She’s been lauded as one of 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World, Canada’s Queen of Green and one of the 150 people who have changed British Columbia’s history.
Internationally recognized environmental activist Tzeporah Berman will be among 11 distinguished authors at this year’s Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival from July 19 to 22.
The author of a memoir, This Crazy Time, Berman will participate in a Friday evening and Sunday afternoon panel sharing insights into her twenty years helping shape the tactics and concerns of modern environmentalism.
From her early days in the Clayoquot Sound logging protests, through campaigns to save the Great Bear Rain Forest and the boreal forest, into her current work as a climate change and tar sands activist, Tzeporah has shown herself both a brilliant organizer and a lightning rod for those who disagree with her brand of ‘radical pragmatism.’
This year’s festival will also feature top-tier Canadian novelists Audrey Thomas (Coming Down From Wa), Timothy Taylor (Stanley Park) and Steven Galloway (The Cellist of Sarajevo). Theatre artist and revolutionary memoirist Carmen Aguirre (Something Fierce) and acclaimed Jamaican poet and short fiction writer Lorna Goodison (By Love Possessed) will add an international perspective.
Grant Lawrence of CBC Radio fame will read from Adventures in Solitude, his memoir of summers in the coastal wilderness of Desolation Sound. Also close to home, Discovery Passages by Garry Thomas Morse is the first collection of poetry about the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) First Nations and finalist for the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.
Prolific and provocative historian Daniel Francis will read from his most recent book Selling Canada: Three Propaganda Campaigns that Shaped the Nation.
In addition to author readings and panels, there’ll be two special performances, one on Saturday afternoon by writer/director/performer Mark Leiren-Young doing his one-man satire Greener Than Thou. And on Sunday morning, super storyteller Nikki Tate will present her energetic To Camelot and Beyond, a compendium of outrageous tales suitable for all ages.
Denman writers will read on Friday morning and Saturday afternoon with young Denman writers reading on Sunday morning.
For those interested in honing their own writing skills, a five-day workshop with Steven Galloway as well as three-hour workshops with five other authors are available by pre-registration.
Full-menu meals can be purchased throughout. Brochures and registration forms are available at The Laughing Oyster, Blue Heron, Second Page and at both Courtenay and Comox Libraries. All festival details, and an easy way to register on-line, are at denmanislandwritersfestival.com. Alternatively, you can phone 250-335-2576.
It’s easy to foot-passenger over from Buckley Bay since everything happens in the village itself, a short walk up the hill from the ferry landing, and evening sessions end in plenty of time to catch a return ferry.
— Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival