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New magazine focuses on northern B.C. culture

What Rob Budde and Kara-lee MacDonald know about publishing magazines could fit in a thimble. It turns out that happens to be the size of northern B.C.
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The first edition of Thimbleberry includes a feature by Two Rivers Gallery curator George Harris on Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, one of the artists currently on display for his work blending Haida art with Japanese manga, seen above.

What Rob Budde and Kara-lee MacDonald know about publishing magazines could fit in a thimble. It turns out that happens to be the size of northern B.C.

The two academics are now the proud parents of the first edition of the brand new and only cultural magazine devoted to the upper block of the province. They named it Thimbleberry.

"It came in on Friday," said Budde, the poet and novelist from UNBC's English department.

"There's always that nervousness. There's a translation from digital to hardcopy, and you never really know how it's going to be until you hold it in front of you. The feel of a magazine is important. When you pick something off the shelf you feel the heft in your hand, you bend and feel the paper. This one feels nice."

The creation of the magazine came in a flash of conversation between Budde and MacDonald, an educator and author of the hit book of poetry Eating Matters. It was almost a call and response challenge.

Budde said "I've always wanted to run a literary magazine" and MacDonald said "well then let's do that" and after blinking at each other to see if the idea would blow away in a sudden gust of reality, they set to work on it. They volleyed potential names so as to fix a point to travel towards. When they agreed on Thimbleberry, MacDonald whipped out her credit card and registered the title on the spot. The arrow was now loosed.

A magazine without any content is called a poster. To add leaves to the trunk of this idea, material was required. Where would it come from and from whom? They knew they wanted to be a northern magazine, not one germane only to their home base of Prince George. They knew they wanted to illustrate artistic quality but also human personality.

"Your fear is you'll get a lot of submissions and they will all be terrible, but the options we got were excellent. The material was strong," said MacDonald.

Some of the names who provided poetry included Al Rempel, Jeremy Stewart, Jordan Tucker and others.

Prose came from Derrick Stacey Denholm, Adrienne Fitzpatrick, Josephine Boxwell and Jane Stevenson.

Visual arts were featured by Two Rivers Gallery chief curator George Harris who expounded on painters Judith Currelly and Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. Further to that, art reviews were written by Joanna Smythe, Catherine Ruddell and Andrea Fredeen.

Columns were provided by Andrew Kurjata, Gillian Wigmore, Greg Lainsbury and Jennifer Annais Pighin.

Budde and MacDonald each provided a book review - an art of its own sort - on, respectively, works by Eden Robinson and Sarah de Leeuw.

It's a conversation among northerners even though these contributors and the subjects of these conversations crisscross the map of this region.

"It's hyper-localized and geographically disconnected but there is a northern identity. I feel it. I'm not someone who feels much patriotism or nationalism, but I do feel like I'm a northern B.C. girl," said MacDonald. "My hope is for an even wider representation from the regional communities. The arts scene in each town is small and very local, but it's there, and how do we find it? I fear that lots of people who deserve to be heard didn't even know about us, despite all the efforts by Rob and I. We are hoping this gets around to people who might want to contribute in future editions."

Budde said he and MacDonald both lean steeply into the poetry scene, but achieving a balance of artistic and cultural genres was achieved in both their estimations.

"The exciting part for me was to see things graphically designed professionlly and look good on the page," Budde said.

"I'm not a graphic designer, I really suck at that, to tell you the truth, so to have the bare bones of the text but then to see it in a nicely designed package was tremendously rewarding. Concept Design did that work, and I think they were challenged by that because they haven't done this kind of thing before either, but they responded really well."

The present plan is to publish two editions of Thimbleberry per year. Subscriptions cost $20 for the two volumes, or get them for $12 at the newsstand.

Budde and MacDonald are in the process of establishing sales points across the north.

They are also looking to attract sponsoring advertisers. The first edition was made possible due to a donation from an anonymous foundation, but ad revenues will be needed to continue their publishing goals. Neither are making personal revenues from this venture.

The name Thimbleberry was chosen because of its suggestion of nature, a plant that provides a humbly beautiful flower and a nourishing berry that's the understated cousin of the raspberry. It is one of the plants that grows most quickly into areas damaged by industry or fire. It also contains the word thimble which connotes industry, work, in order to make handcrafted artisan treasures such as those stamped on the magazine's pages.

The flagship edition of Thimbleberry will be launched with a magazine release party at Artspace (upstairs at Books & Company) on Saturday at 6 p.m. There will be readings, appearances by both Budde and MacDonald (who now resides in Fort St. John) and some of the contributors. It's free to attend, all ages welcome, refreshments will be available, and the magazine will be for sale.