Ice

Posted on June 30, 2013 6:07 pm by Lori Hahnel

I was a bit surprised to discover that my story “Ice” was included last week in Issue 3 of the UK online magazine The Red Line, here. Nobody told me about it, and if I hadn’t happened to Google myself last night I wouldn’t have known.

Sounds odd, maybe, but this kind of thing has happened to me twice (that I know of) before. I shortlisted in the PRISM International short fiction contest once, and had a story included in an anthology once, and both times the only way I found out was via Google. Sheesh! Anyway, writers, I encourage you to get in the habit of Googling yourself now and then. It’s amazing what you find out.

AWCS Writer-in-Residence Closing Reading Cancelled

Posted on June 24, 2013 9:23 pm by Lori Hahnel

Due to the flooding disaster that has hit Calgary, a decision was made by AWCS and myself this morning to cancel the closing reading of my residency, which was set for this Thursday, June 27th at Owl’s Nest Books. Finalists of the It’s All in the Words short story contest had been invited to read at the event. Winners will be announced shortly, and prizes will be mailed out. Thank you to everyone who entered, and many thanks to the jurors and my co-judges, Rona Altrows and J. Jill Robinson.

It has been a pleasure and a privilege to serve as writer-in-residence for AWCS this year. I met a wide variety of writers and read a wide variety of work over the last two months: adult, young adult, new adult and children’s fiction; memoir, creative nonfiction and poetry. Thanks to all of you for sharing your work with me. Many thanks also to Robin van Eck and Rea Tarvydas for all their work in arranging and coordinating the events and consultations over the last two months.

An Urgent Telegram

Posted on June 7, 2013 6:04 am by Lori Hahnel

Tom Thomson's Last Spring

June 6, 1917

We broke camp not that early in the morning. I made breakfast: bacon, biscuits with marmalade and oatmeal. I made coffee for the guests and tea for myself. We packed up wet. We were supposed to be staying for another night but judging by their demeanour I wasn’t sure if they wanted to return as soon as possible.

We made it back into Smoke Lake later in the morning and then they saw Nominigan Camp on the lake shore. The camp is a nice looking outfit. It looked especially inviting to my two bedraggled guests who suggested that we stop there for lunch and dry off a bit more. We canoed near to the main lodge, disembarked and went to the dining room.

“We’ll have lunch here,” John said.

“That’ll be fine,” I said, “I’ll tend to the gear and canoes. Take your time. I’ll see you…

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Antigonish Review; Tumbling through June

Posted on June 4, 2013 10:38 pm by Lori Hahnel

Here we are, June 4th, and I still think it’s about March. March 1995. Well, no, that’s not really true, but let’s just say things are blurring along. I can’t believe we’re almost halfway through the year.

I was most pleased to get an acceptance last week from The Antigonish Review. Yay! No details on when my story will appear yet; I’ll post when I find out. This will be my second appearance in TAR’s pages. My first was my story “Blue Lake”, which they ran in 2009. Very happy to have work in TAR again.

My residency with AWCS is now also halfway over. Short-Short Bootcamp was a success (drop and give me 500 words!). Now we have more consults and judging in the All in the Words story contest. If you entered, I’d say this would be a good time to bribe the judges. Wine and chocolate are always welcome. And then we have my closing reading at dear old Owl’s Nest Books on June 27th, at which the finalists are also invited to read. That should be a lot of fun.

And then, after that, I am taking a break!