Magazines Celebrate Alberta Arts Days

Alberta Arts Days is three exciting days - September 17-19, 2010 - to showcase Alberta artists of all types, and to encourage Albertans to discover, experience and celebrate the arts. the evnt offers a starring role for absolutely everyone: artists, art organizations, community groups, municipalities, libraries, schools and businesses.

Here are just a couple of the ways Alberta magazines are contributing to the celebration:

Since the inception of Alberta Arts Days, Prairie Journal has devoted their fall issue to Alberta writers and poets. This year, Issue 54 is dedicated to the memory of John Bishop Ballem (February 2 1925 - January 9, 2010) who was not only a generous supporter of the arts, but also a novelist (he published 12 novels), a poet and an attorney. The issue includes short stories by Alberta-based writers Aspen Gainer, Stephen Howard and Bonnie Ryan-Fisher, as well as the poetry of Joshua Learn. There are reviews of she walks for days inside a thousand eyes (a two-spirit story) by Sharron-Proulx-Turner, Behind the Man, John Laurie, Ruth Gorman, and the Indian Vote in Canada by Ruth Gorman and Garden Voices: Two Centuries of Canadian Garden Writing, edited by Edwinna von Baeyer and Pleasance Crawford.

Notebook Magazine is, sadly, releasing its last print issue, Issue #12, on September 18th at the ARTery in Edmonton. Notebook will continue in the spirit of promoting local art with web publishing (notebookmagazine.ca). This final release party features a retrospective art show of Notebook artists: Arina Baranova, Caitlin Boyce, Campbell Wallace, Corissa O'Donnell, Daniel Janzen, Erin Prout, Jenny Keith-Hughes, Larry Andreoff, Mariya Karpenko, Oksana Zhelisko, Paula Sommers and Tim Konrad. There will also be performances from singer/songwriters Tatam Reeves, Ky Babyn and the band 100 Mile House.