When I spoke at the Kootenay Literary Competition Awards night last week at the Hume Hotel, I faced a roomful of anticipatory expressions. Who would be the winners? Everyone wanted to know.
If the Kootenay Literary Competition was the destination that night, it’s important to recognize the journey. Creative enterprise that ends on the podium begins in the studio, or at the keyboard, or even — to use that old cliché — in the garret, single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling. It starts humbly: a step taken, then another. If we’re lucky, we get somewhere.
Jurors included writers who have: Antonia Banyard, Vivien Bowers, Jenny Craig, Sharmaine Gray, Kristene Perron, Verna Relkoff, Holley Rubinsky, and Tom Wayman all know that the road can be long, full of punctuation hazards and unanticipated full stops. There is the very real danger of being struck by running metaphors. The only thing to do is carry on, hoping for a lift.
Because most artists will never get rich as they contribute to our cultural landscape, programs that support us in our garrets are necessary. There are a few options out there that can relieve some of the financial burden — buying us a tank of gas, as it were.
The Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance (the cultural arm of the Columbia Basin Trust) offers project assistance, financial help for touring, and other programs. Deadlines are coming up in March, with more information available at basinculture.com.
For those who have a few more miles behind them, there is the British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. These are substantial grants to professional artists and come with their own roadblocks, mostly available funds versus applicant numbers. Only about a quarter of applications receive funding.
Grant-writing is an art in itself. To that end, the Canada Council is coming to Touchstones Nelson on February 23 to run a free info-session and workshops. The focus is on visual arts and writing, but the officers can answer a broad range of questions relating to Canada Council funding (find out what’s available at canadacouncil.ca). Even for those short on mileage, it’s a great opportunity to find out what it takes to get there. Registration and queries should be emailed to helene.pollex@canadacouncil.ca.
The Canada Council also offers grants to Canadian publishers, and these support the publishing of books by Canadian writers, essential in a changing market that has seen the fall of General Publishing, Key Porter, and H.B. Fenn. Without this support, our literary competition winners — and anyone else not writing for the mass-market superhighway — would forever be squirreled away under that single, swinging lightbulb without hope of literary daylight never mind a road to anywhere. This is important for all Canadians who would prefer not to have their bookstore options reduced only to mainstream blockbusters.
So who won the Kootenay Literary Competition? Poetry winners (first and second place) were Sheila Murray-Nellis and Gord Turner; for fiction, Brian D’Eon and Jane Byers. Non-fiction winners were Ellen Burt and Amanda Bath. There was an “emerging writer” category — writers who have never been published in any form — and these were Marie Campagne and Ginny McClelland. The youth winner was Jenny Crakes.
Thanks to Kathy Hartley, Deb O’Keefe, and Morty Mint who, as a subgroup of the Nelson and District Arts Council, put it all together. It was a great crowd and a great bunch of readers, with every writer who emerged from the garret to enter deserving of respect and congratulations.
We’re fortunate in this area to have writers whose published books take them on the road and out there in the wide world, and this reflects well on Nelson. But so do our own homegrown artists of all kinds, whose creative enterprise makes our community the jewel it is, the better to bring the wide world to us. And that makes all of us winners.
Anne DeGrace is Nelson’s cultural ambassador for 2011