Port Medway Readers’ Festival line-up released

This Festival, held for three evenings in July and August at the Old Meeting House on Long Cove Road, is an opportunity for readers to listen to and meet writers in an informal and friendly setting. Authors featured during past festivals include Margaret Atwood, Wayne Johnston, Robert MacNeil, Bernice Morgan, Calvin Trillin and Jane Urquhart.

This year’s award-winning readers are:

Saturday, July 11, 7 p.m.: Don Hannah (Introduced by Rita Howell)

Saturday, July 25, 7 p.m.: Donna Morrissey (Introduced by William Kowalski) Please note that this event is sold out.

Saturday, August 15, 7 p.m.: Kate Christensen (Introduced by Calvin Trillin)

Don Hannah was born and raised in New Brunswick, and now lives in Toronto and Nova Scotia. His novels, The Wise and Foolish Virgins and Ragged Islands, were nominated for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and Ragged Islands was last year’s winner.

His plays include The Wedding Script, Rubber Dolly, Running Far Back, The Wooden Hill and Fathers and Sons. As a playwright, he has received a Chalmers Award and an AT&T OnStage Award. He was a writer-in-residence at the Tarragon Theatre, the Canadian Stage Company, the University of New Brunswick, and for the Yukon Public Library Service. He was the inaugural Lee Playwright in Residence at the University of Alberta. He is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony.

His play While We’re Young opened in Edmonton in 2008 and will be published by Playwrights Canada Press. Last fall, he directed the premiere of his play There is a Land of Pure Delight at Live Bait Theatre in Sackville. The Great Canadian Theatre Company, Ottawa, premiered The Net, by Acadian writer Marcel-Romain Thériault in Hannah’s co-translation with Maureen Labonté.

Facing South, his opera, with composer Linda Catlin Smith, premiered at the 2003 World Stage Festival. Shoreline, a collection of his plays, is published by Simon and Pierre and is available through U of T Press. As a dramaturge, he has worked at the Playwrights Atlantic Resource Centre, the National Theatre School, and Vancouver’s Playwrights Theatre Centre; he is currently on the faculty of the Banff Playwrights Colony.

Don Hannah will be introduced by Rita Howell. A resident of Port Medway, Rita Howell, in a career of 50 years as an actress, has performed in theatres across Canada and the United States. Among her many roles, she played Lucy Maude Montgomery in Don Hannah's The Wooden Hill.

Donna Morrissey has written three vivid prize-winning novels about life in Newfoundland: Kit's Law, Downhill Chance and Sylvanus Now. She has received awards in Canada, the U.S. and England. Reviewers have compared her depictions of Newfoundland’s terrain and people to the worlds summoned up by Hardy and Faulkner. Donna’s fiction has been translated into several different languages, and has proven especially popular in Japan, Holland and Germany. She is also a scriptwriter: Clothesline Patch (originally a short story) won a Gemini for best production, as well as the best picture prize at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Her latest novel, What They Wanted, moves away from Newfoundland and onto the oilfields of Alberta, and has been hitting the best seller lists across the country.

Donna Morrissey will be introduced by William Kowalski. A past festival reader, William Kowalski is a best-selling novelist and screenwriter. His screenplay Lovely To The Last, co-written with director Markus Griesshammer, will be produced in 2009 by Mike S. Ryan, co-starring Dakota Blue Richards.

Kate Christensen is a graduate of Reed College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won first prize in the 1989 Mademoiselle fiction contest. She was the recipient of the 2008 PEN/Faulkner award for her fourth novel, The Great Man. She is also the author of In the Drink, Jeremy Thrane, The Epicure's Lament, and Trouble, which will be published by Doubleday in June 2009. Her stories, reviews, and essays have appeared in various publications, including Elle, Salon, Real Simple, Gourmet, Tin House and many anthologies. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is currently at work on her next novel, The Astral. Of The Great Man, the New York Times says "[it] is as unexpectedly generous as it is entertaining. Wise and expansive. Christensen is a witty observer of the art universe.”

Kate Christensen will be introduced by Calvin Trillin. A long-time staff writer for The New Yorker, and a frequent reader at the Festival, Trillin is also The Nation magazine's "deadline poet." He is the author of 26 books, the latest of which is Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme.

Tickets are $12 and include a reception at the Port Medway Fire Hall. Proceeds will go to the Port Medway Cemeteries Committee for work at the Old Port Medway Cemetery, a Municipal and Provincial Heritage Property. Tickets are available at the Bridgewater Library, Lunenburg Library, Thomas Raddall Library, and Sagors Bookstore, Bridgewater. Donations in any amount are welcome but are not tax deductible. Tickets and/or donations may be purchased by mail: Port Medway Readers Festival, c/o Cate Bird, PO Box 58, Liverpool, NS, Canada, B0T 1K0.

Information on the Port Medway Readers’ Festival can be found at the website: www.portmedwayreadersfestival.com/