Event Info
Creative Collaborations – Combining Imagery and Words
Presented by Kingston WritersFest
1:00pm - 3:00pm
$42.48
Event Description
Creative Collaborations – Combining Imagery and Words
Michael Hingston and Natalie Olsen
Writers Retreat Seminar
Crawford Room
1:00 – 3:00 pm
Limited enrolment.
The creative duo behind Hingston & Olsen Publishing believe in the power of the physical book. In this seminar, they will talk about creative collaboration, how they got started, their philosophy when putting together titles over the years, and what they've learned along the way. You’ll look at some sample books and designs to inspire your own creative process.
Michael Hingston
“In a world where print material is rapidly losing ground to all things digital,” says author and publisher Michael Hingston, “we remain stubborn, true believers in the power of the physical book. Our titles are driven by design and full of the unexpected—both the words on the page, and the look and feel of the page itself. We're suckers for unusual lengths, formats, perspectives, and ideas.”
One could call Michael’s interests eclectic – his bibliography includes a history of Calvin and Hobbes called Let's Go Exploring, the novel The Dilettantes, co-writer of Harnarayan Singh’s memoir One Game at a Time, as well as “the ghostwriter of some other stuff.”
Michael’s latest book is Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda, which was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize. The book tells the bizarre history of Redonda - an uninhabited, guano-encrusted island that transformed into a fantastical and international kingdom of writers. The Washington Post called it “wonderfully entertaining,” and Publishers Weekly described it as “a jaunty historical footnote.”
His journalism has appeared in places like National Geographic, Wired, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Hazlitt, The Walrus, and The Globe and Mail. He’s also the creator of Edmontonia Trading Cards, and the co-founder of Hingston & Olsen Publishing, the outfit responsible for the Short Story Advent Calendar and other literary experiments.
Michael lives in Edmonton.
Natalie Olsen
In her younger years, Natalie Olsen’s artistic nature and preoccupation with the printed word sadly precluded her from other pursuits, such as high school popularity and good hair. It did, however, lead her to art school, where she over-kerned and under-slept. She was then lured into the world of publishing, where these proclivities are put to better use.
She started a studio, called it Kisscut Design (having nothing to do with canoodling or sharp-edged tools), and has since gone on to receive her fair share of acknowledgement, by way of flattering tweets, gifted bottles of scotch, and some awards.
During the slow summer months of 2015, Natalie started a publishing company with her favourite writer, as a means of finding out just how far an untested idea could be taken. The inaugural Hingston & Olsen project, The Short Story Advent Calendar, was a limited-edition box set of chapbooks for readers to open and enjoy on the days leading up to Christmas. Since then, the SSAC has grown to include work from nearly 200 different writers, from George Saunders to Carmen Maria Machado to Arthur Conan Doyle. The press has also expanded to collaborations like The Ghost Box, a three-volume deluxe horror anthology edited by Patton Oswalt, and the non-fiction Permanent Record Series.
In-Person Event
Sat. September 30th 2023 + Add to Calendar
Holiday Inn Kingston-Waterfront, an IHG Hotel
