LINE-POACHING MONTH

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

VICIOUS CIRCLE DECLARES SEPTEMBER TO BE LINE-POACHING MONTH
Local Writers At Odds With Whistler’s Skiing and Snowboard Community, Fuel Poaching Ring

August 10 2009 Whistler, BC –  The Whistler Readers and Writers Festival is breaking the unwritten rules of a ski-town with its 8th annual event, and encouraging  line-poaching, a behaviour that is typically regarded as very poor etiquette amongst the gravity-fed. (Fresh tracks is customarily regarded as belonging to the person who first hiked for it. Dropping in on their line is a no-no.)

However, given the successful reception of several 2008 writing workshops under the guidance of Whistler’s current writer in residence, Wayne Grady, the Festival organizers have been emboldened to subvert Whistler’s primal code.
Grady, a renowned creative non-fiction author, delivered sold-out seminars last fall, entitled: "The Frying Pan", and "The Fire", focussed on how to poach lines from your own notebook, and grow them into something more substantial.
For the note-book is where it all begins.
“Anyone who is motivated to keep a notebook or a journal or a diary or various scraps of napkin in a shoebox is a writer,” says Whistler Readers and Writers Festival Director, Stella Harvey. “Those scribblings are the way any novel, story, article, screenplay, gets its start…”
The 8th Whistler Readers and Writers Festival is dedicated to anyone who wants to take their notebook scribbling to the next level. To that end, the Vicious Circle hereby declares September to be Line-Poaching Month.  Harvey confesses that, despite the potential for tribal rifts, “We’re hoping it will catch on, and line-poaching will even become the norm through December and January.”
As part of its call to creative anarchy, the Festival invites notebook keepers to join the September poaching ring with their Line-PoachRs Drop In HERE contest call. Scan a page from your notebook, and email it to viciouspoachers@gmail.com for a chance to win a pass to your choice of Festival seminar. With 20+ to choose from (check out the selection at www.theviciouscircle.ca), you’re sure to find a reason to drop-in.
Scannerless scribblers can pay a visit to Armchair Books, site of Whistler’s largest notebook stockpile, or Whistler Foto Source, the masters of capturing the perfect image, and use their scanners for free.  BYO USB stick or CD, or take advantage of the “Vicious” discount at Whistler Foto Source.