At Bay Press Presents: The Better Book Club Event # 1
featuring author Ariel Gordon and artist Natalie Baird discussing the book TreeTalk.
Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YGZP1qzATdezieDAUCWQ2w
An intimate reading and discussion series, featuring authors and artists published by At Bay Press. Every Monday, we will host a session via Zoom with live-streaming on Youtube and Facebook for 8 weeks, starting Monday, January 4th 2021.
Each week, an At Bay Press author (and artist if the book is a graphic novel or visual book) will read from their latest novel, poetry collection, or graphic novel. Readings will be followed by an open discussion with attendees, just like a regular book club, but better since the author of the work will be in attendance!
Each registrant will receive a free e-book (pdf format) of the work being read and discussed prior to the event. Each event will be approximately 1 hour long. Take advantage of this rare opportunity to hear from your favourite authors and be able to speak directly with them from the comfort of your own home.
* Registration required. All ages event. This event will also feature live drawing and sketching with the artist.
About TreeTalk
During the heatwave of July 2017, Ariel Gordon spent two days sitting on the patio of downtown Winnipeg’s Tallest Poppy, writing snippets of poems which she hung from the boulevard tree using paper and string. Passersby were invited to TreeTalk too — their secrets / one-liners / meditations / haiku were also hung from the tree. By the end of the weekend, the elm had a second temporary canopy of leaves: 234 poems, 111 written by Gordon, 107 written by passersby, and 16 from other sources.
Gordon has assembled all these voices into a long/found poem that asks: what does it mean to live in the urban forest? What does it mean to be in relationship with each other but also with the more-than-human? The book also includes pen and ink illustrations by Winnipeg artist Natalie Baird.
About the Presenters
M. C. Joudrey is a Canadian writer, award winning artist and designer. His second novel Of Violence and Cliché was released September 2013, followed by his collection of short stories Charleswood Road: Stories in August 2014, which was nominated for a 2015 Manitoba Book Award. His novel Fanonymous was released in 2019 and was nominated for two Manitoba Book Awards, including the Margaret Laurence Award for best work of fiction. M.C. Joudrey has been a member of the submission selection committee for the CBC Short Fiction Prize and a jury member for the Manitoba Book Awards. His titles reside in permanent legislative and national government collections. He is also a bookbinder and a number of his works are held in galleries internationally.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based author of two collections of urban-nature poetry, both of which won the Lansdowne Prize for Poetry. Gordon also co-edited the anthology GUSH: menstrual manifestos for our times (Frontenac House, 2018) and is the ringleader of the National Poetry Month in the Winnipeg Free Press project. Her most recent book is Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests (Wolsak & Wynn, 2019).
Natalie Baird is a visual artist, filmmaker, and community-based researcher based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Natalie completed a bachelor of environmental science from the University of Manitoba in 2014, where she explored film-making as a tool for environmental action. Her documentary, animation, and video-installation work has been screened and exhibited across Canada. She has an embedded community practice, working as an arts facilitator and artist-in-residence in drop-in art centres and personal care homes. In 2016 Natalie returned to the University of Manitoba for a master of environment, leading arts-based research projects about the social dimensions of climate change in Nunavut.