Electric Mermaid: Kathleen Vance + David Kipling @Char's

Date:

Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - 6:00pm to 8:00pm

Venue:

Char's Landing

4815 Argyle Street, Port Alberni

Electric Mermaid: Live Reads from Char's Landing, Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

Emcee: Derek Hanebury Moderator: Karl Korven ZOOM Producer: Charlene Patterson

Spoken Word Open Mic at Char's Landing, last Wednesday of each month

Char's physical doors open 5:30pm Pacific Time

APRIL 24th FEATURING GIBSON'S OWN KATHLEEN VANCE + DAVID KIPLING

Kathleen Vance was awarded first prize in non-fiction in the North Shore Writers’ Association’s 28 th annual writing contest in April 2024. She also received honourable mention for her short story “Queen of the Railroad Bridge” in the Dave Williamson 2024 National Short Story Competition. Her story will be published in May in the Manitoba Writers’ Guild’s Anthology for the Competition, Beyond Boundaries II.

Kathleen has published non-fiction in Don’t Tell: Family Secrets (Sharkey Paré, eds., Demeter Press, 2023) and in Hard Jobbin’ (Collins-West, ed., Ride the Wind, 2001); two fictional stories in Alberniology (Hanebury and Carmichael, eds., RCN Media, 2021); and co-authored the textbook Writing for Success with Dale Fitzpatrick (Pearson ERPI, 1998).

Inspired by the wonderful readers and writers at Electric Mermaid, Kathleen has written a yet-to-be-published novel about the adventures of three time-travelling kids, a dog, and the three real-life characters Charles Steinmetz, Agnes Pockels, and Sofie Herzog.

Kathleen has a PhD, German (UBC, diss. pub. Peter Lang Verlag); MA, German (CSU, Sacramento) and BA, Philosophy (Phi Beta Kappa, University at Buffalo). She taught at BC Institute of Technology (30 years), as well as Capilano University, University of the Fraser Valley, German Heritage Language School, and Burnaby School District Adult Continuing Education. She has trained teachers in Taipei, Beijing and Hunan and published journal articles and presented at conferences on communication, multiculturalism and human rights.

In regard to her formal ‘accomplishments,’ she emphasizes that “back home we always said, ‘That and a nickel will get you a ride on the Staten Island Ferry,’” and adds that in retirement one of her jobs she most remembers was taking inventory for a salvage company. Now she writes to try to understand the contradictions.

Kathleen lives in Gibsons, BC, and is grateful to work on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied, traditional lands of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Nation.

David Kipling was born and raised on a farm in the English Midlands. A motor enthusiast from childhood, he published “Stock-Car Racing: Another Kind of Motor Sport” in the British national weekly magazine, Autocar, in 1965. David has undergone race driver training in Canada and the UK, founded the stock-car history website www.oldstox.com (described in Short Circuit as best site in the field) and has served as announcer for the Sunshine Coast Drag Races for 25 years.

David has worked as a librarian and college teacher as well as "every kind of other job" from carpet cleaning in Canada to laying electrical cable in France. He spent years translating the French novel Rigadoon by a nihilist-anarchist author who fascinates him.

After thirty years of successful college teaching, at the advanced age of 61, he finally earned a Bachelor of Education from the University of Alberta. His short story “Now is the Time” was published in the online magazine Entropy. He has had a short story published locally in Alberniology: The Alberni Anthology.

The CBC’s “The Next Chapter’s Proust Questionnaire” would reveal if he took it that David dislikes conceding arguments and that David’s idea of happiness is working on any sentence, with a pot of tea and some cheese close at hand.

AVNEWS => https://www.albernivalleynews.com/entertainment/two-very-different-authors-read-at-electric-mermaid-in-port-alberni-7348217

YouTube => https://youtu.be/KgR_eRqdvDI

APRIL 24th READERS LIST

READER 01 Lesli Omohundro - Bronczowski 5min Via Zoom ( Germany )

READER 02 Vicki Drybrough 5 min in person ( Port Alberni B.C)

FEATURE 01 Kathleen Vance & David Kipling in person 20 min +Q&A ( Gibson BC. )

READER 03 Jenn Wenn 5 Min Via zoom (London Ont )

READER 04 N.V,V, Victory 5min in person ( Port Alberni B.C)

READER 05 Mark Wonneck 5 min Via Zoom ( Qualicum Beach, B.C)

READER 06 Victoria Roscoe- Roumanis 5 min in person ( Port Alberni B.C)

READER 07 Peter Paul Van Camp 5 min Via Zoom ( Denman Island BC)

READER 08 Joelunch Bucket 5 min in person ( Port Alberni B.C)