This coming Saturday, WordCrawl will be launched with one night of readings at four venues with stories, poems, music and maybe some surprise robot boxing.
The love child of Words With Friends, WordCrawl meshes a literary reading, poetry slam, songwriting showcase and a cafe crawl.
Former St. Albert resident and poet Kasia Gawlak founded Words With Friends along with Jason Lee Norman in June 2011 as a way to link creative minds.
Every six weeks or so the duo hosts free readings at local venues where a variety of writers have showed up, including Morinville playwright Marty Chan.
“It was another venue for creative writers of different genres – poets, playwrights, authors and stand-up comedians. We wanted to welcome different types of writers with open arms in a non-competitive way,” says Gawlak, CEO of CodeWord Design, a website development and media company.
Norman wanted to take the concept further and pitched the idea of a literary crawl to the Edmonton Awesome Foundation, an organization that provides seed money for small roots based projects.
After the November pitch party, the duo received $1,000 seed money and began in earnest to book venues and get out the word.
As it stands, the WordCrawl Express (read little yellow school bus) first port of call is at Bohemia CafĂ© (10217 – 97 Street) for the preshow adrenalin rush. It leaves promptly at 6 p.m. and docks for a literary cage match at The Kasbar. Matt Prins, Michael Hingston and Trevor Kjorlien compete in Battle Royale to tell the funniest story.
Next stop on the crawl is Expressionz Café hosting a dose of rap and song with the energy and rhyme of Patrick Swan and Mikey Maybe.
Its final navigation point is Audrey’s Books with a reading from Jannie Edwards, an author shortlisted for the 2012 Alberta Literary Awards’ James H. Gray Award for Nonfiction. Local poet Rebecca Traquair, Norman and Gawlak are also expected to give readings.
Gawlak just self-published The Mourning After, a confessional poetry book on sex, love, grief and anger. It is a retrospective of poems written from 1996 to 2011 – the latter a dark period after the death of her mother, Sue Gawlak, former Gazette editor.
“Her death certainly influenced my writing. I was in a dark head space at the time.”
Gawlak first picked up the pen about 15 years ago after a painful high school breakup.
“It was very inspirational and very therapeutic.”
With a University of Alberta bachelor’s degree in English literature and a passion for online culture, she’s succumbed to the musical inspiration of the independent-minded, spirited Tori Amos, Ani DiFranco and AimĂ©e Mann.
As for WordCrawl, “We’re focused on making it fun, not stuffy. We’re turning it into a party and social event and this is an opportunity to explore new venues you might not have tried before. It’s also an opportunity to network with writers and people with the same interests.”
Tickets are $20 with online purchasing at www.eventbrite.com.
