Beth Powning in Sackville

Midnight Madness in Sackville Friday evening. Stores and cafe's opened late with Christmas Shopping Season. Kel and me ate a good meal at The Olive Branch then walked about the few blocks of active downtown Sackville streets. There were two horse-drawn wagons giving rides, non-profit groups fundraising at picnic tables, musicians in the window corner of a cafe, a 20% off sale in the bookstore, even a sale in the Sally Anne Thrift Store (with boxes and boxes of previously owned xmas decorations), complementary hot chocolate or cider outside Sackville Town Hall with inflated deer and lit-up tanenbaum. The largest crowd was the lineup to see the 8:50 screening of the new Harry Potter movie.

I bused to Sackville to take a WFNB writing workshop from Beth Powning; to interview her on tape for my Ashes, Paper & Beans radio program; to have some Miramichi hospitality with Kellie; to get away from Broken Jaw work for a few days.

Interviewed Beth late Saturday morning before the workshop. It went well. Probably about 17-20 minutes in duration. Might transcribe some of it if I ever get a chance (& give the publisher something quotable?) Some surprise answers too, i.e., Beth said this latest book began as, and was submitted as, a collection of nature essays with an "Animal Tracks" tile but it evolved into a memoir. Ended with Beth reading pages 220-223 from Edge Seasons (Alfred A. Knoff Canada, 2005). Melanie, the contract publicist (who lives on Causeway Road very near my parents), should be pleased. I might even broadcast the interview on Tuesday's episode.

Workshop was held in the basement of the Sackvile Public Library. Wallpaper border of "goose duck duck goose duck duck" at the top of the wall so we're all in the wet, in the duck pond below, swimming or bottom feeding or something . . . ? Good group: 14 participants, only two males (so an extreme version of the usual more-women-than-men participant ratio), more younger participants than expected. Beth said her writing is "an examination of her life to discover something about her life not previously known—it's a quest—and that journey, that quest, creates its own voice."

shirt: Newfoundland & Labrador: A World of Difference
loc: Dzo comCtr
temp: 3 C
sound: Miles Davis Sketches of Spain