John Vigna

Steven Galloway's Masterful Work

2009-12-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

I sat down with Steven Galloway at Helen's Café to discuss hockey, the future of electric cars, and the process of writing his internationally acclaimed, "The Cellist of Sarajevo."

"The time after a book’s publication can be an intense, exhilarating, soul-baring experience for a writer. Book tours, public readings, fan mail, critical reviews all come in one big time-compressed period, then the writer returns to isolation and, hopefully, another book. But for Steven Galloway, one year after publishing his third book, The Cellist of Sarajevo, the accolades and demands haven’t stopped." Read the full feature...

Cooped Up?

2009-09-10T17:57:00.000-07:00

BOOK LAUNCH AND PARTY
Wednesday, September 30 at 8pm
The Brickhouse, 730 Main Street

CABIN FEVER: THE BEST NEW CANADIAN NON-FICTION
Wear your plaid, dungarees, overalls, long johns - c'mon people, it's CABIN FEVER.

Join West Coast contributors Charlotte Gill, Jaspreet Singh and John Vigna as we celebrate the launch of CABIN FEVER, the Banff Centre's newest literary journalism anthology.

Cabin Fever

2009-08-30T15:50:00.000-07:00

My personal essay, "The Ballad of Big and Small," will appear in the forthcoming Banff Literary Journalism anthology. It's a huge honour for me, as I've long been a fan of the Banff Centre non-fiction anthologies.

CABIN FEVER: THE BEST IN NEW CANADIAN NON-FICTION offers the finest and most daring work by Banff Literary Journalism participants of the past six years. Edited by Moira Farr and Ian Pearson, and published by Thomas Allen, the anthology features the work of: Taras Grescoe, Jeff Warren, Megan Williams, Bill Reynolds, Charlotte Gill, John Vigna, Margaret Webb, Jaspreet Singh, Jeremy Klaszus, Deborah Ostrovsky, Jonathan Garfinkel, Penney Kome, and Andrew Westoll.

Fill 'Er Up

2009-05-10T17:38:00.000-07:00

How does an aging logger who loses his wife and daughters in a horrific car crash spend his first holiday long weekend without them?

"Because it’s the Thanksgiving weekend, he hangs around with the others at the end of the shift. They are a new crew, young, earnest, eager to provide for their families. He doesn’t trust them, their big talk and brazen work, sloppy and sometimes haphazard. By the third beer, he’s heard all he can take. He crushes the empties in his fist, tosses them in the slash, flexes his hand, the knuckles gnarled like lug nuts, strands of jagged scars across the top, and shakes out the numbness. He slings the rest of his six-pack, drops it in the cooler behind his seat, slams the tailgate shut and starts the truck. In his side-mirror, through the dust, one of the guys throws a can at his rear. Another raises a rifle."

To read more of my short story, "Gas Bar," pick up a copy of the Dalhousie Review, Spring 2009, 89.1.

In Good Company

2008-05-26T16:09:00.000-07:00

Nominees for the 2008 Western Magazine Awards were announced today and I was chuffed to see my personal essay, "The Ballad of Big and Small" (Grain, Vol.35 No.1) nominated in the Human Experience category. Even more exciting? My good friend Charlotte Gill's nomination in the same category for her Vancouver Review tree-planting piece, "Eating Dirt". Congratulations, Charlotte!

My Horse Has Come In

2007-09-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't actually own a horse but one helluva a saddle bronc ride appears in my personal essay "The Ballad of Big and Small" so that counts for something doesn't it? "The Ballad" has won The Dave Greber Award for Freelance Writers. I was honoured to receive the award in Calgary at Word on the Street. The award is available to freelance non-fiction writers in Western Canada, recognizing magazine and book writing.

At Last, the Return of the Big Novel

2007-08-12T15:22:00.000-07:00

After half a decade of questioning fiction's relevance and assessing the demise of the novel in the post 9/11 world, it's a pleasure to see that instead of pandering and playing it safe, novelists have responded to reader ennui with exuberant risk-taking. Read the full article here...

Catch the Red Eye

2007-08-08T10:03:00.000-07:00

My personal essay, "The Ballad of Big and Small" leads off the Summer 2007 issue of Grain Magazine (Vol.35, No.1). The issue's title, Tired of Burning, seems apt for the piece. Here's the opening:

"You woke me on December 25th, a rifle across your knees, barrel pointed toward the flickering Christmas tree. I shook my head, closed my eyes and opened them to see if you were still there. I didn't know you owned a gun. Instinct told me it was loaded. Your breath reeked of booze, but your voice was calm, reassuring.

"Bro, let's go out and shoot some shit.""

Happy May Day!

2007-05-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Seeing as it's International Workers' Day, it seems only appropriate to announce that my short story, "Hops", which won sub-Terrain's 2006 Lush Triumphant Literary Award, appears in Issue 46 (Spring/Summer 07) of said magazine, fittingly themed, "Bad Jobs."

The story, brimming with violence and sex and violent sex, is appropriately accompanied by a shocking and compelling illustration by local artist, Derek Von Essen.

Douglas Coupland's Fictional World Takes the Stage

2006-11-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

Does the work of Canada's most famous zeitgeist writer, Douglas Coupland make for good theatre? I interviewed Katrina Dunn, Artistic Director of Touchstone Theatre and playwright, Michael Lewis MacLennan about the challenges of bringing Life After God to the stage.

"Scout lies naked in a warm pool holding hands in a circle with six of his closest friends. They are “pretending to be embryos” in a “life lived in paradise,” one without religion, love or politics. This poignant scene opens Douglas Coupland’s short story “1000 Years”in Life After God, and in that rare moment of intimacy and closenesss, a startling question is posed that seems to have emerged naturally from Coupland’s previous two books, Generation X and Shampoo Planet: Can we find meaning or connection in the madness of the modern world and in the absence of belief?" Read the full feature...

A Life in Pictures

2006-01-30T12:58:00.000-08:00

The Winter/Spring 2006 issue of Trek Magazine features my profile of visionary lighting designer, Robert Gardiner and Governor General's Award-winning playwright, Kevin Kerr as they discuss their recent ground-breaking collaboration, Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge.

"On June 15, 1878, in Palo Alto, California, Eadweard Muybridge photographed the first fast motion serial images of a horse that captured a moment of suspension when no hooves touched the ground. The man who sponsored the experiment was the horse’s owner, railroad builder and former governor, Leland Stanford, who would later found Stanford University." Read the full feature...

Brothers in Firearms

2005-04-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

An early version of the story, "Two," from my collection Bull Head appears in the Spring/Summer issue of The Antigonish Review (Issue 141).

"Maurice lay in his sleeping bag on the single mattress and glanced around the one-room cabin until his eyes adjusted to the dull glow. A flicker of amber light twisted and bent behind blackened glass, tossing shadows against the log walls. A yellowed calendar, thirty-five years old hung on a steel spike; faded pink stubs from raffle tickets bought for a local Rodeo Queen contest were pinned to a log, the draw made twenty-two years ago; wrinkled and warped hunting magazines sat stacked beneath the rack holding two polished shotguns; a washcloth, dishtowel, flannel shirt and navy pants drooped from a thin clothesline near the woodstove pipe." Read the story...