Curator examines WAG Inuit art

Darlene Coward Wight, the Winnipeg Art Gallery's longtime curator of Inuit art, examines the Winnipeg collection -- the largest public gallery collection of Inuit art in the world -- in a book being published in November by the WAG and Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre.

The book, entitled Creation and Transformation: Defining Moments in Inuit Art, also contains texts by Susan Gustavison, Ingo Hessel, Christine Lalonde and Norman Vorano. The book is linked to a major exhibit of the same name that will open in January.

The WAG, of course, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this season.

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Most writers are ashamed to admit how long it takes them to complete a project. But a Winnipeg writer and spoken word performer who goes by the name "hannah-g" is making her glacial progress on one story into a public event.

According to an item in the Manitoba Writers' Guild newsletter, she is adding one letter or punctuation mark per day to a story that she is writing at La maison des artistes visuel francophone in the old St. Boniface city hall building on Provencher Boulevard.

She expects to take 10-15 years to complete the story, entitled On Salt Islets. One of the challenges of writing so slowly, hannah writes, is that it's hard to remember the ideas for the narrative. She describes the project as "a steady drip describing a heart's dislocation and its break.... It is a document of despair and of hope."

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The chairwoman of the Writers' Union of Canada will visit Winnipeg on a national tour to connect with what Margaret Laurence called the "tribe" of Canadian writers.

Merilyn Simonds, the Winnipeg-born author of 16 books of fiction and non-fiction, creative writing teacher at the University of British Columbia and artistic director of the Kingston WritersFest, will meet Manitoba writers at McNally Robinson Booksellers at 5 p.m. Thursday.

Simonds wants to hear about their concerns, including copyright, ebooks, and the public lending rights program.

After the get-together, three local members of the tribe -- Ariel Gordon, Charlene Diehl and Nora Gould -- will read at the Prairie Ink restaurant at 7 p.m.

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Winnipeg female writers are holding a wake for a Toronto bookstore with a national profile.

More than two dozen novelists, short story writers, poets and playwrights are scheduled to read at what has been billed as a celebration and sympathy event for the soon-to-close Toronto Women's Bookstore, starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at McNally Robinson.

Victoria Moreno, owner of the 39-year-old feminist and leftist bookstore, says on the TWB's website that she was unable to compete with online competition and ebooks amid a general recession, despite an attempt at reviving and rebranding the store two years ago.

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Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 27, 2012 J8