{"id":30145,"date":"2021-10-21T20:16:48","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T00:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30145"},"modified":"2021-10-28T17:14:49","modified_gmt":"2021-10-28T21:14:49","slug":"one-book-one-aurora-culminates-with-author-talk-saturday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/one-book-one-aurora-culminates-with-author-talk-saturday\/","title":{"rendered":"One Book One Aurora culminates with author talk Saturday"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For the past nine months, Drew Hayden Taylor\u2019s acclaimed novel Chasing Painted Horses, has weaved its magic across the community as the 2021 selection for the Aurora Public Library\u2019s One Book One Aurora campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by the Ojibwe author\u2019s novel, which is described as a \u201cmagical, fable-like\u201d story about a distant memory of an unusual little girl, Danielle, who leaves a lasting impression by drawing a breathtaking horse in a weekly drawing competition, readers have not only passed the book along to others, but used it as a muse for their own writing, photography, and discussion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, One Book One Aurora will culminate with its grand finale this Saturday, October 23, with a virtual author talk with Drew Hayden Taylor himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think this was the absolute best book selection for this year,\u201d says Reccia Mandelcorn, Manager of Community Collaboration for the Aurora Public Library. \u201cMany of the books [in contention for the 2021 One Book One Aurora campaign] were very dark and during the time of COVID, people had so much on their minds, so much stress and tragedy in everyone\u2019s life, my \u2018beta readers\u2019 in the community all wanted something that had meat in it, had substance, but was not depressing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think because Chasing Painted Horses could be read on so many different levels. Like a fable, like a fairy tale, it can be looked at in terms of societal change, poverty, Indigenous communities\u2026and it can be looked at from an artistic perspective, the whole aspect of creation and process versus product because it allowed people to read it in so many different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the duration of One Book One Aurora (OBOA) 2021, Ms. Mandelcorn says she regularly received emails from people who were relating to what they were reading. One email was received after an OBOA-hosted workshop on Birth Totems with Oneida Nation of the Thames artist Todd Jamieson who led participants in creating their own woodlands-style drawing based on their own personal birth totem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe spoke about creating birth totems from your own background so it was not cultural appropriation and what the meaning of the birth totems are and what they meant to him as an Indigenous person. One of the participants sent in a response and said, \u2018That was just incredible. I felt as if my spirit had been cracking with exhaustion and that just filled me up. It was a beautiful way to learn about a beautiful culture.\u2019 I have never had such heartfelt, non-solicited responses from people in the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur writing workshop with Marnie Maguire (on \u2018literary graffiti\u2019) had people from all around the world who participated along with our local community. There was one woman who had a British accent, we heard birds in the background and one of the participant asked, \u2018Where are the bird sounds?\u2019 She said, \u2018I\u2019m in Somerset, England, let me show you\u2026\u2019 and we looked at this beautiful magic garden. While you were sitting at home on your computers there was an expression, certainly, of community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday\u2019s author talk will be another extension of community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leading the discussion, Ms. Mandelcorn will share with Mr. Hayden Taylor some of the themes that came up as the community read his work, while the audience will be able to ask questions of their own through the Zoom platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe is such an interesting man and such a literary presence in the Canadian scene, whether it has to do with his plays, his films, his novels, his political columns \u2013 it is the chance of a lifetime to meet him and even if they haven\u2019t read the book, this will be an experience that people won\u2019t want to miss,\u201d says Ms. Mandelcorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPersonally, I really want to know where the reader exists when he is actually writing. I would like to know because he writes in so many different genres. I have received emails from people who have seen some of his plays performed almost 20 years ago. I would be very interested in when he is writing if he\u2019s thinking about the reader at the other end. Is he writing for himself because it comes out as a process, or does the reader actually play a conversation in his mind as he is writing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe would love everyone to come out for this. We\u2019re excited to be able to offer this. There are still copies available if you want to read the book and if you want to share the book and OBOA is over, pass it along to a friend or a neighbour. Just because One Book One Aurora 2021 will be done, the sharing of reading continues, so please continue to pass it on and let\u2019s keep everybody talking!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OBOA Grand Finale, Meet Drew Hayden Taylor, will take place over Zoom this Saturday, October 23, at 2 p.m. Register at bit.ly\/3pzC8mV. For more information, visit onebookoneaurora.com.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong>
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/em><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the past nine months, Drew Hayden Taylor\u2019s acclaimed novel Chasing Painted Horses, has weaved its magic across the community as the 2021 selection for the Aurora Public Library\u2019s One Book One Aurora campaign. Inspired by the Ojibwe author\u2019s novel, which is described as a \u201cmagical, fable-like\u201d story about a distant memory of an unusual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/2021-10-21-01.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7Qd","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 13:31:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}