Monthly Archives: October 2009

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Congratulations Tanya – top 40 under 40!

Avenue Magazine has just named Tanya one of Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 – with a shout out to the Greater Edmonton Library Association and her work with the EIFW bookclub!

The article about Tanya (which you can read here) explains why she was chosen as a top 40: ”For making complicated and often intimidating legal information available to those who need it most.”

Congratulations Tanya!

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Supporters

hi everyone, just a note that i added “about us” and “supporters” pages to this blog, accessible from the menu on the right. anyone who can post to this blog can also change their contents so– feel free to add and correct any mistakes you find. Tara suggested thanking the individuals and libraries who have been nice enough to support us in our endeavours, which I thought was a great idea. but in the case of individual donations– we should check before we add names to the public blog.

Edmonton Public Library is on there because we have been using their book club kits. Strathcona County Library has lent book club kits and is also a great source of donated material.
-thanks, jocelyn

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Minutes from the Sept. 30th meeting

Here are the minutes from our last meeting, as well as a list of our various sub-committees and their members. Sorry about the tardiness of this post – it looks like many of the action items listed in the minutes have been followed up on, so that’s great. In addition to the updates from the other sub-committees, Kirsten has set up some tentative dates for the next two sessions of the Storybook Project, so expect to hear more from us soon (we’ll likely need to start exploring fundraising opportunities, as this round was supported by a generous donation from Dr. Toni Samek). Lastly, if there are any changes or additions to the sub-committee list posted above, please leave a comment and it will be updated. For those of you interested in fundraising, should we try to set up a meeting in November, or would early December (i.e. end of the Fall semester!) be okay too?

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Prison Justice at the North of Nowhere Festival, Oct 16-31

The Edmonton Small Press Association presents the North of Nowhere Expo (NoN), “a non-profit and volunteer-operated activist-arts festival that is committed to fostering the awareness of the arts as tools for positive social change.”

Running from October 16 – 31, NoN will be bringing films, speakers, art and more to Edmonton. Topics include Food Security, a Palestine Film Fest, Media Democracy, and Prison Justice.

The focus on Prison Justice includes an art exhibt, Voices from Outside: Artists Against the Prison Industrial Complex (hours);  film screenings on Monday, October 19 and Wednesday, October 21 ; and on Thursday, October 29, there will be a panel on Restorative Justice which will include Chris Hay of Alberta’s John Howard Society.

You can check out a summary of the program here and a very detailed program here (pdf).

The schedule for the prison series is here.

Crossposted at Blogosarus Lex.

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Tour of the Institution for Women planned for Saturday, November 7

edforwomen1GELA has organized another tour of the Edmonton Institution for Women (11151 – 178 Street) for Saturday, November 7 at 3 p.m.

Any interested members of the library community are welcome to sign up for the tour. Cathy, the inmate librarian will be leading the tour so you can learn first hand about all the great GELA library projects, like our bookclubs and Storybook project.

A list of participants and their completed security clearance forms must be submitted by me to the prison by Friday October 23.

The tour lasts about 1 ½ hours and can accommodate approximately 12 people so sign up soon! As of today, we already have 7 people signed up.

To sign up for the tour and receive your security clearance form, please email Kirsten Wurmann at kwurmann@ualberta.ca.

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Book Club meeting

At the last committee meeting, we discussed having a Book Club Subcommittee (I suppose that would be a sub-Subcommittee..?).  I’d like to have a meeting within the next few weeks, but I recognize that October can be very busy.  Nevertheless, I’m going to throw out a few dates in October and a couple in November.  I was thinking of holding it at Remedy (close to the U of A and on a bus route) at 5:30 – does that work for everyone?

[FYI - The next book club meeting at the prison is on November 7th & the book is A Thousand Splendid Suns]

Here are a few dates:

(this Friday) October 16th 

(next Friday) October 23rd                                                                                                                            

Tuesday, October 27                                                                                                                                    

Monday, November 3rd                                                                                                                             

Thursday, November 5th

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Vikki Law on Adamant Eve and at the Anarchist Bookfair!

Tune in to Adamant Eve this Friday at 5:30 on CJSR 88.5 FM or on www.cjsr.com! We’re airing excerpts from my interview with Vikki Law, keynote speaker at the Edmonton Anarchist Bookfair.

Law (who I blogged about here) is an activist who supports women in prisons. She has worked to bring books to prisoners for many years and in 2003 released the first issue of the zine Tenacious: Art and Writing from Women in Prison. Issue #18 of Tenacious was recently released, and it continues to be a way for women to express themselves and have their voices heard, as well as a way to know they are not alone in their struggles. Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcertaed Women, Law’s new book, was released in March of this year and chronicles the history of women’s resistance, the issues facing women in prison, and how women continue to resist the oppressive conditions of prisons today. In our interview, Law cited supporting GELA and the Prison Subcommittee as a way people in Edmonton can be involved in supporting prisoners!

Law will be speaking at the Edmonton Anarchist Bookfair at 7pm on Friday, October 2nd at the Ukrainian Centre, 11018 97 Street. She will also be leading a workshop at the Bookfair on how to support women in prison on Saturday from 2:30-3:30pm. Everyone is welcomed and encouraged to come to both events. She’ll be bringing our presence to the audience’s attention, so let’s have lots of people there!

Cross posted on Blogosarus Lex.