Prairie Fire invites you to a fundraising benefit
"SPEAKING VOLUMES"
on Saturday, May 15, 2010
"SPEAKING VOLUMES" CELEBRATES 31 YEARS OF PUBLISHING with Michael Van Rooy and Joan Thomas at a benefit on May 15. This benefit directly supports Prairie Fire's student practicum program.
Prairie Fire, one of Canada¹s oldest and finest literary magazines, is celebrating 31 years of publishing with a special benefit event called "Speaking Volumes," which takes place on Saturday, May 15 at Fort Gibraltar, 866 rue St. Joseph in old St. Boniface. The evening features award-winning writers Michael Van Rooy and Joan Thomas whose book Reading by Lightning won the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award.
The purpose of "Speaking Volumes" is to raise funds for Prairie Fire's work practicum program, through which every year we welcome students into our office for hands-on internships that run anywhere from two weeks to seven months.
The evening starts with cocktails and voyageur-style hatchet throwing at 6 p.m.,
followed by a truly scrumptious dinner and culminates with readings by our special guests. This event also features an amazing array of Rainbow and Silent Auction prizes, including the work of renowned artist Aganetha Dyck.
"Speaking Volumes" will be held at Fort Gibraltar, 866 rue St. Joseph in old St.
Boniface. Tickets are $65 (a tax receipt will be issued for a portion of the ticket price).
Cocktails at 6 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m., and readings at 8 p.m.
Tickets are available through McNally Robinson Booksellers, Aqua Books, from Prairie Fire's board members, and from Prairie Fire Press, 423-100 Arthur Street, phone (204) 943-9066.
AUTHOR BIOS
Michael Neelak Van Rooy lives in Winnipeg. He has been a bartender, bouncer, cheese maker and a man about town (amongst other things) and now writes full time. Michael¹s first novel, An Ordinary Decent Criminal, was published in 2005 and won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book by a Manitoba Writer. His second novel, Your Friendly Neighbourhood Criminal, was published in 2008. In 2009 Michael won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. An Ordinary Decent Criminal has been optioned as a film by Farpoint Films and Big Mind
Productions. In July of 2010 it will be published in the United States by Minotaur
Books. In 2011 Minotaur will publish Your Friendly Neighbourhood Criminal. A third book, A Criminal to Remember, will be published by Winnipeg’s Turnstone Press this spring.
Joan Thomas began her literary career as a book reviewer, first for the Winnipeg Free Press and then for the Globe and Mail, where she was a contributing reviewer for 15 years. She¹s been involved with Prairie Fire in various capacities--as a fiction editor for several years, and then briefly on the board of directors. In 1999, she and Heidi Harms edited Turn of the Story, an anthology of Canadian short fiction by senior and emerging Canadian writers.
Joan’s first novel, Reading by Lightning, was published in 2008 by Goose Lane Editions. It was the winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and was chosen by an on-line poll as the On the Same Page title for 2009. Her second novel, Curiosity, has just been released by McClelland and Stewart.
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Prairie Fire Press, Inc.
423-100 Arthur St.
Winnipeg, MB R3B 1H3
Tel.: (204) 943-9066
Fax: (204) 942-1555
www.prairiefire.ca