PAPER CHASE: Big Ideas come out of Thin Air

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This article was published 18/09/2010 (5843 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Big ideas will once again be shared at this year’s Thin Air Winnipeg International Writers Festival.

“It’s a slightly different face of the fest,” Thin Air director Charlene Diehl says of the Big Ideas weekday series starting Monday.

The series features Haitian poet Bathélemy Bolivar, veteran journalist Lawrence Scanlan, conservationist David Carpenter, journalist Amy Jo Ehman and aboriginal leader Theodore Fontaine.

Continuing successively from last year, the series focuses on contemporary issues.

“It’s for people interested in non-fiction, and specifically in ideas,” Diehl says. “It’s the opposite of how a lot of people think a writers’ festival might be.”

The series takes place 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. daily at the Carol Shields Auditorium at the Millennium Library.

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The Vatican’s Apostolic Library is reopening to researchers on Monday following a three-year, $11.5-million renovation, according to new reports.

Foundations and floors were reinforced, and the library’s security measures technologically upgraded.

Installed were climate-controlled rooms for precious manuscripts, and computer chips were embedded in the books themselves.

The over 500-year-old library houses one of oldest known complete Bibles, dating from about AD 325 and believed to have been commissioned by Roman Emperor Constantine.

No items can be checked out, and rules are strict: no pens, food or even mineral water are allowed in the reading room.

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A 40-year-old abandoned graphic novel by Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs is set to be finally published in its entirety in 2011.

Leading comics publisher Fantagraphics Books (Joe Sacco’s Palestine) has scheduled the book for next summer.

Burroughs began labouring in 1970 on Ah Pook Is Here with artist Malcolm McNeill, with the story appearing as a monthly strip in English magazine Cyclops.

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HarperCollins has inked a deal with Agatha Christie’s estate to become the British mystery author’s exclusive global English language publisher.

Signed for seven-figures 120 years after Christie’s birth, the deal secures all digital and audio rights to the publisher for the next 10 years.

Collins has published Agatha Christie since The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1926, although Penguin and St. Martin’s Press had previously been publishing Christie in the U.S.

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The short list for the 2010 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction has been announced.

The shortlisted titles are: Lakeland, by Allan Casey; A Very Capable Life: The Autobiography of Zarah Petri, by John Leigh Walters; and Smiling Bears, by Else Poulsen.

Administered by Wilfrid Laurier University, the $10,000 award recognizes Canadian writers of first or second works of creative non-fiction, with Canadian significance. The winner will be announced Oct. 11.

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