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Waterloo Regional Arts Council celebrates literary award winners f I ‘le Waterloo Regional Arts Council (WRAC) will celebrate the best of the region's poets, story- tellers. and cultural journal- ists A winners of the first annual WRAConteurS literary contest - at the council's annual general meeting "The region is in a period of incredible artistic fer- ment," says WRAC executive director Martin de Groot, "and the literary arts are no exception. We've heard a lot lately about Toronto-cen- tonight at the Church The atre in St. Jacobs. trism in the arts. But Water- loo region is currently receiv- ing a share of Ontario Arts Council grants far in excess of its size. Arts council repre- sentatives are wondering what's in the water here." The arts council is giving awards in five categories. including cultural journalism which has been one of the focuses of arts council activi- ty in the past year. "It's not enough for the arts to be thriving. We have to get the word out," says de Groot. The council is hoping that these awards will be one vehicle for doing that. The winner in the fiction category. judged by Toronto writer KD. Miller who is also the invited speaker at the event, is Jane Ann McLachlin for Routines. a story about a mentally handicapped man who gets on a bus to visit an out-of-town relative. A min up in the bus station turns what should have been a simple exercise into an odyssey. "An author takes a huge risk in portraying a character like Tom." says Miller. "One false step and you tumble into sentimen- tality, bathos and cliche. Well. there's none of that here." Runner-up in this cat- egory is Claudia Carver for Poppy'sjoumey. In non-fiction. the winner is Mark Mitchell for Pulling Teeth. Judge and book reviewer Alex Good said it was hard to pick a winner. "Truth has a great deal more variety than fiction, and the work submitted covered a wide range of subject matter in addition to being very dif- ferent in style and tone. Pulling Teeth impressed me with its handling of different time frames and moods. While covering a lot of ground - both in terms of geography and feeling - it has a satisfying coherence, conversational but closely observed and quietly sugges- tive of deeper meanings." The winner in the poetry category is Erin Noteboom for Early Symptoms. Judge Rae Crossman, an English teacher and editor of The New Quarterly. says the poem tells a story in which "the understanding of lan- guage is suddenly lost. .. and an ordinary human exchange of goods for coins becomes poignant. all the more so since a poet's cur- rency is, after all, language." Honorable mentions in this category go to Dona Paul Massel and Peter van der Mans. The book category win- ner is an anthology, Many Women, Th/o Men. submitted by Marianne Paul. The anthology "speaks of and to the people in our region through stories about every- thing from the pain ofa par- em with Alzheimer's to the delight of a loved one danc- The winner in the cultural journalism category is Patri- cia Bow for Global Warming a piece about University of Waterloo Fine Arts gradu- ates' involvement in the Globe Studios, first pub- lished in the full 2001 issue of UW Magazine. David Scott. head of lmpresa Communi- cations and a member of the WRAC board who judged the category. cited it for "doing what it sets out to do: giving insights into why this unusu- al facility exists, why it is so valued by the artists who inhabit and animate it, and why the rest of us should The awards ceremony will be capped by a talk by K.D. Miller, whose most recent book Holy Writ is an investigation into the link between creativity and spiri- tuality. The AGM is open to the public, and is scheduled to begin at 7 pm Fdr information. call the Waterloo Regional Arts Council at 744-4552.