Authors in the Auditorium

Parents are welcome to attend any author sessions: 2 to 3 p.m.

[Authors] [Authors in the Aud] [Dress-up] [Chapters] [U.R.O.C. Events] [Get Caught Reading] [Book Swap] [Scrabble]

Mon. Oct. 30 - Grade 9
Stephen Guy-McGrath
Stephen Guy-McGrath is a Cawthra grad with a Major in Drama and a Minor in Dance. He wrote Bully, which was performed last year by Cawthra students for the 2006 Sears Festival and went on to win awards at the provincial finals held at Hart House. Guy-McGrath's background includes dance training, clown studies and two years at the National Theatre School. He's also a pretty good musician, as he has demonstrated with his singing, step-dancing and fiddle work as a performer in some of his own plays. Another work, Spinning Yarns, tells six stories based on his childhood growing up in Newfoundland.

Stephen Guy-McGrath with Cawthra students who directed and performed in Bully for Sears Festival.

Tues.Oct. 31 - Grade 12 - - Ting-Xing Ye

Ting-xing Ye was born in Shanghai, China, in 1952, the fourth of five children born to a factory owner and his wife. At 16, she was ìsent down to a prison farm during the Cultural Revolution, spending six years there before being admitted to Beijing University. She took a degree in English Literature, then began a seven year career as English interpreter for the national government in Shanghai. Ye came to Canada in 1987. She has been a child-care worker, bank clerk and secretary. She published her first picture book in 1998.

Throwaway Daughter, the book she will read from when she visits Cawthra, tells the dramatic and moving story of Grace Dong-mei Parker, a typical Canadian teenager until the day she witnesses the Tiananmen Square massacre on television. She sets out to explore her Chinese ancestry and discovers that she was one of the thousands of infant girls abandoned in China since the introduction of the one-child-per-family policy. In search of her birth mother, Grace travels back the Chinese village where she was born, and discovers the truth of what happened to her almost twenty years before.

Although Ting-xing enjoyed reading books as a child, she did not enjoy a simple childhood. She was born on June 28, 1952, the fourth child of a factory worker. She was orphaned at thirteen, and her high-school education was cut short by the Cultural Revolution. She majored in English language and literature at Beijing University, and yet, in 35 years of living in China, she never once took the initiative to write. Ting-xing realized at a very early age that, in China, the act of writing “black character on white paper” could prove dangerous. China’s totalitarian regime punished, suppressed, and occasionally executed people for their thoughts, spoken words, and writing. Ting-xing understands that writing is a luxury that not everyone in this world has access to. Ting-xing lives in Orillia with author William Bell. After a long and difficult search, she recently contacted her daughter, from a previous marriage, who still lives in China. Ting-xing hopes one day to bring her to live in Canada.

Wed. Nov. 1 - Grade 10 - - Nadja Halilbegovich
Since gaining international recognition for her diaries of life in wartime Bosnia, Nadja Halilbegovich has spoken to and performed choral concerts for audiences throughout North America and Europe.

Nadja was 12 when the war broke out in her native country Bosnia. Throughout the next three and a half years, she and all the citizens of the capital Sarajevo suffered from the continuous shelling and deprivation of basic needs. In 1992 as a 13-year-old, she was nearly killed when, upon leaving her house to play for the first time in six months, a bomb exploded seven feet from her. Nadja still has seven pieces of shrapnel in her legs. During the war, Nadja began sharing her poetry and diary entries on the National Radio. Soon, she had her own radio show called The Music Box, a program on the National Radio Station of Bosnia, and performed in internationally broadcast solo and choir performances. In 1993, four of her poems were featured in a book Mom, I Don't Want to Go to the Basement. A year later, at 14, Nadja published her diary Sarajevo Childhood Wounded by War which was translated into English and published in Turkey in 1995. She became known as the Bosnian Anne Frank. Her diaries have been published in Bosnia and Turkey. In late August 1995, Nadja escaped the war and came to live with a host family in America. She began learning English and finished three grades of high school in two years. In the summer of 1995, the sequel to her diary titled Dreamer's Insomnia was published in Bosnia.

Thurs. Nov. 2 - Grade 11 - - Jennica Harper

Jennica Harper was born in North Bay, Ontario and grew up in Brampton. Her poetry has been widely published in Canadian literary journals, including Grain, The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, Descant, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, and PRISM International. Her work also appeared in Larger than Life: An Anthology of Celebrity. In 2003, her long poem, The Octopus, was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. Jennica also works as a screenwriter and story editor in the Canadian film industry. She currently lives in BC, where she teaches screenwriting at Vancouver Film School. Jennica holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the U. of British Columbia, and a BA in English from the U. of Toronto.

By clicking here, you can actually hear and see Jennica reading some of her poems:

http://zekesgallery.blogspot.com/2006/05/jennica-harper-reading-at-zekes.html