Geoff Berner
@geoffberner
Geoff Berner graduated from the University of British Columbia Creative Writing Program, where he received the Harry and Hilda Smith Foundation scholarship for top undergraduate student. His first novel, Festival Man, received rave reviews in many publications. He has also written TV scripts for Sesame Street and published the graphic novel We Are Going to Bremen to Be Musicians. An internationally touring singer/songwriter and accordionist who has released six albums, and played in 17 countries, he lives in Vancouver.
The Fiddler is a Good Woman
Berner has been tasked with writing a biography of DD, a mysterious, charismatic and chimerical musician who has, it seems, dropped off the face of the earth. In the course of his search for DD, Berner interviews her friends, ex-bandmates, ex-lovers, and others. They paint such variable portraits of her that each successive attempt to describe her casts doubt on the previous testimony. As his project is taken over by the lively, infuriating, entertaining tales, a wounded, gifted, and complex DD starts to emerge from all the eyewitness accounts and swear-to-God true stories. Who is DD? Where did she go? And why wasn’t the book written? Travel through a world of knockabout musicians and chancers, on the trail of an inimitable artist who truly lives in the moment, for better or worse.
The How To Be Series
Dada meets the For Dummies book franchise in The Kolakovsky Press of Canada’s How To Be series of instructional booklets with illustrations. Launched in 2006 with singer-songwriter Geoff Berner’s How To Be An Accordion Player, the series has expanded to include Kris Demeanor’s How To Be An Asshole of Calgary, Carolyn Mark’s, How To Be A Boozy Chanteuse, and the just-published How To (Hide) Be(hind) Your Songs by Rae Spoon. You’ll want to collect them all!