Category Archives: Publishing

Duthie Party to Remember, Party to Forget

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Online ticket sales are closed, but you can still reserve (and it’s strongly recommended that you do) by emailing Lorraine dot murphy at gmail dot com. The Party is on Monday!!! The Shebeen has a capacity of only 60 people, so email and make sure you don’t get stuck out in the rain.

Book Funeral

The Patient Succumbed to Amazonitis

Help us celebrate the slate but always-great Duthie Books, one of the world’s great independent booksellers. Sadly, after more than a half a century of informed and impassioned involvement in the literary world, Duthie’s last location will be shutting its doors at the end of February.

Come out and reminisce and help us celebrate a great bookstore and an intellectual institution. This is a chain invitation, so pass it along to all who may be interested, either by copying it into an email, pointing out this blog post, or by inviting people by using the link in the sidebar on Facebook. Half of the Vancouver literati used to work there, buy there, or just try to chat up people in the Cellar (not as filthy as it sounds, outsiders!).

We will be accepting book donations for charity! All books and $5 from each ticket sold will go to the Stratcona One to One Literacy program. Keep books alive!

There will be many surprises there. Don’t forget to wear black! Full mourning dress preferred. Celia Duthie will be our guest of honour.

If you have a collection of old Duthie Bookmarks, please bring them in. They’ll be photographed for posterity and the best one will win a prize.

Ex-Duthieites are encouraged to attend, moderately encouraged to get maudlin, strongly encouraged to get into storytelling, and absolutely COMPELLED to get into the whiskey.

Come out and share your reminiscences of the deceased, and toast the memory of a fine, upstanding bookstore who never turned away an intellectual in need of brain food or met an obscure literary magazine it didn’t like. God, I’m getting weepy just thinking about it!

Details: Since we expect this event to be packed, please reserve your ticket in advance via email.

7pm till late

Monday, February 15th, 2010

The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather pub, 212 Carrall Street, Maple Tree Square, Gastown, Vancouver

$20 (proceeds to charity) includes a drink and dinner, with a choice of:

  • entree salad
  • vegetarian pasta
  • bangers and mash
  • fish and chips
  • sleeve of domestic draft or glass of white or red wine

Dress code: funereal. Black beret and tame yet ominous raven optional.

N is for Neville by Christine Mladic

N is for Neville, done in by ennui. Check out the Gashleycrumb Tinies series by photographer Christine Mladic

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A Collective Response to arts cuts at the Gallery Gachet

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Got this from the highly useful Instant Coffee email:

Restore Arts Funding Now

Restore Arts Funding Now

The Gallery Gachet Collective | A COLLECTIVE RESPONSE | FEB 5

————————————————————————

Curated by Lara Fitzgerald | Exhibition runs: 5th – 28th Feb | Opening

Reception: Fri Feb 5th, 7 – 10pm

Dance Party Celebrating the Arts: Sat Feb 13th, 8 – late (With support from

Art Walk 2010 and the Alliance for Arts and Culture)

Exhibition is part of Art Walk 2010, www.artwalkvancouver.ca

Gallery Gachet presents the exhibition A Collective Response, featuring The

Gallery Gachet Collective’s response to the current cultural landscape in

Vancouver. The exhibition showcases each artist’s reaction to the arts

funding cuts through their own art-making practice, celebrating and

reinforcing the importance of art as a critical means for achieving a

healthy and flourishing society.

A Collective Response aims to focus on the critical role of art in society.

In particular as a way of responding to contemporary issues. Vancouver is

currently undergoing a massive upheaval, and these changes affect all its

citizens profoundly. Gallery Gachet’s Collective Membership feels strongly

about the importance of community engagement and asserting a response to

these changes, and they believe that art provides a powerful and

significant channel for dialogue.

Based on the idea of Documenta (an international contemporary art

exhibition held in Kassel, Germany every five years), The Collective will

transform Gallery Gachet into a free speech zone offering both commentary

and critique of issues relevant to art and life in Vancouver at this

specific historical juncture. Thematically, the work addresses the massive

funding cuts that most arts organizations have received in BC, as well as

political priorities and how these precedents impact our cultural climate.

The Gachet Collective believes in the expression of art and culture as a

human right, and as a means for achieving social, cultural and economic

justice.

The link between A Collective Response and Documenta is one of intention

and spirit. Documenta is known as an exhibition that explores the

intersection between contemporary art and the current critical issues of

the time, inviting people from all over the world to convene, assess the

situation, and enact a dialogic process. Documenta began in the early

1950’s, and was developed as a response to the degenerate art politics of

the Third Reich. In contrast to other international exhibitions that

emerged from the World Fair models, the tradition behind Documenta is one

of theoretical grounding, and a sense of urgency in regards to the role and

meaning of art in society. Inclusivity and dissolution of elitism are

founding values of the festival; these beliefs are also woven into the core

of The Collective’s ideology and integral values that are unanimously held

by The Collective.

A Collective Response will feature multidisciplinary works from Gachet’s

twenty-one collective members, and represents not only the distinct

response of each individual member but also the unique energy and drive

behind The Gachet Collective as a whole.

Artists featured: Benitto, Sharon Burns, Sharon Smith, Kara Lee, Stephen

Long, Jay Peachy, Karen Ward, Bernadine Fox, Bruce Ray, Dylan Wolney, Quin

Martins, W.N. (Bill) Pope, Laurie Marshall, Robert Gardiner, Leef Evans,

Diane Thorn, Cherise Clarke, Lisa Walker, Ariel Kirk-Gushowaty, Geoff

Greene and Youngsin Lee.

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Why I Love Vancouver Launch Party

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Vancouver's West End at Sunset by Duane Storey

Vancouver's West End at Sunset by Duane Storey

Stole this off Facebook, where it was passed to me by author Linda Solomon, EIC of the Vancouver Observer:

Why I Love Vancouver Launch Party & Book Signing

Why I Love Vancouver

Why I Love Vancouver

Tuesday, 09 February 2010
18:00 – 20:30
Elysian Cafe
590 West Broadway
Vancouver, BC

Hosted by the Elysian Cafe

Date: Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Time: 6 pm (Linda will do a short reading at 6:45 pm)
Location: Elysian Cafe 590 West Broadway (corner of Broadway and Ash)

Wine and snacks.
Cash coffee bar with Elysian’s fine blends.
Open to the public. Bring your friends.
Why I Love Vancouver will be available for sale at the launch party for $20.00.

“Intelligent, incisive, and often hilarious, Linda Solomon’s Why I Love Vancouver takes you into the corners of the city. Her keen observations read as a kind of a personal journey, while providing an informative analysis of topics ranging from public healthcare and the Canadian social contract to local politics, personalities, and the impact of the Olympics on her beloved adopted city.”
–Ruth Ozeki, author of My Year of Meats and All Over Creation

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Sociable! Book Launch Thursday

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Sociable Book Cover

Sociable Book Cover

Come out to the plus V Lounge in Yaletown to support local authors and social media phenomena Shane Gibson and Steve Jagger, who are launching their new book Sociable! Deets from the Facebook invitation:

5-8pm, Thursday, January 28th

V Lounge above Earl’s in Yaletown

1095 Mainland Street, Vancouver

This is the official launch party for the book Sociable! As many of you know Sociable! is about using social media to connect with people and develop meaningful business relationships. Come out, mingle and be Sociable!

Copies of Sociable! will be available for purchase and Stephen Jagger and Shane Gibson would be pleased to sign them for you.

* Those who plan on purchasing a book, please bring cash or a cheque as we won’t have credit card processing capabilities on site.

This year has seen an explosion of books on various aspects of social media, most particularly from local authors. Not only Shane and Steve but also Tris Hussey, Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo, and Rebecca Bollwitt have new books out this Spring. All are both local to Vangroover and world-class experts in social media, and all of them are friends of mine so I dare not play favorites here except that AHEM Shane, Steve, Julie and Darren are the only ones who’ve invited me to their book launch…yet…and somehow they’re also the only ones whose announcements made it onto my blog). All six were profiled recently in a Vancouver Sun article by Gillian Shaw, whom I also know, for lo, yo, I know everyone in this scene.

Vancouver is the most Facebooked city in the world per capita and, I believe, the second most Twittered. It’s a socially quite isolationist city, and cliques here can be very difficult to break into; it’s not that people are really heartless, but for whatever reason we’ve got these social silos side by side and there’s very little interaction between groups. That’s why Lori and I started the Shebeen Club almost five years ago: to provide a place where everyone involved in Vancouver literature, whether magazine publisher, book designer, journalist, screenwriter, poet, storyteller, or student could come together as equal participants and share ideas and a few drinks and a lot of fun. Getting back to digital social media (whisky is very social, duh!) I think that one of the key reasons Vancouverites are so interactive online is because we do sense the lack of connectedness in our culture, and are driven to address it in easily-accessible ways. Essentially, the social urge in Vancouver is diverted online, where it can find fulfillment almost instantly.

This year I’ve been to more events I found out about on Twitter and Facebook than any other method of communication. Sure, Tweetups were more fun before the recession when companies bought the drinks, but they’re still a fun, casual way to meet great people. The one key thing to remember about social media is that it’s SOCIAL, and people use it to socialize. Online engagement doesn’t replace life, it is life, just conducted on different platforms. The telephone is social media. The bus is social media. Airplanes and the post office and pony express: all social media.

So, even though you read this announcement on a blog, it means very little unless it inspires you to get off your chair and out to V Lounge on Thursday to meet the authors in meatspace! In the meantime, here’s a teaser: you can read the first chapter of their book on Scribd right here (first page is blank, just click onward):

And you can buy Sociable at Amazon if you like the chapter and cannot possibly make it to the book launch.

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A Wake for Duthie Books: our Shebeen Club Meeting for February

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Book Funeral

The Patient Succumbed to Amazonitis

Get your tickets now on Eventbrite!
http://www.eventbrite.com/registerbutton?eid=418674266

Online ticket sales are closed, but you can still reserve (and it’s strongly recommended that you do) by emailing Lorraine dot murphy at gmail dot com.

Help us wake the soon-to-be-late but always-great Duthie Books, one of the world’s great independent booksellers. Sadly, after more than a half a century of informed and impassioned involvement in the literary world, Duthie’s last location will be shutting its doors at the end of February.

We see no reason to wait till it’s dead to have a wake, so come out and reminisce and help us celebrate a great bookstore and an intellectual institution. This is a chain invitation, so pass it along to all who may be interested, either by copying it into an email, pointing out this blog post, or by inviting people by using the link in the sidebar on Facebook. Half of the Vancouver literati used to work there, buy there, or just try to chat up people in the Cellar (not as filthy as it sounds, outsiders!).

We will be accepting book donations for charity! All books and $5 from each ticket sold will go to the Stratcona One to One Literacy program. Keep books alive! And remember, Duthie Books IS having their regular sale starting at the end of January, so you can show your support for Duthie Books and contribute to charity at the same time if you buy the books to donate at Duthie.

We won’t have a presenter, but we MAY have a coffin. There will be many surprises there. Don’t forget to wear black! Full mourning dress preferred. Celia Duthie will be our guest of honour.

If you have a collection of old Duthie Bookmarks, please bring them in. They’ll be photographed for posterity and the best one will win a prize.

Ex-Duthieites are encouraged to attend, moderately encouraged to get maudlin, strongly encouraged to get into storytelling, and absolutely COMPELLED to get into the whiskey.

Come out and share your reminiscences of the deceased, and toast the memory of a fine, upstanding bookstore who never turned away an intellectual in need of brain food or met an esoteric literary magazine it didn’t like. God, I’m getting weepy just thinking about it!

Details: Since we expect this event to be packed, please reserve your ticket in advance on Eventbrite.

7pm till late

Monday, February 15th, 2010

The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather pub, 212 Carrall Street, Maple Tree Square, Gastown, Vancouver

$20 (proceeds to charity) includes a drink and dinner, with a choice of:

  • entree salad
  • vegetarian pasta
  • bangers and mash
  • fish and chips
  • sleeve of domestic draft or glass of white or red wine

Dress code: funereal. Black beret and tame yet ominous raven optional.

N is for Neville by Christine Mladic

N is for Neville, done in by ennui. Check out the Gashleycrumb Tinies series by photographer Christine Mladic

Related Wailings and the Rending of Garments from around the interwebs:

Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin. Didn't we all?

Z is for Zillah who drank too much gin. Looking forward to that myself

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We will be accepting book donations for charity! All books and $5 from each ticket sold will go to the Stratcona One to One Literacy program. Keep books alive! And remember, Duthie Books IS having their regular sale starting at the end of January, so you can show your support for Duthie Books and contribute to charity at the same time if you buy the books to donate at Duthie.