Category Archives: The Shebeen Club

Vancouver’s Monthly Literary Gathering. My baby. No open mic, no hand-holding, no American beer.

Crime Pays: Fundraiser for the Federation of BC Writers

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Cross–posted from the Shebeen Club

Who: The Federation of BC Writers and the Shebeen Club

What: a wicked good fundraiser for the Fed

When: Monday, March 16th, 6-9pm

Where: The Vancouver Police Museum, 240 East Cordova Street, Vancouver

Why: it would be criminal to miss this party!

Crime Pays film noir femme fatale

Wanted: YOU!

Come help the Fed celebrate 32 years of getting away with murder. Whether infiltrating schools, divvying up swag, or distributing subversive publications, the Federation of BC Writers has been operating unchecked in our province for decades.

Do you enjoy the vicarious thrill of rubbing shoulder pads with the Lost Literati of the Wild West, surrounded by instruments of murder and mayhem in the cosy confines of the police museum? Do you have what it takes to make your bones as a Fed member? There’s only one way to find out! Come out to the party and make us an offer we can’t refuse.

Admission: $20 minimum donation includes a drink and appetizers. Click here to register. If you won’t be attending, but would like to support the Fed, you can click the Paypal button in the sidebar to make an online donation in the amount of your choice.

Dress code: Trenchcoat and fedora, deerstalker and cape, jailhouse stripes, uniforms, Bond Villain suits or femme fatale slinkwear all optional but encouraged. Attitude absolutely mandatory.

This arresting experience will feature Western Canada’s first Poetry Brothel (five bucks buys a love poem read to you by a sexy stunner) as well as a Guys and Dolls date auction, so bring your chequebook! Our lineup of lads and lovelies will show the winning bidders the times of their lives, thanks to generous sponsorship from premier local entertainments.

Raffle prize donations, bribes, and sponsorship applications very welcome: please email lorraine.murphy at Gmail dot com. Anything related to crime or the theme of noir is particularly welcome, eg detective books, Martini glasses, etc, or anything black or white.

The Crime Pays fundraiser will be our Shebeen Club meeting for the month of March, so I hope to see everyone there, dressed fabulously and behaving infamously!

Shebeen Club Meeting Monday: Intro to the Federation of BC Writers

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raincoaster logo yo!This month we’ve moved our meeting to Monday, September 15th instead of Tuesday and across the street so that we can have the brand-new Shebeen all to ourselves! We’ll play host to Sylvia Taylor, President of the Federation of BC Writers, who will give us an overview of the Fed and what it can do for its writers. Some of you will remember Sylvia from a our June meeting, when she spoke on memoir writing and editing.

Welcome to all the first-time Shebeeners! Our meetings are a convivial gathering of literary types of all sorts: editors, writers, publishers, booksellers, and students as well. All are welcome.

Go into the Irish Heather GastroPub, then through the back door to The Shebeen Whisky House, 212 Carrall Street in Gastown. If you get lost, staff can show you the way. Note that this is across the street from the old location.

Your $15 admission includes a great dinner of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta from the kitchen of the Irish Heather gastropub, plus one glass of wine or pint of beer or pop.

Meet and Greet 7-7:30

Listen and Learn 7:30-8

Signups, networking, and complaining about agents 8-9!

Shebeen Club:

http://shebeenclub.com
And coming soon to Facebook Groups

BC Fed:

http://www.bcwriters.com/

Sylvia Taylor:

http://sylviataylor.ca/

Shebeen Club Tuesday: The Moon Project

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Virginia Gillespie When: 7-9pm, Tuesday, July 15th rescheduled to July 29th, 2008

Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall

How: reserve @ lorraine.murphy at gmail.com

How Much: $15 includes dinner and a drink

What: The Moon Project with Virginia Gillespie

Who: For more info contact: lorraine.murphy at gmail.com

The Shebeen Club is pleased to present The Moon Project with White Rock poet, author, songstress, and maverick Virginia Gillespie. The author of Taoist Inner Tube Rider will be launching her innovative new Moon Project, a year-long, cooperative artistic challenge in which she invites all artists to participate.

This will be a very free-wheeling, possibly musical event which will cross the barriers between artistic disciplines and encourage audience participation.

Bio: Taoist Inner Tube Rider began as a metaphor to describe the Author’s style of writing that has evolved into a book and CD. It is created to bring the words alive and to inspire people to engage with poetry.

Through word, sound and image revelations are presented as a lyrical journey through time and as a cyclical ride through nature.

The writing spans four decades. The geographies are desert, forest, waterways, and sky represented in wind, weather and sound waves.

A woman rides through them all – flowing through vistas and deep feelings to find meaning and purpose.

Meet and Mingle 7-7:30
Presentation 7:30-8
Summer of Love reminiscences 8-whenever

Good Ideas vs Bad Ideas

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dog

Good Idea: rollerblading down to the office to pay your dues to the Federation of BC Writers for which you are the new Lower Mainland rep. Gets your dues paid and your workout done at the same time, plus bonus tanning time you don’t have to feel guilty about because you were, hello? productive.

Bad Idea: having two honey lagers at White Spot before attempting to rollerblade home.

Nuff said.

A Man of Mystery

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Russell Crowe, before the paunch

For no reason I can imagine except that my life has been deprived of it so far, a DVD of the movie Gladiator has just shown up in my mailbox, purchased from Amazon on my behalf by a name I do not recognize with no further contact details.

Hmmmmmmm.

The only person who’s really been outraged by the fact that I haven’t yet been exposed to the buff and beefy (instead of just puffy) version of Russell Crowe is a gay man whose name is definitely not the one on the receipt.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Oh well, the timing couldn’t be better as I will be taking it easy today as I was up till all hours last night with the Shebeen Club drinking: one Strongbow (why do I do this? why do I inventory it?), two and a half glasses of wine which Lydia bought, one Highland Park 12 year old whiskey which I bought (and bought Lydia one, leaving me effectively penniless till the paypal hits the bank around Friday) and then ran into an old friend on the way home who waylaid me for another two (or was it three?) pints of Dead Frog Nut Brown Ale at the ‘Ho.

You know? The ‘Ho? It doesn’t blow!

A friend of mine got taken to the Ivanhoe for her first legal beer on her birthday. I don’t know how many she had, nor does she because she had that many. How many? So many she passed out and woke up around three in the morning, sitting in a corner with her purse in her lap and a blanket thrown over her. Nothing was missing, either.