Supplied — Jean Malek2016 Kreisel Lecture presents Margaret Atwood “The Burgess Shale: The Canadian Writing Landscape of the 1960s”
When: April 7, 2016 at 7:30pm
Where: Winspear Centre
Tickets: $20 for students, $36 for everyone else at The Winspear Box Office
Lawrence Hill, Esi Edugyan, and Lynn Coady. These are just a few of the names that have graced the stage for the Kreisel Lectures, but the organizers of this year’s lecture want to make it the biggest one yet.
Margaret Atwood will be in Edmonton next Thursday to deliver the 10th annual Kreisel, with Canadian Literature in the 1960s as her topic. The talk will be broadcast on _CBC_ Radio One’s “Ideas,” and hosted at the Winspear by the Canadian Literature Centre (CLC).
For the past ten years, the Kreisel Lectures have given a multitude of notable Canadian writers to write and deliver an original public lecture on any topic they choose. Marie Carrière, Director of the CLC, says that Atwood’s intimate involvement in the Canadian literary scene in the 60s makes her the ideal speaker on the topic.
“(The 60s) is when Canadian literature started taking off,” Carrière says. “With experimental writing, and small presses opening up, (Atwood) was in the center of all of it.”
Aside from being arguably the most notable Kreisel lecturer to date, Carrière said that Atwood brings a varied literary background to the lectures.
“She practices every genre, she is a poet, a fiction writer, a nonfiction writer, a critic and a librettist; so she covers off a lot of literary bases,” Carrière said.
Atwood’s influence extends throughout a variety of genres as well as across borders, according to Carriere, who also called Atwood “one of, if not the most important living Canadian writer.”
Saying that Atwood’s work was very influential to her personally, Carrière had had her eye on Atwood for the Kreisel for some time.
“It just made sense to invite (Atwood) for the tenth anniversary,” Carrière says. “She won’t be on the speaking circuit forever, and I really wanted her to speak for the Kreisel.”
Carrière says this year’s Kreisel gave the CLC the opportunity to make the event bigger than it has been in past. For the first nine lectures, the events were free, non-ticketed, and at the Timms Centre. This year, the lecture is almost quadrupling its capacity in moving to the Winspear, and selling tickets — $20 for students and $36 for everyone else — for the first time.
With a mandate which involves both research and community events, Carrière says that the Kreisel Lecture epitomizes the aims of the CLC. With notable literary minds delivering public lectures, Carrière credited the lecture for addressing “two missions which aren’t easily to reconcile.”
