Editing the unedited

Last Saturday night, I attended a literary gladitorial battle (okay, it’s kind of what I had in mind), part of the Scream Literary Festival, where this year’s theme was “The Book is Dead.” The event, STET, Redacting the Redacted, was meant to be, as I understood, an experiment. Prominent editors in Toronto (Alana Wilcox (Senior Editor of Coach House Books), Stuart Ross (Poetry Editor of Mansfield Press) Bev Daurio (Editor-in-chief of The Mercury Press) had been sent a poem and piece of short fiction to edit blindly (ie. the author was unknown, and, problematically, there was no given context for publication) and were to present their findings that evening, where the mystery author would be revealed. Sounds really cool, right?

Outspoken – Wedding Edition

It’s wedding season. And you know what that means. Speech writing. The speeches at a wedding are at once an expression of how you feel about the couple in question with the discretion to not say what you really think. It’s a tough balance. Most recently, I was asked to emcee my brother’s wedding reception and found myself a little stumped for words. The emcee is definitely in a more neutral position, so the best one could do was offer some general comments, make some cheesy jokes, and then usher people to their dinners.

Overcoming overemployment

The past few months have found me the victim of a lesser-known, less politically correct to complain about (à la Peter and Billy Getty), recessionomic phenomenon – that of overemployment (or hyper-employment?).

Just as stressful and emotionally draining, overemployment causes many of the same social problems that its opposite, unemployment, does during these trying economic times. Problems such as poor health, depression, lack of social life, feeling left out, (and depending on the job(s)) lack of extended health or dental plans, bad hair, premature aging, wrinkled clothes, and a burning desire to spend all day in bed.

Email if you like small literary presses

So, I wrote a while back about the CPF issue and how it’s unfair to small literary presses who need the funding to survive, but aren’t getting it because their circulation is lower than 5,000 copies (is this per year? per issue? the details aren’t clear yet). I also posted a link to a Facebook group that has started a letter-writing campaign to lobby the Ministry of Heritage to reconsider the CPF.
Getting to the point: over the weekend, I was visiting my dear friend in Ottawa who works at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, a department in the government that happens to get a lot of mail. So I asked her what happens to the letters that pour in and what actually happens to letter writing campaigns and what she said actually surprised me.

Stop reading this and pick up a newspaper

Last weekend the Globe and Mail ran an article in their deliciously thick Saturday print edition on the San Francisco Chronicle’s muddy financial ground and raised many questions on the future of newspapers. People are getting their news online now. Last year, the Globe reported, more people in the US got their news online than any other media, which is a scary fact for those of us who love picking up the weekend paper and spending their Saturday afternoons with its pages spread out over the dining room table with a big cup of coffee.

CPF’n stinks – the new Canadian Periodical Fund and why small mags hate it

Earlier this month, James Moore, the Minister of Heritage, announced the details for the 2009 Canadian Periodical Fund. In order to streamline government funding, the new fund will replace the Publications Assistance Program (PAP) and the Canadian Magazine Fund. The most controversial detail of the $72 million breakdown was the new restriction that limits access to the  fund’s restriction to periodicals with a circulation of 5,000 or more. It is especially frustrating for small periodicals because of the Minister’s earlier promise in February to “reallocate funding to small and mid-sized titles to support a diversity of Canadian magazines and newspapers throughout the country” since it is the smaller literary and arts magazines that need the funding more than most. If you’re as upset about this as I am, join the facebook group set up by the editors of a few presses in Canada that are lobbying the government for more support.

Roller Derby in BC’s North

I go behind the bad reputation of Prince George, northern BC’s capital,
and finds a thriving subculture of kick-ass women.

at the intersection of Highway 16 and 97 in Prince George

Nicole Mooring pulls up at the intersection of Highways 16 and 97 in her blue Ford F-150. There’s a dent on passenger door and some rust forming around the wheels, like pretty much every other truck waiting at the stoplight. She’s facing south. If she turns right, she’ll be on the Highway of Tears that made the front page of the Toronto Globe and Mail in 2006, and so-called because of the countless women that have mysteriously gone missing within the past ten years. Were she to turn left, it would take her downtown, to where the near-nightly scenes of gang violence, regularly featured in the Vancouver Globe and Mail, unravel. Past downtown, the street eventually winds down to the Nechako River that overflowed its banks last winter, destroying many homes and businesses, leaving evacuees stranded for months. On the north side of those banks used to be the site of Canfor’s sawmill until it burnt down and left over one thousand people unemployed. Back at the intersection and directly in front of Nicole, on the southeast corner of the intersection, stands Mr. PG, a tired symbol for the city of Prince George, located at the crossroads of northern British Columbia. The statue, like the city’s crumbling reputation in Canada’s national newspapers, is in desperate need of a makeover.

This time, Nicole turns right, and then another hard right into the parking lot of the Prince George Roll-a-Dome. She gets out her hefty first aid kit from the backseat, crosses the icy parking lot, and walks through the front doors, where she’s met with a barrage of leopard print, dreadlocks, tattoos, leather, piercings and pink hair. It’s Thursday night, and that means the Rated PG Roller Girls are getting ready for their league practice.

Thoughts on a few magazine websites

www.chatelaine.com
This website’s web 2.0 features include an RSS feed, blogs, several discussion forums, custom meal plan software, a recipe account option, BMI and calorie counters, budget calculators, style and beauty videos, do-it-yourself home renovation videos, a gallery to post pet photos, and a music player. There were no social bookmarking tools, although they would definitely be an added bonus to all the features the site has to offer.
Because of the highly interactive nature of this website, Chatelaine is able to strengthen the community of women the magazine has already formed. With tools like the BMI and budget calculators, the website complements the magazine by customizing the information it provides on health, finances, style, beauty, and more. It offers an opportunity for women to connect with each other through the forums and form a closer relationship with the magazine. While the print magazine can only offer reviews, online, users can discuss books and music amongst themselves, giving editors a better sense of their readership. Users can search through the archives for favourite recipes and bookmark them directly on the site by creating their own account. Because of all these features, it’s a site that women can go back to again and again, making it more attractive for advertisers. The website is a useful resource for women, a go-to guide for information and a community of friends.