Tom Wayman · Author

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BC COAST LAUNCH READINGS for 2 New Books, May 23 & May 22

On May 23 and 22, I’ll be doing launch readings at the VANCOUVER and GIBSONS Public Libraries, respectively, to promote my two new titles: a prose memoir about coming to the Slocan Valley in 1989 and my adventures and misadventures since, and a new collection of my poems, mainly set in the same locale. Both The Road to Appledore or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place from Harbour Publishing and How Can You Live Here? from Frontenac House were published in March.

The VANCOUVER event, “The Music Our Stories Make” will be held Thursday, May 23 at 6:30 pm at the Grand Staircase on Level 8 of the downtown (Central) branch of the Vancouver Public Library. The evening will feature a concert by the Vancouver-based folk/roots trio FRASER UNION, brief readings from the new books, and an on-stage conversation between Roger and myself entitled “Why Make Art in a Dreadful Time?”

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WEST KOOTENAY LAUNCH READINGS for 2 New Books, May 29 & May 30

I’m excited to be giving two readings of my new books at public libraries in my home region of the West Kootenay. Both The Road to Appledore or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place from Harbour Publishing, and How Can You Live Here? from Frontenac House describe life in this area, at least as I’ve experienced it.

On Wednesday, May 29 at 7 pm, I’ll be reading at the Nelson Public Library, 602 Stanley St. This will be the hometown launch, speaking to people very familiar with the landscapes, and probably with some of the incidents, described in both new volumes. So potentially a tough audience! The reading is free, by donation.

On Thursday, May 30 at 7 pm, I’ll be reading at the Nakusp Public Library, 92 – 6th Ave. NW. This reading is also free and, as with the Nelson reading, all are welcome.

April 19 CALGARY LAUNCH for HOW CAN YOU LIVE HERE?

How Can You Live Here – cover
cover image by Rod Currie

Frontenac House, publisher of my new collection of poems How Can You Live Here?, has organized a group launch for Friday, April 19, featuring their three newest books of poems, including mine. The launch will be held in the Jubilee Room on the lower level of the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, 1415–14th Ave. NW in Calgary, starting at 7 pm. I look forward to participating in this reading.

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THE ROAD TO APPLEDORE
– new prose in 2024

The Road To Appledore – cover

In early June, I was overjoyed to hear that Harbour/Douglas & McIntyre have accepted my prose account of moving from Vancouver to southeastern BC’s West Kootenay region in 1989, and all I’ve learned in the decades since about a rural existence. The book, scheduled for publication in spring 2024, is called The Road to Appledore or How I Went Back to the Land Without Ever Having Lived There in the First Place.

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HOW CAN YOU LIVE HERE?
– a new poetry collection

I was grateful to learn June 22 that Frontenac House, a Southern Alberta publisher specializing in poetry, will publish a new collection of my poems in April 2024. The new book is called How Can You Live Here?

Dipper in Winter. image by H.MacASKiLL

When I had finished assembling the manuscript that became Out of the Ordinary, which Harbour accepted in November 2022, I found I had a large number of poems that didn’t fit the theme of the accepted book. The approximately 60 poems of How Can You Live Here? focus largely on rural life amid southeastern BC’s Selkirk Mountains.

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WATCHING A MAN BREAK A DOG’S BACK wins the 2023 Western Canada Jewish Book Award for Poetry

I was grateful and very pleased to learn May 24 that Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back won the 2023 prize for poetry offered by the Western Canada Jewish Book Awards. The award comes with a $2,000 honorarium.

In my acceptance speech at the awards ceremony, I said that much of my writing matches how Irving Howe, in his history of East European Jewish immigration to America, World of Our Fathers, categorizes modern Jewish life: “a mixture of idealism and skepticism.” I also quoted Alain Brossat and Sylvia Klingberg’s summary, in their Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism, of the driving force behind people’s involvement in social change, a summary I believe is the concept underlying my writing: “Another world is possible.”

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WATCHING A MAN BREAK A DOG’S BACK shortlisted for the 2023 Western Canada Jewish Book Awards

On May Day, the Vancouver-based Jewish Book Festival announced that my 2020 title, Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time has been shortlisted for the 2023 Betty Averbach Foundation Prize for Poetry, one of the Western Canada Jewish Book Awards. In contention this year were books published between 2020 and 2022. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony May 24.

Watching a Man Break a Dog's Back - BookCover
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Interviewing SID MARTY, May 11, on his Zoom Book Launch

On Wednesday, May 11, at 6 pm BC time, I’m going to participate in Alberta author Sid Marty’s online book launch of his new and collected poems, Oldman’s River. The book, published by NeWest Press, spans more than a half-century of singing the Rocky Mountains. Sid and I both published our first books of poems in 1973, both from McClelland & Stewart. Sid’s Headwaters launched his career, which includes the later nonfiction masterpieces Men for the Mountains (1978; an account of his own experiences as a national park warden, woven into a history of the Rocky Mountain parks’ warden service) and The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek (2008; about the fumbled attempts of the authorities to deal with a killer grizzly on the outskirts of Banff townsite in 1980).

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New collection of poems, OUT OF THE ORDINARY, accepted by Harbour Publishing

I was happy to receive the good news that Harbour Publishing has accepted a new collection of my poems, Out of the Ordinary, for publication in the spring of 2025. The book’s poems are direct or indirect responses to how life during the 21st century generally and the years of the pandemic lockdown specifically have felt anything but usual.

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Receiving BC’s 2022 GEORGE WOODCOCK AWARD for Lifetime Achievement

On June 21, at the Vancouver Public Library’s main branch, I spoke at a presentation ceremony for BC’s 2022 George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for the literary arts. The same ceremony presents the province’s George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature.

Here I am with VPL chief librarian Christina de Castell (centre) and 2022 Ryga Award winner Alexandra Morton, honoured for her book Not on My Watch about the danger posed to BC’s wild salmon by open-net fish farming.

You can read my talk here, along with an assessment of my work by George Woodcock himself from the 1990s.

The story behind my poem “PAPYRUS” featured on The New Quarterly website

An account of the inspiration for, and writing of, a poem of mine is featured on the website for the Waterloo, Ontario-based literary magazine, The New Quarterly. TNQ’s website includes a section called “Finding the Form”, and in June the magazine posted there my tale of how I came to write “Papyrus,” a poem published in TNQ’s issue no 162 (Spring 2022).

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June 25 Reading at ELEPHANT MOUNTAIN LITERARY FESTIVAL, Nelson BC

I will be part of the ALL-STAR READING on Saturday evening, June 25 at Nelson, BC’s Elephant Mountain Literary Festival. The event, 7:30 to 9:30 pm, also features Fernie, BC novelist and memoirist Angie Abdou, Vancouver, BC fiction writer Shaena Lampert, and UBC tree biologist Suzanne Simard. Lampert is the 2022 EMLF writer-in-residence.

The ALL-STAR READING will be held at the Prestige Lakeside Resort, 701 Lakeside Drive.

Admission is $20. Tickets are available on the EMLF website, emlfestival.com

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