Eden Mills!

What a weekend!

A celebration to justify four exclamation marks!!!! 

   
I was really thrilled to be a last-minute addition to this year's Eden Mills Writers' Festival. I'd attended the festival a few years ago, and it has held a special place in my heart ever since. 

The first night was an outdoor dinner in a gorgeous backyard with a magnum of champagne, Wellington's beer, the lovely cake above (which was even more delicious than it looks and upon which Leon Rooke pronounced the most amazing and booming benediction), and getting to sing Four Strong Winds around the campfire before boarding a school bus with the other writers heading back to the hotel in Guelph. (That's the abbreviated version.)

Then it was the big day, where hundreds of writers and booksellers and booklovers descended upon the beautiful town of Eden Mills. 

The lovely stone mill.

Stunning scenery around town

Lilypads galore

One of the highlights of the weekend was finally meeting Amanda Leduc and Allegra Young in person, aka the Bare it for Books girls. And I saw the (amazing!) calendar, too... but more about that later.

I wish I had taken off my sunglasses! But I was too giddy to think straight.

Then, after a quick wander up and down, we went to check out the beautiful venue for the "Young Writers to Watch" event. It was the same place I'd read the last time I was there, and as pretty as I remembered.

Scoping out our reading site, pre-event

My absolutely brilliant reading buddies, Grace O'Connell and Iain Reid.

The lovely Jael Richardson tweeted this photo of me reading!

I especially like the photographic evidence of people actually in attendance.

I was happy our set was first, as it meant I could relax and enjoy the rest of the day. The only downside was that two of the writers I was most looking forward to hearing, Catherine Bush and Wayne Johnston, were each reading in separate sets at the same time. (This happened again later, when everyone was forced to choose between Miranda Hill/Tamas Dobozy/Emma Donoghue and Andrew Pyper/Linwood Barclay/Ailsa Kay and Michael Winter/Joseph Boyden/Colin McAdam.)  Talk about hard choices!

Along with spending time with my fellow "young writers to watch," some of the major highlights of the weekend included meeting and hanging out with David Bergen, as well as getting to meet Catherine Bush, whose books I have loved. Regrets: not tracking down Wayne Johnston and Emma Donahue to meet them and get books signed. I neglected to realize that the Toronto-area authors could and would pop out at any time to drive home. I also really enjoyed meeting some Twitter folks (readers and writers), as well as some very kind readers and listeners who came to talk to me after our event.

So, to conclude: meeting readers and other writers and hanging out with one's literary idols --- pretty awesome!  Plus there was pie:

Pie!

Eden Mills Writers' Festival

Eden Mills!

I had lugged along my laptop with the intention of blogging throughout the festival, but although the Guelph Travelodge receives top marks in continental breakfast (mini fat-free yogurts! hard-boiled eggs!) and extremely friendly and helpful staff, its high-speed internet leaves something to be desired. (Namely, a wireless signal.)

So this is me trying to blog in a timely fashion for once and get it all down before I forget.

First of all, the village is completely picturesque. Old stone houses with gracious porches and lovely gables. And to make their gorgeous town even better, Eden Mills is going carbon neutral. To that end, all the writers received adorable little Mason jars of water in lieu of bottled water (though I forgot mine in town...still kicking myself).

I read at the Mill, a beautiful location on the river. It was a unique set-up, with the microphone on the opposite side of the water from the audience, who seated themselves on blankets and lawn chairs along a grassy slope. I liked the magical moment of walking over the little bridge, though I felt oddly apart -- just a little too far to see or hear how most the audience was responding. I was nervous and very happy I was in the first set because soon as I was done, I was able to relax and enjoy the rest of the day. Many of the writers I wanted to hear were reading at the same time, so I did a lot of hopping around between locations. And though the festival has apparently suffered rain the past two years, we had gorgeous sun the whole day.

It was wonderful to reconnect with writers I've met over the past year since Mother Superior came out (actually just about exactly one year ago now) or earlier at the Banff Writers' Studio. I was amazed by how many people I already knew when I arrived! It was also a pleasure to meet other writers for the first time. It's a unique kind of event where you can have a twenty-minute conversation about first sentences, or talk in an amorphous way about a novel-in-progress where people actually understand you instead of only nodding in an uncomfortable or confused way.

I also met some very fine writers with whom I'd only previously interacted in the virtual world: Rebecca Rosenblum and Zoe Whittall. (Get their books -- you will not regret it!) There was even a brief sighting of Julie Wilson of Seen Reading fame, who was reading as part of the Fringe.

Oh, and I met Stephen Henighan, who -- though reputed to be one-third of "the snarling dog-head of the anti-establishment shit-talking Cerberus of CanLit" -- turned out to be a total sweetheart.

What else? I drooled over the wares at the Biblioasis stall and met the charming Dan Wells. After lengthy deliberation, I had a piece of plum pie at the end of a festival dinner featuring no less than ten pie varieties. I drank $2.50 Budweiser and watched a football game with Paul Quarrington and Ray Robertson. I had a friendly exchange in the elevator with Lynn Johnston (yes, THAT Lynn Johnston!), though I was too bashful to introduce myself.

But my favourite part of the festival: the organizers and volunteers (100 of them!), almost all of them local to the town and extremely dedicated . They welcomed us upon our arrival (calling "Welcome, writers!" "The writers are here!") as we debarked from the school bus that brought us from Guelph, they fed us, procured coffee, and enthusiastically and intelligently discussed all of the books. The story of how the festival started is an amazing one of happy happenstance, and I am so thrilled that they are still keeping it going. And of course, I'm even happier to have been a part of it. I've already used the word magical once in this post, so I'll just say...wow.