ACTRA to offer health benefits to writers
Some interesting news from Quill & Quire: ACTRA, which represents TV and film workers, will be offering health benefits to writers and authors beginning in 2009. According to the story by Stuart Woods,
The Writers’ Coalition Benefits package will be “a basic, no-frills plan,” says AFBS president and CEO Bob Underwood. Initially, it will target members of participating organizations, which include The Writers’ Union of Canada, the Periodical Writers Association of Canada, and the Playwrights Guild of Canada. There is talk, however, of expanding the program to a broad base of industry professionals, such as freelance agents, self-employed authors, or employees at small publishing houses and distributors.
Underwood says monthly premiums have yet to be decided, but they will be 20% to 30% more competitive than comparable packages offered by commercial insurers, which he says can cost up to $1,500 per year. A model plan will be rolled out by early summer at the latest, he adds, consisting of extended health-care benefits (including prescription drugs, vision and dental care, and hospital visits), limited life and accident insurance, and critical illness benefits. The AFBS is also looking into the feasibility of a disability program and opt-in home and auto insurance, as well as small-business insurance for those who maintain a home office.
As someone who has lived mostly without the benefit of health insurance since deciding to become a freelancer in 2002, I think this is good news. There have been other attempts to offer insurance packages to writers over the years, but one of the sticking points has been finding an insurer willing to provide a decent plan at a reasonable price. For plans to be appealing to an insurer and affordable to members, you need a fairly large, diverse group of people to sign up so that the higher costs of a few are counterbalanced by the modest cost of the many. Finding that mix can be a challenge, especially when you’re dealing with tens, or even hundreds, of people as opposed to thousands.
So, while I’m surprised to see this deal coming from ACTRA, it does make sense in many ways: ACTRA has a large membership base (21,000) and experience in working with freelance artists, so it makes more sense for them to offer it rather than for writers’ groups to interest an insurer in developing a new, reasonably priced package for a few hundred, or a few thousand, writers.
Nobody’s Father in the Edmonton Journal
It looks like the Edmonton Journal ran a story about Nobody’s Father yesterday. From what I can tell online, it looks like a reprint of Katherine Dedyna’s story that originally ran in the Victoria Times Colonist, but hey, I’m not complaining! Any publicity is good publicity.
Recommended reading
I often find myself being asked for book recommendations this time of year, as people go about their holiday shopping, and I am always happy to give them. So, in no particular order, here are some of the good books I read in the past year (most of which are new, but some of which are older titles I only got around to reading in the past 12 months):
Fiction
Run by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins Publishers, 2007)
The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson (Random House, 2007)
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall (HarperCollins Publishers, 2007)
Axis by Robert Charles Wilson (2007, Tor)
The Black Tower by Louis Bayard (HarperCollins Publishers, 2008 )
Non-Fiction
Drive by Tim Falconer (Viking Canada, 2008 )
Fatal Tide by David Leach (Viking Canada, 2008 )
Leave the Building Quickly by Cynthia Kaplan (HarperCollins Publishers, 2007)
Why I’m Like This by Cynthia Kaplan (HarperCollins Publishers, 2002)
The Long Walk Home by Liane Faulder (Brindle & Glass Publishing, 2007)
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (Penguin, 2006)
Time Was Soft There by Jeremy Mercer (Picador, 2005)
On Writing by Stephen King (Pocket Books, 2000)
Riding With Rilke by Ted Bishop (Penguin Canada, 2005)
The Geography of Hope by Chris Turner (Random House Canada, 2007)
Check out Checkerspot magazine
I have a story in the Fall/Winter 2008 issue of Checkerspot magazine, which came out earlier this week. If you aren’t familiar with this biannual magazine, you shouldn’t feel too out of the loop: Checkerspot is relatively new, having made its debut in August 2007. It’s published by the Canadian Wildlife Federation and is focused on engaging people in the fight against climate change. It’s a great read, and what’s even better is that you can subscribe for free!
My piece is a words-and-pictures feature about artists addressing climate change in their work. Photo editor Margaret Williamson came up with a fantastic collection of different types of art from all over the world, and then it was my job to write up an introduction and captions for each of the pieces. I’m really pleased with how the feature turned out and was thrilled with the opportunity to write about art and get paid for it, which doesn’t happen as often as I’d like!
Nobody’s Father on the CBC
If you didn’t happen to catch the interview Lynne and I did on CBC British Columbia’s “All Points West” show a few weeks ago, I’ve just discovered that it’s archived online. The sound file is available on the show’s book club page, which you can find here.
Gone fishing
I have a story in the new issue of Canadian Geographic Travel magazine, which hits newsstands across the country this week. It is my account of the three days and two nights my partner and I spent camped out in an ice hut near North Bay, Ont., this past February.
As I say in the story, we aren’t the sort of guys you’d expect to find ice fishing, but I actually did a lot of it as a kid with my grandfather, so my editor, Patricia D’Souza, thought it would be fun for me (and readers!) to have another go at it.
Against almost all of my friends’ and family’s expectations, we had a really good time, which I chalk up to the hospitality of Scott Nelson, who owns Glen Echo Cottages, and our fantastic photographer, Harry Nowell.
You can check out a preview of the story here, but if you want to read the whole thing, and find out if we caught any fish, you’ll have to track down a copy of Canadian Geographic Travel.
The gang’s all here
Here’s a scan of a photo that appeared in yesterday’s Times Colonist newspaper of all the Nobody’s Father contributors who made it to the Victoria launch party. Please try to ignore the glare from my forehead.
Nobody’s Father the editor’s choice at the Vancouver Sun
Nobody’s Father gets a mention in today’s Vancouver Sun as one of four recommended new titles. You can read the brief review here.
Men without children
On my last day here in Victoria, there’s a great story in today’s Times Colonist about Nobody’s Father by reporter Katherine Dedyna, who came out to the launch party on Tuesday. It’s a lifestyles piece that features commentary by some of the book’s contributors as well as some other interesting information that Dedyna dug up, including a
… major study of 12,000 Americans published in 2007 in the Journal of Marriage and Family. It found men much less likely to hold accepting attitudes about childlessness and people who remain childless, and less likely to believe they will have a satisfying life, study author Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, a University of Florida sociologist, says in an e-mail to the Times Colonist. Other research has shown women are more aware of the costs and demands of parenthood, while men think more of the rewards of being a dad and might reap higher pay because “married men with children are regarded more positively by others” she adds.
Going to school with David Leach
This is my last full day in Victoria, and I’ll be spending the afternoon at the University of Victoria. I’ll be speaking with one of David Leach’s creative nonfiction classes about the challenges of writing and editing family memoirs. I’m looking forward to it because David is someone I’ve known by byline for many years, but I’ve never had the chance to meet him in person until this week. The former arts editor of Victoria’s Monday Magazine and the former managing editor of explore: Canada’s Outdoor Magazine, in Toronto, David is now a full-time assistant professor at UVic’s Department of Writing.
If you haven’t his book Fatal Tide, released this past spring by Viking Canada, I highly recommend it. Here’s a short description from the book jacket:
On June 1, 2002, sixty-eight after-work athletes and other “weekend warriors” set off from Saint John, New Brunswick, for a sweaty day of competitive adventure: 15 kilometres of trail running, 40K of mountain biking, and 12 kilometres of sea kayaking on the legendary Bay of Fundy. However, as a storm swept across the final paddling section, what began as a fun introduction to the sport of adventure racing soon turned into a tragedy that would haunt many of the participants for years to come.
Fatal Tide: When the Race of a Lifetime Goes Wrong is a work of investigative journalism that dramatizes, in the storytelling style of such non-fiction bestsellers as Into the Wild and The Perfect Storm, precisely what happened at the controversial Fundy Multi-Sport Race. Fatal Tide also explores the psychology of risk taking in the outdoors, the contemporary culture of reality TV and extreme sports, the science and treatment of hypothermia, as well as the legal and emotional fallout from the first death of an adventure racer in North America.
Admittedly, I don’t read a lot of adventure or travel writing, but David’s book is a compelling read that is hard to put down. It also went a long way toward explaining the appeal of adventure sports to someone like me, who would barely qualify as even an armchair adventurer. So, if you haven’t picked it up, you really should; you won’t regret it.
