Manitoba Book Jam (online)
Next event: Thursday, Jan 21, 2021
7 pm
Our live Zoomed audience is now full. Please join us here via Facebook Live!
Join us January 21st, 7 pm for our live-streamed Manitoba Book Jam: A Celebration of MB Literature. This month we feature authors of shorts stories from the Parallel Prairies, an anthology of Manitoba-inspired speculative fiction published by Enfield & Wizenty, a literary imprint of Great Plains Publications.
A selection of invited writers are each given five minutes to read with our musical guest providing “half-time” entertainment. Prepare a snack, pour a favourite bevvie and join us for a lively hour of entertainment.
Entrance is free, but please consider purchasing our guest authors’ books through the links provided.
The event will be broadcast on Facebook Live on our Manitoba Book Jam page . Our registered Zoom audience members will be entered in a draw for a McNally Robinson Booksellers gift certificate.
Made possible by a #SafeAtHome grant from the Manitoba Government
Meet our Guest Authors!

Jonathan Ball
Jonathan Ball, PhD, writes “stranger fiction”—horror, science fiction, and fantasy influenced by experimental literature. He teaches creative writing and hosts the podcast Writing the Wrong Way, showing writers new ways to work and create innovative art that stands out. His most recent work is The Lightning of Possible Storms, a collection of linked stories published last fall.
Purchase The Lightning of Possible Storms

S.M. Beiko
Samantha Mary (S.M.) Beiko is a Winnipeg-based artist, author, and editor. Her young adult fantasy novels include The Lake and the Library (2013), Scion of the Fox (2017), winner of the 2018 Copper Cylinder Award, and its sequels Children of the Bloodlands (2018) and The Brilliant Dark (2019). Beiko is the co-editor of the original comics anthologies Gothic Tales of Haunted Love (2018), and Gothic Tales of Haunted Futures (2020.) Her short fiction has been anthologized in Gush: Menstrual Manifestos of Our Times (2018) and Parallel Prairies: Stories (2018). Beiko is also the artist and writer for the webcomic, Krampus is My Boyfriend!, which won the 2020 Aurora Award for Best Graphic Novel, and was nominated for the 2020 Joe Shuster Award for Best Webcomic. She lives in a home she’s dubbed Skye Woods, which backs onto a forest and prairie field, with her husband, son, rescue dog Sophie, and too many plants to count.
Purchase The Brilliant Dark

David Jón Fuller
David Jón Fuller is a Winnipeg writer and editor. At his day job, he is a copy editor at the Winnipeg Free Press. He holds a B.A. (Hon) in theatre from the University of Winnipeg and studied Icelandic language and literature for two years at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík. In addition to Parallel Prairies, his short fiction has appeared in On Spec magazine as well as anthologies such as No Shit, There I Was; Tesseracts volumes 17 and 18; Long Hidden; Kneeling in the Silver Light; and in French translation in Ténèbres 2017.
Purchase Parallel Prairies
Photo credit Michael Deal

Adam Petrash
Adam Petrash is a writer from Winnipeg. He is the co-editor, alongside Darren Ridgley, of the speculative fiction anthology Parallel Prairies: Stories of Manitoba Speculative Fiction (Enfield & Wizenty) and the author of the indie novella, The Ones to Make it Through (Phantom Paper Press). His work has appeared in the anthology Fitting In: Historical Accounts of Paranormal Subcultures, and in places such as After the Pause, CHEAP POP, Devolution Z, Fantasmagoriana 2, Lemon Hound, Spacecraft Press, WhiskeyPaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications.
Purchase Parallel Prairies

Darren Ridgley
Darren Ridgley is a journalist and genre fiction writer residing in Winnipeg. He co-edited Parallel Prairies: Stories of Manitoba Speculative Fiction, released in 2018 by Enfield & Wizenty. His work has also appeared in the anthologies Endless Apocalypse, Fitting In: Historical Accounts of Paranormal Subcultures, and Memories of the Past, as well as publications including Mad Scientist Journal, Empyreome, and Polar Borealis.
Purchase Parallel Prairies

Craig Russell
Craig Russell’s novel, Fragment (2016 – Thistledown Press) was selected by Yale University for their 2017 climate-fiction reading list.
His novel, Black Bottle Man (2010 – Great Plains) received the Moonbeam Gold Medal for YA fiction and his stage adaptation of that novel was performed at the 2019 Acts of Faith Theatre Festival in Richmond, Virginia.
Purchase Fragment
Musical Guest

Alana Levandoski
Alana Levandoski is a Manitoba-born songwriter, recording artist, and producer. Growing up in a church that sang gospel music, where she got to ‘sing out’ at least twice a week, naturally inclined her toward roots music. For 10 years, Alana toured internationally as an alt-country roots singer/songwriter, and was once upon a time signed to Rounder Records. Her second album was produced by Ken Nelson (who produced the first 3 Coldplay albums). In 2010, Alana underwent a “dark night of the soul”, that she sees as a reorientation toward her truest calling… that of the marriage between her spiritual seeker’s heart, and songwriting. She has a sincere love of ALL the mystics and the Celtic monastics, reaching all the way back to her pre-Christian, Celtic and Slavic roots. Alana now calls the music she makes “Contemplative Roots Music”. Another way to describe the music is “Roots music that points to the Incarnation or mysterious animation of the whole of life”… and it is grounded in a mysticism at the most practical level of life. Some listeners have described Alana as “the love child of Emmylou Harris and a Desert Abba” which gives you an idea of what to expect.
Join Alana for her weekly Sunday Song and Rumination Radio Show
And Your Host

Anita Daher
Anita Daher is an author, screenwriter, producer, show host and actor based in Winnipeg, MB. She has been entrenched in the book publishing industry since 1995 and has fifteen (and counting) books published in print, audio and e-book format in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Anita presents at conferences and schools across Canada and is current Chair of the Writers Union of Canada (TWUC). When not word-wrangling she enjoys inhabiting characters on stage and screen. Her most recent novel, You Don’t Have to Die in the End, was virtually launched during the first Covid-19 Pandemic lockdown, April 2020.
Purchase You Don’t Have to Die in the End
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Manitoba Book Jam
PAST EVENTS
December, 2020: Jodi Carmichael, MaryLou Driedger, Gabriel Goldstone, Melanie Matheson, Pat Trottier, Larry Verstraete, with musical guest, Allan Palmer. With thanks to the Manitoba Government and a #SafeAtHome grant.

August, 2020: Raye Anderson, GMB Chomichuk, Deborah L. Delaronde-Falk, Joel Robert Ferguson, Kyle Penner, Lara Rae, with musical guest, Michael Daher. With thanks to the Manitoba Arts Council!
