary!

Click here for more information about this event.

Posted: Thursday December 15, 2011

Support Your Indie Bookshop This Sunday!

People’s Co-Op Books invites you to an in-store Open House on Sunday, December 18, 2011 that goes until late…

Book lovers will have a chance to mingle with many of the city’s most renowned writers while doing their holiday shopping at an Open House this Sunday at one of Vancouver’s few remaining independent bookstores.

Confirmed guests include George Bowering, David Chariandy, George Stanley, Ivan Coyote, Brad Cran, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Peter Darbyshire, Garry Thomas Morse, Aaron Peck, JJ Lee, Gillian Jerome, Jacqueline Turner, Ian Weir, Nikki Reimer, Rita Wong, Hiromi Goto, Dennis Bolen, Kaitlin Fontana and Sarah Levitt.

Click here for more information about the Open House.

Posted: Friday December 9, 2011

The Poets are Coming to Pages in Calgary!

On December 9, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Jake Kennedy, kevin mcpherson eckoff and derek beaulieu will appear at Pages bookstore in Calgary. Supplemental video above.

Posted: Wednesday December 7, 2011

Meredith Quartermain and Daphne Marlatt at Play Chthonics

On November 16, 2011, Meredith Quartermain and Daphne Marlatt read together at UBC as part of the Play Chthonics Reading Series.

Posted: Monday December 5, 2011

Cecily Nicholson at Play Chthonics

(Cecily Nicholson reading from Triage at the Talonbooks Bash for Karl and Christy Siegler)

As part of the Play Chthonics: New Canadian Readings Series at UBC, Cecily Nicholson will be reading with Jim Johnstone at 5pm on December 7, 2011.

Posted: Thursday December 1, 2011

A B Series Launch For Two New bill bissett Books

(Adeena Karasick channelling bill bissett at the Talonbooks Bash for Karl and Christy Siegler)


The A B Series is hosting launches for two new books in Ottawa on December 3, 2011.

> Go to story...

Posted: Thursday December 1, 2011

Talonbooks Presents Karl and Christy Siegler's Farewell Bash

On September 28, 2011, more than one hundred people packed into the exquisite Heritage Hall on Main Street in order to celebrate the literary work and contributions of Karl and Christy Siegler to the world of Canadian publishing.

It was an astounding night of speakers that highlighted many engaging and talented authors who are part of the stellar Talonbooks list that Karl and Christy Siegler established and cultivated over three decades.

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Posted: Tuesday November 29, 2011

Carmen Aguirre Tours Blue Box in 2012

Carmen Aguirre, the author of the memoir Something Fierce (D&M) and The Refugee Hotel (Talonbooks), will be touring her one-woman show Blue Box in 2012.

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Thursday February 2, 2012 in Meta-Talon

How to Bank Your Life on Speculative "Futures"

Jonathan Ball interviews Garry Thomas Morse about various speculative “futures”:

In two volumes of The Chaos! Quincunx, I use what William S. Burroughs called the “fold-in” method, which feels rather like battering some batter in a bowl. This process is exciting, because of its sense of immediacy. I’m never quite sure what the characters are going to do next!

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Thursday January 26, 2012 in Meta-Talon

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again Comes to Kamloops

Michel Tremblay’s For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again comes to Kamloops:

They may seem like everyday moments — and in many ways they are — but, with Lorne Cardinal and Margo Kane playing the only two characters, the play becomes “an homage to his mother,” Leyshon said.

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Monday January 23, 2012 in Meta-Talon

Anis Shivani Interviews Michael McClure

Anis Shivani interviewed Beat Poet Michael McClure On Jim Morrison, The Doors, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac for The Huffington Post on March 03, 2011:

Shivani: Is Olson the major figure in American poetry after Pound?

McClure: I do not like seeing poetry as literature rather than art and I’m not happy with the separation of Poetry and the sister arts, I prefer to see Art as Art. I perceive that a major figure after Pound would be Jackson Pollock, and instead of looking at “American” Poetry as William Carlos Williams exhorted all to do, I would look worldwide at the poetry of D.H. Lawrence, Federico Garcia Lorca, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and of course Charles Olson, and all.

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Thursday January 12, 2012 in Meta-Talon

Direct Harkening: A Review of On the Material

Andrew Vaisius reviews 2011 BC Book Prize Winner On the Material:

This poetry burns straight into your thoughts with a third degree of truth. Words matter. They aren’t frilly or sentimental, hoity-toity or academic. Collis writes in a language unencumbered by tired cliché or overwrought descriptions. His is a direct harkening, devoid of affectation, expressing the gut endurance of each sparking woman/man capable of the “natural brilliance of the human spirit.”

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