writes about war from a young person's view #bannedbyrussia
Thank you, Melanie, for this great interview!
Marsha Skrypuch and I have a history.
It makes sense because we both write and care about history–particularly stories where there has been injustice. I believe that we are humanitarians, who hope that our stories of the past will resonate with the present, bringing awareness about people who have for–one reason or another–been silenced. Continue reading “Melanie Fishbane’s Dance of the Banished interview”
What a thrill it was to see all the cars and buses pulling up to the theatre as I snuck inside unnoticed. Many kids were clutching copies of Making Bomb for Hitler, Stolen Child and Underground Soldier.
Here are Bairdmore students catching a few extra pages before heading up to the balcony!
The two young MCs were amazingly calm, cool and professional. I can’t imagine being so poised at their age!
When they announced me as this year’s winner, I got up from the audience and walked onto the stage. Here’s the awesome award:
I also got a cheque! I gave a short talk, reading, and kids asked questions…
… and then I was whisked away to the lobby to sign books. All of my books quickly sold out, and I found out later that one of the MCs did not get a copy because she was at the back of the line-up, so I gave one of the organizers my personal copy of Making Bombs for Hitler, signed to her.
Here are some of the students at the signing table:
On Thursday night, I had pre-signed 350 WWII trilogy bookmark as I had been told that there would be 315 kids in attendance. As it turned out, there were exactly 350 kids there. Eeek! The organizers made sure each student got exactly ONE signed bookmark. I also had some postcards for Dance of the Banished on hand and gave all of those out as well.
After all the buses left, the MYRCA committee treated me to a fabulous lunch at Chez Sophie on the bridge over top the river. Lovely view, great company and fantastic food!
After lunch, another kidcritter, Julie K, picked me up. We had coffee and a chat, and then Julie took me on a quick car tour of the city and dropped me off at the airport.
A whirlwind trip. I’m still on a high! Thank you Thin Air. Thank you, MYRCA!
Two more Thin Air presentations, this time without booming sounds. GREAT kids in the audience once again, with awesome questions.
Once the afternoon session finished up, Dave Jenkinson and his wife Rhea picked me up for a visit over sweets and coffee. Dave is the longtime editor of Canadian Materials Online. I also consider him a mentor. More than a dozen years ago, he convinced me to concentrate on historical novels, rather than the historical/contemporary novels that I had been writing up to that time. I took his advice and the very next book I wrote was Nobody’s Child. That was a huge turning point for me. All of my novels since then have been historical fiction. Thank you, Dave!
While waiting in the hotel lobby for Rhea and Dave to arrive, I watched a puzzling scene unfold. A woman approached a young couple who were relaxing on one of the sofas. She opened a large carryall bag and pulled out a short sundress. “There’s this one,” she said. “And this is for later,” she said, pulling out a second that looked pretty much like the first. Then she pulled out a padded bra, and yet another sundress, all the while chatting away with the couple as if this were the most normal thing to do in a hotel lobby. The female half of the couple seemed disinterested, but the male had comments on all the garments. Finally the female took a sundress and a few minutes later she returned, in the sundress, with a big floppy hat and sunglasses. Hmmm. At first I thought maybe the couple had lost their luggage and a friend was loaning them clothing, but I think these were film people and this was a costume. This suspicion was also borne out by the odd man outside, monopolizing the only the bench. He was smoking a cigarette and checking his email on his phone device — not unusual — but this guy had a mustache that was so perfectly manicured that it looked like it had been plucked or threaded to perfection. Ditto his hair. And he had really dorky sunglasses on (likely super-expensive).
There were also stretch limos pulling in and out of the valet parking area on an ongoing basis. Hmm.
Dave and Rhea confirmed my suspicions. Apparently lots of films are shot in Winnipeg.
That evening I was treated to dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory by Karen Boyd and the MYRCA Award committee. It was so very nice to meet these hard-working booklovers in person!!
The above pic is how I spent Wednesday morning. Here’s a write up about it. For this first session, I was given a Madonna-type headset with a microphone bud at my lips. I have no idea why it suddenly began to BOOM partway through the presentation. Quite disconcerting! That kink was smoothed over the rest of the week though, as I was given a lapel mike after that. Great groups of students with FABULOUS questions! Wonderful to interact with so many avid readers.
On Wednesday afternoon, I presented at Acadia School — again — so great to meet many avid readers and excited fans of my WWII trilogy. Teacher-librarian Jo-Anne Gibson emailed me afterwards: “My students are still talking about your presentation. I’ve had a lot of authors at Acadia and few have made such a lasting impact.”
From there I went to Winnipeg’s Children’s Literature Roundtable pizza party and author talk. Again, such a wonderful opportunity to meet many children, parents, educators and librarians who had read and loved Making Bombs for Hitler and other of my books. Truly, this is an author’s dream!
After the pizza party, I was whisked away to Holy Family Nursing Home for a presentation to the Alpha Omega Alumni Association. Interesting to present to students all day and finish with a presentation to adults, and not just any adults, but a group of people who had family connections to my trilogy. Many in the audience had personally lived through the times reflected in my books. Because of this, the questions were very interesting.
A couple of Alpha Omega members kept me company later in the evening as I had a very late dinner back at the hotel — Manitoba smoked goldeye is delish.
This post was originally published on Brenda Kearns’ blog here.
Most people will say that fiction is fake and non-fiction is true, but have you ever had a news article written about yourself or a topic you’re very familiar with? Was it 100% accurate? Not likely!
Yet news articles are supposed to be non-fiction. Ditto for textbooks. They’re filled with facts and figures that are based on suppositions of the time but that doesn’t make them true. Continue reading “Fiction, Non-fiction and Narrative Non-fiction”
Erin Woods of Pajama Press came in early on the train so I picked her up and took her to the Blue Dog Cafe so she could fortify herself for the book launch and plaque unveiling. Here she is, about to fortify herself with carrot cake.
Erin snapped this of me, chugging down mint tea:
Erin Woods of Pajama Press and freelance publicist Kim Therriault were both on hand to help out with the book signing table. It was so nice to see many familiar faces, including Helen Kubiw, who had posted this fabulous review just hours earlier.
It was also wonderful to see Suleyman Guven, who helped me tremendously with cultural and historical details of Alevi Kurdish life from a century ago. He too had just published an interview that we had done. It is published in Turkish and English in Yeni Hayat, the Toronto Kurdish/Turkish newspaper, of which he is the editor. He brought me a paper copy of the newspaper as well and it is beautiful!
Lada and Olya, women I met on my first trip to Ukraine back in 2001 drove in from Toronto together, and CANSCAIPers Lynne Kositsky (and husband Michael) and Judy Robinson also came out, as well as a mother-daughter avid reader blogging team.
I was especially honoured to see so many people from the Armenian Canadian community. One young man who towered over me said he’d heard me speak about my first novel, The Hunger, when he was in elementary school. How nifty is that?!
And Joan Mailing, I am glad that you did get postcards and bookmarks this time!
What an honour it was to be part of the wave of plaque unveilings across the country on Friday at 11am, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Canada’s first national internment operations. The hundred plaques project, known as CTO (Ukrainian for 100) was the brainchild of Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk and was organized and funded by the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund.
Since there were only 100 plaques for the entire country, as soon as I heard about this project, I put Brantford down for one. Here’s what the plaques look like:
There were about 80 people in attendance, many driving in from Toronto and Cambridge including people of Alevi and Armenian heritage. The prayers and hymns were a moving tribute to those who had been unjustly imprisoned by Canada one hundred years ago. Both priests spoke eloquently, as did our government representatives.
What sets Canada apart from many countries is that we do acknowledge injustices. That’s what these 100 plaques are all about — commemorating a past injustice so it will never be repeated.
Check this out — TWO maps, French flaps, the word Banished is in turquoise foil and breathtaking landscape painting by Pascal Milelli that wraps from front cover to back.
