Words of a feather

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Deborah Schnitzer (left) and Marjorie Anderson with bust of Carol Shields in Citizens Hall of Fame in Assiniboine Park. (PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

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The Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth in King's Park. (MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS ARCHIVES)

 CONNECTIONS  and conversa­tions.

For the organizers of this weekend's Carol Shields Symposium on Women's Writing: Festival of Voices, the value of the inaugural event can be boiled down to those two words.

"When she was close to the end of her life, she used to say that the meaning of her life could be wrapped up in connections and conversations," symposium co-organizer Marjorie Anderson says.

"She was the most inclusive person in the world."

Beginning Friday morning, more than 100 writers, editors, journalists and academics -- among them some of the biggest names in the country -- will gather at the University of Winnipeg for what Anderson and her colleague Deborah Schnitzer plan as a triennial endeavour.

There will be panel discussions on various aspects of Shields' work and others that have been inspired by it.

There will be writing workshops, presentations and readings. The idea is not just to celebrate the works of the beloved Manitoba writer but to encourage the kind of interplay between people that Shields herself so enjoyed.

"This type of thing occurs because people will not let her die," says Joan Barfoot, the veteran novelist based in London, Ont.

"She was always so open and curious. So many kinds of people were attracted to her in so many ways."

Anderson is particularly excited about a gathering that precedes the actual symposium.

Some 40 contributors to the three Dropped Threads non-fiction anthologies, which Anderson and Shields co-edited, will be on hand tonight at 7:30 at the Polo Park McNally Robinson Booksellers. The event is free and the public is welcome.

"It was the first time I tried life-writing," says Schnitzer, who had a piece in the first Dropped Threads. "To have Carol and Marjorie read it and find its pulse and structure was a giddy and extraordinary experience for me."

Coincidentally, another Manitoba literary figure is being honoured this weekend.

The 100th anniversary of the birth of Gabrielle Roy is being celebrated at her family home turned museum at 375 Deschambault St. at 2:30 p.m. Saturday. Winnipeg's Carol Harvey, a Roy scholar, will be giving a presentation and there will be a tour of the house.

"Artists and writers need role models like Carol Shields and Gabrielle Roy," Anderson says. "When they live on your soil, it passes on an extra impetus for creativity."

It's hard to believe that almost six years have passed since Shields died of cancer at age 68 in Victoria, and almost nine since she and her husband, Don, left Winnipeg.

During the 20 years she lived here, the American-born Shields became a fixture in the city's literary community. She wrote most of her signature work here.

She wrote novels, poetry, plays and essays. Her star took off in 1995 after she was awarded the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for her 1993 novel, The Stone Diaries.

Charting the life of a quietly heroic Manitoba-born woman, Daisy Goodwill, the novel, Shields' eighth, also won the U.S. National Book Circle Award and the Governor General's Award in Canada. As well, it made the short list for Britain's prestigious Booker Prize.

"It took a long time for her to get the acclaim she deserved," says the Calgary-based writer and academic Aritha Van Herk, who was on the award jury that gave her the G-G.

"I think the Canadian public was surprised. There was a tendency even then to underestimate how good a writer she was."

Van Herk will be at the Shields symposium to launch a new collection, Carol Shields: Evocation and Echo, which she has co-edited with Dutch academic Conny Steenman-Marcusse.

The book features 21 pieces responding to Shields' life and work by other writers, including two of Shields' daughters.

Barfoot, meanwhile, will lead a roundtable discussion titled Going Bad, to explore what limits, if any, society places on the content of women's writing.

"Are there still expectations that our work must be nurturing, domestic or -- horrors! -- redemptive?" asks Barfoot, who has penned such well-regarded novels as Luck and Exit Lines.

She says that Shields was more subversive, in her work and in person, than most people thought.

"She had that camouflage of that soft voice," Barfoot says.

"But there were knives in there."

morley.walker@freepress.mb.ca

Symposium events

The inaugural Carol Shields Symposium on Women's Writing runs Friday through Sunday at the University of Winnipeg's Convocation Hall.

 To attend all the events, you must be a delegate, for which there is a $75 charge. You can register online or in person.

 A gathering of 40 Dropped Threads contributors is set for tonight at 7:30 at McNally Robinson Polo Park.

 On Friday at 7:30 p.m., the CBC's Eleanor Wachtel will host a tribute to Shields from six Random House authors in U of W's Riddell Hall: Gail Anderson-Dargatz, Joan Barfoot, Sandra Birdsell, Lorna Crozier, Andrew Davidson and Jane Urquhart. Admission is $10.

 That event will feature the premiere of a vocal composition by Randolph Peters.

 On Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in the new U of W theatre, there will be a staged reading of Shields' play Departures and Arrivals, hosted by Shields' daughter Anne Giardini. Peters' new composition will also be performed. Admission is free.

 On Sunday morning, there will be a CBC Book Club group discussion and rally hosted by the CBC's Terry MacLeod and featuring the participation of several writers. Admission is $25.

 At 1:30 p.m Sunday the Carol Shields Memorial Labyrinth in King's Park will be officially opened.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 7, 2009 D1