This week we welcome Linda Hutsell Manning. Linda’s publications include four picture books, three juvenile plays, two mid-grade novels and Polka Dot Door scripts as well as a literary novel, That Summer in Franklin, a two-act comedy, A Certain Singing Teacher, VOS Theatre, a memoir, Fearless and Determined, Blue Denim Press, about her 1960’s teaching experiences a one room elementary school west of Cobourg and Finding Moufette, Pandamonium Publishers, a picture book about a cat lost in a Christmas Eve snowstorm, released in 2023. A novella, Heads I Win, Tails You Lose, AOS Publishers has just been released and is available in bookstores and on Amazon. Linda has also written many pieces of short fiction and poetry published in literary magazines. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she now lives near Cobourg Ontario where she writes in a century old farmhouse. www.lindahutsellmanning.ca.
Michael Pepa
WORD ON THE HILLS welcomes Michael Pepa as our guest this week. Michael has composed/written some 80 works for solo instruments, chamber groups, and orchestras. These have been commissioned and broadcast in Canada, the U.S., many European countries and Japan. He studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto graduating with an ARCT diploma. Having passed the necessary examinations in the Theory and Practice of Composition, he was admitted as a FELLOW (FTCL) of Trinity College of Music, London, England. He holds a Teacher’s diploma in the Art of Violin Playing (LTCL) from the same college. Michael also earned a Master of Arts in Music Education. As well as being the founder and artistic director of Les AMIS Concerts, he is the composer-in-residence of the Canadian Sinfonietta, a member of the Canadian League of Composers, SOCAN, and an Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre. http://www.musiccentre.ca/composers. Michael Pepa was born in Timisoara, Romania. He came to Canada in 1953, settling in Toronto with his family. He has lived in Cobourg, since 2014.
Matthew King
This week we celebrate the last week of poetry month with Matthew King. Matthew taught philosophy at York University for a number of years before he moved to the Marmora area in 2015—or, as he likes to say, “what Al Purdy called ‘the country north of Belleville’”—where he tries to grow things, counts birds, and takes pictures mostly of flowers with bugs on them. Over the last several years, catalyzed in part by winning the Spirit of the Hills Festival Poetry Prize in 2019, he has increasingly been concentrating his energies on poetry. In 2020 he won the FreeFall magazine poetry contest; in 2023 he was a runner-up for Plough Quarterly’s Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award, won Arc magazine’s “Award of Awesomeness” for June, and had a poem selected for Best Canadian Poetry 2024. Others of his poems have appeared in various magazines in print and online.
Kathryn MacDonald
Our third celebration of Poetry Month features poet Kathryn MacDonald. Kathryn has published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S. and even Indonesia. Her poem, “Duty / Deon” won the Arc Award of Awesomeness (January 2021). “Seduction” was entered in the Freefall Annual Poetry Contest and published in Freefall (Fall 2020). Kathryn is the author of Far Side of the Shadow Moon: Enchantments (poetry chapbook), A Breeze You Whisper: Poems and Calla & Édouard (fiction), as well as a book of essays and recipes, The Farm & City Cookbook with its philosophy of “eat natural, eat local.” Kathryn lives in Belleville on the north shore of Lake Ontario where the Moira River flows into the Bay of Quinte. Kathryn taught literature as well as creative and nonfiction writing in Ontario’s college system in addition to facilitating writing workshops and coaching sessions. For pleasure she pursues photography and sketching.
Allan Briesmaster
This week we celebrate Poetry Month with Allan Briesmaster. Allan is a poet, freelance editor and publisher, active on the Toronto-area literary scene for many years. He has been a workshop leader and reading series organizer and was a partner in Quattro Books in 2006-2017. He currently operates his own small, independent press, Aeolus House, specializing in custom-designed, limited-edition books of poetry. The most recent of Allan’s nine poetry collections are The Long Bond: Selected and New Poems, from Guernica Editions in 2019, and Windfor, from Ekstasis Editions in 2021. He has read his poetry, given talks, been on panels, and hosted events at venues from Victoria to St. John’s. He is a Life Member of The League of Canadian Poets and of The Ontario Poetry Society. Due to an unexpected problem with the sound on the programme when it was recorded recently, this episode is is an encore presentation from 2021. The episode originally proposed for this week will be re-recorded for broadcast this summer.
Kate Rogers
On our first show for Poetry Month this year, we interview poet, Kate Rogers. Kate’s poetry collection, The Meaning of Leaving, launches in Toronto on April 20th. Homeless City, a chapbook co-authored with Donna Langevin, debuted in the first week of January 2024. Kate recently won first place in the subTerrain magazine 2023 Lush Triumphant Contest for her suite of poems, “My Mother’s House.” Her poetry also recently appeared in Where Else? An International Hong Kong Poetry Anthology. She has been published in such notable journals as World Literature Today; Cha: An Asian Literary Journal and The Windsor Review. She is a Co-Director of Art Bar, Toronto’s oldest poetry reading series. More at: katerogers.ca
Tom Cruikshank
This is an encore presentation of our interview with Tom Cruickshank in 2023. Tom’s current big project started out as a straightforward architectural inventory of Hamilton Township’s older buildings. The township had never catalogued its heritage before and in , 2016, Tom proposed he was the guy to do it. Retired from a career in journalism, he has an abiding interest in local history and heritage architecture, a subject he has pursued in no less than five books. His work includes Old Ontario Houses, Old Toronto Houses and The Settler’s Dream. For the better part of 25 years, he worked in the Canadian magazine industry, first as editor of the locally produced Century Home and later, Harrowsmith Country Life. Nowadays, he freelances for Watershed magazine.
Maria Kordas Fraser
Meet Maria Kordas-Fraser. Maria was born on Point Pelee, just south-east of Leamington, Ontario; her parents being share-croppers, arrived in Canada as DPs after WWII. Eleven days after her birth, her mother brought her to the lakeshore farm on the hill, west of Port Granby, which her father had just bought, and she grew up on this farm. After studying at U of T and Teachers’ College she taught elementary school and was a school librarian until she discovered the joys of teaching Adults at Durham College. She is grateful for the year she got to teach International Students at Niagara College. Before she retired, she took a year to study Spiritual Psychotherapy and Spiritual Direction using it primarily to do her own therapy work, as well as understand others better. She enjoys writing short stories, facilitating Women’s Circles, exploring nature spirituality, bird-watching and practising compassion for animals. She has self-published a family history and is currently working on a memoir about the Port Granby Community where she grew up.
Karl Fliesser
This week we talk to Karl Fliesser, who has not chosen to write a standard biography, addressing education and career but rather to focus on present objectives. He is seeking a publisher for a children’s book, a book of short stories, and some poetry. He is also hoping to collaborate with a musician and co-write lyrics. Karl is an inveterate traveller and has visited 17 countries, mostly as a young man, and has lived in a great variety of places too, Vienna, Kitzbuhel, Salzburg, Orillia, Aurora, Windsor, Toronto, Scarborough, Bowmanville, Halifax, Victoria BC, Terrace BC, Stewart BC, Laguna Beach California and Putney and Highbury Islington in England. The accommodations were as eclectic as the cities themselves. Karl says, “I had many unforgettable adventures while navigating this “Global Village” and at times I had visits from the grim reaper to keep me on my toes!”
Lois Gordon
Lois Gordon is a writer and editor, with several humorous essays published in anthologies and articles appearing in lifestyle magazines. Her second mystery novel, “Death at Iron House Lodge”, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis “Best Unpublished Novel” award in 2016, and several essays have won awards. Currently, she works part-time as an editor for a digital marketing company. Lois wrote her first stage play three years ago for a community theatre in Ancaster, Ontario. The new experience rekindled her passion for writing and she has since written three more scripts for the amateur acting company. Since moving to Northumberland three years ago, Lois has volunteered with community theatre and the Northumberland Festival of the Arts, hoping to become more fully involved with the vibrant arts scene in the county.
Word on the Hills Radio Program 