Opens with special performance by Tara Dawn Solheim. Open Mic: Bring your writing! Prizes for best costume!

You pay a toonie. We give you a topic. You write a poem and share it. The judges and crowd determine the Slam Champion for 2011! Music by Glenn Sutter at 7 pm. Glenn uses thoughtful lyrics and moving guitar melodies to express ideas about nature, love and the human condition.

Celebrate the launch of a chapbook of poetry composed by the young poets of our neighbourhood. Refreshments will be served and all are welcome!

The Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild is pleased to launch volume 27 of WindScript, a magazine of the best of Saskatchewan teens’ poetry, prose and creative nonfiction, with readings by contributors to the 2011 issue.

Two local writing groups, The Poetry Klatsch and The Poets' Combine, will perform poetic pieces. Cash bar. Music by Ray Bell and Tahnis Cunningham at 8:00 pm- a dynamic guitar/fiddle roots duo.

The Poetry Klatsch is an everchanging poetry group based in Cathedral Village. Its two founders, Kris Brandhagen and Bernadette Wagner, will perform an excerpt from "Letters to a Young Player", written by Kris Brandhagen. The work explores the steamier side of various circus characters and their relationships.

A dynamic guitar/fiddle roots duo.

Join The Poets Combine for poems, images, and stories from "the neighbourhood that could". Over the last forty years Cathedral has grown from the poorest neighbourhood in Regina to one that has been recognized across Canada for what we have built. Come to hear new work inspired by the neighbours, the faces and places we love, and a few we love to hate. Combine members Paul Wilson, Bruce Rice, Judith Krause, Jim MacLean, and former Saskatchewan Poet Laureate, Robert Currie, are known across the Prairies and Canada, have published over twenty books between them.

Several Saskatchewan writers will read from their work on Saturday under the Literary Tent at 13th Avenue and Retallack.

David Sealy has published work in magazines, literary journals, and anthologies. His play "Life's Like That" was presented at the Saskatchewan Playwrights Centre Spring Festival. His play "Runaway Barbies" was presented at the Petro-Canada Stage One Series in Calgary. His latest play "The Bob Shivery Show" was presented at PlayWorks Ink and the Suncor Energy Stage One Festival, both in Calgary. He is currently writing the book for a musical set in medieval Europe.

Sandra Ridley has received the bpNichol Chapbook Award, the Alfred G. Bailey Prize, and was twice a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her first book of poetry, Fallout (Hagios Press), won the 2010 Saskatchewan Book Award for Publishing and a selection from it was produced and broadcast by CBC Radio One. This fall she launches her second collection of poetry, Post-Apothecary, with Pedlar Press.

Martine Noel Maw Les romans jeunesse et pour adultes de l’auteure lauréate Martine Noël-Maw l’ont menée de Halifax à Vancouver, en passant par la Californie et la France.
With her French-language novels for youth and adults, award-winning author Martine Noël-Maw has travelled from Halifax to Vancouver, and to California and France.

We'll have a sign-up sheet out all morning so feel free to stop by and take a slot for a 5-minute reading between 12:30 and 1:30 p.m.

Tracy Hamon Regina resident Tracy Hamon has two books of poetry This is Not Eden (Thistledown) and Interruptions in Glass (Coteau) and is currently the Program Officer for the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild.

Shelley Banks, MFA has lived and worked across Canada, and has also lived in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. She has an MFA in creative writing and her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in literary magazines including Grain, Room, Carousel, The Antigonish Review, Other Voices, and CV2. She is working on her first book of poetry and her first collection of short stories.

Don Kerr is Saskatchewan's Poet Laureate. He knows prairie culture better than most - he knows it from the inside out. He has made us aware of ourselves through his numerous volumes of poetry, his fiction, his many plays, his histories, and his interest in heritage. He served on the Saskatoon Public Library Board for eleven years, and as chair for five of those years. He was the first chair of the Saskatoon Heritage Society and the first chair of the Saskatoon Municipal Heritage Committee. He was also the Saskatchewan governor for the Heritage Canada Foundation. He lives in Saskatoon.