The workshops raised $240 for the Manitoba Writers' Guild. Thanks to McNally Robinson Booksellers for hosting, and to the artists and writers who joined the fight to make comics. And hey, check this shit out:
Super-Powered Literacy: The Benefits of Comics in the Classroom
July 21, 2010—Dismissed by generations of parents and educators for being “sub-literate” comic books and graphic novels may hold the key to promoting prose literacy in young boys—who have traditionally lagged behind girls in reading—says the Canadian Council on Learning (CCL).
Thank you to Septagon Studios for the plug:
Make Comics with John Toone and GMB Chomichuk
Gator Butch, from Septagon Studios, will be live, soon, so stay tuned.
"Graphic Storytelling Workshop, Tuesday July 13 & Tuesday July 20, 7:00-9:00 pm in the Travel Alcove. Join the Fight! Make Comics! Join Manitoba Book Award nominees John Toone and GMB Chomichuk, the authors and artist of The Imagination Manifesto, in these two special graphic-storytelling workshops. These nights will take you from pen to page, from finding your storytelling strengths to finding a publisher. Bring your portfolio, scripts, concepts, ideas and an open mind for these evenings of discussion and creative brainstorming. Registration is $10 and can be paid at McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park. All proceeds benefit the Manitoba Writers' Guild. E-mail events(at)grant.mcnallyrobinson.ca for further details and please visit McNally Robinson Booksellers on-line at
www.mcnallyrobinson.com."
From Out of Nowhere by John Toone
Reviewed by: Karin Cope
The Dalhousie Review – Spring 2010
Written in a tough-guy's one-liners, John Toone's From Out of Nowhere is a marvelous compendium of wordplay and contemporary business, political, cow¬boy and advertising clichés set to stagger in single broken lines. I like the way Toone lets words run down the page—ragged on the left, but (often) towing the line on the right, neatened up, like a fence. For this book is about the occupation (loss) of the land, its colonization, line by line, its shift from wilderness to farm to suburbia, where temporary profits "revolution eyes / the great wide open" ... "untitled / free and clear / site unseen" (85). The speakers are small-town heroes, ancestors or shysters—now and then, their words run into one another; they contaminate one another's utterances, the way clichés do, staggering in single lines down dusty tracks. The book ends with the forever hope that someone will ride out of the wilderness with the answer—even to questions we've not asked. But the poem knows the hero is just a mirage. He's no more a game changer than any of the speakers, who must admit to themselves: "chances / you will spend your life / looking both ways before / deciding to stay put" (21).
Sometimes, particularly towards the end, the neatened lines of the book are broken up; words slide back and forth, cluster—"this is the church's / secret hand/shakin g/ orders / ... finger pointing" (96)—in the middle. It seems as if a new order will assert itself; what is rotten, exposed, what is hoped for emerging, but this in the end, is too just cliché: "i know what you are thinking /... / i give a way I catch the drift / right before our eyes / remains / a straight shooter / at the crosswalk / appearing / from out of nowhere / the end" (102). The would-be game changers—businessmen, cowboys, developers, farmer ancestors—change no games. Only art can do that, slipping the tongue in sideways, showing how "plain english" never is.
KAREN COPE lives in Nova Scotia. Formerly a Gertrude Stein scholar (Passionate Collaborations: Learning to Live with Gertrude Stein), she chose, as Stein did, the happier risks of a creative life. She is currently at work on a novel about a girl who flies (Signs Taken for Wonders) and a play, as well as a book of very short horror stories (Terrible Tales), and several long illustrated poems.
Check out our splashy press release:
Bluewater Productions - The Imagination Manifesto: Book One
And while your there, check out GMBC's artwork in Insane Jane: Avenging Star #1, Vincent Price Presents #22, and The Claw and Fang #3. Many thanks to Darren Davis and Bluewater Productions for their support.
Meet the Author - Table "C" was the place to be for an afternoon of bookish revelry. Thanks to Fish Futures and the Manitoba Fisheries Enhancement Fund, I gave away copies of Catch That Catfish! and Hope and the Walleye to libraries throughout the Province. And thanks to Emma Hill Kepron and the MLC for the invite.
