Event – Spring/Summer 2015

The Spring/Summer issue of EVENT is a particularly exciting read because it is the “Notes on Writing” issue. Not only does the journal provide a spectrum of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and reviews, but it also provides reflective commentary on the creative writing process that is valuable for all but the most experienced writers. The Spring/Summer issue of EVENT is a particularly exciting read because it is the “Notes on Writing” issue. Not only does the journal provide a spectrum of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and reviews, but it also provides reflective commentary on the creative writing process that is valuable for all but the most experienced writers.

The five reflective pieces offer a reminder for professional writers as to how far they have come with their work, and provide support for beginning writers as to how ‘normal’ they are in their struggles to perfect their writing. With no intention of slighting the authors of much truly creative work, I’d like to provide excerpts to focus the readers on a few of the insights these pieces provide; we all need reminders of where creative ideas come from.

Sue Goyette:

I was sitting in a bar in Halifax for Comedy Night a few months ago and realized I was listening not only to the jokes but to the spaces in between them. I was intrigued, tempted to take notes about the different species of silence we were encountering as an audience. I had been thinking about the ways comedy is akin to poetry.

Michael Christie:

I wonder if Dostoyevsky, if he were alive today, would have played week-long, sleepless sessions of online poker, while he simultaneously tweeted and blogged about his painful struggle with gambling addiction.

Padma Viswanathan:

Many writers I love, from Hans Christian Andersen to Virginia Wolff to Oliver Sacks, are, or were, assiduous journal-keepers. [ . . . ] I wonder if their journals did for them what mine did for me; created a voice for them outside of their heads [ . . . ].

Naben Ruthnum:

Hack, to me, has become a byword for professional. I write with the fixed aim of making a living out of it, of at least making it the fundamental part of my career, of how I buy food and books. That’s why I need at least two of me.

Ashley Little:

On the days my stories are workshopped I have to skip my next class and go drink beer at the campus pub until I feel okay again, because having other people rip your story apart is so emotionally devastating

And then there are seventeen poets, four fiction writers, a nonfiction piece, and nine reviews, all of which are well worth noting here, but . . . all I can do at this point is highly encourage you to pick up a copy of EVENT and enjoy several evenings of entertaining, professional poetry and prose.
[www.eventmagazine.ca]