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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 [log in to unmask]