Exciting Reading at the Elizabeth Bishop House on 8 June

 

Don't forget that the next weekend the EBSNS will host several events at the Bishop House to mark its 30th Anniversary.

EBSNS marks significant milestone

The EBSNS was founded in 1994, so 2024 marks its 30th anniversary. The society will celebrate this milestone with a few events in June.

Ever committed to introducing the children of Great Village to Elizabeth Bishop, the society has arranged for Emma FitzGerald, the illustrator of A Pocket of Time: The Poetic Childhood of Elizabeth Bishop to give a workshop to the students at the Great Village School (where Bishop herself went to "Primer Class," on Monday, 10 June.

(Emma FitzGerald (r) giving a talk at the EB House)

The society will hold its Annual General Meeting on Friday, 14 June at 11:00 a.m. at the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, at which time it will do the draw of the fund-raising raffle, the prize for which is a beautiful painting of the EB House by Nova Scotia artist Susan Tooke. In the afternoon (1:30 p.m.), members of the EBSNS board will participate in a "Room by Verse" tour of the house, which will feature readings of Bishop's Nova Scotia poems.

On Saturday, 15 June, the society is holding two exciting events. In the morning (10:30 a.m.), Nova Scotia poet Brian Bartlett (former EBSNS board member and editor of the society newsletter) will give a talk about Bishop's Key West houses, based on his January 2024 visit to Key West. This event will be followed by light refreshments, including anniversary cake!

(Brian Bartlett in Florida, January 2024)

 

In the afternoon on Saturday 15 June (1:30 p.m.), British Columbia writer Leesa Dean will give a talk about her process for writing Filling Station (published by Gaspereau Press), her novella in verse, inspired by Bishop's life and her Brazilian poem "Manuelzinho." Leesa's reading is sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets.

(Leesa Dean)

Other than the workshop, all events are free

and open to the public.

Everyone is welcome.

A new book of great interest to EB fans

Two of Elizabeth Bishop’s dearest friends were the Ilse and Kit Barker. A new biography of Ilse Barker, a.k.a. the novelist Katherine Talbot is now available. Originally published in German in 2022, the English translation has just appeared. Below is information about an online conversation with the author Christoph Ribbat, happening in the UK on 30 May at 6 p.m.

Booking form to attend online: Becoming Kathrine Talbot: A Jewish Refugee and the Novelist She Invented at Online event tickets from TicketSource.

In 1935, when she was fourteen years old, Ilse Gross fled Germany for the safety of England. Alone. Seventeen years later, she published her audacious first novel Fire in the Sun. Her pen name: Kathrine Talbot. Her German Jewish identity she carefully concealed. Becoming Kathrine Talbot: A Jewish Refugee and the Novelist She Invented [Becoming Kathrine Talbot: A Jewish Refugee and the Novelist She Invented], first published in German in 2022, recreates the life of a refugee who lost her parents and sister in the Holocaust and who resisted telling their stories until it was almost too late. Only at the end of her life did she turn her family’s fate into prose.

In the just-published English translation of his book, Professor Dr. Christoph Ribbat of the University of Paderborn, Germany, traces the life of a once well-known but now nearly forgotten 20th century novelist from an Isle of Man internment camp to postwar Cornwall, New York, and California, and then to a green hill in Sussex. He will be joined for this discussion of the new publication by Professor Sue Vice of the University of Sheffield, who has written: ‘Christoph Ribbat’s remarkable book is a creative biography and literary retrieval of Kathrine Talbot, née Ilse Gross ... It will make everyone who reads it reconsider what they believe they know about the lives of refugees, and rush to find copies of Talbot’s fiction.’

Please note that those signed up to attend this event will be able to benefit from a 20% discount on the cover price of the book.

Discount: 20% discount not including post and packing. Code: Ribbat24

www.vmbooks.com

North America: www.ipgbook.com

Offer valid May 2nd 2024 to Nov 4th 2024 (see Toby Harris email, 20.2.24)

Christoph Ribbat, born in 1968, is Professor of American Studies at the University of Paderborn and has previously held positions in Bochum, Boston and Basel. His book Im Restaurant was shortlisted for the Preis der Leipziger Buchmesse and was translated into fourteen languages.