Posts tagged with “Charlotte Gill”

Read All Over celebrates the bookworm in all of us, showcasing readers in Vancouver and the books they love most. .

Carol Shaben is the author of Into the Abyss a recently-released book of non-fiction that explores the transfigured lives of four men who survived a 1984 plane crash in northern Alberta: the rookie pilot, a prominent politician, a young RCMP officer, and the accused criminal he was escorting in handcuffs to face sentencing.  She has won two National Magazine Awards including a Gold Medal in Investigative Reporting, and was nominated as Best New Magazine Writer in 2009. Carol lives in Vancouver with her husband, Riyad, and son, Max.  She’s launching Into the Abyss on Thursday October 25 at Monk McQueen’s.

Interview by Dina Del Bucchia

What are you currently reading? Your thoughts on it?
I am reading friend and fellow MFA colleague John Vigna’s debut story collection, Bull Head, an unflinching exploration into the lives of hard living, rough-edged men trying to find their place in the world. The collection has been a revelation to read, both because John’s writing and characters are so compelling and pitch perfect, but also because I had read some of John’s stories in their earlier incarnations and they have changed and grown so remarkably.

What books have changed your life?
Such a tough question. I think every good book I read changes me just a little, but the books that probably made the greatest impact were Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. I read them when I was young and traveling the world. I was both humbled and inspired by the sweep of them, Dickens’ mastery of his characters, plot and settings and the resonance of the themes he tackled.

Recently, I’ve been recommending Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill. I was incredibly moved by the beauty of her writing, both poetic and deeply human.  In my mind, she deserves every award and accolade she has received for her years-long effort to document the unexplored and very Canadian rite of passage that is tree planting.

How do you like your books served up best – audio books, graphic novels, used paperbacks, library loaner, e-reader…? 
I like my books served up on paper and have not been swayed to deviate until recently as I was racing to read the works of authors I was sharing events with at the Vancouver Writer’s Festival. Kim Thúy’s Giller-nominated memoir Ru, which I ordered online, arrived in French and out of desperation, I purchased it as an e-book. I was surprised by how little I missed the actual hard copy.  What I don’t think I could give up is the kid-in-the-candy-store excitement I get every time I walk into a venerable old bookstore like Shakespeare & Company in Paris, or Munro’s Books in Victoria or even Carson’s second-hand books in Dunbar. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

The Vancouver Book Club’s recent meeting with Charlotte Gill was a cozy event on a rainy Vancouver Saturday (oxymoron?). Charlotte entertained almost 20 of us at the wonderful Project Space, reading from her book Eating Dirt and giving us some insight into why she wrote it and her writing process in general (“I find writing really hard….This book took six years to write, and 20 drafts.”) The former tree planters at the event shared their stories and Charlotte admitted she gets an email a week from people who write “You think you’ve got a story? Well, I’ve got a story for you!”

The event, gracefully hosted by Book Club team member Nikki Reimer, was a wonderful opportunity to talk to Charlotte about the book and her experiences, with a lively discussion ensuing from the attendees’ questions.
…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

	ReVIEWS, preVIEWS, interVIEWS, and overVIEWS: here’s where you’ll find out what the Vancouver Book Club team thinks about the literary scene in Vancouver. What you should read, where you should go, who you should sit up and notice.
	It’s literary overload as this week brings you the Shoot it! book launch, W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, Mashed Poetics, and our own VBC Live with Charlotte Gill.

Sunday January 22 – Book Launch: David Spaner’s Shoot it!

Former Vancouver Province film critic David Spaner, has just released his second book, Shoot It!: Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film and Arsenal Pulp Press is holding a book launch at People’s Co-op Bookstore. The location of the launch is fitting as the first half of Spaner’s book looks at the history of the the Hollywood movie studio system including the clashes, often physical and violent, between studios and union members.

The second half of the book is a look at the history of independent film scenes in seven different countries (including Canada, of course).

David Spaner will give a brief talk about his new book and take questions; book signing and refreshments to follow!

When: Sunday Jan. 22 • 2 – 5 pm
Where: People’s Co-op Bookstore, 1391 Commercial Dr., Vancouver
www.davidspaner.com
www.arsenalpulp.com

Tuesday January 24 – W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series

	Sean Cranbury & Co. are at it again, this time celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series with a stellar line-up of established and up-and-coming writers.
	Featuring: Angie Abdou Zsuzsi Gartner David Lester Arley McNeney Garry Thomas Morse Jen Neale Ayelet Tsabari
	Books for sale by author. All proceeds go to the writers. Cash bar. Music. Live streaming. Conviviality. Jokes. Hosted by Sean Cranbury and Dina Del Bucchia
	If the last big literary event held at the W2 Performance Space (Giller Light Vancouver) was any indication, this is sure to be a great evening. And on a Tuesday!

When: Tuesday January 24, 7 – 10 pm
Where: W2 Media Café, 111 W. Hastings St., Vancouver (enter through the Woodwards Atrium)
Cost: $5 (no one turned away for lack of funds)

Real Vancouver Writers’ Series is 100% volunteer-driven. All proceeds go toward supporting future W2 programming and the writers who participate.

Friday January 27 – Mashed Poetics: Gordon

Mashed Poetics is back! An evening of music and poetry as selected writers read the results of the musical influence of a particular song. This time ’round sees The Barenaked Ladies’ album Gordon acting as muse.

BNL cover band ENID will be playing all of the songs on the album GORDON, interspersed with very cool poems by 15 different and talented writers.

Poets and their songs include…

1. “Hello City” -Matt Hogan
2. “Enid” -Laurie Bricker-Cherry
3. “Grade 9″ -Roger Blenman
4. “Brian Wilson” -Chris Gilpin
5. “Be My Yoko Ono” -Diane Tucker
6. “Wrap Your Arms Around Me” -Magpie Ulysses
7. “What a Good Boy” -Chris Masson
8. “The King of Bedside Manor” -RC Weslowski

Intermission

9. “Box Set” -Duncan Shields
10. “I Love You” -Wilhelmina Salmi
11. “New Kid (On the Block)” -Sean McGarragle
12. “Blame It on Me” -Johnny Scoop
13. “The Flag” -Alberto Cristoffanini
14. “If I Had $1000000″ -Sonja Littlejohn
15. “Crazy” -Laurel Albina

When: Friday January 27,  8 – 11 pm
Where: The Kozmik Zoo, 53 W. Broadway
Cost: $10 at the door.
Doors at 8:00 Show at 8:30

Saturday January 28 – VBC Live: An Intimate Chat with Charlotte Gill

Come join us, Vancouver is Awesome’s very own Vancouver Book Club, for an afternoon with Charlotte Gill, author of Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe. We (that is, us and you) will be chatting with Charlotte about the book and her experiences.

This book has been getting a lot of buzz over the past few months and was recently shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

Read our review of Eating Dirt and visit the Event page.

When: Saturday February 28, 2-4 pm (doors at 1:30 pm)
Where: Project Space, 222 E. Georgia St., Vancouver

There will be books and refreshments for sale.

www.charlottegill.com
www.dmpibooks.com
www.projectspace.ca

Once again Vancouver and West Coast Canadian writers are showing their awesomeness as the finalists for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-fiction were announced this morning.

Our Winter Book Club selection, Charlotte Gill’s Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe is among those on the shortlist, along with Vancouver’s JJ Lee for his book The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit. (Look for our review of JJ’s book this Sunday in VBC ‘Views.)

The other shortlisted finalists chosen from the 115 books submitted by 35 publishers are part-time Stikine Valley resident Wade Davis, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest;  Victoria writer Madeline Sonik, Afflictions & Departures: Essays; and UBC MFA Creative Writing grad Andrew Westoll, Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary: A Canadian Story of Resilience and Recovery.

The $25,000 prize is awarded to the author whose book “best combines a superb command of the English language, an elegance of style, and a subtlety of thought and perception.” The runners up each receive $2000 and all the shortlisted books receive promotional support. The winner will be announced at a gala luncheon in Toronto on March 5.

The Vancouver Book Club Winter Event with Charlotte Gill takes place Saturday January 28 at Project Space. Find all the details here and check out Maegan Thomas’ review of Eating Dirt.

Charlotte Gill’s Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe currently resides on the Globe 100 Best Book of the Year in 2011, was on the short list for the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize and the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. On top of that well-earned acclaim, Eating Dirt (Douglas & McIntyre) is the Vancouver Book Club‘s winter selection! We are very excited to be hosting a discussion of the book with Charlotte Gill on January 28, 2012 at Project Space. RSVP to this FREE event.

“There was something alluring, addictive even, about the job. I liked the feel of loam between my fingers, loved the look of a freshly planted tree bristling up from tamped soil. Planting trees was a whole, complete task. You could finish what you started in just a few seconds. You could sow a field in a day. It meant being outside, unprotected from the elements, but at least weather affected everyone equally. Best of all, in a cut block you could erase your old self. You could disappear almost completely.”

Eating Dirt follows a tribe of tree planters through a season of planting in British Columbia. It incorporates Gill’s 17 years as a tree planter, as well as a look at the BC wilderness and its complex relationship to the forestry industry. Like tree planting itself, her prose is ever present, concerned with the current minute, the current tree, ache or pang of hunger; at the same time, it is expansive, mimicking the movement of the mind that occurs when the body is wholly engaged with the repetitive task at hand. It is also thoroughly absorbing and educational, provocative and delightful.

Gill allows the reader to enter the mind of the planter – you may actually feel the calluses thickening with each turn of the page. Her use of the second person “you” and the collective “we” welcomes the reader into a story seemingly not as much read as told over cold beer, hot carbohydrates and sore, creaking joints. Beyond the day’s tally of seedlings planted, Gill considers the nature of the human as a planting animal, and an animal with a age-long dependence on trees. She touches on environmentalism, economics and the ambivalent position of the planter in the gears of the forestry industry.

Once finished, the reader will feel as if they’ve had a whirlwind tour of BC’s backwoods. Bears, cougars, cliffs and inlets populate the space between the countless varieties of potential timber. Gill takes us across hemispheres, cultures and time to understand the similarities that tree planters the world over share. But each area is unique, with British Columbia home to some of the largest trees and least accessible “cut blocks” – areas where trees have been harvested – in the trade.

In between descriptions of landscapes, weather, sore joints, flora and fauna are the characters. There’s Aimee, the “alpha female” roommate who instigates Gill’s “addiction” to the work, and whose endurance convinces Gill that she “could stand to have [her] back broken if this was the way a spine could grow back”. There’s K.T., the boyfriend with whom Gill shares her ups and downs, equally attributable to work and sugar. There’s Adam, the high-impact team leader who drives and plants like it’s a drag race. There’s Rosie, who works the job as heartily as anyone and still finds the energy to bring her rubber case full of frilly underthings, perhaps as some sort of nod to the world outside planting. Other planters come and go – when they cannot work another day, they disappear and the work goes on.

Regardless of tree planting experience, Eating Dirt enchants. The enchantment of the unknown is Gill’s explanation for why so many go – or fall – into the trade in the first place. That, and the romance of working with your hands, the romance of dirt. This romance falls away quickly, almost immediately. Why do planters continue? Among other things, Gill calls it an addiction.  I know that recommending Eating Dirt has quickly become my addiction.

Pick up a copy and join us with Charlotte Gill on January 28, 2012 at Project Space. RSVP to this FREE event.

The Vancouver Book Club is pleased to announce that our January 2012 selection is Eating Dirt by Charlotte Gill!

Charlotte Gill spent nearly twenty years as a tree planter in the forests across Canada. In her latest book Eating Dirt she explores the subculture of the tree-planting tribe, recounts the geological and geopolitical history of forests, and questions the effectiveness of conifer plantations.

This loamy piece of non-fiction was published by Douglas & McIntyre  in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation, chosen as Globe 100 Best Book of the year in 2011, and short listed for the Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize and the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction.

Charlotte’s previous book, the short story collection Ladykiller, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and winner of the Danuta Gleed Award and the B.C. Book Prize for fiction.

Get down to your local bookseller and grab a copy of Eating Dirt, or if you’ve been nice maybe Santa will bring you one, and join us on January 28th for an intimate chat with Charlotte Gill and other readers. Let us know you’re coming by joining our Facebook event. Read more about the Vancouver Book Club and our past selections.