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Breakfast Meeting November 19, 2022

Antanas Sileika (Antanas Šileika) is a Canadian novelist and critic.

After completing an English degree at the University of Toronto, he moved to Paris for two years and there married his wife, Snaige Sileika (nee Valiunas), an art student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While in Paris, he worked as part of the editorial collective of the expatriate literary journal, Paris Voices, run from the upstairs room of the bookstore, Shakespeare and Company.

Upon his return to Canada in 1979, Antanas began teaching at Humber College and working as a co-editor of the Canadian literary journal, Descant, where he remained until 1988.

He became involved through journalism with Lithuania’s restitution of independence during the fall of The Soviet Union 1988-1991, and for this activity he received the Knight’s Cross medal from the Lithuanian government in 2004.

A past winner of a national magazine award, he retired in June of 2017 as the director for the Humber School for Writers in Toronto.

After writing for newspapers and magazines, Antanas published his first novel, Dinner at the End of the World (1994), a speculative story set in the aftermath of global warming.

His second book, a collection of linked short stories, Buying On Time (1997), was nominated for both the City of Toronto Book Award and the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, and was serialized on CBC Radio’s Between the Covers. In 2016, almost twenty years later, it was long-listed for Canada Reads and the translation was short-listed in Lithuania for Book of the Year. The book traces the lives of a family of immigrants to a Canadian suburb between the fifties and seventies. Some of these stories were anthologized in Dreaming Home, Canadian Short Stories, and the Penguin Anthology of Canadian Humour.

Antanas Sileika has worked frequently as a reviewer of books for radio, television, and print.

His third book, Woman in Bronze (2004), compared the seasonal life of a young man in Czarist Lithuania with his subsequent attempts to succeed as a prominent sculptor in Paris in the twenties. The novel was a Globe Best Book of that year.

His novel, Underground, appeared from Thomas Allen in 2011. The story is set in the underground resistance to the Soviet Union in the late 1940’s. It was named as one of the Globe and Mail’s 100 Best Books of 2011.

Here are some review highlights:

How are we going to survive unless we turn our hearts to stone?” a comrade warns the hero of Antanas Sileika’s Underground. The question is an example of the elegant thinking that characterizes this rare and compelling chronicle .

Toronto Globe and Mail

Sileika’s novel is a gripping tale, and the fate of Lukas – how long his luck runs – engages the reader to the last page.

National Post,

Sileika writes with a spare style that suits the action sequences as well as the rare moments of tenderness or humour. Entertaining and sometimes shocking, the book describes a little-known period of European history that has been kept underground far too long.

Toronto Star

Antanas’s memoir, The Barefoot Bingo Caller, was released in spring of 2017 by ECW. Author Miriam Toews called the memoir “Evocative, unfailingly honest, and dead-on funny.” The book received a starred review in Quill and Quire. The translation of this memoir, Basakojis Bingo Pranešėjas, went on to win book of the year for 2018 in Lithuania.

Provisionally Yours, a historical espionage novel set in Kaunas in the 1920’s , was published by Biblioasis in March of 2019 . UK author Samantha Harvey said of the book, “I loved this novel.” Publishers Weekly called it “an urbane thriller.” and the Toronto Star called it “a finely honed political thriller.” The Lithuanian translation, called Laikinai Jūsų, published by Baltos Lankos, was positively reviewed in that country. .

2021 Poetry Contest Results

At our virtual breakfast meeting on Saturday, January 15, 2022, we announced the winners of the Claude Osmond Hodge Poetry Contest for 2021. We selected three three winners along with three Honourable Mentions. We want to congratulate the winners as well as everyone who submitted an entry. The talent displayed in all of the entries was inspiring and it was very difficult to rank them.

First Place: Ocean Saskia van Tetering
Second Place: Writing Journey Lynn Xu
Third Place: Meditation Jake Hogeterp

Honourable Mentions
Disintegrated Feather of the Slow War Mandy Orchard
The Last Poems Husain Mehdi
Wink Geetaa Sharma

"Ocean"
This is an unusual poem in which the poet make an ingenious
comparison of the forest to the ocean using marine images to describe
the trees. The poem finishes with the original lines "the wildwood
learns to bend / And the trees swim on. . ."

"A Writing Journey"
The writer takes us on a fascinating journey into dream to "the
edge of the universe where / the outer world rotates/ the inner" to
the ending it in place were time is transformed into eternity.

"Meditation"
A playful, intellectual poem that teases the reader with its
ambiguous imagery and surprising provocative ending.

"Disintegrated Feather of the Slow War"

In this poem the narrator recalls the aboriginal rituals of her
childhood "The dancing enigmatic under stars and smoke / Feathers and
pipes, jingling, drums and falsetto voices." She describes teenage
suicides, Aboriginal women missing in BC, and the fight for land
rights. The poem concludes with the lovely idea of buying a
dreamcatcher which will protect her son from nightmares.

Between the Notes

Jake Hogeterp has launched his new book “Between the Notes” about the impact of long Covid.

What could be worse than catching COVID-19? Not being able to shake it off and developing long COVID, for one. The symptoms mystified doctors as Rebecca’s condition continued to worsen during the summer and fall of 2020. As terror coursed through her soul, Rebecca’s family and friends provided help and support 24 hours per day.
Between the Notes is both an unnerving and heart-warming tale of how despair and courage battled within Rebecca during her year-long struggle. It is also a story of love and compassion as she discovered how strong and loyal her family and true friends were when she really needed them.

Ann Birch Featured in an Interview

Click below to go to the interview.

https://mizging.blogspot.com/2022/05/featured-friday-author-spotlight-on-ann.html

Ann Birch

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Poetry Contest Winners: Saskia van Tetering, Lynn Xu, Jake Hogeterp

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