anne fleming – EVENT

EVENT Magazine at Word Vancouver, featuring Billeh Nickerson and Anne Fleming

Word Vancouver has come and gone, wrapping up last (rainy) Sunday. Fortunately the organizers managed to move the exhibitors and most of the programming inside the downtown Vancouver Public Library. We at EVENT sponsored a little shindig featuring Anne Fleming and Billeh Nickerson reading from their Notes on Writing pieces in our last issue (EVENT 42/1). Notes on Writing, a yearly feature in EVENT since 1989, allows writers extraordinary freedom to write whatever they want, however they want, about their craft and writing life.
We laughed (a lot). We cried (not much). Anne shared why ‘Novels Are for Children,’ and mentioned the special place in her heart she has for EVENT, home to her first published work; and Billeh dealt with the occasional interruption while reading with grace and humour. Check out a selection from Billeh’s piece, ‘Shelagh Rogers Called Me a Slut on CBC and Other True Stories,’ below.

Articles, Interviews

Go Away, I’m Reading. Really: EVENT in conversation with author Anne Fleming

Event Mags / September 23, 2013

One year Anne Fleming gave her nephew a book for Christmas and watched from the sidelines as the volume captivated him for the next three hours. Though she hadn’t seen him in months, though she gave him the book that spellbound him, though she would have loved to talk to him about the book, he commenced to read the book from cover to cover, oblivious to everyone around him. Reminded of her own childhood, of not being available to her father or anyone else while she read, she realized that perhaps this ‘was the real reason [her] father turfed [her] out of doors time and again, bookless, to participate in things of this world.’ This is the ‘aha moment’ she recalls in EVENT magazine’s latest Notes on Writing issue (42/1) in her brilliant essay ‘Novels Are for Children.’ After reading countless stories, and writing many of her own, Anne recognizes that becoming wholly lost in a book rarely happens to her anymore. ‘Hyperaware’ of the tricks authors are up to, she reflects on how often our best experiences of reading are the ones we have while we are still wide-eyed children, easily and utterly swept away by a good story. Luckily for us at EVENT, we don’t have any trouble being swept away by her writing.