1. February 2, 2012 • THE REFLECTOR 15
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Photo: Bryan Weismiller
Scott Giffin, left, Scotty Charles, right, and the boys from
Frankie McQueen play a charity gig at The Hub on Jan. 20.
Funds from the show were given to the MRU Psychology
Club.
Frankie hits the Hub
People packed into a crowded
Moot Court to hear writer Ivan
Coyote tell stories on Jan. 26.
Coyote had been on the Mount
Royal University campus for most
of the prior week, speaking to
classes and talking to students.
Her Thursday-night performance
still brought in a large crowd
— students and faculty alike
— to listen to excerpts from her
award-winning stories.
Born and raised in what she
calls a “massive Irish-Catholic
family” in Whitehorse, YK, much
of Coyote’s writing features her
family members, who are obvi-
ously an inspiration to her work
— and after a quick two-hour
talk, Coyote managed to make
these people as real and mean-
ingful to the audience as they are
to her.
She opened with a reading
from a collection of what she
calls Yukon Love Stories, followed
with another entitled Objects in
Mirror Are Queerer Than They
Appear. The magic of storytell-
ing silenced the room and drew
the audience into her world —
vivid and captivating — sharing
in memories, drawing tears and
plenty of laughs.
“They don’t really get what I do
for a living. They call it my ‘art
project,’” Coyote jokes of her
large family.
Some of her stories feature
her father and stepmother, her
grandmothers and uncles, as
well as different people she has
met, ranging from an old lady on
an airplane to her barber. Coyote
travels all across North America
giving talks at universities as
well as junior high and high
schools on anti-bullying.
Coyote’s art crosses a number
of different mediums. She is an
award-winning author of six
collections of short stories, one
novel, three spoken word albums
and four short films.
However, it is obvious that her
gift of storytelling is best done
through her honest and enthrall-
ing use of spoken words. She
has the remarkable ability to
silence an entire room with her
words and take the audience to
a faraway place. When she stops
speaking, the audience comes
back, blinking into reality
as if from a trance.
More than just en-
trancing, Coyote
is charismatic and
funny, with the
wonderful ability
to laugh at her own
experiences as she
recalls playing
hockey as a child
and wondering
when her family
first thought she
might be gay. She
tells of an older
man in town call-
ing her mother
and saying, “if she
didn’t get me
out of the
hockey gear and straight into the
kitchen I’d become a lesbian.”
It was evident within a few
minutes that Coyote’s gift of
storytelling went deeper than
just the way she used language.
Instead, it’s her ability to capture
moments in history and release
them like a magician, casting a
spell on listeners. She empha-
sizes the importance of the story
— everyone’s story — ending the
night with some great parting
words: “You don’t decide – you
just write what moves you.”
‘You just write
what moves you’
Award-winning author Ivan Coyote
speaks at Mount Royal University
guest speaker
Holly Triebwasser
Staff Writer
Photo: storynorth.com
Ivan Coyote is an award-winning author and spokenword per-
former. She is a writer in residence at Carlton University.