Lisa Moore (1)

What is structure in a novel? Pacing, dipping back and forth between memory and action, leaping from dialogue to description, unspooling or snagging time, every movement creating new meaning. In this session, novelist and short–fiction writer Lisa Moore looks at suspense on the level of the sentence, ... (more)the paragraph, the page, and over the trajectory of a story. Explore with her how the unfurling of time and action together can provoke an emotional reaction in our readers and build to revelation. Venue: Martello Room, Holiday Inn. Tickets: $25.00.

Twice nominated for the Giller Prize, Lisa Moore has been described as a writer with a "feel for place as gritty as dirt under your fingernails". A resident of St John's, Newfoundland, her city and island are vividly rendered in her short fiction and novels. Moore's first collection, Degrees of Nakedness, ... (more)introduced readers to her tough, naturalistic prose, her sensuously wrought land and cityscapes, and characters straddling the extremes of raw emotion and the trivialities of modern existence. In Alligator, her first novel, multiple plot-lines weave together a group of characters loving and labouring in variously exploitative, heartless and violent relationships, brilliantly mirroring the reptilian indifference of the title character. By contrast, Moore's recent novel, February, evokes, with profound sympathy, the lives of working people in the aftermath of a shipping tragedy. "She brings to her pages," wrote Richard Ford, "what we are always seeking in fiction and only find in the best of it... an unswerving instinct for what's important in life." Moore will be in conversation with Caroline Baum.

Travel from a frigid Newfoundland to the dusty streets of Iran, from a lonely Outback town to a chilly Polish winter, and back to an often sinister New Zealand. This free event brings together six of contemporary fiction's most compelling voices. Lisa Moore (Canada) is the author of the wonderfully sharp ... (more)novel Alligator and the wholly sympathetic February. Joan London (Australia) is the author of hauntingly beautiful novels Gilgamesh and The Good Parents. Fariba Hachtroudi (Iran/France) is the author of a number of novels including Iran, les rives du sang, and is the current Randell Cottage Writer-in-Residence. Anna Taylor (New Zealand) is the author of the exquisite short story collection Relief. Charlotte Grimshaw (New Zealand) is the one of our most sophisticated writers, and her most recent collections include Opportunity and Singularity. This event is hosted by Jenny Pattrick.

Huck Finn got to light out, and in doing so invent his future. For boys who run away, the road is an adventure, for girls it is often a more perilous place. In contemporary literature, women on the run face unique hardships, many of which have to do with suffocating families, illicit sex, and establishing ... (more)a sense of self. Joan London's Gilgamesh and The Good Parents give us young women making their way in men's worlds; whether in Europe on the eve of war or a hotel room in Brisbane, the consequences are equally shocking. In Alligator, Lisa Moore's novel, two women struggle to make their way in the world: sassy Colleen is an eco-terrorist determined to escape small town Newfoundland, while her aunt tries to stay alive long enough to make a film. In all of Susanna Moore's novels, women negotiate twilight worlds of sex and identity, be it a steamy Hawai'i in Sleeping Beauties, colonial India in One Last Look, or prison in The Big Girls. Join these three novelists in conversation with Ingrid Horrocks on why we call women "bad girls".

Venue: The Banff Centre, Rolston Recital Hall Start: 3:00pm End: 4:30pm Can-lit heavyweights join forces with international superstars to wrap up the readings with a bang! Tickets are $15.00, $7.50 for students and seniors – call WordFest at 403.237.9068 for more information.

Venue: The Auburn Start: 5:00pm End: 6:00pm The girls gossip (and read too)! The highs, lows and the fun in between at the 2009 Publisher of the Year. Tickets are $12.00, $6.00 for students and seniors – call WordFest at 403.237.9068 for more information.

Venue: Vertigo Theatre Centre, Playhouse Start: 7:00pm End: 9:00pm Words and music collide in this WordFest favourite with stories that look back, forward and everywhere in between. Authors are joined by the WordFest house band under the musical direction of Mario Allende. *Includes the presentation ... (more)of the Brenda Strathern Late Bloomers Writing Prize. Tickets are $20.00, $10.00 for students and seniors – call WordFest at 403.237.9068 for more information.