Recent Programs

Jennifer Bogart

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This week we talk to Jennifer Bogart. Jennifer is a writer, with three adult novels and two middle-grade books to her credit. For many years she was a publisher and editor at Morning Rain Publications and then became the owner of Let’s Talk Books, Cobourg’s independent book store. The store was featured in a Globe and Mail article in 2019 and is now celebrating its seventh year in business. She frequently hosts writers, whose books she admires and arranges very successful readings for them, as well as organizing a number of book clubs at the store for readers of different genres.

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Patrick Muldoon

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This week we talk with Patrick Muldoon. Patrick is the Branch Supervisor of the Warkworth Public Library, which is a part of the Trent Hills Library system.  He has always loved libraries and reading.  Patrick has degrees in English Literature and Education and before coming to the library, he had a 27 year career as an elementary school teacher.  The highlights of his teaching career included introducing children to Shakespeare and touring the county with student performances of many Shakespeare plays. Since retiring from education, he has been working at developing the collection and programs at the Warkworth Library.  His plans for making the Warkworth Library a dynamic community hub are well under way and he is here today to share what has been happening at the library, and his upcoming plans.

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Pat Calder

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This week we welcome Patricia Calder. Pat is a photographer and writer who loves nature. After retiring from a busy career as an English teacher, she has lived in the quiet village of Colborne where she writes in a sunroom overlooking Lake Ontario in the distance, her gardens at closer range, and birdfeeders. When she is thinking, she has a pleasant view out her window to inspire her stories. During her career as a teacher, she taught in 13 different schools, colleges, and at York U. As a photographer, she created a website, showed her horse images at the Royal Winter Fair, visited Sable Island to photograph the feral horses and BC’s Great Bear Rainforest to capture images of the Spirit Bears, and mounted several solo shows around Northumberland County. As a writer, she published a novel, Roadblock, and several stories in newspapers and anthologies locally; the most notable were “Stand down, soldier” written during the war in Afghanistan, and “The Gifts of Alzheimer’s” published in the Globe and Mail.

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Tom Pickering

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Meet Tom Pickering. The majority of Tom’s work life has been as a technical writer. His first job after graduation from the University of Alberta was to write training manuals for a company based in Edmonton. Several years after school, he returned to Ontario and continued with technical writing at IT and engineering related companies. Along the way, Tom amused himself with an avocation in art, studying at the Ontario College of Art, and in community theatre, where he performed onstage and wrote and directed plays. In later years, Tom moved to Northumberland County and continued his interest in theatre with the Northumberland Players for several years. More recently, Tom participated in the 2022 edition of the Northumberland Festival of the Arts, which brought together a wide assortment of artistic talent that was showcased across multiple venues within the county. Here he was introduced to new experiences, deepened existing friendships and made new ones. He is also a member of the Spirit of the Hills Arts Association and belongs to one of the Writer Critique groups that meet regularly to share and critique work of the group’s members. He lives in Cobourg with his wife Tracy and his dog Lily.

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Chris Cameron and John Unruh

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 Please join us to hear Christopher Cameron and John Unruh tell us about their adventures in podcasting. Christopher is presently engaged in making podcasts of his latest book. Thorneside Stories; A Mix of Sun and Cloud  and John has completed his series of podcasts of his novel The Ziggurat.  They tell us about how they found the platforms they publish on, about the programmes they use to record their readings, the challenges they faced in making the recording and why they love doing it.

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Alan Seymour

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Meet Al Seymour who grew up just north of Cobourg attending Cook’s School and CDCI West, before venturing to the University of Guelph to earn a degree in Microbiology. For the next 40 years, Al worked in the GTA as a microbiologist, senior food manufacturing manager, logistics consultant and started his own contracting firm constructing sustainable buildings and quality renovations. Committed to making his community a better place, Al co-founded three charitable organizations. These were the Mississauga Food Bank, the Erin Mills Youth Centre, and the 3rd Erin Mills Scout Group. Five years ago, Al and his wife Kathy Toivanen retired to Cobourg. Al is a busy retiree – active with the Cobourg Museum, renovating his home, church, skiing, hiking, walking, and gardening.  And writing; Al has written 3 books: an historical novel, a children’s short story, and a political thriller. Only the short story has been published so far. He parked his incomplete WWI story but is finishing the first draft of an 1850’s saga. 

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Theresa Bailey

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This one’s for Moms on Mothers’ Day. For over 20 years Theresa has been training businesses and organizations and helping to plan for and adapt to change, through interactive, compelling and creative workshops and facilitated events.

As the founder of Canadian Hockey Moms, she has become a sought after and respected voice on the state of minor hockey in Canada.

With three hockey playing children across 10 years, over 32 teams (from house league to girls hockey to AAA), Theresa Bailey has managed 17 and been the president of a small association for the past three. She has built a community of over 40,000 Hockey Moms across the world to share knowledge, promote rational thought, current research, and showcase the newest hockey related brands. And now she has published a book giving a voice to hockey mums, the heart of the game. Please join us!

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James Pickersgill

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We interview James Pickersgill this week. If asked, “When did you most recently compose a poem?” James will likely be able to say, “A few hours ago” or “Earlier today, I was continuing to work on a current one.”

Any poem James writes will very often be a love poem for his wife, who consistently refuses to be identified as “his muse” and rightly so.

James has been a happy-warrior type of poetry activist in our lively Cobourg Arts scene for many years, including service as a member of the various selection Committees appointed by Town Council to discern who should be our 2nd, 3rd and 4th Poets Laureate. James is the coordinator of the Third Thursday Readings and the Cobourg Poetry Workshop.

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Kate Rogers

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Kate Rogers describes herself as a transnational poet. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies based in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, the U.S. and U.K. During her more than two decades in Asia, Kate was inspired to write about the impact of colonialism and the destruction of the natural environment. Kate’s collection, Out of Place expresses her life in the liminal zone between countries, cultures and identities. Kate repatriated to Canada in December 2019 after spending one third of her life in Asia. The poems in Out of Place evoke for the reader the experience of being of a place, yet never belonging; they explore longing and transformation. Kate Rogers’ next poetry collection, The Meaning of Leaving, is forthcoming with Montreal-based publisher, Ace of Swords (AOS), in early 2024. Her poems recently appeared in SubTerrain, The Windsor Review and Looking Back at Hong Kong.

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