Dave Carley


On Sunday at 1.00 pm join us to hear Dave Carley discussing his plays and telling us about his career as a playwright, director and curator. Dave’s stage and radio plays have had over 450 productions across Canada, the United States, and around the world. They include Writing with our Feet, Conservatives in Love and  Midnight Madness. He has also written dramatizations of novels, including Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman; Al Purdy’s A Splinter in the Heart; and, in progress, Farley Mowat’s And No Birds Sang.

Dave’s plays often deal with human rights concerns and include Taking Liberties; The Last Liberal; and Twelve Hours. His play Canadian Rajah – first read at Wesleyville Village church – has its Asian premiere this fall in Malaysia. He has just completed a new drama, Hope is a Bird, about the elusive Ivory-Billed

Woodpecker. Dave’s radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC (UK), CBC (Canada), ABC

(Australia) and NPR (USA). He is also curating ten-minute play events for the Port Hope Festival in August and the Northumberland Festival of the Arts in September, festivalofthearts.ca


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 Her second mystery novel, “Death at Iron House Lodge”, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis “Best Unpublished Novel” award in 2016, and several essays have won awards.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.

Susan Statham

Join us to hear Susan Statham discuss the sixth volume of Hill Spirits with us. Author and artist, Susan Statham is Chair of the Spirit of the Hills Writers Group. She has edited and contributed to all the Hill Spirits anthology series and is accepting submissions in prose, poetry and pictures for Hill Spirits VI to be published in September as part of Northumberland Festival of the Arts 2024.

Today she has come to tell us about that newest edition. The sixth volume in the series of writing by local and regional authors from five counties was first initiated by members of the Spirit of the Hills Writers’ Group in 2012.