Thu, Oct 29th, 7-9pm, Spoken Word Open Mic – Alberni Valley Words on Fire! Featuring Anne Pley
Open mike, showcasing our local writers, will start at 7:00 p.m. Sign up at the door.
Beverages of your choice are available at Char's starting at 4:00pm.  Come early and enjoy a warm fall beverage.
Feb 15th 2015 Stephen Novik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY6Ti7mdVRs 
Bring your writing, friends, and enthusiasm.
FMI Fran Thiessen [email protected]     http://www.wordstorm.ca/    http://ascentaspirations.ca
FMI http://alberni.ca/events/16664       Char’s 19+ Lounge opens M-F 4pm, S-S 1pm www.charslanding.com Char’s Landing, 4815 Argyle @5th. Port Alberni V9Y 1V9
 
 
 
 
Anne’s Bio
 
 
 
Writing has been a life long project for Anne. 
 
In Grade six, at Beaver Creek Elementary School, Anne’s teacher told her she should become a journalist because she could write in pictures. Years later, she conducted interviews and wrote articles for a local, free magazine called ‘Canvas and Clay’.  She began to write short romances and mystery stories for the magazine. Today, she has started her own local, free magazine called ‘What’s Up Port Alberni? and is currently working on the winter issue.
 
Because of the warmth written into a magazine article about a local artist, Anne was asked to write the man’s biography.  It is called ‘The Man Who Speaks With Wolves’ and is about Robert Aller.  Anne had it self-published and Robert cried when she gave him the first copy.  It took two years because Anne wrote it twice from different directions.  The final version weaves Robert’s home life with the fantastic life he lived out in the world.
 
As a young mother she wrote and submitted Harlequin Romances (three chapters and a synopsis) and collected lots of rejection slips.  Late in the day, she got the interest of an editor who sent the manuscripts on from Harlequin to their head office at Mills and Boon.  This felt like winning the lottery or an academy award.  It was a great feeling but the manuscripts were once more rejected.  Anne didn’t write for a bit after that.
 
As a Toastmaster, where Anne was known as a wordsmith, she had to prove she was a leader by doing a project that she could get other people to visualize and bring to fruition. She decided to write a play based on an old song her grandmother used to sing ‘The girl in the golden cage’.  The play was called ‘The Golden Cage’ and was performed as a dinner theater at Echo Center.  The newspaper said it was a cross between ‘My Fair Lady’ and ‘On The Buses’.  The audience loved it.  The amazing thing was that people of all ages came to act out Anne’s fantasy, to provide music and even to direct the proceedings.
 
 
 
Anne loves to write poems so when the AV Times had a feature that had people submitting poems on monthly themes dictated by the paper, Anne wrote one a month for twelve months. 
 
Anne has many novels in her mind but has finished one and sent it out to a publisher in New York.  This book needs an American publisher because it is an American story.  It is about two women, both slaves, who live on a rice plantation in Georgia. One is old and was dragged from Africa at the age of sixteen, the other is young and was born on the rice plantation.  She knows no other life. The novel is the young girl’s story. It starts in October of 1846 and ends as the Union Army is marching on Savannah at the end of the civil war.  This novel is the first in a trilogy.
 
Tonight, Anne is going to read a poem she wrote for her uncle who was a submariner in the Pacific in World War II.  She wrote it when he came from England for a two week visit.  It is a comparison between an old submarine and the old man.  Her uncle loved it, took it home and put it in a drawer.  When he died, Anne’s cousin found the poem and, thinking it was from a magazine, used it in the brochure she had made for his funeral.  She had no idea that Anne had written it until, after getting a copy of the brochure in the mail, Anne told her where it had come from.
 
The second piece that Anne will share with us is the beginning of the second novel in the series.  This one is about the son of the girl in the first novel and is unique in that it starts at the end of his life.  The man’s name is Pearl.  He is named after the old woman in the first novel. The place at the beginning of the story is Oklahoma but prior to becoming a state, it was the Indian Territory.
 
 
 
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