Cathy Ostlere's Lost: A Memoir
Reading and Stage Performance

Cathy Ostlere's stunning Lost: A Memoir has been adapted for the stage and will be presented at Prairie Theatre Exchange from January 19th - February 5th, 2012.

You are invited to attend a free reading by Ostlere, who will be in Winnipeg for a series of events. MWG members will also receive a 15% discount on tickets when attending the play after Ostlere's free talk on Friday January 20th.

Reading
Friday, January 20, 6:30 pm
FREE
Prairie Theatre Exchange, 393 Portage Ave. 3rd flr. of Portage Place.

Performance
Friday, January 20, 8:00 pm
15% discount for MWG members - see PTE pricing at: http://pte.mb.ca/tickets/single.htm
Prairie Theatre Exchange, 393 Portage Ave. 3rd flr. of Portage Place.

If you are interested in attending either or both of these events please email info@mbwriter.mb.ca or call 944-8013.

About the Book
September, 1995. Cathy and her family are waiting for a phone call from David, Cathy's youngest brother, who is on a sailing journey. It's a phone call that never comes. With each hour that passes and still no word, Cathy must come to terms with the unacceptable but bleak inevitable: something has happened.With its roots in Winnipeg, Lost: A Memoir is an honest and true story of a woman's search for a beloved brother lost at sea, and an intimate exploration of what it means to be passionate, alive and to follow one's dreams.

About the Author
Cathy Ostlere’s first book, LOST, began as a series of poems but grew into creative non-fiction essays with the assistance of Sharon Butala, Greg Hollingshead and Edna Alford at the Banff Centre and Roberta Rees at the University of Calgary. Karen Connelly, of the Humber School of Writing, guided LOST into a memoir. Essays excerpted from LOST have been short-listed for the National Magazine Awards, Western Magazine Awards, CBC Literary Awards, and Prism International and Event Magazine Non-fiction Contests. In 2009, Lost: A Memoir was shortlisted for the prestigious Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction. In 2010, she co-wrote with Dennis Garnhum, Artistic Director of Theatre Calgary, LOST: A Memoir, a 90 minute one-woman play performed in Calgary and expected to tour Canada over the next two years. Her first novel, Karma, a verse novel written for young adults, was released by Penguin in Canada and the U.S. in March 2011.

Cathy Ostlere was born in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. Her family eventually settled in Winnipeg, the home of her Ukrainian grandparents, where Cathy completed high school and a degree in English at the University of Manitoba. Post-graduation she worked in Toronto for Warner Publisher Services. In 1983, she began a journey that would take her through sixteen countries in eighteen months. A chance encounter with a sailing crew allowed her to visit thirteen of the Greek islands and cruise the coastline of Turkey. In 1984, she continued traveling, going east to India, South East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. Upon her return to Canada in 1985, she settled in Calgary. Over the next ten years she was an at-home parent for three children and a freelance writer. In 1990, she took her first creative writing class.

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