Rhubarb: A Magazine of New Mennonite Art and Writing launches a special Ontario edition with a public reading and reception at Conrad Grebel University College on Saturday December 8th at 7:30pm in the college's Chapel. All members of the public are invited to attend.
Contributors to this edition, subtitled Words and Images from Ontario include Waterloo Region writers Esther Regehr, Kristen Mathies, Todd Schiedel, Aleda Klassen, Melanie Cameron, Dylan Siebert, Carrie Snyder and David Waltner-Toews, as well as artists Jo-Anne Harder, Chris Tiessen and Matthew Tiessen, and guest editors Hildi Froese Tiessen and Margaret Loewen Reimer. A number of these contributors have connections to Conrad Grebel University College.
Conrad Grebel was the first North American Mennonite college to offer a course focusing on Mennonite authors and artists, and, by 1990, was firmly identified with Mennonite literature when Grebel and The New Quarterly hosted the first conference on “Mennonite/s Writing.”
Tiessen said,
This issue of Rhubarb is a kind of ‘coming out’ as Mennonites of Mennonite artists and writers of Ontario. The writers represented here offer a compelling answer to the question: where are the Mennonite writers of Ontario? Mennonite writing and art in Ontario will only gather momentum as communities gather ready to read and view their wonderful work.
Rhubarb is, in its own words, a
fresh new quarterly magazine featuring art, analysis, commentary, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, humour and reviews by writers and artists of Mennonite heritage, descent, or interest for a general reading public.
Hildi Froese Tiessen and Margaret Loewen Reimer bring a deep knowledge of our artistic heritage, and the confidence to present new Mennonite artists in that context,
said Paul Krahn, editor of Rhubarb.
Margaret Loewen Reimer, a former editor at Mennonite Reporter and Canadian Mennonite has written widely on Mennonites and the arts. Her 1998 lectures on “Mennonites and the Artistic Imagination” have been published by Canadian Mennonite University. Hildi Froese Tiessen has edited numerous volumes of work by and about Mennonite writers and artists. She was program chair of the first conference on Mennonite/s Writing and co-chair of two subsequent conferences on Mennonite literature. She is the Literary Editor of the Conrad Grebel Review and is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Journal of Mennonite Studies and Rhubarb. She teaches at Conrad Grebel University College, where this winter she will again offer a course on Mennonite literature.
Subscriptions to Rhubarb can be purchased for $25.00/year or $7.00/single issue by visiting the Mennolit website.