Prose in the Park Media Release

MEDIA ADVISORY

May 23, 2017

Contact: Benoit Chartier

E-Mail/Courriel: proseintheparkottawa@gmail.com

Telephone: 819-598-4297

(Pour la version française, cliquez ici)

THIRD ANNUAL PROSE IN THE PARK LITERARY FESTIVAL

We are delighted to announce that the Third Annual Prose in the Park Literary Festival will take place on June 10, 2017 in the Parkdale Park, Ottawa. All the panels and events are now ready for the festival. Please visit our website at www.proseinthepark.com for details. Here are some of the highlights.

The day will start at 11 am on Stage 2 (south end of the park) with five Ottawa Story Tellers (OST) providing a sampler one-hour program of oral story-telling. At noon, we will officially open the festival with a bilingual ceremony with the Mayor of Ottawa, Jim Watson. A replica of a centuries-old trumpet will be used to call in the spectators and the mayor will be accompanied to Stage 2 by bagpipe music.

At 12:30 on Stage 2, M.C. Sang Kim will do a thirty-minute interview with readings with Canada's most celebrated humour writer since Stephen Leacock. That's right! Terry Fallis, twice winner of the Leacock Medal, has joined Prose in the Park.

At 2 pm, we will listen to passages read by the five finalists (or their designates) of the Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors, comments by the jurors on the short-listed books, and at 2:40 pm, we will announce the winner of the award. The finalists are Joan Crate for Black Apple (Simon & Schuster), Susan Doherty Hannaford for A Secret Music (Cormorant Books), Emma Hooper for Etta and Otto and Russell and James (Penguin Canada), Eric Beck Rubin for School of Velocity (Doubleday Canada) and Andy Sinclair for Breathing Lessons (Véhicule Press). There were 40 submissions for the Frank Hegyi Award.

The four English panels are:

1) Reaching Thirteen (literary fiction) with moderator Ursula Pflug and panelists Neil Smith (Hugh MacLennan Prize 2015), Catherine Leroux (Giller Prize Finalist 2016), Nadia Bozak (author and head of Creative Writing at Carleton University) and Paul Carlucci (Danuta Gleed Winner 2013).

2) The Musicality of Fiction (literary fiction) with moderator Menaka Raman-Wilms and panelists Sean Michaels (Giller Prize Winner 2014), Susan Doherty Hannaford (2016 Grace Irwin Prize winner) and Robert Barclay (author and international expert in the conservation and preservation of musical instruments).

3) Emerging Crime (crime fiction) with moderator Melissa Yi and panelists Michael Blair (author and past President of the Crime Writers of Canada), Catherine Alstolfo (2012 Derrick Murdoch Award Winner), Jim Napier (author and crime fiction reviewer at the Ottawa Review of Books) and Patricia Filteau (author and Vice-President, Capital Crime Writers).

4) Poetry at 150 (poetry) with moderator Michael Mirolla and panelists Sarah Tsiang (2012 Gerald Lampert Prize Winner), Michael Fraser (2016 CBC Poetry Prize winner), Kelly Norah Drukker (2016 A.M. Klein Poetry Prize winner) and Bänoo Zan (2017 Gerald Lampert Prize finalist).

The three Francophone panels are:

1) Le pouvoir de l'auteur dans la traduction moderated by Mélanie Rivet with Louis L'Allier (Nikolaos, le copiste), Catherine Leroux (Prix littéraire France-Québec 2014), Madeleine Stratford (Prix de la traduction littéraire John Glassco 2013) and Caroline Vu (Fred Kerner Award 2016).

2) L'espace est-il un personnage ? moderated by Éric Charlebois with Stéphanie Corriveau (La Grande Illusion), Éric Mathieu (Prix littéraire Émergence AAOF 2017), Gabriel Osson (Hubert, le restavèk) and Michèle Vinet (Prix littéraire Le Droit, 2017; Prix Émile-Ollivier 2012; Prix littéraire Trillium 2012)

3) L'Histoire dans le roman est-elle une mise en contexte sociale ou plutôt un catalyseur narratif ? moderated by Éric Charlebois with Liliane Gratton (La décennie de nos jeunes années), Kalula Kalambay (Tendre Afrique), Véronique Marie Kaye (Prix Trillium 2016) and Marie-Josée Martin (Prix littéraire Émergence AAOF 2014; Prix Le Droit 2014; Prix Christine-Dumitriu-Van-Saanen 2013; Prix du livre d’Ottawa 2013)

And this year, we will have a Spanish-language panel El arte de vivir en la encrucijada (The Art of Living in the Crossroads), moderated by Ramón Sepúlveda with Luis Molina (Las falsas mujeres de Gaugin), Camila Reimer (Tiempo de ser) and Jocy Medina (Habana dura).

Seventeen publishers and more than eighty independent writers will be selling and signing books in the book fair of the festival.

Cheers,

Ian Shaw

Chair, Prose in the Park Organizing Committee

proseintheparkottawa@gmail.com