Stephen Kimber at Halifax International Writers’ Festival
Stephen Kimber will be one of more than a dozen writers featured during this year's second annual Halifax International Writers' Festival at the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax from April 5-9.
- On Sunday, April 9 at 2:30 p.m. Kimber will read and discuss his new novel, Reparations.
- On Thursday, April 6 at 2:30 p.m., he will appear with American novelist Brad Kessler on a panel discussing "It's all in the Details: Making Real Life into Fiction." Kessler's latest novel, Birds in Fall, is a fictional account of the 1998 Swissair plane crash off Nova Scotia, which was also the subject of one of Kimber's earlier nonfiction books, Flight 111.
You'll find more information on the panel as well as a complete schedules of Festival events at the Halifax International Writers' Festival web site.
Copyright 2006 Stephen Kimber
Column for March 26, 2006
Sinking deeper and deeper into the Iraq quagmire
'kwag-"mIr, Noun.
1 : soft miry land that shakes or yields under the foot.
2 : a difficult, precarious, or entrapping position: predicament.
“The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the (U.S. and Iraqi) economy.
“My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . . . I think it will go relatively quickly. . . (in) weeks rather than months.”
“My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed… Iraq is more secure. The economy of Iraq is beginning to improve… Banks are now opening up and the infrastructure is improving. In a lot of places, the infrastructure is as good as it was at pre-war levels… And the political process is moving toward democracy.”
“Since the collapse of the Iraqi regime, homeless children, often drug-addicted and hungry, have become a common sight on the streets of Baghdad.”
“Month by month, Iraqis are assuming more responsibility for their own security and their own future.”
“WASHINGTON — CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war.”
“We have led, many have joined and America and the world are safer.“
“The World Food Program, a UN agency, reported in September that 6.5 million Iraqis were dependent on food rations… The country's infrastructure is in disarray, including the sewer system. Sixty per cent of rural residents and 20 per cent of urban residents don't have access to clean water. Violence has also driven away international aid agencies, who provide food aid and medical help.”
“The State Department on Monday detailed an array of human rights abuses last year by the Iraqi government, including torture, rape and illegal detentions by police officers and functionaries of the interim administration that took power in June.”
, Mar. 1, 2005
“The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
“Those of us in public office have a duty to speak with candor.”
“The civilian death toll in Iraq was higher in the last year than at any point since the end of the war, according to figures released today. A study by the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project suggests that 12,617 people have been killed over the past year. That figure does not include the hundreds who have died in the recent upsurge of violence between Shia and Sunni groups.”
“In less than three years, the Iraqi people have gone from living under the boot of a brutal tyrant, to liberation, to sovereignty, to free elections, to a constitutional referendum, and last December, to elections for a fully constitutional government.”
“We are in a civil war. We are losing each day an average of 50 to 60 people ... if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.”
“Iraq on Monday marked the third anniversary of the US-led invasion with new bombings, more sectarian tension and continued indecision on government.”
“Is the daily discovery of bodies in Iraqi streets the freedom Bush says Iraqis are living in? Is the killing and death that have grown until they have become a beast the same freedom that Iraqis are living in? How can the two pictures, killing and cruelty, freedom and security, be confused?”
, Qatar, Mar. 20, 2006
“The US military has begun investigating claims published this week in Time magazine that American Marines killed 15 civilians in Iraq in November last year. ‘I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the chest and then in the head,’ one child was quoted by Time as saying. "Then they killed my granny.’”
, Mar. 21, 2006
“I thought we would have real freedom after Saddam, but now if you criticize a politician or a party, you can be killed the next day. I cannot relax; I suffer tension all the time. If civil war comes I will lock myself in my house and rot there. I would rather die than kill someone. I hate to say it, but we were better off under Saddam.”
“We're making progress because we've got a strategy for victory… I'm optimistic we'll succeed.”
Copyright 2006 Stephen Kimber
Official truth, unofficial consequences
Halifax Daily News March 19, 2006
By Stephen Kimber
Why did a 16-year-old boy really attack Canadian army Capt. Trevor Greene with an axe in the Afghan village of Shinkay two weeks ago?
And what actually happened in that Kandahar City roundabout last Tuesday night when a Canadian soldier shot and killed an unarmed, middle-aged Afghani man.
Truth is a slippery beast, especially in the fear-filled middle of a surreal, kill-or-be-killed war zone, where it’s virtually impossible to distinguish friend from foe but where a soldier must — in an instant — decide who is which, or risk his own death and the deaths of his comrades.
This is not a column about a soldier’s instantaneous, moment-of-decision truth.
This is a column about Official Truth. And its unofficial consequences.
Within hours of the attack on Trevor Greene, Canada’s military brass had its official version of events firmly in place.
Even though, as a Canadian Press report put it, the army “rarely reveals much of the intelligence it gathers,” Brig.-Gen. David Fraser, the head of Canada's Task Force Afghanistan, eagerly “confirmed” to reporters that “this individual was a Taliban.”
The story did not reveal how the general knew this. The circumstantial evidence — children being shuffled away from where Greene was meeting with elders, a brief firefight following the incident in which unseen attackers fired at the Canadians from inside and outside the village, and the fact that all the village’s able-bodied men seemed to disappear in the aftermath of the attack — might suggest a carefully orchestrated ambush.
Or it could simply indicate that local mothers weren’t too keen on having their children playing around the menacing, gun-toting Canadian soldiers who were watching over the meeting. And that local men, some of whom were, in fact, chased after the attack by Canadian troops, decided it was wiser to melt into the mountains than risk the wrath of soldiers who might choose to blame them for what happened to their comrade.
There is, in fact, a different image of the boy who attacked Greene. Village elders, who traveled to the Canadian base two days after to apologize for what had happened, said the boy who attacked the captain was mentally ill and had, in fact, previously murdered his own sister.
“What happened was an accident,” one elder told Canadian soldiers. “The guy was crazy.”
A deranged teenager, of course, is a less compelling villain than a Taliban insurgent, so “this individual was a Taliban.”
In the case of the man killed in Kandahar City, the official version — issued equally swiftly after the incident — is that a Canadian patrol was parked at the side of a road when a rickshaw taxi, which had already “blown past” an Afghan military checkpoint, barreled toward the Canadian vehicle. Soldiers used shouts, hand gestures and even pointed a spotlight at the taxi to order the driver to stop, but he ignored them. Finally, with the vehicle within a metre of the Canadians, a soldier opened fire, wounding passenger Nasrat Ali Hassan. A Canadian medic examined the man at the scene, did not think his injuries life threatening and left him to his own devices. Afghan police eventually took the man to the hospital where he died a few hours later.
Hassan’s widow, who was also in the rickshaw, says that’s not how it happened. Semen Gui told a Toronto Star reporter, “I know all about police checkpoints. We were not stopped by the Aghans. And there was no warning shot from the Canadians, no shouting, no shots fired in the air, no light shining on us. There was only this sudden gunfire — three shots — and my husband falling out of the rickshaw into the street.”
It turns out that her husband, a poor Shiite who supported his family by making tin pots and pans, was engaged in nothing more threatening than trying to get back home with six members of his family in a noisy, overburdened rickshaw taxi after having enjoyed a pleasant dinner with a relative. No guns or explosives were found in the vehicle.
Although there will now be an official investigation, the Canadian military didn’t wait for its results to begin putting its own propaganda gloss on what happened that night.
Though all of this spin-doctoring might serve to drum up support at home for Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan, the army’s unseemly eagerness to pin blame on Taliban insurgents or reckless Afghanis as the authors of their own misfortunes will do little to win the hearts and minds of the people there, who may come to fear their Canadian liberators as much as their Taliban oppressors.
Listen to Semen Gui, who lived for many years in Iran before returning home with her family after the American-led invasion, hopeful, ironically, of a better future: “If there had been a warning,” she told the Star, “we would have stopped, of course… You think we are all Taliban or Al Qaeda... I don't hate Canadians. But I can't forgive them… They do not have the right to shoot at Afghans… You cannot come to our country and kill us… Let them shoot at people in their own country, not here.”
Copyright 2006 Stephen Kimber
Sailors, Slackers wins national Torgi Nonfiction Award
Sept. 21, TORONTO: The Canadian National Institute for the Blind Library is pleased to announce the winners of the 2004 Torgi Literary Awards, the only awards program in Canada to celebrate books in formats such as PrintBraille and audio. More than 300 guests, including authors, book publishers, CNIB client judges, and CNIB volunteers attended the 20th annual awards ceremony, held today at the new CNIB service centre in Toronto.
Austin Clarke’s The Polished Hoe won the award for CNIB Produced Fiction. Judges praised Clarke’s command of Island dialect and gripping plot. The nuanced language of Clarke’s setting meant that the role of narration was central to its production as a talking book. As one judge commented, “the intersecting tales of these characters are wonderfully colourful, believable and compelling. This is a wonderful book, which should delight the reader. The narrator of this book did a wonderful job and added much to the enjoyment of the reader. This is one case where a talking book would be much preferable to a print version because of the narrator's contribution.”
The other Torgi Literary Awards went to:
- Sailors, Slackers, and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War by Stephen Kimber (CNIB Produced Non-Fiction)
- Run, by Eric Walters (Tiny Torgi Audio)
- Stanley’s Party, by Linda Bailey (Tiny Torgi PrintBraille)
- Buddha Da, by Anne Donovan (Partner Produced Fiction)
- Stupid White Men: And Other Excuses for the State of the Nation, by Michael Moore (Partner Produced Non-Fiction)
Award presenters included CNIB Library clients Simon Braham and Niall Hartnett (seven and 11 years old, respectively).
Giller Prize founder Jack Rabinovitch gave the keynote address, a highlight at the event.
Margaret McGrory, executive director of the CNIB Library, added, “This year is an exciting time of new beginnings. As we move to full digital production and settle into our new building, clients of the CNIB Library have more opportunities than ever to pursue their love of reading.”
Established in 1984, the Torgi Literary Awards (named after Morley Torgov, the author of the inaugural winning book) was the first awards ceremony in the world to recognize alternative-format books. The awards celebrate PrintBraille, and talking books that have been written, published, and produced with excellence for adults or children who are blind or visually impaired. As readers' choice awards, winning books are chosen by juries of CNIB Library clients. The awards also highlight the work of the more than 500 CNIB volunteers who produce these books.
Since 1906, the CNIB Library for the Blind has been working to promote literacy and to ensure that Canadians who are blind, visually impaired, or deafblind have equitable access to information, culture, and lifelong learning. The CNIB Library is one of the largest producers of alternative-format materials in the world and circulated 1.8 million items last year.
Matt Ferguson
(416) 486-2500, ext. 7423
Jessica Parrales
(416) 486-2500, ext. 7570
Copyright 2006 Stephen Kimber
Kimber takes two top writing awards
A packed audience applauded enthusiastically as winners were announced at the Atlantic Writing Awards late this afternoon at Alderney Landing Theatre in Dartmouth. . . . . .
Stephen Kimber with Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War was greeted with riotous applause as he was awarded the Dartmouth Non-fiction Award ($1,500). Also shortlisted were John Griffith Armstrong for The Halifax Explosion and the Royal Canadian Navy (UBC Press) and John N. Grant for The Maroons of Nova Scotia (Formac).
No sooner had Stephen Kimber returned to the audience than he was called back to the stage to be awarded the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction ($1,000). The other nominees for this prize were Dan Falk for Universe on a T-Shirt and Michael Harris for Con Game: The Truth about Canada's Prisons (McClelland & Stewart). . . .
. . The Booksellers' Choice Award ($1,000) was presented to Wayne Johnston for The Navigator of New York (Knopf Canada). Voted by readers and booksellers across the region, the award is sponsored by the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Association and included Stephen Kimber for Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs (Doubleday Canada) and Donna Morrissey for Downhill Chance on their 2002 ballot.
Atlantic Book Awards is presented by the Steering Committee of Atlantic Book Week which is made up of representation from Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Association, Nova Scotia Library Association, Halifax Regional Library, Halifax Regional Municipality, PEI Writers' Guild, Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland & Labrador and Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia. Nominees and winners are chosen by independent juries composed of members of the literary community. The Steering Committee acknowledges the generous support of our prize sponsors, CBC Radio-One and the Canada Council for the Arts.
For further information, please contact
Jane Buss or Monika Sormova,
WFNS902-423-8116
talk@writers.ns.cawww.writers.ns.ca
See: "And the nominees are..."
Copyright 2006 Stephen Kimber
Kimber, Morrissey Conlin lead race for Atlantic Book Awards
Thursday, April 24, 2003
The Halifax Herald Limited
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Kimber, Morrissey Conlin lead race for Atlantic Book Awards
New first-time author's prize named for John, Margaret Savage
By Stephen Pedersen / Arts Reporter
A new book award for first-time authors will be offered in the name of former Nova Scotia premier John Savage and his wife Margaret when the winners of the 2003 Atlantic Book Awards are announced May 16 in Dartmouth.
The Margaret and John Savage Book Award brings to eight the number of awards to be handed out at a late afternoon awards ceremony at Alderney Landing Theatre.
Paul Robinson, chair of the Dartmouth Book Awards, which offers two prizes of $1,500, one for fiction and one for non-fiction, said the idea of the new award is to honour the contribution of the Savages to writing and to encourage first-time published writers. He was speaking Tuesday afternoon at a news conference in the Helen Creighton Room of the Alderney Gate branch of the HRM Library held to announce the books on the short lists of all eight 2003 Atlantic Book Awards .
" Margaret was a quiet volunteer in this library," Robinson said. "She delivered books to shut-ins, and she and John helped us to get the Dartmouth Book Awards on the road and supported us, the library and its services."
Stephen Kimber with three nominations, and Donna Morrissey and Christy Ann Conlin with two each led the list of 18 Atlantic Canadian writers now eligible for 2003 Atlantic Book Awards.
Kimber's book on the World War II riots in Nova Scotia, Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs, was listed for the Bookseller's Choice Award, the Dartmouth Book Award for Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction.
Morrissey's novel Downhill Chance was also nominated for a Bookseller's Award, which is for books of any genre that have already become bestsellers, as well as for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize of $10,000.
Conlin's novel Heave is shortlisted for both the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction as well as the Thomas Raddall prize.
A new award for Excellence in Book Illustration offered by the municpality will be announced May 16 as well, said Keith McPhail, representing HRM Mayor Peter Kelly.
BEST BOOKS
The complete short list of nominees for the 2003 Atlantic Book Awards follows:
Ann Connor Brimer Children's Literature Prize ($1,000): Shoulder the Sky by Lesley Choyce; Walker's Runners by Robert Rayner; Full Moon Rising by Joanne Taylor
Atlantic Poetry Prize ($1,000) The Afterlife of Trees by Brian Bartlett; Opening the Island by Anne Compton; So Rarely in Our Skins by Robert Moore
Bookseller's Choice Award ($1,000): The Navigator of New York by Wayne Johnston; Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs by Stephen Kimber; Downhill Chance by Donna Morrissey
Dartmouth Book Award - Fiction ($1,500): Heave by Christy Ann Conlin; Down the Coal Town Road by Sheldon Currie; Butterflies Dance in the Dark by Beatrice MacNeil
Dartmouth Book Award -- Non-fiction ($1,500): The Halifax Explosion and the Royal Canadian Navy by John Griffith Armstrong; The Maroons in Nova Scotia by John N. Grant; Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs by Stephen Kimber
Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction ($1,000): Universe on a T-Shirt by Dan Falk; Con Game by Michael Harris; Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs by Stephen Kimber
Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize ($10,000): Heave by Christy Ann Conlin; Lures by Sue Goyette; Downhill Chance by Donna Morrissey
The Margaret and John Savage First Book Award ($1,500): Heave, Christy Ann Conlin; Walker's Runners, Robert Rayner; Full Moon Rising, Joanne Taylor; The Halifax Explosion and the Royal Canadian Navy, John Griffith Armstrong; Universe on a T-Shirt, Dan Falk; Opening the Island, Anne Compton; So Rarely In Our Skins, Robert Moore.
Copyright 2006 Stephen Kimber
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About
STEPHEN KIMBER, the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, is an award-winning writer, editor and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel -- Reparations -- and eight non-fiction books.