Hunter Valentine brings attitude to Windsor By Lindsey Rivait Arts Editor November 21, 2007 Hailing from Toronto, Hunter Valentine is more than a name; it’s an attitude.
“We wanted a name that represented a certain kind of attitude we were trying to carry in this rock game,” says electric guitarist and lead vocalist, Kiyomi McCloskey. The name is actually the “porn star name” (first pet’s name plus the name of the first street that person lived on) of a friend of the band’s.
McCloskey and her band mates, drummer and backup vocalist Laura Petracca, and bassist Adrienne Lloyd, liked the fictional name so much that it stuck with them. “It created this whole fictional character around the name,” McCloskey explains. “This is a person that has the ability to break because they’ve been broken in.”
The three members come from very different music backgrounds, only adding to Hunter Valentine’s unique sound. >> | Eye on the Arts: TRP By Lindsey Rivait Arts Editor November 21, 2007 University of Windsor electrical engineering graduate, Ahmad Shawky (a.k.a. TRP), is helping to put Windsor on the map as a hip-hop hot spot.
With his diverse first release, My Dedication, available at HMV, iTunes, Napster, and Rhapsody, success is sweet for the once shy Shawky, who overcame his fears at a grade school talent show where he was determined to prove those who didn’t believe in him wrong.
“No one believed that I would do it, but their doubts just made me want to do it even more, not to prove them wrong, but to prove that I could do something that I really set my mind to,” admits Shawky, whose talent helped the cover band he fronted to win the competition. >>  |
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| Writer in Residence: David French By Marissa Reaume Lance Writer November 21, 2007 In the 1950’s, an Grade 8 boy discovered his passion for writing after reading Mark Twain’s famous novel, Tom Sawyer. That boy was Canadian author, David French. When asked how Twain sparked his interest in writing, French recounts, “I think it was the first book I read in which I identified completely with the protagonist. I was Tom. I understood him. I’d done comparable things and felt exactly the way he did. It shocked and excited me that a writer could write a story about me a hundred years before I was born.”
Now, roughly half a century after turning the pages of Tom Sawyer, French is one of Canada’s most popular and critically-acclaimed playwrights. Among his best known works are the semi-autobiographical Mercer plays: Salt-Water Moon, Leaving Home, Soldier’s Heart, and Of the Fields, Lately. Leaving Home was named one of Canada’s 100 Most Influential Books (Literary Review of Canada) and one of the 1,000 Most Essential Plays in the English Language (Oxford Dictionary of Theatre). A recent revival of Leaving Home by Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre played to sold-out houses and was nominated for five Dora Mavor Moore Awards. >>
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