Wolfe Island LitFest

All year, as I’ve been going around from literary festival to literary festival, there has been a quiet but persistent legend growing in my mind of the Wolfe Island LitFest.

“Have you heard of Wolfe Island?”

“Have you been to Wolfe Island?”

“If you get invited, GO!”

And then I was invited. So I went!!!

The 11th Annual Wolfe Island Joe Burke Literary Festival

You can see from the poster that this happened in June. But that was a mere blink of the eye ago in blogging time...

Rumour has it that Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip (!!!) is sometimes in attendance. Joseph Boyden is usually there, and this year his absence was lamented by many (including me). I was told by a few people that the first public readings of sections of The Orenda and Through Black Spruce happened on Wolfe Island. (I don't know if this is true, but it was a fact related with a significant amount of pride.)

The mystique of Wolfe Island was such that right up until a few days before I left, I wasn't 100% sure how I was getting there or where I might be staying. It was the kind of uncertainty that otherwise might have made me nervous (I like to plan! I like to visualize!), but I also knew that I shouldn't worry...I knew it was all going to come together.

I was charged with connecting with visiting Irish writer Kevin Barry upon leaving the train and to take a taxi to the dock, where we would be met by someone in a boat. Somehow, without ever having met before, Kevin and I spotted each other immediately, and along with his wife Olivia, easily found a cab.

The taxi drove along Tragically Hip Way, which caught the attention of the Irish, and as a long-time Hip fan, I had the fun task of trying to explain how awesome they are and the place they occupy in the national consciousness.

We were found by the lovely people who needed to find us (including the inimitable Mark Mattson, whose family plays a role in this wonderful festival), and we crossed very choppy waters on a little speedboat. Not knowing exactly what to expect -- or rather, having ignored some of the concrete information I did have at hand -- I was wearing heels, which made the boat boarding process slightly more nerve-wracking than it ought to have been. City girl mistake!

On a boat!

Then we crossed to the island, which was beautiful. We were fed, welcomed, introduced to a whole host of lovely Wolfe Islanders, taken to a remarkable abode known as the Duck Club, and then, later, to the venue. 

Beautiful peonies on the lunch table

 
The reading venue was a beautiful spot. The festival is supported by Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, an charitable environmental group that works to protect the lake and keep it safe for drinking, fishing, and swimming.

Gorgeous light at the venue

 

Listeners gathering

Posters from previous years

Steven Heighton introducing Ken Babstock

Ken Babstock reading

Kevin Barry's (hilarious) reading

The photos are lacklustre and incomplete, I know. But all of the readers were amazing, those pictured as well as those not. Mostly, I was too much in the moment to worry about documenting things. Tanis Rideout read a poem about Wolfe Island which was full of references to past festivals and which was somehow moving and funny even without access to the full knowledge to understand all the allusions.

My own reading started with an introduction from Dave Bidini (!!!) and some microphone trouble, and I really enjoyed the reading itself. There were actual, palpable good vibes. At one point, I was startled to look up and notice Sarah Harmer in the audience. I got super into the band Weeping Tile after they broke up (sadly!), but Sarah Harmer’s solo album You Were Here was a major theme with me and my friends during my undergrad. (Listen to this as a sample if you don't already know it...then buy it.) I was lucky enough to see her play at least half a dozen times over those years. I was so thrilled she was there and even more thrilled when she came up to speak to me afterwards!

After the readings, everyone ate, drank, and made merry. A lot of us watched part of the World Cup game between England and Italy in a nearby garage while an eclectic soundtrack, (including "Poets" by the Tragically Hip, achieving a quintessential interdisciplinary artistic CanLit moment for me!) blared at full blast. 

Merry-making evidence

Dreamy drive through a wind farm

Bundled up outside the Duck Club before a night out

Then that night Dave Bidini and his band played at a beautiful patio venue on the water, where sadly my phone was too dead to take any good photos. Although I did work up the nerve to ask Sarah Harmer for a photo that Kevin Barry was kind enough to take and send to me. She is so gracious and lovely!

Me and Sarah Harmer!

I don’t want to unravel any more of the Wolfe Island mystique, so I won't get into the antics that played out after dark (most of which, due to exhaustion, I didn't even witness).  Maybe you really don't want to know what the poets are doing... Let's just say that there are good reasons to keep guns under lock and key.... 

Victoria Writers Festival

(I'm playing catchup here on my blogging, though I'd actually written most of this in Victoria.) 

I had a rough start to my journey that involved horrendous Montreal traffic, missing my flight, waiting a bunch of hours for another flight via Toronto which then ended up being diverted to Vancouver, where we spent a bunch of hours waiting for Victoria's fog to clear. Eventually they sent us to hotels at around 2 in the morning to sleep for four hours before an 8 a.m. flight that (luckily!) turned out to be one of the only ones to make it out of Vancouver that day.

I'd called ahead to the hotel to make sure I'd be able to check in early and get some sleep, and I even got there in time to get some breakfast before an intense power nap until the early afternoon. I was sorry to miss Jan Zwicky's talk on Poetry and Meaninglessness (doesn't that sound amazing?? and apparently it was), but the sleep and shower were more important at that point after a full 24 hours of stressful travelling. 

The festival event itself was stellar...the kind where you're absolutely riveted by everybody's reading and immediately want to run out to buy and read all the books you don't already have. I was nervous before the reading but I was happy with how it went. The other amazing writers were Angie Abdou, Ayelet Tsabari, Sarah Peters, Jay Ruzesky, and Annabel Lyon. 

It was fun to meet Angie in person after knowing her from Twitter, and Ayelet, after meeting briefly at Eden Mills. (At this point, looking back after the Vancouver festival, it seems crazy to think this was the first time I really hung out with either of them! Love you ladies!) I was sorry not to have remembered to bring my copy of 1996 to get Sarah Peters to sign it...it is one of the few books I can actually locate after the great post-fire-cleaning-move-jumble of earlier this year. 

It was also nice to re-meet Annabel Lyon, though I was a little too shy to say much. (It is just possible I may have accosted her in the bathroom at the offices of the Canada Council a few years back and introduced myself as a superfan. I've noticed that I am way, way more awkward around the women I adolize than the men...or at least feel as though I am...but let's not analyze that here. Is anyone else like this or is it just me?  Anyhow, I'd convinced myself that maybe I had only thought about introducing myself then, but actually hadn't...or that I'd waited for a more opportune moment in the hallway or something...but this remains unconfirmed.) She brought her daughter along to the reading, which was nice to see, so I managed to keep myself in check and not bother her with, well, all of the above!

Here are some quick cell phone snaps from Julie Paul, who was up in the balcony, to give you an idea of the venue.

Reading at the Victoria Writers Festival

We all did a Q & A up on stage later

There were so many lovely readers and people to talk to afterwards that I had to be hurried out to get a ride to the afterparty and I missed checking out the bookstore (which had already packed up)!  My friend H. came with her mom, which was so nice. I love meeting people's moms!

I got to meet other internet writer friends, too! 

Mega-selfie with Ayelet Tsabari and Will Johnson

The afterparty was at the lovely home of festival co-organizer John Gould and his partner Sandy, and it was a beautiful spread! I was unfortunately still really tired, in spite of my nap (and maybe partially because of the time difference, too), and so I caught a ride back to the hotel at the rather respectable hour of midnight (it's respectable either way you look at it...somehow managing to be both reasonably late and reasonably early). Nevertheless, I managed to have a lot of fun while I was there. I also had some really interesting conversations with people about their travels up north and have vowed (again) to make it up there one of these days.

Here are a couple of photos I nabbed from Twitter:

Me and Ayelet!

A photo where you can spot my encroaching fatigue:

 Twitter pals IRL: Me, Angie Abdou, and Ayelet

One party highlight was meeting the daughter of Julie Paul, one of the festival organizers. Thanks to Julie's posts on Facebook, I basically now regard her as a kind of celebrity. She offered me a cupcake (absolutely delicious and looked professionally made, which is not surprising because she has her own cupcake business!) I also got to hear her play and sing one of her own songs before I left. Pretty cool for a girl who (I think) just started high school not long ago. You rule, Avery Jane!

                  

I also got some nice goodies from the festival I've been using a lot, including some nice Victoria Writers Festival bookmarks that I'm using in the, oh, nine or so books I'm in the middle of right now and a giant Greater Victoria Public Library reusable bag with funky graphics that people keep commenting on and which has now been used for groceries, an overnight trip to Halifax, and even trick-or-treating.

All in all, a wonderful festival and a great experience and I'm so grateful to have been invited!

20 hours in Kingston

I think I left off of my trip recounting right around when I was running to catch the train to Kingston.  I made it in the nick of time, settled into a double seat by myself, ordered a coffee and ate the rest of my yummy mushroom risotto that I'd been too nervous to eat before my library event.  Then I read (and finished!) Skim on the way there and loved it so much. I wish I'd read it years ago!  

My train was almost an hour late, which meant getting to the hotel only around 9 p.m. --- too late to catch the event I'd hoped to see and too late to try to go to dinner. Instead I headed to the hospitality suite, which I was happy to find was very hospitable indeed: lots of yummy food and welcoming writers, including Lauren B. Davis, Marcello Di Cintio, and Corey Redekop (click through read about their own festival experiences!).   Before I turned in for the night, I also got to meet Shelagh Rogers in person! And as I wrote on Facebook (pretty much immediately) afterwards, any day with two hugs from Shelagh Rogers is basically awesome.

 

A welcoming flag at the hotel

Before my event the next day, I was able to catch the "You Are What You Read" session between Alberto Manguel and David Mason. It was hands down one of the very best (or maybe just most enjoyable?) events I have ever been to at a writers festival. Maybe because it was a discussion between two fanatical book lovers and collectors (David Mason is a writer as well as a preeminent rare book dealer), it got more to the heart of what I care about than the usual discussions about writing. For one it made me feel better about my own (problematically large number of) books, as well as my sentimental attachment to them and my desire to shelve them in idiosyncratic and biographical ways. And my inability to get rid of any of them, even the ones I dislike.

Alberto Manguel talked about how he now seems to interpret the world through the lens of Alice in Wonderland --- a situation to which I keenly relate. David Mason also told the story of a family that required all of their houseguests to read The Wind in the Willows when they came to stay. He said that it wasn't a matter of what they would think of the book...but of how the book would judge them. (I love this idea.) And this was just a small sample of the kind of conversation between these passionate book lovers. 

Look who's on the poster!

 (Clearly it pays to have a good photo...)

My event with Wayne Grady on Saturday afternoon was well attended and it was nice to hear the opening of Emancipation Day in his voice. For one thing, he made it funnier in his reading than I'd gathered just from the page. 

The audience was very warm, and the questions were interesting. The very first gentleman who stood up, though, seemed to have a question about why the "races" included in the event were non-white ones...but it was hard to tell what he was really asking as everyone immediately went to cut him off. I was interested in responding (or at least finding out what it was that he was going to say), but I wasn't given the opportunity. The general feeling in the room was one of alarm and expected offence, and although it is certainly possible that he was about to steer the conversation into terrible waters, I didn't actually get that sense from him. Oh well. 

After the event, I was lucky enough to meet my author patrons (two representatives from a Montreal firm who had contributed to the festival by sponsoring an author.) They were two lovely gentlemen, and I hope I can get a hold of the photos we took and post them here with everyone's permission. Even before we were introduced, I had noticed them in the audience -- giving me good vibes! I am always looking for friendly faces in a listening crowd and it is so much appreciated when I find some.

One of my favourite things at the festival was the Poem of the Day provided by my former Freehand-mate and Writersfest Writer-in-Residence Jeanette Lynes. Here's one from Sunday. I snapped a pic after my event and book signing when I ran out to spend an hour on Princess St. before catching the train home. 

Fresh poetry from Jeanette Lynes

Kingston: short but sweet and very fun! Next up, Victoria and Vancouver!

Tuesday Tuesday

I've been feeling the urge to blog, but without much to report except for various adventures on the internet. I've been laying low, reading and catching up (or trying) on emails, and preparing for a couple of events this weekend: a reading at the Deer Park branch of the Toronto Public Library on Friday and a discussion with Wayne Grady on Saturday in Kingston as part of the Kingston Writersfest.

That's right, I am doing an event with the only ever simultaneous dual Giller longlistee (for fiction and translation) Wayne Grady (!!!). So please do stop by if you'll be in Kingston...or just buy a train ticket and come to Kingston for the Writersfest, which has a ton of events I wish I could attend, too. (I'm there for less than 24 hours, but I hope to squeeze in at least one event around my own.) 

Wayne Grady and I are billed to talk about "Writing Through Race," which promises to be a very interesting discussion. (If you've read Emancipation Day, you'll know why.)  When it comes to Bone & Bread, it's not a subject I've really been asked about at all (or thought about, to tell you the truth), so I'm curious as to where the conversation will lead us.

And around the internet:

* I really like this NYT article on Elizabeth Gilbert, and one of these days I will actually get around to reading one of her books since it seems I get excited every time I read something about her. In this article, I like the way she talks about her readers (and about the implied attitude that male readers are more valuable or important than female readers), as well as the descriptions of her writing attic with winding shelves and hidden compartments. Also, it seems like she has actually populated the town where she lives in New Jersey full of her friends and in, at least one case, her favourite restaurant. That's kind of awesome. 

These are the relevant paragraphs about her readers:

The only time I saw Gilbert lose her equanimity, in fact, was discussing her fans. She detests the mind-set that certain readers are more desirable than others. “It’s the worst kind of arrogance. Shouldn’t the idea be that we want people to read, period? Isn’t it an honor if somebody chooses our books at all, whatever her background, whatever her education, whatever her level of perceived literary credentials?” She recalls meeting a woman in a Tulsa Barnes & Noble — “probably 65 years old, looked like an aging country singer with sad eyes” — who told her “Eat, Pray, Love” was the first book she’d read in her life, and she now understood why people read. “So if that’s the kind of reader I’m not supposed to want, well, Jesus Christ. Give me a few thousand more of those!”

Now that people have started telling her that “The Signature of All Things” will attract “a different level of reader,” she can’t help hearing the implicit slight in this praise: “You might be lucky enough to get out of your ghetto, now that you’ve found a better grade of readers, meaning male readers. I want to say: ‘Go [expletive] yourself! You have no idea who the women are who read my books, and if I have to choose between them and you, I’m choosing them.’ ”

*Also, this piece by Kerry Clare about her two different experiences of motherhood is one of the best things I've read on the internet this week. 

*Aaaaand if you find yourself as mesmerized by breakdancing as I am, you will probably enjoy watching this 6-year-old break dancer named B-girl Terra, who is now Britain's youngest breakdancing champion.

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!

IFOA envy

If you’re a writer who lives in Montreal, you may, like me, very occasionally suffer from jealous bouts of Toronto-publishing-world envy.  So much of the book industry is located there, not to mention so many amazing writers, and during fall festival season, it’s hard not to feel a little left out of things here in Quebec.  Sure, we have brioches and joie de vivre and, you know, bagels, but we are low  on high-profile English-language literary events.  Never mind the Giller, which at least I can watch online, it’s IFOA that really gets under my skin and turns it green.  I would be so excited to go hear Zadie Smith read, or Michael Chabon, or any of a dozen amazing Canadian writers I’ve seen listed on the bill.  (Amazing photos like this one from Teri V. – blogged about here – don’t help!  Love both the fandom and the post.)

Luckily, Emily M. Keeler’s posts at Hazlitt almost make me feel like I was there.  And some photos up here at Quill & Quire from the opening night party also furnish some good voyeurism.

It’s not all bad, of course.  I’m sure if I was in Toronto right now, it would be much, much harder to finish editing my novel.  Plus I’d be agonizing about which events to go to and which to miss.  I might even waste time getting stressed out about the fact that my pointy black kitten heels are coming apart at the seams, or about my chronic inability to make small talk while simultaneously holding a canapé.

But tonight is the Anansi party, which I’m sad to be missing.  When Anansi came to town for Rawi Hage’s launch earlier this month, I claimed (and I think I stand by this) that it was the best literary event I’d ever attended in this city.  A certain amount of champagne-induced hyperbole might have been involved in this statement, but I stand by it remaining in the top five, for sure.  Rawi Hage asked a few friends to read selections of their choice from Carnival, which struck me as utterly brilliant -- it added variety and kept things moving.  This was followed by a transporting musical interlude on an lute-like instrument that was new to me (can anyone who was in attendance enlighten me?), plenty of sparkling wine and hors d’oeuvres, and (clearly the best part) a zillion of my favourite people in attendance.   Not the least of whom was my editor (and Rawi's), who, bless her, gave me a much-needed six-day extension.

Which reminds me what I’ll be doing tonight instead of attending the Anansi party.  I think it was Aristotle who said, Write now, party later, dudes.

A photo from the Anansi event in Mtl, taken by DD

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.