The $7-million funding increase, which is being diverted from the newly created Sports and Arts Legacy Fund, is a partial restoration of the $10 million axed from the council’s budget last spring. The announcement, made by culture minister Kevin Krueger on Wednesday, comes after B.C. Arts Council chair Jane Danzo stepped down last month in protest over the cuts.

This fall, the Kamloops Arts Council and BC Living Arts will sponsor the Kamloops Writers Fair on Nov. 19 and Nov. 20 in the Old Courthouse Cultural Centre.

Writers, would-be writers and those dedicated to stories and words can come to meet and network with others.

The event begins on Nov. 19 with a wine-and-cheese social, which will include an open-mic event.

With tufts of grey hair poking out from beneath his baseball cap, he stands there shaking his fist and hurling volleys at the players on the field at Nat Bailey Stadium.

“Show a little hustle No. 4! You don’t want to wind up like No. 27.”

George Bowering, poet, novelist, historian, biographer, is a towering hyperbole in the baseball stands.

He rails against ignorant fans who cheer just before the opposing team catches a pop fly. Really! Vancouver fans don’t know anything.

He rails against bad calls by the ump. “Foul ball?” he harrumphs. “That was way inside.”

As for the players, well, that’s another story.

He stands out like an exclamation mark. People recognize him. Hey, George, how’re ya doing?

According to the federation’s president, Craig Spence, shock over the size of the cut was deepened by how abrupt it seemed. “Organizations make their plans based on assumptions about what’s coming in, so when there’s a drastic and sudden cut like that, it really makes it difficult to plan properly,” Spence said in a phone interview with the Straight. “Part of our plan going into this year was to look for alternatives and expand our sources of revenue. Well, again, because we’re having to restructure so radically in terms of staff and that kind of thing, it makes it difficult even to achieve those kinds of goals….If it wasn’t just all of a sudden, boom, you’ve lost 80 percent of your funding—we might be better positioned to say, ‘How can we plan for this circumstance?’”

Spence said his organization’s first response to the funding loss—a significant hole in the federation’s overall annual budget of roughly $70,000—has been to reduce staff hours across the board. However, he’s unable to say at this point whether the organization will be able to continue offering its current group of programs.

Mystery author Louise Penny told how safe it was for her in her writing group and talked about the healing power of words.

Jack Whyte, practically a Festival regular, exploded the myth of inspiration: 95 per cent of writing is hard work, he said.

Shani Mootoo explored the richness of small spaces when she read from her book Cereus Blooms at Night.

“Writing is a solitary profession, but every so often we get together with the other monks and nuns,” Mootoo said.

On Saturday, the poets took to the stage, giving the audience lots to think about.

True to form, the ninth annual festival lineup includes interesting workshops, innovative events and a roster of heavy-hitting authors. Highlights include Kate Pullinger, 2009 Governor General’s Award-winning novelist, and a performance by spoken word/beatbox artist C.R. Avery.

But even though the fest will go on in October, the struggles aren’t over for the Whistler Writers Group, the local group of volunteers that organizes the annual event.

Stella Harvey, writers group founder and festival director, said she found out about two weeks ago that a grant she was counting on isn’t coming — after planning the bulk of the festival and booking many authors. The B.C. Arts Council has helped fund the festival for five years running, but not this year because of an overall cut in available funding, she said.

Everybody seems to have written a screenplay. And odds are they’ve picked up Syd Field’s book Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, to find out just exactly how it’s done.

More than a million copies of the book have been sold since it was released in 1979.

“I think in the first five months we went through three printings,” said Field, 64. “The publisher, Dell, was astounded. Since that time, I think the book has gone through 40 printings. We’re in 42 languages around the world, [and] it’s used in 400-some-odd colleges and universities around the U.S.

“It literally took off, because people wanted to know how to, and what they have to do, in order to write a screenplay.”

On Saturday and Sunday, they’ll be able to get his advice in person. Field will be joining fellow screenwriting gurus Linda Seger, John Truby and Michael Hauge for a “Screenwriting Summit” in the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt Hotel.

“I always thought that there would be a magic number that we could sustain ourselves at without having to go for grants. Even at 150 people or whatever, you still don’t have the money that it takes (to cover the costs),” festival founder, Stella Harvey, said in an interview Monday.

But shortly after announcing the cancellation, Harvey started receiving e-mails from disappointed members of the local literary community, many of whom were asking what they could do to save the festival.

“It’s very gratifying to be recognized … as a legitimate Canadian poet. It certainly makes up for all the hard work and years of trying. It felt really good.”

The group, “a non-profit arts service organization, is the national association of professional publishing and spoken word poets in Canada,” its website states.

A committee made up of existing members assesses membership applications. The league was founded in 1966 by a group of five poets and now has almost 600 members.

“That was a blast,” he recounted from a taxi in Toronto on Friday afternoon.

“It was 6,000 people at Nokia Theatre, and 2,000 of them were teenage girls who won tickets on radio contests. Any time there was a kiss all the girls would scream. It was very Frankie Goes to Hollywood, it was really cool.”

Next up: Doug Coupland’s own “pop-up” Roots store.

So get out your calendar and clear some time from July 15 through 18 and start making plans for a perfect weekend.

The Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival has become widely recognized by writers, reviewers and the media as one of the best small literary events in Canada. The Canadian Encyclopedia thinks so, as does one of the Globe and Mail’s chief reviewers, John Barber.

Books of any genre that demonstrate excellence and contribute to an appreciation and understanding of Vancouver’s residents, history, or unique character are eligible to apply for the $2,000 award. The winning book must also exhibit excellence in content, illustration, design and/or format.

An independent panel of judges will choose the winner. The shortlist of finalists will be announced in early September, and the award will be presented in October by Mayor Gregor Robertson.

To be eligible, books must be published in 2009 or 2010 and meet the application criteria. All entries must include: four copies of the book, a $15 submission fee, and a completed entry form. Entry forms and guidelines are available from the Cultural Services Department at 555 West 12th Avenue, East Tower, Suite 310, Vancouver.

More information and forms are also available on the City’s website at: http://vancouver.ca/bookaward.

Luckily for Vancouverites, our city is home to some genuine poetry talent: North Vancouver is home to the winner of the 2009 Governor General’s Award in poetry, David Zieroth, and East Van is home to Rob Taylor, a young and fast-rising star in the Canadian poetry world and very recent winner of the 2010 Alfred G. Bailey Prize (many of the biggest names in Canadian poetry got their start with this prize). These two word-whizzes are going to give a free poetry reading on Tuesday night at La Fontana’s Caffe.

The $5,000 award is given annually to a B.C. writer who has contributed to the growth of literary excellence in the province,

“His grace as an essayist, his curiosity and independence of thought as a critic and newspaper columnist, and his exuberance as a civil rights activist and a leading voice of the gay community, have enriched us all,” jury member and last year’s winner Terry Glavin said in a citation.

Persky was honoured for “trail-blazing efforts in creating literary journals and a forum for public engagement — not least New Star Books and the Georgia Straight,” the citation said.