Author Events & Publications 2020-2021
2021
October 25, 2021
Permanent Tourists
by Genni Gunn
Winnipeg: Signature Editions, 2020
$19.95 / 9781773240800
Reviewed by Zoe McKenna
The final page of Permanent Tourists closes with an “ocean of ghosts,” an image simultaneously elusive and evocative. This exploration of emotion without the assumption of clear resolution underlines the entirety of Genni Gunn’s third short story collection to a fascinating effect.
SUNDAY, October 17, 2:00-3:30pm CDT (virtual)
Getting Your Novel Started – A practical approach
You've always wanted to write a novel but cannot find either the time or the starting point. Writing must be something you do regularly, like brushing your teeth. You have unique experiences to record, hundreds of characters struggling to come out of your pen onto paper. What you need is to make time to write and, perhaps more importantly, to have a clear idea of what you are going to write. Genni Gunn, author of Permanent Tourists discusses getting your novel started!
May 19, 2021
January 27, 2021 INTERVIEW
Author of twelve books, including her most recent Permanent Tourists (Signature Editions), Genni Gunn joins us on the blog—sharing more about her parallel life as a musician, the classical history she carries with her as a result of growing up in Italy, and her restlessness for journeys into the unexpected.
My translations from Italian of two poems, “Code of Conduct” and “Exorcism” by Ada Donati, published in subTerrain Issue #87 Tales from the Pandemic, Jan 2021.
Pleased to see an essay on my work by Sylvia Terzian and Veronica Austen entitled “Locating the Traveller: Genni Gunn and Nostalgia on the Move” published in Patterns of Nostos in Italian Canadian Narratives (University of Toronto Press, Canada, 2021). “This paper analyzes the concept of nostos through a reading of Italian-Canadian writer Genni Gunn’s autobiographical travelogue TRACKS: Journeys in time and Place (2013) to show how its narratives of movement contest meanings of home and homecoming. Gunn initiates new ways of thinking about return by taking the migrant traveler as its central figure and envisioning home as a “practice of displacement” (Evelein 21) wherein “home” is not achievable through physical return, but through memory…”
My travel essay, "Birth Stones" which was published in the US by Nowhere: People, Place, Time has been nominated for Best American Travel Writing 2021.
On their 20th anniversary, Chants Libres has put out a video of arias of operas they have produced over that time. One of them is ALTERNATE VISIONS, the opera for which I wrote the libretto. Music by John Oliver. French translation by Anne-Marie Alonzo. Here is the snippet from Alternate Visions, and includes setup and performance.
2020
November 19, 2020
“Chinese Olives” the translation of a story by Dacia Maraini in Dacia Maraini and her Literary Journey, (Consenso Publishing, 2020)
November 12, 2020
SHORT STORY SPECTACULAR
Discussion and readings from three BC authors.
Featuring Genni Gunn, Mary MacDonald and Madeline Sonik. Hosted by Merilyn Simonds
4:00 p.m. PST
October 28, 2020
Virtual launch of Permanent Tourists, with host Hal Wake.
October 8, 2020
Whistler Festival Blog regarding the origin of one of the stories:
A couple of years ago, I went to visit friends in Fossombrone in Le Marche, Italy, to chase down a story about an old man and his museum of crystal ammonites. I had been there years before, and had never forgotten the fluorescent stones in the basement of his house, situated on the ancient Roman Via Flaminia, along the Metauro river.
On the way, my friends decided to first take me to a lookout, high above the river. After a 8-kilometer, hair-raising switchback gravel road to Mount Pietralata, we reached the trail head, where, to our astonishment was a black Mercedes, inside which were two young men engrossed in an animated conversation.
We parked, then skirted the Mercedes, thinking it seemed an odd, solitary place for a conversation. We proceeded up the trail to the lookout, a wide stone balcony from which we could see the canyon, the emerald river, the Appenines silkscreened across the sky, and in the distance, the Adriatic sea. Read more here…
Host Stephen Vogler and his band Some Assembly Required back perform with writers via Zoom for a night of improvisation, innovation and rich storytelling embellished by sweet and soulful sounds. Guest authors include Caroline Adderson, Jen Ashton, Dakshana Bascaramurty, Jillian Christmas, Katherine Fawcett, Genni Gunn, D.A. Lockhart, Amy McDaid, David A. Robertson and Lori Rohda. Our guest musicians are Geeta Das, Musical Director, also playing trumpet, saxophone and percussion; Rajan Das on upright bass; Dean Feser on percussion; and Rosalind Steel on grand piano and electric keys.
August 2020
From the Road to the Writing Desk: Travel in Writing
Genni Gunn, Linda Kenyon, and Denise Roig
July 2020
“Erasures” is one of the short stories in the new collection, Permanent Tourists. Honourable Mention in the Prairie Fire Fiction Contest. Published in Prairie Fire. Set in Le Marche, Italy, near Via Flaminia, the ancient Roman road leading from Rome over the Apennine Mountains to Ariminum on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. The man below features in the story as the man who collected ammonites.
April 2020
“Birth Stones” is a travel essay set in Matera, Italy, a UNESCO Heritage Site. In Italy, known as I Sassi — the stones. Published in NOWHERE Magazine: People / Place / Time.
© 2021 Genni Gunn