The Planet Earth Poetry reading series is a launching pad for the energies of writers and poets established and not. It is a place where words are most important. A venue in which all manner of poets and writers are welcome; a place for excellence, innovation, collaboration, diverse projects and experiments. The evening begins at 7:30 with an open mic, followed by a featured reader(s). Planet Earth Poetry is located at Hillside Coffee and Tea (formerly The Moka House), 1633 Hillside Ave (across from Bolen Books). Sign-up for the open mic begins at 7pm.
FEATURED READERS MAY 2014
Andrea Raine’s new novel
Friday, May 2, 2014
ANDREA RAINE,
ANDREA ROUTLEY & JANINE ALYSON YOUNG
Planet Earth Poetry is pleased to host a fiction night.
Andrea McKenzie Raine grew up in Victoria, BC, where she still resides. She is a long time attendee of the Planet Earth Poetry reading series. Andrea holds a B.A. in English Literature and a Certificate in Public Relations from the University of Victoria. She is a poet, novelist, book reviewer, and government correspondence writer. Her poetry has appeared in Mocambo Nights anthology, Canadian Literature, Quills, Tempus by Rubicon Press, Leafpress, Boulevard Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Poems from Planet Earth anthology and various chapbooks edited by Patrick Lane. In 2005, she published her first book of poetry A Mother’s String through Ekstasis Editions. She also recently published her first novel, Turnstiles, through Inkwater Press.
Andrea Routley’s work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including the Malahat Review and Room Magazine, and in 2008, she was shortlisted for the Rona Murray Prize for Literature. She is the founder and editor of Plenitude Magazine, Canada’s queer literary magazine, and Walk Myself Home: An Anthology to End Violence Against Women (Caitlin Press, 2010), which continues to receive praise from magazines like Bitch, Herizons, Prairie Fire and the Vancouver Sun. In 2012, she completed a degree in writing from the University of Victoria.
In a mining town edging the Australian Nullarbor, Gina sits at the bar and devotes herself to the heart of what she’s trying to escape. After finishing a grueling cross-Canada tour, Dana, an alt-rock musician, flees to the Yukon to avoid her band’s rising fame and risks sabotaging it all. In a small West Coast fishing town, a boat-dwelling mother struggles to manage a friend’s cancer, mortality and a failing marriage. A novella, “Sung Spit,” chronicles Cassiopeia’s adolescence and young adulthood as she is paralyzed by an unwanted pregnancy and faces the disappearance of family members.
In her debut collection, Hideout Hotel, Janine Alyson Young delivers disparate characters struggling with their own inadequacies. From Coastal BC and Yukon Territory to Western Australia, each small town confines characters and mirrors their own limitations. From boats to abandoned shacks, tents to trailers, Young’s characters take refuge in unlikely places. As they meander from one edge of town to the other, they search for the overlooked morsel that will make them good. Somehow, in spite of themselves, they manage to survive.
Friday, May 9, 2014
TINA BIELLO & CHRISTINE SMART
Christine Smart’s latest collection of poetry, The White Crow, was published in 2013 by Hedgerow Press. Her first book, Decked and Dancing, won the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poet Award in 2007. She was born in Shawville, Quebec, graduated from Queen's University with a B.Sc.N. (1976) and from UVic in Fine Arts, Writing (1997). She lived in Montreal, Edinburgh and Victoria before moving to Saltspring Island, BC where she works as a public health nurse and a writer. Visit her website: christinesmart.ca
For more about Tina, visit her website.
Tina Biello grew up in a small logging town, Lake Cowichan, B.C. She studied Theatre at UBC and now finds herself writing. Her poems have appeared in chapbook anthologies edited by Patrick Lane, since 2008. Her chapbook, Momenti was part of a multi-disciplinary art exhibition of poetry and watercolour in Montreal and Vancouver. These poems have also been composed into a CD of music called Dolci Momenti. In the Bone Cracks of the Walls with Leaf Press is her first full length publication. She will have her second book of poetry published in Spring 2015, with Guernica Press, called A Housecoat Remains. She has written and toured a children’s play about Autism called The Indigo Kids and when she’s not writing, she teaches Commedia dell’Arte and performance mask work at various institutions and schools.
Her latest book, In the Bone Cracks of the Walls is available through Leaf Press.
Friday, May 16, 2014
JULIE BRUCK & CATHERINE OWEN
Julie Bruck is the author of three collections of poems from Brick Books: Monkey Ranch (2012), The End of Travel, and The Woman Downstairs. Her work also appears in magazines and journals like The New Yorker, Ms, Ploughshares, The Walrus, The Malahat Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Maisonneuve, Literary Mama, and others, and her poems have been widely anthologized.
In 2012, she won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, one of many awards for her writing.
Montreal-born and raised, Julie has taught at several colleges and universities in Canada. Since 2005, she has taught poetry for The Writing Salon in San Francisco, and tutored students at The University of San Francisco.
Catherine Owen is a Vancouver poet, writer, bassist and tutor/editor with two English Literature degrees from SFU. She has been publishing trade books since 1998 and as of 2012 has nine titles out of poetry, one of epistles and a collection of prose essays/memoirs. Her presses include: Exile Editions, Wolsak & Wynn, Anvil Press, Mansfield Press and Black Moss. Her new poetry collection, Designated Mourner, is out from ECW in 2014.
Friday, May 23, 2014
EUFEMIA FANTETTI, KATHRYN PARA & KATRIN HOROWITZ
Planet Earth Poetry is pleased to host a fiction night.
Eufemia Fantetti is a graduate of The Writer's Studio at SFU and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. She is a winner of Event Magazine’s Creative Non-Fiction Contest and the 7th annual Accenti Writing Contest. Her essay, “Alphabet Autobiografica,” was listed under notable essays in the 2009 Best American Essay Series. Her work is included in the anthologies Contours, Beyond Crazy, Emails from India and the 2012 Fish Anthology. A two-time finalist for Theatre BC's National Playwriting Competition, Eufemia has had plays produced across Canada, including The Waiting Room, An Italian Tale, It’s All the Rage and My Own Private Etobicoke. She has performed stand-up comedy in Toronto, Vancouver and the Catskills. She co-hosted the SFU’s Studio Reading Series and co-founded the series, Speakeasy, in Ontario. A resident of BC for many years she now lives in Toronto, where she’s at work on a memoir. A Recipe for Disaster & Other Unlikely Tales of Love is her debut book.
Kathryn Para is an award-winning, multi-genre writer with a MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have been published in Grain, Room, Geist, Sunstream, and Vancouver Review. She is the 2013 winner of Mother Tongue Publishing's Great BC Novel Contest. Her stage play, Honey, debuted in 2004. She has also written, directed and produced short films. She lives in Gibsons, BC. Lucky is her first novel.
Lucky is an unflinching novel set in the Middle East and Canada. It tells the story of Anika Lund, a freelance war photographer with an ambition to photograph an infamous terrorist, and her best friend and translator, Viva, who seeks answers to the mystery of her husband's disappearance in Syria. In the fall of 2004, they gain access to Iraqi resistance fighters, and entrance to the broken city of Fallujah, igniting a series of terrifying events that exact a price that becomes too much to bear. Lucky explores essential questions about war photography, the price paid by journalists and the moral dilemmas of love and war.
Katrin Horowitz has lived in Victoria since 2003 and she's convinced that the clean air inspired her to become a novelist. Last year her second novel, The Best Soldier’s Wife, was a finalist in The Great BC Novel Contest and then published by Quadra Books. The novel explores the impact of Canada’s war in Afghanistan and the war’s aftermath – especially PTSD – on one military family.
Katrin published her first novel, a murder mystery called Power Failures, following two lengthy volunteer assignments in Sri Lanka.
In 2008, she attended the Victoria School of Writing summer program, where she worked with Steven Galloway. She has contributed short pieces to several anthologies and recently started reviewing books for UVic’s Coastal Spectator. Next month, Island Writer will publish one of her short pieces called “What does it mean to be old?” which she first read at PEP last summer.