Minister Faust's Blog, page 7
April 18, 2017
MARTY CHAN ON FINDING VOICE AS KIDLIT AUTHOR, WORKLIFE BALANCE FOR WRITERS, ZOMBIE NOVELS + OVERCOMING FEAR OF CHILDREN (MF GALAXY 115)
PRE-PUBLICATION TESTING KIDLIT BEFORE AUDIENCES, IMPROV’S SCENE-BUILDING CHEAT CODE, STAY-AT-HOME DAD WRITERS, SMALL-TOWN ALIENATION SCARS FOR LIFE
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Marty Chan is one of E-Town’s most successful writers ever. He’s best known for his popular children’s and young adult books including Keepers of the Vault, Infinity Coil, and the award-winning The Mystery of the Frozen Brains. But he’s also a screenwriter who worked on the TV series Jake and the Kid and received a Gemini nomination for his TV pilot The Orange Seed Myth.
Chan's best-known play is the semi-autobiographical Mom, Dad, I’m Living With a White Girl, about the culture clash of being a Chinese-Canadian finding work and love in the arts in Edmonton. The play’s been produced across Canada and in New York. Chan was the first playwright in residence at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, Canada’s biggest and busiest regional performing arts centre.
In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Marty Chan discusses:
The professional tension he felt defining himself as a playwright or as Kidlit authorThe personal meaning and artistic results of his unpublished and innovative zombie novelHow and why not having children frees him to be a children’s author, and why a writer friend told him that being a stay-at-home dad was the worst decision he ever made, andThe profoundly alienating experience of growing up as the only Chinese Canadian boy in Morinville, Alberta and how it’s affected him for life
Along the way I refer to The Memory Eaters, his unpublished novel he wrote for Book Television 3 Day Novel Contest reality TV series, season 1, for which I was a judge.
The novel was a pre-Walking Dead zombie story that was uniquely from the zombie’s perspective and touchingly and profoundly addressed loneliness, isolation, social networks, and love. He also cites his opera The Forbidden Phoenix which incorporated the classic Chinese story of the Monkey King and Chinese Canadian experiences.
We spoke on June 23, 2008 at his home in Edmonton. This interview has never been aired before.
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IRRELEVANT SHOW HEAD WRITER NEIL GRAHN ON HOW TO GET AHEAD IN COMEDY WRITING, WHY STAYING TRUE TO YOUR VISION CAN PAY OFF + HOW SKETCHES GO FROM PAGE TO STAGE ON HIS HIT CBC SERIES (MF GALAXY 114)
STRATEGY FOR NO-NONSENSE ACTING, LEGENDARY COMEDY TROUPE THREE DEAD TROLLS IN A BAGGIE, PERCENTAGES GAME OF WRITING + RECORDING THE IRRELEVANT SHOW, MONEY VS POWER IN COMEDY
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If you listen to CBC Radio then you’ve almost certainly heard the comedy of Neil Grahn. He’s been a debater on The Debaters, but he’s best known as one of the sketch comics on and lead writer for The Irrelevant Show.
Years ago Grahn was part of a pioneering sketch comedy troupe in Edmonton called Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie which included Cathleen Rootsaert, Wes Borg, and the late Joe Bird, which was briefly a television show. He’s currently the writer/director/producer behind the Gemini Award-winning series Taking It Off, and he’s a documentarian with many films to his credit including one about Amber Valley, one of the earliest African towns in Alberta. He’s constantly busy writing pilots and hustling to put new work into gear. The man is a machine, with plenty of wisdom to share about making it in the business of comedy writing.
In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Neil Grahn discusses:
The no-nonsense approach to acting for actors and directors and why both must be open to whiplash-inducing turnsWhy being a great comedy writer means risking never earning a livingHis legendary E-Town comedy troupe Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie and how it didn’t get its nameThe percentages game of writing and recording his hit comedy radio programme The Irrelevant ShowWhat more money costs you in show biz, and why making comedy on CBC radio is such a creative joyHow sketches go from the page to the stage on The Irrelevant ShowHe spoke with me at his home in South-West Edmonton on November 19, 2014. And now on MF GALAXY, my conversation with Neil Grahn.
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neilgrahn.com
deadtroll.com
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SHELAGH ROGERS - HOW RESIDENTIAL SCHOOL SURVIVORS CHANGED HER LIFE, HOW TO ENHANCE THE PERSONAL QUALITY INTERVIEWERS MUST POSSESS, HOW AND WHY CANLIT GOT BETTER (MF GALAXY 113)
THE JOB OF THE NEXT CHAPTER, WHY LIT SHOULDN’T BE ALL BRAN, INTERVIEWING ADVICE PETER GZOWSKI GAVE HER, WHEN TO BUILD RAPPORT WITH GUESTS, WHY IT’S BETTER SHE CAN’T SEE HER GUESTS, THE BEST WAY TO STYLE YOUR VOICE
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If you’re a Canadian who loves books as much as you love radio, then it’s almost a guarantee that legendary broadcaster Shelagh Rogers has been in your life for a long time.
Rogers is the host and producer of CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter, Canada’s leading author-interview radio show focusing on indigenous and settler Canadian writers. She started at CBC in 1980, hosting music and current affairs programmes, and working her way up eventually became the permanent guest host on Peter Gzowski’s Morningside, the host of This Morning, and also of Sounds Like Canada.
She’s won a range of awards and honourary doctorates, and as a result of her work and advocacy, Native Counseling Services of Alberta gave her their Achievement in the Aboriginal Community Award, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada inducted her as an honourary witness, the Order of Canada elected her as an Officer, and the University of Victoria named her Chancellor.
Rogers was in Edmonton on February 28, 2017 to host the Edmonton Public Library’s Conversation about Reconciliation at the Ramada Inn on Kingsway. Before she took the stage, we spoke briefly about a range of topics, including:
How a group of residential school survivors changed her life, and why she needed quit her show to pursue their storyThe job of her show The Next Chapter and why literature shouldn’t be All BranThe personal quality that interviewers must possess, and how you can learn to enhance itWhen people are most likely to respond to you so you can build rapportThe advice that radio legend Peter Gzowski gave herWhy not being able to see her guests is not a bug, but a featureHow CanLit has changed for the better, andFor broadcasters and podcasters, the best way to style your voiceAnd now on MF GALAXY, my conversation with Shelagh Rogers.
Shelagh Rogers provided EPL with a selection of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and children's books that explore residential schools, reconciliation, and Indigenous identity.
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BEN DOBYNS, INDIE FILMMAKER OF JOURNEYQUEST + STROWLERS ON THE ART MAKING YOUR BEST INDIE FILM + THE SCIENCE OF CROWDFUNDING IT (MF GALAXY 112)
IS WORK-LIFE BALANCE POSSIBLE IN FILMMAKING? MAKING CREATIVE COMMONS TV, THE ONLY WISE INVESTMENT IN INDIE FILM, THE BEST WAY TO CROWDFUND, SHOOTING SHAMANS IN ULAANBAATAR
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You ever dream of being a filmmaker? Maybe writing or directing television? Maybe you thought about it and figured that moving to Hollywood was out of the question, or even if you were willing to go, that climbing the ladder in Hollywood was too long a shot?
Or even if you were willing to try the long slog, you wouldn’t want men in suits ruining the stories you really want to tell by replacing all your egalitarian ideas with offensive stereotypes, or shoving all your most ingenious character creation, plots, and world-building into a blender to turn them into mass-market pablum? Because it takes millions of dollars to make a movie, which you could never raise on your own?
What if I told you that you could stay in your home town or even home country, tell the stories you want to tell and the way you want to tell them, and that it wouldn’t be Hollywood paying the bills, but your most loyal fans? Sound too good to be true?
It won’t sound that way to maverick indie filmmaker and pioneering crowdfunder Ben Dobyns, because that’s exactly what he’s done and doing.
Dobyns is a film producer, editor, cinematographer, composer, writer, and director, and one of the founders of Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, or ZOE. He also has a minor in Latin. He worked for years in Seattle and has now relocated to Vancouver BC. He and ZOE have just completed their third season of their indie-TV comedy-fantasy series JourneyQuest.
They’ve also produced Strowlers, a forthcoming series about a world in which magic is suppressed and regulated by a xenophobic, oppressive government.
In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Ben Dobyns discusses:
What Hollywood film-makers should be learning from French film production to make their workplaces better for workersHow getting ripped off by a Hollywood distributor led him to create a Creative Commons business modelWhy indie film is a bad investment while his company Zombie Orpheus can repay investors within twelve monthsThe 1000 True Fans concept, how his team invented Patreon before Patreon, and how they crowd-fund todayWhy your films should be ads for your company instead of selling ads for your filmsHow best to use Kickstarter and Patreon simultaneously, what his different backers want from each, and one surprisingly delightful physical rewardHow he gets to make exactly the films he wants, and why selling his company’s stories and worlds to a giant media company would probably destroy their valueWhy he’s heading off to Mongolia to work with the shamans of Ulaanbaatar, andWhat makes human beings and societies strongerWe spoke by Skype on February 15, 2017, and began by discussing the critically-important question that a mentor asked him about what price he was willing to pay for success in filmmaking.
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Ben Dobyns IMDb
Zombie Orpheus Entertainment YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/ZombieOrpheusEnt
Zombie Orpheus Entertainment is fan funded and creator distributed. Support them at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/zombieorpheus
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PLAYWRIGHT CHERYL FOGGO ON JOHN WARE, CANADA’S MOST FAMOUS COWBOY, AN AFRICAN-CANADIAN LEGEND WHOSE EXISTENCE CHALLENGES THE BACK-PATTING CANADIAN MYTH OF BENEFICENCE (MF GALAXY 111)
HOW LEARNING JOHN WARE WAS AFRICAN CHANGED HER LIFE, HOW FOGGO’S EXPERIENCE AS RESEARCHER, JOURNALIST + HISTORIAN AFFECTS HER CHARACTER CONSTRUCTION, AND WHY POETS MAKE THE BEST PLAYWRIGHTS
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John Ware is the greatest Canadian legend you probably have never heard of. He was a 19th Century West African born into the American continent-wide rape-gulag that apologists call the Old South. He went on to become one of thousands of African-American cowboys, and he eventually moved to what is now Alberta to become a master bronco-buster, successful rancher, a founder of modern rodeo culture, and a man of near mythic proportions with the strength of Paul Bunyan and the power of a horse whisperer.
Ware earned the admiration of many of his fellow settlers on First Nations territory, although many Euro-Canadians called him, and please excuse the language, “Nigger John,” and after he died, used the N-word to describe Alberta landmarks associated with John Ware, names that remained until late in the 20th Century. His reconstructed cabin still exists—you can find it in Dinosaur Provincial Park.
While a few people have written books about John Ware, it’s possible that no one has done more original research than celebrated Alberta journalist, essayist, YA novelist, and playwright Cheryl Foggo. She’s written for Canadian Magazine, Reader’s Digest.ca, Avenue, AlbertaViews, Western Living, Sunday Magazine, and The Globe and Mail, among many others.
Foggo's play John Ware Reimagined premiered in Calgary in August, 2014, and the script won the Writers Guild of Alberta 2015 Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama. She’s currently developing a John Ware documentary with the National Film Board of Canada. Her many other projects include adapting Chinua Achebe’s classic novel Things Fall Apart, and Hiding Place, a history of African settlements in southern Alberta. Foggo also makes acclaimed multi-media presentations across Alberta, including Ranchers, Rebels and the Righteous, Creole, and Unlocking Sacred Codes.
In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Cheryl Foggo discusses:
How learning that John Ware was an African-Canadian changed her lifeMildred Lewis, who became John Ware’s wife, and the remarkably accomplished Lewis family from OntarioHow John Ware’s story defies the myths of Canadian beneficence and Euro-Canadian settler identityHow Cheryl Foggo has changed her playwriting craft over her careerHow her experience as researcher, journalist, and historian affects how she constructs characters, andWhy poets often make the best playwrightsWe spoke on February 14, 2017 at the Old Arts Barns in Strathcona, Edmonton, when she was in town to conduct a playwriting workshop. She began by discussing how when she was a girl she was a cowboy culture nerd. Please note that for the sake of historical clarity, I’ve left the use of the N-word in today’s podcast.
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cherylfoggo.com
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SOULJAH FYAH’S LATEST ALBUM THE LONG WALK, MAKING THE ALBUM IN JAMAICA + WHY WAYMATEA WON’T SING HER MOST POPULAR SONG EVER (MF GALAXY 111)
MAKING SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS ALBUMS WHEN LOVE SONGS COULD MAKE HER RICH, MOST RECENT LESSONS IN MARKETTING AND PROMOTING HER BAND, WHY SHE WON’T TOUR THE UNITED STATES
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Souljah Fyah. They’re an outstanding reggae band. And that’s not just me saying it. Here’s what Shelly Gummeson from Earshot-Online says: “On and off stage...[lead singer] Sista J exudes a high voltage, positive energy. Unfettered without setting limitations is precisely the attitude and energy that has propelled Edmonton’s Souljah Fyah to become Canada’s top Reggae band.” They’ve won all kinds of acclaim: including a Juno nomination, two Western Canadian Music Association awards, and twice-declared the best reggae band in Canada by the Canadian Reggae Music Awards and the Reggae Music Achievement Awards.
So who’s in Souljah Fyah? The leader is Waymatea Ellis, better known as Sista J; she’s the lead singer, the lyricist, and she plays bass; she’s also a reverend with her own healing practice. Too Tall Paul Joosse sings and plays keyboard and bass. Stormin’ Norman Frizzell plays keyboard and megaphone, and the Original Tribesman plays percussion. The band is back with The Long Walk, recorded at Edmontone Studio in Edmonton and Mad Rebel Studios in Negril, Jamaica, and the album features the classic mix that made Souljah Fyah great: intelligent lyrics full of personal and social commentary, and music and lyrics as warm as the Caribbean sun.
In today’s conversation, Waymatea discusses:
Why she makes albums rich with political and social content even though love songs would be more likely to make her richThe impact of guest vocalist Access on the album and how she met the Jamaican singerHow her songwriting has changed to produce this latest albumHer most recent lessons in marketting and promoting her band, why she won’t tour the United States, and the impact of the late Soulicitors ska band member Kelly Callin on The Long Walk.Throughout today’s show you’ll hear tracks from the latest album, including “Inner Critic,” “Bigger Than Me,” “One More Chance” with guest singer Access, “Circle,” and “All is Still.” Waymatea spoke with me by Skype on February 14, 2017. We began by discussing the meaning of the title The Long Walk.
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SOULJAH FYAH
souljahfyah.com
waymateamusic.com
BUY THE LONG WALK
souljahfyah.com/listenbuy
REVEREND WAY
waymatea.com
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NOVELIST THOMAS WHARTON - ARE MILLENNIAL WRITERS MORE NARCISSISTIC THAN GENERATION-X WRITERS? WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO TEACH CREATIVE WRITING WELL? WHAT YOU MUST KNOW ABOUT THE YA MARKET (MF GALAXY 109)
WHY HE CHANGED HOW HE PLOTS, AVOIDING THE “JAMES MICHENER EFFECT,” HOW FICTION ABOUT YOUNG ADULTS DIFFERS FROM YA FICTION
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Thomas Wharton. If he decided to wear a ballcap that says “Winning” he’d have every right to do so. His first novel was Icefields, and straight out of the gate, it won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best First Book in the Canada/Caribbean division, and the first Banff Mountain Book grand prize. Then his second novel, Salamander, was short-listed for the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Then he up and gets his short story collection The Logogryph shortlisted for the IMPAC-Dublin Prize.
He also published The Perilous Realm, a YA fantasy trilogy. And his work’s been published in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and many other countries. He teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta where he and I studied creative writing together way back in the early 1990s, and we had the chance to work together when I was the Writer in Residence at the U of A in 2014-2015. Tom’s also a down-to-earth cat who values rich language, numerous genres, and quality teaching.
In today’s episode of MF GALAXY, Wharton discusses:
What it takes to teach creative writing wellWhether Millennials are more narcissistic writers than Generation-Xers or Baby BoomersHow he plans stories and what made him change his methodAvoiding what he calls “the James Michener effect,” andClarifying the differences between fiction about young adults and young adult fictionWe spoke in my then-office at the University of Alberta on January 5, 2015, and Tom begins by introducing himself.
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thomaswharton.ca http://thomaswharton.ca
facebook.com/perilousrealm
Thomas Wharton’s online writers’ workshop
January 3, 2017
PRINCESS LEIA + CARRIE FISHER REMEMBERED (MF GALAXY 103)
FIVE WOMEN CREATORS + CULTURE COMMENTATORS DISCUSS MEMORIES AND IMPACT OF CARRIE FISHER THE WRITER + MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCATE AND PRINCESS LEIA THE SFF/POP CULTURE ICON
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Two words known by hundreds of millions: "Princess Leia." That's the legacy of the collaboration among Carrie Fisher, George Lucas, and hundreds of other filmmakers who worked on the Star Wars saga.
But without Fisher herself--the actor, the public personality, and the astonishing accomplished novelist, screenwriter, and memoirist--Princess Leia could never have become the icon she was.
MF GALAXY celebrates the life and legacy of Carrie Fisher and her most enduring role by speaking with authors Jennifer Marie Brissett, Krista D. Ball, and Sparkle Hayter, writer Mari Sasano, and director Zoe Hopkins.
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Mohawk Star Wars
Krista D. Ball.com
Jenn Brissett.com
Sparkle Hayter.com
Mari Sasano.ca
Jennifer Marie Brissett on creating intimacy between readers and characters
How Krista D. Ball pays the mortgage with Ebook sales
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To hear the patrons-only bonus content for Carrie Fisher + Princess Leia Remembered, visit mfgalaxy.org to click on the Patreon link to become a sponsor for a dollar or more per week.
Carrie Fisher with Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, and Kylie Minogue
Teen-aged Carrie Fisher with mother Debbie Reynolds
STAR WARS ROGUE ONE REVIEWED WITH SUZETTE CHAN + STEPHEN NOTLEY (MF GALAXY 102)
WHAT STUNNING SURPRISES DOES THE FILM CREATE? A RACIALLY DIVERSE CAST BUT HOW GOOD ARE THE CHARACTERS? WHO’S BETTER—REY OR JYN? WHOSE CAMEOS ARE THE BEST? HOW DOES IT STACK AGAINST THE FORCE AWAKENS?
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Reviewing the film with me—as recorded live at Happy Harbor Comics —are Suzette Chan, the Features Editrix for SequentialTart.com (a webzine by women who are fans of comics and pop culture), and Stephen Notley, a game designer at PopCap and the creator of Bob the Angry Flower .
This reviews contains MAJOR SPOILERS.
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