MF GALAXY

John Ware is the greatest Canadian legend you probably have never heard of. He was a 19th Century West African born into the American continent-wide rape-gulag that apologists call the Old South. He went on to become one of thousands of African-American cowboys, and he eventually moved to what is now Alberta to become a master bronco-buster, successful rancher, a founder of modern rodeo culture, and a man of near mythic proportions with the strength of Paul Bunyan and the power of a horse whisperer.

Ware earned the admiration of many of his fellow settlers on First Nations territory, although many Euro-Canadians called him, and please excuse the language, "Nigger John," and after he died, used the N-word to describe Alberta landmarks associated with John Ware, names that remained until late in the 20th Century. His reconstructed cabin still exists—you can find it in Dinosaur Provincial Park.

While a few people have written books about John Ware, it's possible that no one has done more original research than celebrated Alberta journalist, essayist, YA novelist, and playwright Cheryl Foggo. She's written for Canadian Magazine, Reader's Digest.ca, Avenue, AlbertaViews, Western Living, Sunday Magazine, and The Globe and Mail, among many others.

Foggo's play John Ware Reimagined premiered in Calgary in August, 2014, and the script won the Writers Guild of Alberta 2015 Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama. She's currently developing a John Ware documentary with the National Film Board of Canada. Her many other projects include adapting Chinua Achebe's classic novel Things Fall Apart, and Hiding Place, a history of African settlements in southern Alberta. Foggo also makes acclaimed multi-media presentations across Alberta, including Ranchers, Rebels and the Righteous, Creole, and Unlocking Sacred Codes.

In today's episode of MF GALAXY, Cheryl Foggo discusses:

• How learning that John Ware was an African-Canadian changed her life
• Mildred Lewis, who became John Ware's wife, and the remarkably accomplished Lewis family from Ontario
• How John Ware's story defies the myths of Canadian beneficence and Euro-Canadian settler identity
• How Cheryl Foggo has changed her playwriting craft over her career
• How her experience as researcher, journalist, and historian affects how she constructs characters, and
• Why poets often make the best playwrights

We spoke on February 14, 2017 at the Old Arts Barns in Strathcona, Edmonton, when she was in town to conduct a playwriting workshop. She began by discussing how when she was a girl she was a cowboy culture nerd. Please note that for the sake of historical clarity, I've left the use of the N-word in today's podcast.

cherylfoggo.com

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Souljah Fyah. They're an outstanding reggae band. And that's not just me saying it. Here's what Shelly Gummeson from Earshot-Online says: "On and off stage...[lead singer] Sista J exudes a high voltage, positive energy. Unfettered without setting limitations is precisely the attitude and energy that has propelled Edmonton's Souljah Fyah to become Canada's top Reggae band." They've won all kinds of acclaim: including a Juno nomination, two Western Canadian Music Association awards, and twice-declared the best reggae band in Canada by the Canadian Reggae Music Awards and the Reggae Music Achievement Awards.

So who's in Souljah Fyah? The leader is Waymatea Ellis, better known as Sista J; she's the lead singer, the lyricist, and she plays bass; she's also a reverend with her own healing practice. Too Tall Paul Joosse sings and plays keyboard and bass. Stormin' Norman Frizzell plays keyboard and megaphone, and the Original Tribesman plays percussion. The band is back with The Long Walk, recorded at Edmontone Studio in Edmonton and Mad Rebel Studios in Negril, Jamaica, and the album features the classic mix that made Souljah Fyah great: intelligent lyrics full of personal and social commentary, and music and lyrics as warm as the Caribbean sun.

In today's conversation, Waymatea discusses:

• Why she makes albums rich with political and social content even though love songs would be more likely to make her rich
• The impact of guest vocalist Access on the album and how she met the Jamaican singer
• How her songwriting has changed to produce this latest album
• Her most recent lessons in marketting and promoting her band, why she won't tour the United States, and the impact of the late Soulicitors ska band member Kelly Callin on The Long Walk.

Throughout today's show you'll hear tracks from the latest album, including "Inner Critic," "Bigger Than Me," "One More Chance" with guest singer Access, "Circle," and "All is Still." Waymatea spoke with me by Skype on February 14, 2017. We began by discussing the meaning of the title The Long Walk.

SOULJAH FYAH

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BUY THE LONG WALK

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REVEREND WAY

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Thomas Wharton. If he decided to wear a ballcap that says "Winning" he'd have every right to do so. His first novel was Icefields, and straight out of the gate, it won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book in the Canada/Caribbean division, and the first Banff Mountain Book grand prize. Then his second novel, Salamander, was short-listed for the Governor-General's Literary Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Then he up and gets his short story collection The Logogryph shortlisted for the IMPAC-Dublin Prize.

He also published The Perilous Realm, a YA fantasy trilogy. And his work's been published in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and many other countries. He teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta where he and I studied creative writing together way back in the early 1990s, and we had the chance to work together when I was the Writer in Residence at the U of A in 2014-2015. Tom's also a down-to-earth cat who values rich language, numerous genres, and quality teaching.

In today's episode of MF GALAXY, Wharton discusses:

• What it takes to teach creative writing well
• Whether Millennials are more narcissistic writers than Generation-Xers or Baby Boomers
• How he plans stories and what made him change his method
• Avoiding what he calls "the James Michener effect," and
• Clarifying the differences between fiction about young adults and young adult fiction

We spoke in my then-office at the University of Alberta on January 5, 2015, and Tom begins by introducing himself.

@TWhartonWrites

thomaswharton.ca http://thomaswharton.ca

facebook.com/perilousrealm

Thomas Wharton's online writers' workshop

TV killed radio, ebooks killed paperbacks, and video games killed board games, right? Wrong, of course. In fact, according to my guest on today's show, we're living in the golden age of board games.

When I was a kid, all I knew was Monopoly, checkers, chess, backgammon, Trivial Pursuit, and the Game of Life. Now walk into any board game store, or these crazy things called table top cafes, and you'll see wall after wall lined with board games, and people paying cover charge to sit with their friends for hours playing them. What is the freaking deal?

To answer that question I spoke with Paul Saxberg, the community manager for Roxley Games Laboratory. Roxley is a Calgary developer and publisher of board games. Saxberg told me he wouldn't be in gaming community management without years of experience with game design, theatre, book sales, stand up comedy, IT, and ADHD.

At this point you're probably asking, "What is community management, and why does it sound so awful?" You'll get answers to those questions and learn why it's actually excellent. Saxberg and I discussed plenty, including:

• What board games offer that video games simply can't
• How to supercharge your crowdfunding campaign
• How to get great publicity for your game or other project
• How not to manage a gaming community or any other community
• How game companies and other groups can improve their reputation, and how they can sink it, and
• How to apologise, and how not to, when your company screws up publicly

Because Saxberg has a background in theatre, we began by discussing the link between stage and games, and why we're living in the golden age of board games. We spoke by Skype on December 28, 2016.

Marc Taro Holmes knows an awful lot about art. I'm not just talking about last December when he up and got himself elected to the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, or more than twenty years ago when he got his BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary.

I'm talking about his more than fifteen years as an Art Director and Concept Artist for tiny outfits you've never heard of, such as Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Disney, and BioWare where he worked on games such as Dragon Age Inquisition, Neverwinter Nights, and Baldur's Gate. He's still doing contract work for game design on characters, costumes, and fantasy-historical settings.

Back thirty years ago, he and I belonged to an informal group of young science fiction, comics, and fantasy artists in Edmonton that I nicknamed "The Sketchmen" because we were all so enamoured with Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. That group included painter Jaemi Hardy, and cartoonists Adrian Kleinbergen and Nigel Tully.

Now Marc Holmes is the author of two books including The Urban Sketcher and Designing Creatures and Characters: How to Build an Artist's Portfolio for Video Games, Film, Animation and More. That second book, his latest, is a gamified approach to getting into professional artistic design. Holmes's spectacular art and engaging exercises offer a truly fun and competitive means to get good quickly.

In today's show, Marc Holmes discusses:

• New tools to help artists make more money
• How to transition from traditional art school to Photoshop + tablets
• How one of the most important comic artists of the late 20th Century was an early adopter of the new technology
• How his gamified educational approach can help you design creatures and characters to break into the industry of your choice
• How you gain artistic muscle memory, and
• The difference between ineffective and effective art supervisors and managers in video games and movies, and how companies can improve their game, and their games

We spoke by Skype on November 10, 2016. We began by discussing 1980s superstar Marvel artist John Byrne, best known for his work on X-Men and Fantastic Four, and why art in comic books has gotten better every generation.

citizensketcher.com

Instructional videos

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Free downloads

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During the last few years, the catalogue of online slurs has grown considerably, but none has been as disturbing to me as the rise of the word "hotep." What does the word mean? What is its significance to those who prize classical African civilisations? How have two forces collided to degrade the word, and whose interests does that degradation serve?

Joining me to discuss the issue is C.R. Sparrow. She's a writer and assistant editor at Black Girl Nerds.com, an Africentric website, podcast, and video series addressing pop culture, politics, feminism, and technology. Sparrow describes herself as "an avid fan of science fiction, fantasy, and afrofuturism… an alumnus of Temple University's School of Media and Communication [and a] Black Queer Woman in a world that frequently attempts to dehumanize each of these identities. She actively centers Black/queer/woman-ness in her lens as she looks out at the world."

Sparrow recently wrote a powerful article for BGN called "Hotep is the Modern Day A.B.S. and It's Not OK". After I read it, I knew I needed to speak with her for MF GALAXY.

I appreciate how Sparrow reinforced for me that people's self-description is profoundly personal, and not easily changed or wished-away. I'm strongly reminded of the lesson from Elijah Muhammad: Tell a man he's drinking dirty water, and he'll resent you and keep on drinking. Instead, simply put a clean glass of water next to his and he'll figure it out himself and maybe even thank you. My own lesson: If people aren't buying, change your product, change your marketting, or change your market—but whatever you do, don't blame the customer. It'll get you the exact opposite of what you want.

For Canadian listeners, Sparrow uses the African-American colloquialism "bougie," meaning "bourgeois," and cites Kim Burrell, a gospel singer and pastor who has preached from her pulpit that LGBTQ folks are "perverted" and will die in 2017 from what she called their "sin." Before her remarks surfaced, Burrell contributed a song to the soundtrack for Hidden Figures, a docu-drama about African women mathematical geniuses who were indispensable to the success of the US space programme.

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"Tololwa Mollel is a children's author, dramatist and storyteller, who has written seventeen internationally published books, and several plays as well as stories that he created or adapted for performance. His books, which include award winning titles such as Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper, Big Boy, and My Rows and Piles of Coins have been published in Canada, the U.S., Australia, England and Tanzania where he was born. His work has been translated into various South African languages, into Korean, Spanish, Serbian, Norwegian and Finnish, and of course his native Kiswahili, Tanzania's national language.

"In Tanzania, Mollel was a University lecturer and an actor and performer in a touring company that performed as far as Germany and Sweden. He continued performing in Canada but came to devote himself to writing and to the literary scene in Edmonton, serving as President of the Writers Guild of Alberta in the late 1990s.

"He does extensive work with schools and libraries, with literacy, arts and educational bodies, and with community organizations. In all this work, Mollel has presented, performed and conducted writing, storytelling and dramatic workshops and writer-in-residence programs in schools, libraries and communities across Canada and the U.S., as well as in England, Australia and Tanzania. Of his presentations and his work with schools, libraries and communities, Mollel says, "I aim to provide a feast of words – written and spoken – for the eye, the ear and the mind; as well as for the creative imagination, and for performance." Through writing, storytelling and drama, Mollel hopes to empower the young, and others, with the gift of story — to write, tell, share and enjoy stories; to mentor them as he was mentored. Mollel has increasingly come to combine the arts of storytelling, story making and theater into story performance with music with collaborating musicians and artists. Click here to learn about Mollel's childhood sources of inspiration for his love of story and story making.

"Available for presentations and work in schools, Mollel does author visits, young writers' conferences, as well as workshops and residencies on writing, storytelling, storytelling with drama and story performance, and drama, in programs that he can adapt for all ages and various curricular needs, determined through his discussion with schools. He is available for writing and editing projects, such as student anthologies, stories for performance, memoirs, story making for movie scripts and for other purposes. He is also available to conduct workshops on writing and storytelling for teachers and librarians in schools, conferences and conventions. For details about Mollel's presentations and work in schools, click here. You can view or download a summary of the details in a PDF brochure here. For additional details regarding school and library bookings and fees, contact Tololwa Mollel."

tololwamollel.com

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Two words known by hundreds of millions: "Princess Leia." That's the legacy of the collaboration among Carrie Fisher, George Lucas, and hundreds of other filmmakers who worked on the Star Wars saga.

But without Fisher herself--the actor, the public personality, and the astonishing accomplished novelist, screenwriter, and memoirist--Princess Leia could never have become the icon she was.

MF GALAXY celebrates the life and legacy of Carrie Fisher and her most enduring role by speaking with authors Jennifer Marie Brissett, Krista D. Ball, and Sparkle Hayter, writer Mari Sasano, and director Zoe Hopkins.

Mohawk Star Wars

Krista D. Ball.com

Jenn Brissett.com

Sparkle Hayter.com

Zoe Hopkins IMDb

Mari Sasano.ca

Jennifer Marie Brissett on creating intimacy between readers and characters 

How Krista D. Ball pays the mortgage with Ebook sales

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To hear the patrons-only bonus content for Carrie Fisher + Princess Leia Remembered, visit mfgalaxy.org to click on the Patreon link to become a sponsor for a dollar or more per week.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu is best known for his work to end decades of European racial supremacy in South African politics and create electoral democracy. Because all previous Cape Town Anglican archbishops were European, Tutu was the first South African to be appointed to the post and the primacy of the Anglican Church of South Africa.

Following the retirement of formal apartheid, Tutu led the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission which granted amnesty from prosecution to anyone who confessed crimes to maintain or fight the Whitesupremacist regime. But it was his early struggles for justice that won him, in 1984, the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tutu continues to speak for peace and justice, including about ecological devastation in Alberta's tar sands, the occupation of Palestine, and the international campaign to cure HIV/AIDS and help all afflicted by the disease. He's the author or co-author of nine books, including No Future without Forgiveness, God is Not a Christian, and God Has a Dream.

Tutu and his wife Leah founded the non-profit Desmond Tutu Peace Centre, which works to create "a society that nurtures tolerance and understanding amongst all people and is guided by … the building blocks for sustainable peace: Love, Hope, Tolerance, and Courage."

He spoke in Edmonton at the Jubilee Auditorium for the first annual University of Alberta Visiting Lectureship in Human Rights on November 29, 1998. He discussed the horrors of apartheid, the racial divide in US culture, the link between racism and homophobia + sexism, and the power of youth to change the world.

If you're listening to MF GALAXY on radio, you can download the full-length version of the podcast right now. Just go to MF GALAXY.org, iTunes, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Player FM, or patreon.com/mfgalaxy.

A warning: the beginning of Tutu's comments includes a disturbing description of police torture and murder during apartheid.

tutu.org

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Review the film with me—as recorded live at Happy Harbor Comics—are Suzette Chan, the Features Editrix for SequentialTart.com (a webzine by women who are fans of comics and pop culture), and Stephen Notley, a game designer at PopCap and the creator of Bob the Angry Flower.

This reviews contains MAJOR SPOILERS.

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