The Saint City Writers, a group of diverse individuals, is launching its second anthology this Wednesday at the St. Albert Public Library.
Everybody Has a Place in the Choir has drawn together 10 writers with a wide range of experience and ideas and gives us a hint of the local melting pot.
Some are published writers. Others are honing their skills through friendly criticism and brainstorming sessions. Most importantly, the work features exclusive, original work.
“There’s a menagerie of people, stories and styles. This is a showcase of writing talent in St. Albert, and I’m impressed with the quality and variety and the number of unique voices,” says writer/organizer John Betton.
In addition to Betton, the male voices include slam poet Troy Sherdahl, Bruce Thompson and Kenneth Waldron. The female writers, who outnumber the men, are visual artist Pat Trudeau, Iris McNiven, Kay Guthrie, Alice Sears, Eva Kolacz and Patricia Dunnigan.
Betton’s contribution is Beginnings and Endings, a fictional tale of a survivor of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
“I’m writing a series, a collection of experiences. When I was in school, I knew two or three immigrants from Hungary and this story just hung around in my head.”
Sherdahl contributes six relationship poems while Trudeau offers two short stories dating back to her elementary school days.
Thompson, an environmental scientist, writes The Miracle at Lake Opeongo, a concise memoir about a period in his university days working in the wilds of Algonquin Park.
Instead McNiven veers into humour with The Dignified Retreat of a Prairie Farmer.
“She has a wonderful take on growing up on the prairies. She takes quirky characters and writes rather wry commentaries of the shenanigans they got into.”
Waldron instead takes the reader to Barbados, a sunny environment that masks a life of hardship.
“He has a little bit of the lilt of the Caribbean speech in his writing. He writes from the black perspective and uses his cultural tongue. In his stories, his parents left the island to find employment and he is raised by a grandmother.”
Similar to McNiven, Guthrie has a quirky sense of humour that lends itself to comedic fiction. In one of her tall tales, she tells of fruit fly locked in a fridge from the fly’s perspective.
On the other hand, the Danish-born Sears provides English Immersion, a memoir piece that marks her immigration to Canada in her early teens.
In a different vein, Polish writer Kolazc tells her immigrant story through From Flashlight to Skype.
“It’s about the development of communication over the years. She left under the communist regime when phone calls were rare and expensive to today where she Skypes with her aging grandmother.”
Last on the list is Dunnigan, an Alberta Avenue resident who has written Carrie’s Softball, a yarn about a young teen struggling with life.
Unlike Alice Munroe’s 50-page short stories, these anecdotes are more succinct running about 10 pages in length.
An interesting sidelight is the Trudeau’s painting, Welcome to the Zoo depicting a menagerie of animals, is used as the cover shot.
Copies are limited to 100 for the first printing.
On Wednesday, Betton, Dunnigan, Guthrie and Trudeau will do a series of five-minute readings followed by a Q & A. The readings start at 7 p.m. followed by a reception.
