Author Stephen Hunt
Author Stephen Hunt riffs on Caucasian males readings and more
As it turns out Stephen Hunt and I have a lot in common. We’re both arts journalists we’re both devastatingly charming… and we’re both white guys. While my whiteness however only gives me slight pangs of racial guilt and nasty sunburns Hunt has turned his into a book. The White Guy: A Field Guide launches this week but its roots go back almost 15 years.
“After graduating from the University of British Columbia I moved to New York to be a playwright and immediately my ego was smashed to pieces because there were a million other people doing the same thing” Hunt laughs. “I was in a theatre class and the teacher kept saying ‘You are your own instrument look inside yourself to find what’s special!’ So I wrote a monologue about being a white guy.”
The monologue struck a chord and soon blossomed into a full-fledged play — The White Guy — that played off-Broadway in New York before moving on to Los Angeles eventually being sold as a TV pilot to Quincy Jones. “ The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air had been off the air for awhile and I think Jones thought he could do a reverse- Fresh Prince about a white guy” says Hunt. “It was a cute idea but we never could quite figure out how to talk about race in a funny way on television. It seemed pretty taboo especially from a white guy’s perspective. We tried to do a Dharma and Greg -type show but the idea petered out.”
Hunt soon moved to Calgary where he began working as an arts journalist for the Calgary Herald but the white guy kept nagging at him. “I’m always searching for the right place for my voice and I had friends who started writing books” says Hunt. “I was like ‘Aw I want to write a book too!’” During a residency at The Banff Centre’s cultural journalism program Hunt met Scott Steedman the associate publisher for Douglas & McIntyre. “He didn’t really like the essay I wrote in Banff but he liked my play and he asked me to come up with a book like that — over-the-top and comic.”
The White Guy: A Field Guide was born a series of comedic riffs about the Caucasian male. “You could almost call it a cultural anthropology book about white guys” says Hunt. “Or a bird-watching book: there are sections for plumage habitat and history.” Hunt’s wife Melanee Murray-Hunt contributes several essays to the book from her perspective as an African-American actor and playwright. “Melanee talks about race all the time in our house” says Hunt. “She’ll have friends over who talk about white people in really interesting ways and everyone has a point of view. The only people who are uncomfortable talking about white people were other white people.”
Hunt’s book launch will take a unique spin: rather than reading from the book he will be interviewed by his wife with such questions as “When did you first realize you were white?” and “Was it hard to grow up white in Winnipeg?” The launch takes place at the W.R. Castell Central Library (616 Macleod Tr. S.E.) on May 15 7:30 p.m.
A year ago Claudia Dey’s play Trout Stanley was produced at the University of Calgary. Dey returns to Calgary this week for the launch of her new novel Stunt . At the age of nine Eugenia “Stunt” Ledoux awakes to a note from her father: “gone to save the world. sorry. yours sheb wooly ledoux. asshole.” Her mother soon vanishes with the family car leaving Stunt to search for her lost family in the wild corners of Toronto where she encounters alien postcards levitation taxidermy and an exploding-shoulder-pad factory. Dey reads from her novel at Pages Books (1135 Kensington Rd. N.W.) on May 15 7:30 p.m.
The Sustainable Calgary Book Club is still going strong and this month’s theme is business. Focusing on The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability by Paul Hawken the afternoon will explore a business model that prioritizes social improvement over profit and loss. Facilitated by Jane Cawthorne the book club meets at McNally Robinson (120 8 Ave. S.W.) on May 18 2:30 p.m.
Dobbs and Muldoon have served in the Colonial Marines for over 800 years conquering planets for the Federation… but times have changed and when they discover a planet whose natives have unlocked the golden secrets of alchemy they decide to take a slice for themselves. From a dice-throwing computer virus to the last emperor of Xerxes Craig Dilouie spins a wild sci-fi adventure in The Great Planet Robbery which he launches at McNally Robinson on May 21 5:30 p.m.
Passion Pitch Poetry the open mic poetry series hosted by inexhaustible local poet Kirk Ramdath keeps on rollin’ with its latest feature performer Wakefield Brewster. To share the stage with Brewster bring your words and voice to the Oolong Tea House (110 10 St. N.W.) on May 21 8 p.m.
Since his tenure as the Markin-Flanagan writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary Jaspreet Singh has been a mainstay in Calgary’s literary scene. Following up on his successful short story collection he launches his first novel Chef wherein Chef Kirpal upon his brain cancer diagnosis returns to the governor’s residence in Kashmir to cook his last meal. Singh reads at Pages Books on May 22 7:30 p.m.
