Fringe Words 2010: A Hoot

This year the London Writers' Society paired up with the London Fringe Festival to bring Fringe Words back to the festival.

If you did not attend Fringe Words 2010, you missed a good time and some great stories, all of which were linked through associations (real or imagined) with London, Ontario.

Hosted by LWS president Richard Nagel, this was what you missed

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In A Cut Above Bob Gervais gave us non-fiction profile of a London, Ontario tree sculptor who has graced London with his incredible tree sculptures. (For more about London's tree sculptures, where they can be seen and who sculpted them, visit London's Tree Trunk Tour.)

In his Meditation on Clarke Bridge John Hitchens described the precarious state of mind that can be evoked by the simple act of walking across a bridge.

Roxanne Lutz held us spellbound with The Melancholy Madness of Maggie McFarland which she skillfully fabricated from a thread of truth.

In Fat Woman Eating Vickie Candow gave us the triumphant experience of being a woman of large appetite who finally finds equal footing with skinny inlaws who have, for years, deprived her of food during family visits.   

Ted Janusz told a harrowing story of blind justice during the London flood of 1937 in his novel, The Tears of Angels.

In Harold's Travel Christina Dass gave a humourous, yet touching, tribute to her deceased father as she recalled London as seen through his eyes.

Richard Nagel made us laugh with Inside The Great London Sinkhole, an Alice-In-Wonderland fantasy populated by late, great London characters whose annoyed ghosts, it turns out, live beneath the city and are displeased with their lack of options.  

With The Wayward Guest, Erin Moxam spooked us with a story of love that endures beyond death. 

In reading the first chapter of his novel, Victoria Day, John Passfield allowed us to inhabit the body and soul of the exhausted reporter who sat smoking on the porch of his boarding house at the end of the day on May 24, 1881 just as news of the sinking of the steamboat Victoria broke.

With his delightful Fairmont 1580 Douglas Hogg painted a colourful picture of  life as he lived it in London in the 1930's.

The icing on the cake, E. Ann (Liz) Bardawill delivered one hilarious punchline after another in The Off-White Hendersons, the story of a little-known (and possibly fictitious) feud of the nineteenth century.  

Well done, everyone!

For a little more about London's past, here's a list of significant London events from 1844 to 1894.