Winter Launch with John McDonald, William Klebeck & Gary Young

Winter Launch - posterTis the season for poetry and hand-crafted chapbooks! Join us at The Woods Ale House on December 9th as we celebrate the launch of two beautiful new works. Brave the cold for drinks, merriment, and readings from the authors!

Farm Works is the latest collection of poems by William Klebeck. Interspersed with evocative, prairie-inspired paintings by Gary Young, these poems carve a close portrait of farming life in a rhythmic, unique voice. Hardcover, bound in dark red cloth.

Been A Year is a spare, elegaic poem by John McDonald. This accordion-fold mini-chapbook pulls the reader through a memory of grief. Embossed prints of lakeweed and translucent, pearled paper mirror the poem’s haunting, final image.

 

Bill Klebeck lives in Wynyard, Saskatchewan. He has published two previous books of short fiction, Where the Rain Ends and Down Milligan Creek Way.

A long-time resident of Saskatoon, Gary Young currently lives in downtown Calgary following six years in several locations in eastern Canada. In association with Finding City Community Arts Inc., he continues to explore urban mix and contributing cultures manifest in community arts programming, arts connectivity, cultural engagement and overall research of creative community ecologies. Gary integrates personal creative practice with his interest in mapping urban pathways (i.e. active transport – cycling, walking and transit, public art, place making) and emerging notions of learning how to ‘be’ in a city.
He also enjoys hand-crafted books and random unexpected collaborations.

John McDonald is a writer, artist, historian, musician, playwright, actor and activist originally from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. A sixth-generation direct descendant of Chief Mistawasis of the Plains Cree, John’s writings and artwork have been displayed in various publications, private and permanent collections and galleries around the world, including the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. John is one of the founding members of the P.A. Lowbrow art movement, and is the Vice-President of the Indigenous Peoples Artists Collective. He has served as guest editorial writer for several international publications. John is also the author of “The Glass Lodge”, published by Kegedonce Press, which was selected as one of the books for the 2009 First Nations Libraries Community Reads program. He has also contributed work to anthologies and secondary school textbooks.
John has studied at England’s prestigious University of Cambridge, where in July 2000 he made international headlines by symbolically ‘discovering’ and ‘claiming’ England for the First peoples of the Americas.
John is also an acclaimed public speaker, who has presented in venues across the globe, such as the Anskohk Aboriginal Literature Festival, the Black Hills Seminars on Reclaiming Youth, The Appalachian Mountain Seminars, the Edmonton and Fort McMurray Literary Festival, the Eden Mills Writers Festival and at the Ottawa International Writers Festival. John was honoured with the opportunity to speak in Australia in April of 2001. John was also included in the Aboriginal Artists and Performers Inventory for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, BC.
John’s artwork and writing have been nominated for several awards, including the 2001 Saskatchewan Aboriginal Youth Achievement Award, and he has been honoured with several grants from the Saskatchewan Arts Board.
A noted polymath, John lives in Northern Saskatchewan.