MENNONITE/S WRITING IN CANADA: THE FIRST 50 YEARS A free public reading/lecture series featuring authors reading from their work and reflecting on the development of their careers as writers of Mennonite heritage January 11 Rudy Wiebe “On this Earth: 57 years of writing” January 18 David Waltner-Toews “From A Brotherly Phillippic to Tante Tina to the mysteries of disease, death and transformation: Mennonite reflections on a life of poetry and science” Watch Online January 25 Patrick Friesen “Stop Meaning, Start Singing” Watch Online February 1 Magdalene Redekop “Here Come the Clowns: Laughter in Mennonite Writing,” featuring “Sush Funk and Her Old Bag of Secret Schunt” Watch Online February 8 Rob Zacharias “Mennonite Literature as Communal Debate: Tracing the Collapse of the Russian Mennonite Commonwealth through Canadian Literature” Watch Online February 15 Julia Kasdorf “From Sleeping Preacher to Poetry in America: a writer’s journey” Watch Online February 29 David Bergen “My work in retrospect, within the Mennonite world and without” March 7 Darcie Friesen Hossack “Writing Towards Home: A prodigal daughter looks back” March 14 Paul Tiessen “Miriam Toews: the trouble with ‘Mennonite’ novels” All readings and lectures will take place on Wednesday evenings at 7 pm, in the College Chapel

Are you interested in hearing significant Canadian writers talk about how their writing sensibilities, their careers, and their Mennonite heritage intersect? This winter, Grebel will host a public reading and lecture series featuring writers of Mennonite heritage. Each of these writers – from Rudy Wiebe, the “father” of Mennonite fiction, to Darcie Friesen Hossack, a newcomer whose Mennonites Don’t Dance has garnered extravagant praise from critics and writers alike – will offer a combined reading/commentary meant to take the audience on a journey that traces how the writer’s Mennonite heritage contributed to shaping his or her literary sensibility.

When Rudy Wiebe’s first novel Peace Shall Destroy Many threw the Canadian Mennonite world into shock in 1962, no one would have anticipated that fifty years later such a wide a range of Mennonite writers would have found so prominent a place in Canadian literature. Names of Mennonite writers are well known in Canadian Literature, and “Mennonite literature” has become a recognizable minor literature on this continent.

Featured within the series, alongside a number of Canadian writers, is American poet Julia Spicher Kasdorf, this year’s Rod and Lorna Sawatsky Visiting Scholar. She will read from her work, including her new volume Poetry in America, while reflecting on the development of her career in the context of her Amish roots.

The winter 2012 Wednesday evening series, which celebrates and builds on a decades-long association between the College and Mennonite/s writing in Canada, will include – besides author readings/reflections – guest lectures on laughter in Mennonite writing, interpretations of the Russian Mennonite diaspora in fiction, Miriam Toews’ “troubling” of the “Mennonite” audience, as well as historical/contextual comments by Hildi Froese Tiessen in this, her last term of teaching before retirement.

Gather your reading family, friends and book club members and join us in the Grebel Chapel on Wednesday evenings at 7:00pm this winter, to hear these distinctive and important voices that speak to the contemporary Mennonite experience. Students may attend the series as part of a course-for-credit if they sign up for “English 218: Mennonite Literature.”

Contact Professor Hildi Froese Tiessen for more information.

---

Poetry Workshops

Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Patrick Friesen – both well-established poets and long-standing teachers of poetry – will each be offering two 2-hour poetry-writing workshops for students and members of the public.

The workshops, limited to twelve participants, are free and available on a first-come basis.

Patrick Friesen
Thursday, January 26

Julia Spicher Kasdorf
Thursday, February 16

---

This series has been made possible with support from:

Institute of Mennonite and Anabaptist Studies