I will be virtually visiting two schools in Killaloe Ontario today and tomorrow to talk about my middle grade novel, Audrey (cow) and to give writing workshops about Voice & Dialogue.
Thank you to the Ontario Council for the Arts and their Writers-in-Schools program for making this to happen!
This is a short heads up that I will be giving daily readings of my middle grade novel, Audrey (cow) on Facebook Live starting Monday, March 30, at 11:00 am PST (2:00 pm EST).
Please let any grade 3-6ers know about it, or if your family’s quarantine daily breaking point is around that time, take a breather with moi. There is a cast of thirty-three narrators telling the story. My acting abilities being what they are, I think that I can guarantee at least fifteen distinct voices among them.
Nothing helps in curing two months of debilitating back pain
and a kidney stone attack like finding out that one of your books, Dog Night at
the Story Zoo, has been nominated for the Joan Betty Stuchner Oy Vey! Award. Why? Because ironically,
oy vey is what I’ve been groaning of late, and laughter is medicine, and an
award celebrating funny books is kind of related.
It’s also a great honour. Those of us in Vancouver knew Joan
to be a very funny soul who was taken from us much too early. This award was
set up by some of her writer friends.
Dog Night at the Story Zoo is a graphic novel illustrated by
Vick Nerino and published by Tundra Books
Yesterday, I took part in the Red Cedar awards gala and had a great time! This is an event owned by the children (several hundred strong) who packed the room, many of whom had taken the ferry from Victoria that morning to get there. These grade 4-6 students served as masters of ceremony, they introduced the authors in attendance, they performed skits based on the nominated books and they came up to us to chat and get books signed. The level of confidence, the degree of capability and the abundance of humour shown by them has so much to do with the fact that these were children in school reading clubs who were among other children from other schools who also had a passion for reading. I was impressed with all of them.
The Red Cedar Award is an annual, young reader’s-choice event given in two categories: fiction and information. Students from across the province of British Columbia take part in deciding the winners.
This is the first time one of my books have been nominated and I’m very excited to be attending the gala awards ceremony on May 7th at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. I understand that there will be skits performed based on the shortlisted books.
As part of the pre-voting activities, interviews have been conducted with the authors. Here is the link for the one I did with a grade six student from Pemberton BC: