January 15, 2008
News for Animaritime 2008:
Animaritime Announces Scheduled Guests
Moncton, NB., Jan 14 -- Animaritime is excited to announce their current scheduled guests: K.V. Johansen, Jones, Nicole Letersky, and Svetlana Chmakova.
K.V. Johansen is the author of a number of books, including the "Torrie Quests" series of children's novels, the "Pippin and Mabel" picture books, and other fantasy and science fiction for children and teens. She is also the author of Quests and Kingdoms: A Grown-Up's Guide to Children's Fantasy Literature, a history of and guide to children's fantasy which was shortlisted for the 2006 Harvey Darton Award in the UK. Although her academic background is in Medieval Studies, she held the 2001 Eileen Wallace Research Fellowship in Children's Literature from the Wallace Collection at UNB and received the 2004 Frances E. Russell Award for research into children's literature from IBBY Canada. Torrie and the Pirate-Queen was a nominated title for both the 2006 Silver Birch and the Diamond Willow Awards, and won the 2006 Lilla Sterling Award. She will be doing her official book launch of Treason in Eswy: The Warlocks of Talverdin Book II at Animaritime this year.
Nicole Letersky has been active in the cosplay world for many years and has done work at a few Conventions around north America. Last year she was a Guest/Panelest/ Judge at Animethon, AnimeEvolution and AiKon and was asked to be the Mascot at Sakura Con in Seattle. She was a guest down at a LARP Medieval fighting event in Flordia last year and I was flown down to be International Judge For the LARPIES ( Live action Roll Play Awards..like the Oscars but for nerds) in 2006 in Los Angeles. She runs a few classes to do with sewing and wig work locally, and is currently working on the costumes for a Star Wars Fan film being shot hopefully early this year. She will be running several cosplay panels at Animaritime as well as being a guest judge in this years masquerade.
Jones is the creator of the popular webcomic Vampirates. The comic is about a group of vampires who end up stealing one of the Newfoundland ferries and try taking it to Saskatchewan. Jones will be doing panels on drawing and creating webcomics this year at Animaritime.
Svetlana Chmakova was born and raised Russian, and came to Canada at the tender age of 16. She finished high school here, then graduated Sheridan College with a three-year Classical Animation Diploma and is currently a freelance artist, as well as a fledging North-American equivalent of a manga-ka. She has been in a love-hate relationship with comics and manga for several years now because she is too weak to break it off. Svetlana has drawn for how-to-draw-manga books, RPG manuals, toy designs, animation, book covers and a bunch of online comics. She is most famous for her series DramaCon, and will be doing a book signing this year at Animaritime.
Animaritime is the Maritimes' only anime and gaming convention. Animaritime 2008 will be the fifth annual event, and is expected to be the biggest yet. Animaritime will once again be holding events such as theater-style anime showings, panels and workshops, masquerade, an artist's alley, vendor room, card and board games, RPG's, console games, and much more.
For more information about Animaritime, contact the venue coordinator, William Belanger at [email protected]. For general information about Animaritime please visit http://www.animaritime.org. If you have any questions, please send them to [email protected]. For information on how to reserve a room in the Animaritime convention block at the Delta Beausejour, please visit http://www.animaritime.org/location.html.
