.: Reading, writing, and really good times :.
FRIDAY @ 7: The award-winning author of "The Great Karoo."
Maggie SigginsFRIDAY @ 9: Prolific author of "Marie-Anne: The Extraordinary Life of Louis Riel's Grandmother."
Joan ThomasSATURDAY @ 7: The Manitoban author of "Reading by Lightning."
Daria SalamonSATURDAY @ 9: Author of the popular new novel, "The Prairie Bridesmaid."
Contact us
Facebook us!
Remember to sign up for our 24-hour short story writing contest. Test your mettle again Brandon's most exhausted writers, as you battle for the title of Caffeine King or Queen. One winner will be published in the Brandon Sun and in the official program of Words Alive. To be held overnight, Oct. 25-26.
Sign up here!Thanks to generous support from the Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Corporation, we're proud to offer Words Alive completely free of charge this year!
MAGGIE SIGGINS is an author and film producer who has worked as a reporter, columnist, magazine writer and news editor. She has written nine books. Her early work includes A Guide to Skiing in Eastern North American, How to Catch a Man with cartoonist Ben Wicks, Bassett, and Brian and the Boys: A Story of Gang Rape. In 1985 she wrote Canadian Tragedy, relating the events that lead to the murder of JoAnn Thatcher by her husband Colin.Another murder was the centre piece of Revenge of the Land published in 1991. Riel: A Life of Revolution was the best-selling biography of Canada's one great revolutionary. In Her Own Time told two tales: the fate of a grade 13 class, and a cultural history of women through the ages. Her lastest publication is Bitter Embrace: White Society's Assault on the Woodland Cree. She is currently working on a biography of Louis Riel's grandmother for McClelland & Stewart, titled, Louis' Grandmother: The Amazing Life of Marie-Anne Gaboury. It will be published in the fall of 2008.
UPDATE: Her new book "Marie-Anne: The Extraordinary Life of Louis Riel's Grandmother" has been released and is in stock (at Pennywise).
For over 200 years, Pelican Narrows Indian Reserve in northern Saskatchewan has endured a torturous relationship with the encroaching European culture, from the Hudson’s Bay Company factors and Oblate missionaries of earlier times to the bureaucrats and police of today. Through the use of archival material, oral storytelling and documenting the personal stories of contemporary Pelican Narrows Cree, Maggie Siggins gives us the human faces behind the newspaper headlines screaming about native issues.
An excerpt: It’s a nice day, so people amble about outside, waiting for the judge to arrive. A big fellow wears a black shirt which taunts: “I DID NOT ESCAPE. THEY GAVE ME A DAY PASS.” On one side of the building is located bitter402the community hall, which serves both as a bingo parlour and courtroom – when a trial runs too long, the bingo players bang on the door to be let in -- an on the other side is the village office. All the windows have bars or are covered with wire mesh, which is why it seems such a dismal place. The railing on the stairs has mostly fallen away, and the floor of the entranceway has a gaping hole in it. How someone hasn’t broken their leg is a wonder. On the outside wall of the village office, in bright blue paint, is scribbled “FUCK” in huge letters; on the community-hall side, there as smaller “Fuck” painted in the same painful blue. Piles of garbage and rubble are scattered around. Why the band doesn’t cough up the money to clean the place remains a mystery.