Fall 2022 is the 20th anniversary of the “new” RDP Library, and you’re invited to celebrate with us! Some of our favourite authors from the past 20 years are coming back for this special Friday night public reading.

Readings by Jenna Butler, Joan Crate, Leslie Greentree, and Rod Schumacher (see biographies below).

• Free admission.
• Complimentary appetizers.
• Cash bar.
• Some authors will have books for sale (cash only).

NOTE: The Library will be open exclusively for this event. No other access or services will be available.

Dr. Jenna Butler (she/her) is an award-winning Canadian poet, essayist, and editor. She is the author of three books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; a collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail; and the Arctic travelogue Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. Her newest book, Revery: A Year of Bees, essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award in Non-Fiction. Butler is a retired professor of creative and environmental writing and an off-grid organic farmer in northern Treaty 6.

Joan Crate was born in the Northwest Territories and, after finding homes in various places, now lives in Calgary and the rural Okanagan.  She writes both poetry and fiction and has won several writing awards over the years including the W.O.Mitchell City of Calgary Book Award for Black Apple, which was shortlisted for the Frank Heygi Award, and listed in CBC’s Ten Books You Must Read list in 2016. The band U2 , of whom she’s a big fan, featured her poem “I am a Prophet” on screen in their last Canadian tour. She lost her partner of almost 4 decades two years ago. Since the pandemic, her work has appeared in five anthologies and on CBC radio.

Leslie Greentree is the author of four books – Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For (University of Calgary Press, Fall 2022), the award-winning short story collection A Minor Planet for You, and two poetry books: go-go dancing for Elvis, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Griffin Prize for Poetry, and guys named Bill. Leslie has won CBC literary competitions for short fiction and poetry, and the Sarah Selecky 2013 Little Bird short fiction competition.

Rod Schumacher taught English and Creative Writing at Red Deer College (Polytechnic) for 18 years. His work has been published in numerous literary and scholarly journals. His book, Habits and Love, was shortlisted for two Alberta Book Awards. He now writes and plays music and old-timers’ hockey in B.C.