You might know that we are organizing a potluck fundraiser at the WFNS with Deborah Ellis, a Toronto-based children's author. The event is called "Breaking Bread for Afghanistan" and it will take place in our space (and the adjacent shared CFNC space) on Saturday, Nov. 9, 7-9pm.

Breaking Bread for Afganistan
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 27, 2002

WFNS, in collaboration with the Canadian Children's Book Centre and
Groundwood Books, is hosting a potluck fund-raiser in celebration of
Paravana's Journey, the latest children's novel by Deborah Ellis, on
Saturday, November 9 from 7 to 9 pm at 1113 Marginal Road, Halifax.
Tickets are $25 and each guest will contribute a potluck offering to
share. All proceeds from the event will support Women for Women in
Afghanistan, an organization dedicated to the education of Afghan
girls and women in refugee camps.

Parvana's Journey is the sequel to The Breadwinner, the inspiring
story of Parvana, a young girl growing up in Afghanistan, as she
struggles to make a life for herself and her family under the harsh
rule of the Taliban. With more than 200,000 copies in print, The
Breadwinner has won international acclaim. Parvana's Journey takes up
where The Breadwinner left off, following Parvana through present-day
war-torn Afghanistan as she searches for her family under a barrage of
western bombs and missiles, through fields littered with Taliban
mines.

Governor-General's Award winning author Deborah Ellis spent time in
Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan and Russia, talking with women and
girls. "I had no real skills to offer, or I'd be back there now,"
Ellis says of the experience. "So I asked them for their stories." She
met a woman whose daughter had cut off her hair and put on boys'
clothing so that she could work in the streets of Kabul to feed her
family. "Something just went click in my head and I knew that I had to
do a book about that person... A novel gives us the opportunity to see
into the hearts and minds of a people in a way that a news story
doesn't always do."

Ellis has contributed all royalties from both books to raise money for
a new library in Kabul and to raise funds to pay teachers in a country
where the salary of a teacher for one year is $750.

Deborah Ellis is a writer and mental health residential counsellor in
Toronto. Her first novel for young adults, Looking for X, drew on her
experience working in "the projects" in Toronto, and won the 2000
Governor General's Award. She will be releasing her fourth novel, A
Company of Fools, later this fall. Deborah will be visiting schools
throughout Nova Scotia as part of the annual TD Canadian Children's
Book Week celebrations which run from November 2 to 9 throughout
Canada.

Tickets may be reserved, and your potluck offering noted, by calling
the Writers' Federation at 423-8116.

For further information, contact: Jane Buss or Monika Sormova
902-423-8116 or see www.writers.ns.ca/pr27sep02

For further information on TD Canadian Children's Book Week in Nova
Scotia, contact: Kathleen Martin-James 902-420-1471 or
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