Caitlin Hicks

PLAYWRIGHT. AUTHOR. PERFORMER. PRESENTER.

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Think globally. Read locally!

For the first time in my  life, I think, I was first. We had to pick numbers out of a hat before the show, to see who would read in what order. There were only 3 left in the basket and I reached for the one in the middle. I’m Number 6 from a family of fourteen children, waaay back in my childhood, and ever since then, the middle has been my comfort zone. Let somebody else warm up the crowd, make mistakes. Usually I like to perform right before the intermission. But Saturday night I unfolded the paper I had snatched and read a simple word: “one”.

So I was first up. I read “George Goes for a Walk”, which I’ve posted here under Fiction. The Gumboot Garden was packed to the gills and I had their full attention. You know how it is, in the first moments of a film, you’re eager to get into the story and you pay really close attention –that’s how it was, being first. Everyone was listening.

It’s something in my life that has been very important to me. When someone listens to me, they have my full attention.

Jane Covernton organized the event –Think globally. Read locally!, local writers reading from their work:

  • Joanne Bennison: journalist, read from “Jinx” her young adult novel – in -progress.
  • Heather Conn: “who likes to write true stuff best and is working on a scandalous family story”
  • Jane Covernton: self-published fiction writer who launched her third novel, The Modern Age, that evening
  • Rebecca Hendry: author of the novel Grace River, who has published short fiction in numerous Canadian literary magazines
  • Gillian Kydd: author of Secrets of the Creek, a mystery set in Roberts Creek
  • George Payerle: author of two novels and two books of poetry
  • David Roche: international performer and author of The Church of 80% Sincerity
  • Robin Wheeler: wrote Gardening for the Faint of Heart

The summer is the biggest thing in my life right now. The brilliant light, the abundant greens and myriad creatures busy with their own eating and nesting and squirreling dramas.

I am listening with everything I have, and the days come up so softly and slip soundlessly dark quickly and then we have to put our heads down and do that odd thing, sleep. And I realize the brilliance of it, and how it’s going by, not an infinite thing.

The soft warmth of the sun, or in the afternoon, the baking heat of it reflecting off wood steps on the front porch. The clear, halcyon blue skies; birds dropping on a breeze or darting from branch to branch. Summer tastes of fresh onion, cucumber and cilantro mixed with tomato and pepper.

My cat meows, wanting to get in. We walk together to the other door. As soon as I open it he wants to get out.

He goes in a circle — from inside, to out, thinking he wants something, when he’s already got the life of Riley here.

Acclaimed Debut Novel

Republished by Sunbury Press this summer

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Mother Marcelle's Spaghetti, as discussed in my podcast, "Some kinda woman - Stories of Us"

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