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Jay Ruzesky's novel about a medieval monumental astronomical clock is called The Wolsenburg Clock (Thistledown 2009) and was shortlisted for a ReLit Award and for the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize so now has a shiny sticker on it if you buy it from a bookstore. Worth doing really, because shiny stickers are not easy to get--think back to kindergarten and the way you always wanted a gold star but got a red one instead because you coloured outside the lines. Ain't that life? Ruzesky has not all that long ago guest-edited a special issue of The Malahat Review on environmental literature called "The Green Imagination". He was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1965 but doesn't remember that city at all because he only lived there for two weeks and at the time was busy distinguishing between his early, complicated senses. Memories begin sometime later as he was raised in Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Calgary, and Kelowna. He studied at Okanagan College (with John Lent whose image is painted on the wall of The Bean Scene in Vernon, BC where he sports a halo and looks as divine as many of us believe that he is. John drinks a lot of coffee and should be honoured for that as well); the University of Victoria (with the late, sparkling Constance Rooke); the University of Windsor (with Alistair MacLeod who speaks as beautifully as he writes); and at the Banff Centre for the Arts (with Don Coles and Don McKay, both of whom are geniuses). His poems and stories have appeared in Canadian and American journals such as Caliban, Prism international, Canadian Literature, Event, Saturday Night, Descant, Border Crossings, and Poetry Northwest but not in The New Yorker or The Atlantic Monthly. His books include Blue Himalayan Poppies (Nightwood, 2001), Writing on the Wall (Outlaw Editions, 1996), Painting The Yellow House Blue (House of Anansi, 1994), and Am I Glad To See You (Thistledown, 1992). He has been on the editorial board of The Malahat Review for 20 years without getting tired of it, and he teaches English, Creative Writing and Film Studies at Vancouver Island University. Essays, interviews and art criticism have appeared in Brick, Poetry Canada Review, and selected gallery publications. He is currently working on way too many projects at once including an essay about driving around in a Lamborghini, a novel about things that go up, a book about his explorer relative -- Roald Amundsen, a blues opera, and, finally, a one-man play which he would dearly like to see someone stage at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (hint, hint for those of you who have anything to do with theatre on Vancouver Island). He lives on Vancouver Island and has a ticket for Ushuaia, Argentina in his pocket.
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