Great day today at Word on the Street. Had a blast making the rounds, talking about the conference and meeting the glowing literati of the Vancouver area. Tons of our presenters were on the street, performing, schmoozing, having a ball.

It was the first official 'shadow' outing for my successor, Kathy Chung. Kathy will be keeping a close eye on the workings of the conference this year, as she'll be taking over as conference coordinator in 2010. We'll be profiling her on this blog very soon.

The Book Broads [Angela Crocker, Kim Plumly and Peggy Richardson] interviewed Kathy and me for a video post on their blog. We'll post a link to it here when it goes live. We talked about all the great stuff we have planned for the conference this year -- it's going to be a winner! The Book Broads will all be volunteering at the conference -- make sure to say hi when you see them this year!

Other SiWC 2009 presenters at WOTS included:  Annabel Lyon, who was just this week included on the Giller Prize longlist for her new novel The Golden Mean, was interviewed by former presenter favourite Stephen Galloway.

Spent the afternoon on Bowen Island yesterday, celebrating the book launch of GENERATION with writer and poet Bernice Lever. GENERATION is Bernice's ninth book of poetry and her fourth with Black Moss Press.

She had a great launch, and spent the day meeting and greeting her fans and admirerers, all the while wearing a button proclaiming: Take a Canadian Author To Bed!

It was a fantastic day -- huge congratulations to Bernice on her accomplishment. You can meet Bernice and talk with her at the conference next month -- be sure to take advantage of the opportunity!

 Here's a closer look at Bernice, from her bio on our website:

Bernice Lever gets high on words. A poet with 9 poetry books, including Generation, 2009, she has also written a college textbook and other non-fiction works. Living on Bowen and retired from college English teaching, she gives editing and marketing advice, and writing workshops. She enjoys performing her poems and prose pieces as she has read on 5 continents. Best known as editor of WAVES, a literary magazine from 1972-1987, Bernice has won awards for her poems, such as the Wm. Henry Drummond poetry prize, 2008. She continues to write on this peaceful island.

On Monday I published kc dyer's interview with Bernice Lever in Episode 3 of the SiWC Soapbox podcast. Recorded at the 5th Annual Summer Dream Literary Arts Festival, I also caught Bernice on video giving a reading from her book, Yet Woman I Am (kc and Bernice talked about the reading in their discussion). We're pleased Bernice has given us permission to publish her reading here.

Bernice Lever's SiWC Biography Page:
http://www.siwc.ca/speaker/2008/bernice-lever

Websites:
Colour of Words: http://www.colourofwords.com/
Never a Straight Line: http://www.blackmosspress.com/main/?p=331

Reading at Blip.tv: http://blip.tv/file/1196447