Writers Radio

P122 The Last Wilderness: Carole Harmon“ I’m working in that part of Canada which stands on end.”Byron HarmonWhat is wild? This question underlies Carole Harmon’s inquiry into the role her family played in the colonial history of western North America, specifically the Pacific Northwest in the USA and the Canadian Rockies. The Last Wilderness centres on her paternal grandfather, Byron Harmon, who photographed and filmed the Canadian Rockies and adjoining mountain ranges between 1906 and 1934. It delves into family history and introduces some of the remarkable characters with whom he shared a life in this mountain wilderness.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

A Memoir Through Essays and Other StoriesIngrid RoseThe body is Ingrid Rose's touchstone as she explores her life through stories and personal essays:• Her relationship with her twin brother, Tim• Her New York adventures as a young woman, waitressing in a jazz club and performing with Warm Rain, a spoken word and music ensemble • Her spiritual and intellectual transformation from a young communist to a spiritual seeker• Discovering her body as a source and interpreter of consciousness.From her childhood in London, England, to living in intentional communities in the Cotswolds and France, Ingrid arrived in Vancouver, Canada, in 1996. She is a storyteller, writing mentor, and author who explores body/mind/spirit.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

They Lived Ever AfterStories and true accounts about the resilience of the human spirit, the importance of fairy tales, and creativity as a wellspring in troubling times.Una Suseli O'Connell: They Lived Ever AfterMedwyn McConachy: Vasilysa and the Coloured StonesGraem Castell: By Way of Beachy HeadMohamad Kebbewar: FragmentedFrom the Anthology, Off the Map: Vancouver writers with lived experience of mental health issues:Kate Bird: ShelterVenge Dixon: LinusGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, Dreams Before ExtinctionProgram 3 of 3: Readings from the anthologyJoJo Donovan: Dispatches from the Collapse of TimeNora Jamieson: I Am Nothing Without My DeadWendy Gorchinsky Lambo: Making Love With a Three Billion Year Old WomanSusan Cerulean: Bear RequiemJuliana Borrero Echeverry: Landscapes at the End of the WorldORDER THE ANTHOLOGY HEREDark Matter Women WitnessingGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Program 2 of 3: Readings from the anthologyDeena Metzger: Dreaming Another Language; She Will not KillIntroducing The Literature of RestorationMiriam Greenspan: Seeing in the Dark, from the sectionTo Witness: Seeing in the DarkSharon Rodgers Simone, Fired Anew, from the section Fired Anew: What it Means to HealCynthia Travis, Listen With Your Feet, from the section The Grammar of AnimacyNancy Windheart, Aspen Ways of Knowing, from the sectionWhat We Know in Our BonesGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Edited from the first ten years of the online literary journal "Dark Matter: Women Witnessing," this anthology is a heartfelt and inspiring collection of written and visual responses inspired by dreams, visions, and activism, all aimed at healing our fractured relationship with the earth.Sixty-seven authors from six countries have contributed to this anthology of 79 pieces, spanning 572 pages, divided into nine sections. Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

American Bloodlines, Reckoning with Lynch Culture combines memoir with reportage and cultural criticism to interrogate and complicate the traditional narrative about how lynch culture is created in families, communities and institutions.Summer 1936, Owensboro Kentucky.In just four and a half minutes, an all white, all male jury convicts Rainey Bethea, a young Black man, of the rape and murder of an elderly white woman. Bethea is hanged near the banks of the Ohio River in the last documented public execution in America.Bethea's story comes to author Sonya Lea, who was born in Owensboro, through her family. She reckons with its truths and the broader implications of systemic racism, not just in the past, but in today's culture, politics and justice systems.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Penny Allport is a poet, wordsmith, painter, teacher and mentor living in Victoria, Canada. As a life-cycle celebrant, she co-creates ceremonies and rituals with individuals, couples and groups, to weave words which serve and express the sometimes un-expressible mysteries of love, life and loss.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

I have made of myself into a long river of words, a plain flatlands meander of words looping back, looping ahead.from Encrypted by Arleen ParéProlific, award-winning Canadian poet Arleen Paré joins Ingrid Rose in conversation about her books: Paper Trail (2007), Leaving Noe (2011), Lake of Two Mountains (2014), He Leaves His Face in the Funeral Car (2015), The Girls with Stone Faces (2017), Earle Street (2020), First (2021), Last (2022, Chapbook), Time Out of Time (2022), Don’t Tell: Family Secrets (2022, co-edited with Donna McCart Sharkey), Absence of Wings (2024), Encrypted (2025).Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

POEMS: Kelsey Andrews and Jacinda OldaleThere is a connection between the work of Canadian poets Kelsey Andrews and Jacinda Oldale. Both women have been writing poetry for most of their lives, using it as a means to understand and express their personal experiences, covering life's challenges and their responses to the natural world, day by day. Poetry is their chosen tool for transformation.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Women Who Write is the title chosen by a group of eight women for their writing group, which formed after they met in a Simon Fraser University continuing studies creative writing class in Vancouver, facilitated by Ingrid Rose. This gathering occurred over ten years ago. The eight of them, with ages ranging from their sixties to early nineties, continued to meet monthly and recently published a chapbook of their poems and stories. Recording their work for this program, The Pace of Grace, Women Who Write also serves as an opportunity to honour the memory of one of the eight poets, Donna Nanson, whose piece is read by her husband, Derrick.Host / Producer: Ingrid Rose, Music / Producer: J. Gary SillGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

DEATH OF PERSEPHONE: A MURDERAn award-winning Canadian poet reimagines the Greek myth of Persephone in her 2024 release from Caitlin Press.“Hardboiled detective tropes meet classical myths and free-form poetry. A breathtaking work of imaginative cross-pollination”   Will Ferguson, Giller Prize-winning author of 419“In Death of Persephone, Blomer stalks back alleys, asking urgent questions: Why is the violence against women and girls in myth still haunting us today?...Blomer walks us out of the old story and into this essential retelling”  Ariel Gordon, poet and author of Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest.Stylistically varied and always engaging, an excerpt from this long-form poetry book won the Gwendolyn MacEwen poetry prize in 2021.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Feet of Clay, the title of Graem Castell's epic memoir, refers to the awful behaviors of mankind. This highly enjoyable book [the book, not the title] is filled with pointers to more enlightened living.At 86, Graem looks back on an adventurous life with humour and very few regrets. As a young child, he fled with his mother and baby brother from the Japanese invasion of Malaya in 1942; at 19, he served as an officer with the legendary Gurkhas in the jungles of Malaya; in his mid-twenties, he opened a spectacularly successful restaurant in "Swinging London" with others to follow; and founded a spiritually-based community on the Scottish island of Iona in his early thirties. His adventures had hardly begun.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Postcards from Katherine is a series of short personal essays that Katherine Govier publishes for free on her website, katherinegovier.com. In this program, she muses on the series and reads from several of her “postcards.“Canadian author Katherine Govier is known for novels such as The Ghost Brush (The Printmaker’s Daughter in the US), which imagines the life of Katsushika Ōi, the talented daughter of Japanese artist Hokusai. She founded The Shoe Project, a writing workshop that helps immigrant and refugee women tell their stories using shoes as a metaphor. Katherine has been recognized by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association for Excellence in Arts and was awarded the Order of Canada in 2019.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Angela J. GreyAngela writes about race, equity, and the impact of colonization on all peoples in Canada. She offers a unique perspective on children of the African/Caribbean diaspora who are adopted into white families- a part of Canadian history that is not well documented. Angela is a graduate of the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive (VMI) and a recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts - Explore and Create - grant (2022).Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Readings in Three Voices by Medwyn McConachy"to seek a new life free of social constraints and prejudice based on class or race."Medwyn McConachy could not have imagined, when she left England in 1966, that she would become a writer and fiber artist, live in cities, the north, and on an island, become a witch, and change her first name from Janet to Medwyn.Medwyn reads three excerpts from her series of creative non-fiction, memoir-based essays written from the perspectives of friends, family members, and her younger self, Janet.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Ethel Whitty says, "I write about extraordinary, ordinary women searching for their own truths."  Ethel Whitty was born and raised on Cape Breton Island, in Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. Those were years when the depth and warmth of the culture had to be balanced against the island's isolation and the struggles of working-class people. The experiences and community of her childhood significantly influenced her fictional characters and narratives in "The Light a Body Radiates."  Since moving to Vancouver, Ethel has served as the Director of the Carnegie Centre in Vancouver's downtown eastside for twelve years, where she drew inspiration from the resilience and spirit of resistance she discovered in that community. Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Barbara Baydala from Ladner, BC, writes A Family of PoemsI’ve recently been contemplating a collection of writings about my father and have realized through assembling these poems for Writers Radio that I can’t write about my father without placing the two of us amidst our family in all its many guises.Vancouver poet Colette Gagnon revisits her memoir-based poetry, further exploring the use of form. This suite of five poems centres around the grief and loss of her brother Phil and includes an excerpt from a childhood narrative entitled Lure. Thematically, these are haunted voices-- of dream, reverie, elegy, foretelling.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Twice a year, we have a themed call for submissions from our pool of writers. I didn’t know what to expect when I asked for Good Bedtime Stories. Serendipity was at work.Jeremy Page and Alison Goeller met in an online class on mystery writing and were eventually paired off to critique each other's work. They've kept in touch and occasionally send each other their work. Ingrid Rose and Peter Buckman are cousins.These authors read for us in this episode:Jeremy Page: The Ghost of Haversham HaltAlison Goeller: Murder in ProvenceIngrid Rose: Power of AttractionPeter Buckman: The Spectre of the StonesAuthor, editor, and translator Jeremy Page lives in Lewes, England. He writes both prose and poetry. Jeremy is a former Director of Language Studies at the University of Sussex and the founder of the literary journal The Frogmore Papers.Alison Goeller is a former professor of American literature, now living in Uzès, a medieval town in France. Her murder mystery series features locksmith Will Sargent and his wife, Poppy, characters inspired by Alison’s locksmith uncle, Gil Deming, and his wife, Phyllis.Memoirist, lyric prose writer, creative writing teacher, and editor Ingrid Rose lives in Vancouver. She is a co-producer of Writers Radio.English author Peter Buckman has written books, plays, and scripts for film, television, and radio. His long career in publishing includes founding Ampersand Agency, a UK-based literary agency representing commercial and literary fiction and non-fiction authors.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

The loneliness of narrative, the loneliness of seeking truth, is our human condition. It is our task as writers. Betsy WarlandBetsy’s popular inquiry into the act of writing, Breathing the Page, Reading the Act of Writing is in its second edition with an additional ten essays. Betsy reads one of these essays: Narrative Position, for this program.In our conversation, Betsy elaborates on her personal quest to understand and articulate her unique narrative position, "person of between" in their own life and work.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Re-imagining a classic fairy tale with puppeteer, puppet builder, performer, director and filmmaker Kris Fleerackers.Bored and tired of doing chores, little Lotte Grimm sneaks a peek at a ‘broken’ fairy tale her older brothers have collected. To fix it, she finds a way to enter the story and save its heroine, but not everything goes as planned…Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Radical Acts of LoveHow We Find Hope at the End of LifeJanie Brown has been an oncology nurse, first in Glasgow, then Vancouver for four decades.She  is the founder of the Callanish Society which, through programs and retreats, creates a healing space for people who have been irrevocably changed by cancer.“With Radical Acts of Love, Janie Brown demonstrates the power of a book to transform, in fact to turn things upside down. She turns death into life, despair into hope, sorrow into joy, and pain into love with these twenty astonishing encounters with the dying. We all know somewhere in the back of our minds that a deeper understanding and acceptance of death is supposed to release us into an even fiercer embrace of life—this wonderful book made me, for the first time, truly feel and believe it. Unforgettably wise, kind and wonderful.” Stephen FryOrder Radical Acts of Love from your library or favourite bookseller. It is also available as an e-book from Kindle and Apple Books, and an audio book. Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

meditations on art, myth, archaeology, ceremony, and deathCome, anguish. Help us manage / the plainsong of an open shore, / its language of high tide rich and close, / close and hard to see.In her conversation with Ingrid Rose, Miranda discusses how lifelong themes and experiences are interwoven in this book, like the white lines which connect the stones on the cover of her book. Like love renewed while visiting the Bridestones, (sandstone rock formations in Yorkshire). Or world seen from bird's-eye perspective in a poem from her book, The Aviary.Miranda Pearson has homes in Vancouver and Kent, England, where she grew up. She came to Canada as a psychiatric nurse and still works in the health care field in Vancouver.She has an MFA from University of British Columbia; she is an editor and creative writing instructor. Bridestones, (2024) is her sixth book of poetry, published as part of the juried Hugh McLennan Poetry Series by McGill-Queen's University Press. Of her previous titles both The Fire Extinguisher and Harbour were nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and The Aviary, (2006) won the Alfred G. Bailey Prize from the Writers Federation of Newfoundland. Order Bloodstones from the publisher, your local bookstore,  library, or favourite online retailer. It is available as an e-book from Amazon and Kobo, but sadly not from Apple Books.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Gambit, a word from chess, struck our producer, Ingrid Rose, as appropriate to the daring and wide-ranging work created recently by authors from our growing Writers Radio community.Each program in this two part series is scheduled for three weeks instead of two while our producers take a summer break: Ingrid is off to France and Carole is getting a new hip.PART 2Elizabeth Cunningham, Look to This Day, Poems for Doris McCarthy“ Look to This Day: Poems for Doris McCarthy is a rich ekphrastic dialogue between poet Elizabeth Cunningham and painter Doris McCarthy, [1910-2010]. Poet Jenna Butler wrote about this book, " McCarthy’s paintings, and her cottage on Georgian Bay, became a refuge to Cunningham during the weary years of the pandemic; they also became profound connection points between two deeply creative women, important links between shared views of the more-than-human world and its exquisite beauty. Look to This Day is the most engaged sort of homage: it is an intimate and intelligent exploration of the very ways of seeing and holding space in the world that underpin McCarthy’s work.” Kevin Spenst, A Bouquet Brought Back from Space, Anvil Press, 2024.Kevin writes of this book: I live in a bachelor suite in a building named the Stanley Park Manor in Vancouver’s West End...A Bouquet Brought Back from Space contains a crown of sonnets dedicated to my friend Jeff Steudel, who also lived in this building decades ago, written immediately after I’d learned of Jeff’s passing. My book takes inspiration from Rilke in several ways, one of which is through Jeff’s fascination with Rilke and how he wove his words and ideas through his own poetry. Rilke became more and more important to some of the book’s overall themes of angels, isolation and love.Susan Dambroff, A Chair Keeps the Floor Down, Finishing Line Press, 2021These poems are dedicated to the children Susan had the privilege of teaching, and who taught her. Written after retiring from a rich career as a special education teacher in San Francisco, as a way to honor each heartbreak and celebration she encountered, and to move into the next more spacious journey of her life. As a teacher she would corral the children into loops of captivating play just as the poems do as they witness taking the journey out of the classroom into the lives of their families and communities.Alison Goeller, Frozen in Love (A Will Sargent Mystery) Alison Goeller, who lives in Provence,  writes short stories and mystery novels. Frozen in Love is the second of a four part series featuring Will Sargent. "The idea to write a series of murder mysteries set in the fictional village of Wilburne, Vermont, and featuring a local locksmith (Will Sargent) and his bookish wife (Poppy) was inspired by my uncle Bill Deming--a real locksmith-- and his wife Phyllis, both long-time residents of the village of Shelburne, Vermont. In Frozen in Love a restaurant manager is found dead inside a meat freezer. When Poppy discovers an unusual smell emanating from her husband’s brand-new winter gloves, a dangerous journey to solve the murder ensues."ORDER these fine books:Elizabeth Cunningham, Look to This Day, Poems for Doris McCarthy was published by Elizabeth's business, Waterside Arts, in time for the twentieth anniversary celebration of the Doris McCarthy Museum at University of Toronto in May 2024. ORDERS: Waterside Arts: 5-1106, 7th St, Nelson, BC, V1L 0A1, CanadaKevin Spenst, A Bouquet Brought Back from Space, may be ordered from the publisher, AnvGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Gambit, a word from chess, struck our producer, Ingrid Rose, as appropriate to the daring and wide-ranging work created recently by authors from our growing Writers Radio community.This will be a two part series; each program will run for three weeks instead of two while our producers take a summer break: Ingrid is off to France and Carole is getting a new hip.PART 1Cathy Stonehouse: Dream House, A Poem, Nightwood Editions, 2024, short-listed for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award (2024)Cathy writes about this reading: "Dream House emerged after the experience of visiting my mother in a nursing home in the UK, where I grew up, and emptying her small house, in a matter of days...the book begins with an evocation of the journey to the nursing home, and, by association, from life to death. A poem about my mother and one about my grandmother then follow. This long poem is therefore an attempt to both celebrate and question my inheritance from them as daughter, grand-daughter, poet and ultimately mother to my own daughter."Tariq Malik: Blood of Stone, poetry, Caitlin Press, 2024Tariq has written: "In Blood of Stone Tariq Malik revisits Kotli, the 1,000-year-old city of his formative years in the province of Punjab, Pakistan following partition. Marked by the traumas of dislocation and migration, the city and its inhabitants share secrets and longings, chronicled and imagined by Malik as he gives voice to a personal history that precedes his experiences as an immigrant in Canada."Chad Norman: Parental Forest, poetry, Ace of Swords Publishing. 2024"In Chad Norman's poetry, the world is created and re-created with great attention to details and beings involved...where everything is connected and interchangeable - a person, a plant, a bird, a tree. Each poem sounds like a secret recipe for medicine, the healing effect of which the author knows and generously shares with us" Halyna Kruk, fellow poet & professor of European and Ukrainian baroque literature, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv.Cornelia Hoogland writes:"I'm pulling together a new collection of poetry with the working title Snowing Inside. Does Snowing Inside evoke an image for you? Some of the many poems go back 20 years and I'm choosing the ones that want, need, to talk to each other. I'm creating a conversation.Plus, my life has changed. How is something the book will take up. The thing I've noticed about the newest poems, which is that, the closer I am to the terminus of my life, I'm 70, the more vivid are the long connections to my beginnings: a trajectory with a philosophical bent. Here's a line that might underscore the book. We were taught there's a heaven above, but not how on earth to live in between."All the books in this Writers Gambit series are available from online retailers and may be ordered from your favourite bookstore. Happy summer reading!Produced by Ingrid Rose, Carole Harmon and Gary Sill, Writers Radio programs reach deeply into the collective mind of our times. We broadcast from Halfmoon Bay, on traditional tribal land of the self-governing shIshalh Nation, on the west coast of Canada. We express our profound regret for past and present injustices done to all indigenous peoples through colonization, and our gratitude to them for their wisdom teachings and land stewardship which are much needed guidance today and into the future.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Consider the World Treeher mantling greenour swaddling gown dismantledan iron word falling felling, disruptingold growth's primal ground...Susan McCaslinCanadian poet and literary scholar Susan McCaslin lives in Langley, British Columbia. She is the author of seventeen books of poetry and ten chapbooks.In Consider, (Aolus House, 2023), Susan explores her evolving experience of the figure of Jesus in relation to the wisdom teachers and activists of diverse spiritual traditions. By turns mystical and playful, provocative and insightful, many of the poems have ekphrastic inspirations.In my conversation with Susan we focus on the connection between mystical experience and activism which I sense as themes of the book.We also discuss Susan's role as editor of Walking Into God by E.D. Blodgett which was released in spring 2024 by Farleigh Dickinson University Press. Susan also reads from Walking Into God.Carole Harmon, Writers Radio produceredited by Susan McCaslinCelebrated Canadian poet, E.D. Blodgett's final book of poetryAuthor of over thirty books of poetry, and winner of many awards, Ted Blodgett's Walking Into God was written during his struggle with terminal cancer. It was published posthumously, produced as a labour of love by his friends, fellow artists, and contributors Susan McCaslin, Sheila Martineau, and Yukiko Onley."What interests me in poetry is the interplay of language, the page, and silence. Heaven falls out of words because possibility is in the page, another kind of heaven; I wonder if that's the only heaven we are given to know in life". Edward Dickinson (Ted) BlodgettGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Listen to this lively event recorded May 4 at our studio in Halfmoon Bay on the Sunshine Coast in Canada.Canadian authors Caitlin Hicks and Liz Long joined moderator Gord Halloran, pianist  Gary Sill, and a live audience to discuss,The child I was...the adult I becameThis program was Writers Radio's first live event and it went very well. We wanted to create a conversation which reached beyond a lone listener to engage a live audience.We began with brunch at Carole and Gary's home (sorry you will miss this part), then adjourned to Gary Sill's studio for readings and discussion.This program is close to an hour long so take it in courses if you like but do listen to the end for the insightful discussion with our lively audience.The Child I was—the adult I became•Gary Sill, improvisational pianist (standing with arms crossed)•Canadian artist Gord Halloran is our moderator•Liz Long, author•Caitlin Hicks, author•Carole Harmon introduces Writers Radio•Ingrid Rose with her hand up in the audienceLiz Long's book, Navigating Shitstorms: How to Find Your True Path When Life Gets Rough is part memoir and part self-help guide. Traumatized by the disappearance of her aunt when Liz was six, Liz has learned how to follow her heart voice from Victimtown to Freedomville.Caitlin Hicks has published two engaging novels based on her own childhood growing up in a large Catholic family in Pasadena, Ca. Annie Shea is her creative and delightful main character in both A Theory of Expanded Love and Kennedy Girl. Annie will do anything to shine.All three books are on Amazon but do ask for them from your favourite book seller. Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Atma Frans lives in Gibsons, on ancestral Sḵwx̱wú7mesh territory that is part of Canada’s Sunshine Coast.She grew up in Flanders, a region of Belgium which was continuously invaded and occupied since Julius Caesar first conquered it in 52 BCE, and which only recently gained cultural and political autonomy.Atma’s childhood was marked by intergenerational trauma: her parents were children in the Second World War, her grandparents in the First. Yet her work also pays tribute to another side of her Flemish heritage — the spirited perseverance Belgians are known for in spite of their troubled history, as well as their firm determination to enjoy the good things in life.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

The adventures that we wanted to have, the adventures that we did have kayaking for months on end in very remote parts of the world where there were tropical diseases, hippos, crocodiles, big seas, big sea crossings, or cycling, the whole length of Vietnam just after it opened up, I mean, some of these were really, really challenging adventures. I know there's no way that I could have brought a child along…Maria Coffey in conversation with Carole HarmonAuthor Maria Coffey grew up in a conservative Irish Catholic family with a mother who wished nothing more than to be a grandmother. Instead, Maria was introduced to the world of high risk adventure by her older brother who climbed mountains. She fell in love with a famous climber, Joe Tasker, who died on Everest. This was a turning point of her life. She began to write, moved from England to Canada, met and married veterinarian and photographer Dag Goering who loves adventure as much as she does. Maria and Dag have travelled the world in kayaks, by bike and on foot. They run an award winning adventure travel company called Hidden Places. Maria and Dag still explore the world together, scout and create new trips, and fund conservation work. Maria and BacMeeting Vinh and BacThe question of motherhood never altogether left Maria. In 1994 in Vietnam Dag and Maria met street children Vinh and Bac who they tried to help. Fortune didn't smile on their attempt to relocate the children in an SOS Children's Village.Maria with Agnes and her son AdrianMeeting AgnesIn 2011 Maria and Dag were on safari in Kenya where they met Agnes, a young Samburu woman facing difficult circumstances. With their help she realized her dreams of going to university. They remain very close to her and her two children.Instead was published by Rocky Mountain Books in 2023. All thirteen of Maria's books are available online and make fascinating reading. She explores the hidden facets of extreme sport, topics rarely discussed and almost never spoken of in public.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Alison Goeller is a former professor of American literature who taught in Philadelphia and at the University of Maryland overseas. She lives in Uzès, a medieval town in Provence.Ingrid Rose discusses family secrets and the writing life with Alison Goeller who also reads her short stories Fallen and Pepita on this episode of Writers Radio.Alison Goeller's short stories have been published in numerous literary magazines. She is the author of three mystery novels whose main character, Will Sargent, was inspired by her locksmith uncle. Frozen in Love and The Possessive Case are available on Amazon.Alison is currently working on a novel about the Grand Tour of Europe, based on her great grandmother’s diary.Read another of Alison's short stories, Tom, on the online platform, Discretionary Love.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

The life of Great Salt Lake is inseparable from our own. We gather to bear witness to her beauty. We gather to grieve. We gather to create beacons of possibility. We gather to increase our tenderness towards brine shrimp, microbialites, and winged citizens of the air. We gather to carry each other through spells of despair. We gather to revere all that is vital and alive...We continue to honor a great intelligence deserving of legally defensible personal rights, as we sing back to a ever-singing and sentient entity. Nan Seymour, Great Salt Lake VigilPoet, teacher of writing, and community activist Nan Seymour lives near Great Salt Lake, which is in peril, as are inland saline seas around the world—from climate change but also from human generated polution and environmentally unsustainable practices which threaten their existence. Dams on tributary rivers divert flow of water to the lake, which is shrinking. Sequestered toxic chemicals from industrial farms and industry which have settled on the lake bottom create dust storms of pollution as the lake recedes. Wildlife are forced to leave this habitat which is on the North American flyway for migratory birds.Beginning in January 2022 Nan Seymour has spearheaded a daily vigil for the lake, corresponding to the seven week period of the Utah State legislative session. The vigil began in 2022 as one woman, Nan, living in a trailer on Antelope Island, supported by fellow writers and friends. It has grown in number, voice, and action to include other writers, fellow citizens, scientists,  environmental groups, Indigenous voices, and occasional voices from abroad who have written about this vigil which is less a protest movement than a determined community statement of intent to save the lake.n 2024 the vigil "walked the waves" around Utah State capital building, morning and evening, sometimes joined by law-makers.Irreplaceable, a collective long poem of over 500 voices which has resulted from the vigil will be published in 2024.coming in 2024, Beloved Water Body, poems by Nan SeymourNan's first book of poetry, Prayers Not Meant For Heaven, was published as a chapbook by Toad Hall Editions in 2021. You can order it from the publisher.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

"I walk along a corridor in the Museum of memory" writes Onjana Yawnghwe.Onjana Yawnghwe's grandfather was the last ruling head of Shan State in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. He was the first president of unified Burma, which was set up as a hoped for democratic state. In 1962 the first military coup of what is now the longest running civil war in modern times saw Onjana's parents fighting in the jungles of Burma, where her older brother was born. The family fled to Thailand, where Onjana was born, and finally immigrated to Canada with nothing but a pile of suitcases on a luggage cart.Growing up Onjana was protected from her turbulent past by her family but suffered, nevertheless, the trauma and exclusions immigrants face. As an adult she revisits her turbulent ancestral history, distilling its essence in verse.Work in ProgressHomes: A Pictorial Archive of MemoryOnjana Yawnghwe is also an illustrator as seen in this graphic memoir; view excerpts are on her website, Onjana Yawnghwe.com.Rivers of Memory and Onjana's previous book of poetry, The Small Way, were published by Caitlin Press. They  can be ordered from the publisher or your favourite bookstore or online book outlet.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

At this stage of my journey, I've returned to my ten year old self when poetry was as natural as a fresh stream. - Yehudit SilvermanWhether writing of the war in Israel / Gaza, deaths of loved ones, or nature Yehudit Silverman distills a life spent as artist and healer in her recent poetry. In this episode we discuss both her writing and her work as a creative art therapist, author and film-maker. The Story Within: Myth and Fairy Tale in Therapy & The Hidden Face of SuicideBased on her clinical work in several hospitals, and as the former Chair, professor, in the Department of Creative Arts Therapies at Concordia University, Montreal, Yehudit understands the power of the arts for healing. Her book and film, T he Story Within - Myth and Fairy Tale in Therapy, as well as her film, The Hidden Face of Suicide, encourage others to discover their own creativity and resilience even in the face of great suffering.Yehudit SilvermanGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Pervin Saket is the pen name of a multi-genre poet, novelist, playwright, children's author and essayist who lives in Mumbai, India. She writes of identity and the purpose of language influenced by her family's Zoroastrian, ( Parsi ) faith and the caste system of her home country. Inspired by a forgotten woman from a timeless epic, Inspired by a forgotten woman from a timeless epic, the Ramayana, Pervin’s novel Urmila rekindles questions of love, devotion and desire in contemporary India. Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

My body on a bus stop bench is a place of high drama, writes  poet Alison Braid-Fernandez in her poem, Blue Dot, which is included in the Montreal Poetry Prize 2022 Anthology.Alison Braid-Fernandez is a Canadian poet who has lived in Prague, Vancouver and now London, England. Her work is informed by the legacy and environment of these unique locales and the relationships she has encountered with individuals, trains and buses, parks, fruit, colours, the devices we live with. Lately she has been writing ekphrastic poems which take their inspiration from art works but also from overlapping influences such as music and the written word. Their influences on the body are at the heart of Alison's poems. The ekphrastic references are so complex, juicy and evocative that I decided to list them here as an aid to the listener in my fascinating interchange with Alison. Enjoy.Blue Dot: after Dorothea Lasky, Animal, essaysEkphrasis Yourself, Jennifer Nelson, Woodland Pattern Book Centre, woodland pattern.orgEmbracing Confusion, Bryon Cherry, woodlandpattern.orgLight Upon the Body, after Adrienne Dagg, Luncheon in Room 206, Bau-Xi GalleryMoving Continents, after Leonardo Cappiello, Chocolat Klaus, Library of CongressNectarine Heart #1 after John Wilde, Boxed Fruit #1: A Nectarine, Milwaukee Art MuseumOranges, after Erin Armstrong, Between Two Minds, Bau-Xi GalleryAlison Braid-Fernandez's first chapbook, Little Hunches was published with Anstruther Press (2020.) She is presently working on a short story collection, Look Both Ways and Other Stories. Visit her website to learn and read more. Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

The world is made up of stories, many of which remain untold. History told from the point of view of grand achievements, harrowing deeds, or significant events omits the effects of history on personal lives, family, and community.The childhood memoirs of Jadzia Prenosil and Elizabeth Herejk couldn't be more different, yet each illuminates the hardships faced by families following World War 2. Each memoir has been realized through new models of self-publishing.Elizabeth Herejk's memoir, From Kendal to Canada: An Adventurous Spirit follows her childhood growing up in Kendal, a small market town in Cumbria, England, her interesting nursing career in Canada, and her varied retirement activities. Elizabeth regards From Kendal to Canada as legacy work written for her family and friends with emphasis on her European heritage. Life in Kendal was austere, a story of self-reliance and ingenuity at a time of food shortages and other privations which inevitably follow war.Jadzia Prenosil's memoir, My Childhood Behind the Iron Curtain details an even grimmer post-war life. In 1968 Russia invaded Czechoslovakia and Jadzia's mother died unexpectedly. In the aftermath of this double tragedy her father remained in Europe and Jadzia and her sisters emigrated to Canada, sponsored by an aunt. Jadzia was seventeen. A brutal beginning to life in a new country.Jadzia wrote this memoir in memory of her beloved mother and sisters for her family and friends in Vancouver. It illustrates how love and strength of family can endure great hardship.Both authors self-published their memoirs through new publishing models which make this sort of project possible.In her conversations with the authors, Ingrid Rose discusses the process each went through in bringing their memoir to fruition.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Kat, the protagonist in Jane Callen’s novel, Bernini’s Elephant,  leads the reader on a dark adventure of transformation. This tale of murder and redemption is set within contrasting environments in Canada and Italy with lush descriptions of Vancouver, the coastal wilderness of Vancouver Island, and the high art world of Florence and Venice.“Genre-defying. Callen draws us deep into the vivid art world, conjuring the life and legacy of a young Italian painter and his muse, an older lover with a poisoned past. A literary mystery spanning two continents; the moral stakes of human desire create an intelligent and utterly absorbing read. A sensual, richly detailed glimpse of Italian architecture, art, family secrets, and above all: the struggles of love.”—SUSAN DOHERTY, author of A Secret Music, and The Ghost GardenBernini's Elephant was published by Guernica Editions in May 2023. You may order it from the publisher or your favourite library, bookstore or online source.Visit Jane's website to learn more of her writing and current projects.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

GOODBYE TO LAMPEDUSAIt is what they saybecause the sea does not have footprintsto see where others have ended their journeys,and today—this incandescent afternoon—they tell you to followthe path of the wind,follow it to where the water leads youas a new merchandise arriveswith a parcel of goodbye.Goodbye is what they tell youas your final parting gift, so closeyour heart to unholy thoughtsabout the waves.Nigerian poet Salawu Ọlájídé  joins host Ingrid Rose to discuss his chapbook, Preface for Leaving Homeland.Ọlájídé is a Ph.D candidate at University of Alberta with a passionate interest in de-colonization. "Goodbye is a migrant word",  Ọlájídé says of the title of his poem, Goodbye to Lampedusa.Lampedusa, an island off the coast of Italy known for fishing and tourism has welcomed many African migrants in the past. In autumn 2023 the resources of this generous island were overwhelmed by Africans fleeing war and poverty, “We find people at sea – on boats and in the water – and we rescue them,” Pietro Riso, a local fisherman told Al Jazeera. “At times, we find bodies in our nets.”Ọlájídé is also passionate about preservation of Indigenous language. "When I see Nigerian writers writing in English receiving national awards, I recognize an implicit gesture of exclusion going on as well. I wonder what kind of awakening could greet Nigerian literature if more indigenous voices were included in these literary spaces." from a 2021 article, On the Politics of Language in Nigerian Literature, Ọlájídé Salawu Examines the Colonial Grounding of the Country's Literary Industry.NOTE!Transcriptions of the poems in this episode will be available to view on the Writers Radio Listen page while the program is on air and with our Podcast.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Epigraph to Holy MagicLet wise men piece the world together with wisdomOr poets with Holy MagicHey-di-hoWallace StevensEach chapter of Holy Magic has a colour palette. Each poem reflects a vibration of that colour. Many of the poems contain epigraphs of other writers or artists. Each section captures the mood of its colour. Archeology of Orange for instance, A Glass of Bitter Ale, Bluebirds.It is a rainbow of a book.In 2022 Priscilla Long released a book, Dancing with the Muse in Old Age, about thriving in old age. She is eighty.Priscilla writes, "The book explores the old-age time of life of more than one-hundred dynamic elders—mostly but not entirely creators in the arts, both well-known and little known, both able-bodied and disabled. Their inspiring stories model for us all how to live in old age. The sections, “Composing Our Lives: Old Age” at the end of each chapter will help readers consider and better plan for a satisfying old age."Priscilla Long is a Seattle-based poet, writer, editor and a longtime independent teacher of writing. She has been an activist in peace and social justice movements. She serves as founding and consulting editor of HistoryLink.org, the free online encyclopedia of Washington state history. She writes science, poetry, history, creative nonfiction and essay, and fiction. She has written a guide to creativity, Minding the Muse, and a how-to-write guide, The Writer's Portable Mentor.Her books are available for order through libraries, bookstores and online.Holy Magic was published in 2020 by Moon Path Press for which it won the Sally Albiso Poetry Book Award.Dancing with the Muse in Old Age was published in 2022 by Epicenter/Coffeetown Press.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Title: The Passion of a PoetEpisode: P075START: January 01, 2024ENDS: January 14, 2024Length:  33' minsHost/Producer: Ingrid RosePoetry is the hinge between the artist, having that moment, and the reader or listener, having their own moment in the silence of the first breath, after a poem. A poem is a medium, that says, "here, have this" it can do this, because it is compact. Because it carries you, like a magic carpet, across meaning. Because its intent is fleeting."Advocacy through story: an interview with Michelle Poirier Brown".Michelle Piorier Brown: writer, performer, playwright, photographer, and former federal treaty negotiator is a writer with a desire for clarity. What is going on? She asks us to consider.She describes, You Might Be Sorry You Read This, as a poetic memoir. It distills five decades of living through extreme childhood trauma, learning to live with PTSD, discovering her Cree, Métis roots at age 38 and finding her way through this maze to the page.Join Michelle and Ingrid Rose, in conversation about personal and public identity and the challenges and opportunities in writing difficult histories.Michelle Poitier Brown is an internationally, published writer and performer, currently living on the traditional unseeded territory of the silax peoples, in Vernon, BC. She is nehiyaw-iskwew and a citizen of the Métis nation. Her debut book of poetry, You Might Be Sorry You Read This, was published in the Robert Kroetsch Series from the University of Alberta press in Spring, 2022. It was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch award for innovative poetry. In 2023, her chapbook book of poems and photographs, Intimacies, was published by Jack Pine press in 2023.Adapted from the authors websiteOrder You Might Be Sorry You Read This,from your local library or a bookstore or direct from the publisherGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Elizabeth CunninghamJacinda OldaleKate BirdKathryn AlexanderKatherine GovierMara Alper and Elliott LevineSheila MartineauIt’s that time of year again, for those of us in the northern hemisphere, when daylight hours dwindle; it’s dark at five, then four. For our annual celebration of this darkening season Writers Radio asked our authors to regale us with pieces written to the theme Belight. The response came from far and wide.This has become a yearly tradition for Writers Radio. As with our Summertime special we are broadcasting this episode for three weeks, through the busy holiday season.Katherine Govier of Canmore Alberta writes of seasonal light, beginning with the great opening line, My father was a lizard.Kathryn Alexander's poems explore the intimate coastal landscape of Port Moody on Burrard Inlet.Mara Alper of Ithaca New York wrote lyrics for When the World Feels Dark, composed by her friend and former husband, Elliot Z. Levine. The song is performed by Elliot Levine and Julie Hinton.Vancouver author Kate Bird takes us on pilgrimage in Mexico.Poet Jacinda Oldale, of Vancouver, BC writes, winter’s burn on my mind at the climax of summer.Sheila Martineau of Vancouver writes of how Christmas annually restored her troubled parents, Franny and Sparky, to their young love.Elizabeth Cunningham, of Nelson BC, closes the program with a trio of poems from her book, Watching the Light Below the Storm, published by Ekstasis Editions.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

In Navigating Shitstorms Liz Long turns her childhood trauma into a road trip. Travel with her to Victimtown. Listen to your Heart Voice and take the road to Freedomville.When Liz Long was six, Lynda, her favourite aunt and babysitter, disappeared. She was nineteen. Although her body was discovered five years later, her case remains one of Canada's longest unsolved crimes. The trauma to Liz and her extended family was incalculable. After fifty years of living with fear, depression and the extreme need to control Liz hit the road. In this engaging memoir she takes us on her journey to a healing centre she calls The Place. This inner work leads to an epiphany and she is able to witness the rigid structure she has lived within since her aunt's disappearance. This epiphany arrives with a fully formed idea for a book, a way to help others confront their own problems.Having spent more than fifty years stuck in Victimtown, Liz knows the terrain as well as any local...Touring Victimtown’s most popular attractions—such as the Guilt & Shame Café, the Control Factory, the Denial Trails, and more—Liz demonstrates that while short visits offer life lessons and healing, extended stays lead to all kinds of problems. This groundbreaking framework to understanding the voices in your head will enable you to• open healing conversations with yourself and others by equipping you with an accessible language to discuss mental health,• reframe your shitty inner dialogues by embracing a new awareness, and• discover your own route to Freedomville by learning to love yourself without limits or conditions.from the publisher's websitehttps://greenleafbookgroup.com/titles/navigating-shitstormsLiz Long lives in Sechelt on the Sunshine Coast, in Canada.Navigating Shitstorms was published by Greenleaf Book Group in August 2023. It is available through Indigo in Canada, Barnes and Noble in the US and Amazon internationally.Liz is hard at work on a follow up guidebook. She considers this her life's work. Visit her website: lizlongwrites.com to find out more.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Keiko Honda is living a successful, busy life as a scientist of cancer epidemiology at Columbia University in New York City when one morning she abruptly loses all strength in her legs. She phones a friend to care for her twenty-month-old daughter and rushes to the hospital. Within hours, she can barely breathe. She soon discovers she is permanently paralyzed from the chest down due to a rare autoimmune disease with a frequency of approximately one case per million per year. Suddenly, she’s that one. As Keiko struggles for life, she learns through lived experience the importance of community to healing, one of her prior research interests at Columbia....Seeking a wheelchair-accessible home closer to nature in which to raise her daughter, Keiko moves to Vancouver, Canada. She starts hosting informal artist salons, forms a mutually supportive group of artists and art-loving neighbours and then, surprisingly, becomes an artist herself. While her illness forced her departure from a career she spent twelve years building, it would ultimately provide the opportunity to live a life dedicated to community, friendship and art, as well as the continually evolving process of self-discovery as a mother, Japanese immigrant, survivor and artist.—Caitlin PressMaking is FindingIngrid Rose and Keiko Honda discuss Keiko's happy childhood, living with her grandparents, the foundation which gave her the courage to re-invent her life.In spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful. As the light creeps over the hills, their outlines are dyed a faint red and wisps of purplish cloud trail over them, I quietly recited to myself in Japanese. My favourite line from Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book (written in tenth century Japan). It comes back to me every spring. from Accidental BloomsAccidental Blooms was published by Caitlin Press in October 2023. You may order it from the publisher or your favourite bookstore.    “Keiko Honda is sharing much more than a memoir. She is sharing a philosophy of love and care in a time of anxiety and uncertainty. She shares a journey of possibilities when adversity strikes with life-altering challenges. This book is both an evocation as well as an example of ‘seeing with the heart.’ Our world is a better place for Keiko Honda’s generous gift(s).”    —Bernard Perley, associate professor for Critical Indigenous Studies, UBCGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant.Emily DickinsonThis Emily Dickinson quote greets you when you visit Seema Shah's website. I met Seema, a Vancouver writer and collage artist, in May 2023 at the exhibition of her work, Unthought Known, at B1 Gallery of The Beaumont Studios in Vancouver.Seema was a recipient of The Beaumont Studios  Artist to Watch Award 2022 Seema's creative work, both writing and collage, began after the onset of chronic illness. "Unthought Known" is a quote from psychoanalyst Christopher Bollis which refers to "experiences that reside within us, and that we in some way 'know,' but which we have never 'thought' or been able to put into words."The exhibition consisted of collages which often incorporated cut up poems. One piece was a book, based on the plight of Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty After the Fall is a collage of Seema's prose and poetry with excerpts from our  zoom conversation.I hope you enjoy listening.CaroleSeema's work has been published in numerous magazines. She is shortlisted for the 2023 Contemporary Collage Magazine Awards.While this program airs, she has work in Paper Play, an exhibition of collage artists at Outsiders and Others Gallery in Vancouver, November 4-25, 2023. She is longlisted for the Susan Crean Award for Nonfiction 2023.Seema has also exhibited internationally and has an upcoming solo show, Where I Live, Feb-March 2024, at Small House Gallery, a dollhouse gallery in London, UK. The show will feature miniature 2D & 3D works and will be viewable online.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

I write about women heroes. Not obvious ones and not immediate ones, but women who are searching for freedom and worth in their lives despite complicated, risky circumstances.Mary Carroll MooreA forced landing on a stormy night in the remote Adirondack Mountains opens this novel. Singer Red Nelson and her half-sister Kate, a Search and Rescue pilot, share a father, but have never met. Kate's Mom is the legal wife, Red's Mom is the mistress. Nevertheless, their father has been loving, and taught both daughters to fly.It's hard to avoid spoilers while introducing this complex and exciting novel. Red flees the attack on her former husband, pursued by her revengeful former lover. Surprisingly, Red's Mother urges her to seek refuge with the sister she has never met. Refuge leads to reconciliation in what Kirkus Reviews called this novel, "An exciting work of survival fiction with strong female characters."Author and artist Mary Carroll Moore has been a journalist, food columnist, writing instructor and creator of a long running newsletter, Insights on the Writing Life. Mary's Substack blog, Your Weekly Writing Exercise has over 3000 subscribers. Her last three books (of nineteen total) have been self-published under her imprint, Riverbed Press. They include: Your Book Starts Here, Create, Craft and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir or Not-fiction book.A Woman's Guide to Search and Rescue is available in print, e-book and audio book formats through libraries, bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, and is a "hot new release" on Amazon.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

In 2012, poet Elee Kraljii Gardiner precipitously lost feeling in, and use of, her left side. The mini-stroke passed quickly but was symptomatic of something larger: a tear in the lining of an artery known as the tunica intima. This long-poem memoir tracks the author’s experiences with un/wellness and un/re-familiarity with herself. Trauma Head disturbs and disorders language and syntax to reconcile appearance with experience.Winner of the Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence, shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, and long listed for the Souster Award, Trauma Head has inspired vivid responses from fellow poets:Intimate and powerful. An astonishing paradox as Elee Kraljii Gardiner stages a series of verbal break-throughs in her poetic testimony to what is incommunicable during and after a stroke.Daphne MarlettThe unit of composition in Trauma Head is the page used as a mirror, a reflection of the synapses detonated by the poet as she triggers the intricate mechanisms of language. Elee Kraljii Gardiner seizes this linguistic dream (traum) world with skill and playfulness; these are poems to wake up from.Fred WahPoet and editor Elee Kraljii Gardiner is a Director of Vancouver Manuscript Intensive.She is the founder and creative mentor of Thursdays Writing Collective, a non-profit organization of Vancouver's downtown eastside writers, and editor and publisher of eight of its anthologies. Trauma Head and her previous book of poetry, serpentine loop were published by Anvil Press. Order her books from the publisher or your favourite bookstore. Visit Elee's website for links to her recent publications and interviews.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Night in the World explores entwined personal and ecological crisis, suggesting that our disconnection from nature underpins many of the challenges we face in these times.Sharon English has penned a tender and powerful novel about the claims places make on our hearts, and how journeys into darkness are sometimes necessary to see through catastrophe. Night in the World explores the need to end our separations from each other and from nature — coming home, at last, to a beleaguered yet still beautiful world.Freehand BooksSet in metropolitan Toronto, Toronto Island and the environs of Rice Lake near Peterborough, Ontario, Night in the World follows the lives of three major characters.The sudden death of their mother catapults brothers Justin and Oliver into a downward spiral, triggering a crisis in lives which have already been unravelling. Justin retreats from his business and family into drug abuse, Oliver, a former environmental journalist, tries to reclaim a childhood home on Toronto Island.While Gabe, a graduate student conducting research on moth populations in the Peterborough area for her Masters thesis, confronts the troubling ethics of scientific study.The plot rests on specific instances of environmental challenge, and how Justin, Oliver and Gabe respond to these challenges, entering into a dynamic relationship with the living world, and each other, which revivifies, in ways unique to each character.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Hypatia of Alexandria, fell into history’s abyss.Paradoxical, Hypatia's dilemma in Alexandria—she goes into the streets as a free womanis killed on the way home becauseshe goes into the streets as a free woman.If Hypatia were the sea, she would be immensefragments from Hypatia's WakeHypatia of Alexandria, Neo Platonic philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, was murdered in 415 AD by a mob led by Peter the Lector (a Christian official in the service of Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria). She has been called a martyr for philosophy. Her torture and death included flaying, dismemberment, and burning.Celebrated in her own time for her scholarship, widespread teachings, and egalitarian spirit, Hypatia embraced the Neo-Platonic philosophy of a divine First Cause known as the One, the First, or the Good. Neoplatonists believed that everything we see and know emanated from the Good.Over the centuries Hypatia has inspired opponents of Christianity, been co-opted as a symbol of Christian virtue, been represented as a symbol of opposition to Catholicism, and in modern times she has become an icon of women's rights and the feminist movement.Hypatia’s Wake addresses many false and fanciful representations about her life and death.Hypatia lived and the flesh of her invisibility has not stolen her from us forever. We can claim her and wake her loss as we are awakened to her. When we give Hypatia back to the flesh of the world, we claim visibility.Susan Andrews GraceVisual artist and poet Susan Andrews Grace lives in Nelson BC. where she teaches writing at Oxygen Art Centre.Hypatia's Wake, Susan's sixth book of poetry, was published in 2022 by Inanna Publications . Order from the publisher or your favourite bookstore.Visit Susan's website to see her other publications and treat yourself to her visual art. My visual art practice conceptually searches for the metaphysical in the ordinary: old cloth, rubble from demolition, rusty objects. It includes textile installation, mixed media, and sculpture and has been exhibited in (mostly) public galleries in Canada and the US over the last thirty years.Go to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Kate Bird's photo is of her son at former Mt. Pleasant Outdoor Pool in Vancouver.Here is a CBC article about the recent status of a citizen's campaign to build a new outdoor pool.Writers Radio likes to gather writers around a theme. This episode is such an occasion. Each writer has responded to the question: Summertime..."and the living' is easy"...Is it?In order of reading:Donna Stephen:The West Highland Way, spring 2023Barbara Baydala:poems inspired by words plus her poetic response to my question.Kate Bird:memories of Mt. Pleasant Outdoor Pool in Vancouver, lamenting its lossCynthia Sharp:love poemsGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.

Frightened of horses as a child, Oriane Lee Johnston takes up riding at age fifty. When she follows an inner calling to travel to Africa, she enters into a love affair with a species, a country, a person, and a way of life."An unexpected liaison with an African horseman builds a courageous and tender bridge across classic cultural divides. The backdrop is present-day Zimbabwe in all its political, economic and ecological complexities. Oriane Lee Johnston’s memoir takes the reader from her island home on the west coast of Canada into southern Africa as it is today, exploring ethical relations with land, with culture, the sacred and the human heart.The story follows an inner call to the Mavuradonha Mountains in the eastern edge of the Zambezi Escarpment. The quest to preserve this wild and unspoiled bioregion parallels the campaign to protect the Great Bear Rainforest, the author’s birthplace in coastal B.C."from the publishers blurbTitle: The Geography of BelongingSub Title: A Love Story of Horses and AfricaEpisode: P065START: July 24, 2023ENDS: July 13, 2023Length:  28 minsHost/Producer: Ingrid RoseGo to WritersRadio.ca and listen to the current episode.Writers Radio is a free 24/7 non-commercial internet radio station that presents new and recognized writers reading their own work.Writers Radio is proud to be a registered nonprofit society in British Columbia, Canada.