Despite a civic strike, the pages turn as organizers bring in an American comedic talent to 'mix it up'
Rebecca Wigod
Vancouver Sun
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Los Angeles playwright and performer Lauren Weedman is one funny woman, and now her comedy lives on the page.
"When I first saw the painting The Scream, I wondered if Edvard Munch had gone to my high school in Indianapolis," she writes in her first book, A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body, soon to be released by Seattle's Sasquatch Books.
Mind you, that short, bathetic quotation doesn't show Weedman at her self-revealing, self-flagellating best. Elsewhere in the collection of funny personal essays, she writes of attending the 2001 Emmy Awards with her then-colleagues from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and being acutely uncomfortable because, thanks to the Atkins diet, her guts were "packed full of salami and cheese."
The story gets increasingly down-and-dirty from there. She shares so much intimate detail from her life that comparisons with David Sedaris are being made. You can see why her book is subtitled Tales from a Life of Cringe.
On Sunday, Weedman will be in Vancouver, appearing at The Word on the Street, a free celebration of literacy and the printed word taking place on Georgia, Homer and Hamilton streets for the 13th year.
Organizer Liesl Jauk said, "I thought it would be fun to bring her up [from L.A.] and mix it up a bit."
The Word on the Street is primarily a celebration of B.C. writers, books and magazines. Taking place from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the last Sunday in September, it has shown itself capable of attracting 30,000 people.
With its traditional anchor point, Library Square, behind picket lines this year, it's a wonder that it's going ahead at all. But Jauk, her partner Bryan Pike and the other event organizers in their firm, Rebus Creative, say the show must go on.
Canada Post, across Georgia Street from Library Square, has agreed to allow tents to be put up on its parking lot. Jauk said three of Georgia's lanes will be closed to traffic so festival-goers will be able to get to those venues safely.
As well, the Centre in Vancouver for the Performing Arts, at 777 Homer, is allowing its sidewalk to be used.
"We've managed to save most of the festival," said Jauk. "The only major venue we had to cut completely was the Main Stage, which is really unfortunate, but there's just not enough space.
"We're really pleased that we were able to relocate pretty well everything else."
The B.C. talent on display will include the writers Caroline Adderson (Very Serious Children), Colin Angus (Beyond the Horizon), Carellin Brooks (Wreck Beach), Arthur Black (Black to the Grindstone), Bruce Grierson (U-Turn), Brian Preston (Mi, Chi and Bruce Lee) and Meg Tilly (Porcupine).
Jauk aims for a lively mix. She doesn't think the lineup should be "strictly for the literary-novel reader." Little kids, tree-huggers, poetry buffs, francophones, gardeners -- all these groups, and more, are catered for.
Calvin Sandborn, a Victoria environmental lawyer, will be appearing at 3 p.m. in the Family Stories venue on Hamilton near Georgia. He's the author of a memoir, Becoming the Kind Father, that has been striking a chord with readers. It's about growing up with an abusive alcoholic father and learning to break that cycle.
"This book is for every woman who knows an angry or a distant man, and that's 100 per cent of the population," said Sandborn, a father of three.
When he reads from the book in public, he often sees audience members with tears in their eyes. At one event, a retired air force pilot came up to him and said, 'I realize I was too hard on my son, and now he's being too hard on his son.' "
Sandborn will be followed at 3:15 by memoirist Leilah Nadir, author of The Orange Trees of Baghdad.
At 12:30, Ruth Ozeki will appear in the Authors Tent, on Homer near Georgia, and talk about her novel My Year of Meats, centrepiece of the Vancouver Public Library's One Book, One Vancouver program this year.
Lauren Weedman will follow her at 1:30. It shows every sign of being a provocative and stimulating afternoon.
