It’s a race to the thrilling conclusion for the St. Albert Readers’ Festival this year. In barely more than two weeks’ time, local literature lovers have been treated to visits by nine nationally and internationally-renowned authors.
It’s a race to the thrilling conclusion for the St. Albert Readers’ Festival this year. In barely more than two weeks’ time, local literature lovers have been treated to visits by nine nationally and internationally-renowned authors. There have been Claire Cameron, CBC host Terry O’Reilly, Steven Price, Angie Abdou, Giller winner Elizabeth Hay, Trevor Cole, Emily Schultz, Toronto Star journalist Tanya Talaga, and Roberta Rich, who takes the stage with host Caterina Edwards tonight.
Even though we’re getting to the denouement, the action just isn’t letting up. Well-known CBC host Bill Richardson arrives on Friday to herald in the last week and a half, which includes some more outstanding talents.
Living (and writing) the fantasies
Kelley Armstrong has all of the great genre categories and sub-categories in her wheelhouse: paranormal suspense, modern Gothic, and urban fantasy, just to name a few.
She makes up some incredible stuff for a living, and it’s a lot of fun.
“It really is. I’ve been very lucky that way. I get published in what I enjoy writing,” she exclaimed. “I feel like there’s no restriction on me from an audience or a publisher’s standpoint.”
It’s hard to keep track of her full bibliography, with dozens of titles to her name. There’s the
Cainsville series, the
Darkest Powers series, the
Darkness Rising trilogy, the
Blackwell Pages trilogy, the
Age of Legends series, the
Nadia Stafford crime series and the
Rockton mystery series, not to mention
Women of the Underworld, the
New York Times bestselling series.
Seriously? Everything she writes turns into a series. She even has serial novellas to her credit.
She suggested that it was her lifelong interest in folklore and mythology that first brought her to consider creating stories of her own design. She read every genre and has been writing all her life but when it came down to her sitting at the word processor as a full-time author, something paranormal won the day.
It’s even more impressive to think that she’s only considered herself full-time for 15 years.
“I’m very lucky. I get to meet writers all the time and yes, there are those who have not been able to give up a day job or those who did give it up but eventually had to go back to it. I was listening to another Canadian writer speak recently. Somebody had asked why he still had a job when he was so successful. He kind of joked that ‘Canadian successful’ is a whole different thing.”
She just had the final
Cainsville instalment come out two months ago, and she’s still hot in the schedule of her
Rockton series, what with
A Darkness Absolute having hit the shelves earlier this year and
This Fallen Prey, the third title, on the slate for a February drop. Usually, she sticks to one adult and one youth title every calendar cycle.
So how does she find the time to travel for events like STARFest? It’s all part of the business. Besides, she added, you have to know your audience.
“Reader interaction is just great. Getting to know readers, and getting those emails from people who are just entertained … what I’m writing, that’s what the point is.”
Armstrong is set to have the spotlight at Forsyth Hall on Sat., Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. with no guest host.
A life fantastic
Writers know the age-old adage to write what you know. Maybe that’s just common sense.
For Cea Sunrise Person, it’s good, solid advice on writing success. She’s had a pretty unique and fantastic upbringing, so she set out to tell the world some incredible stories straight out of the photo album of her extended, free-spirited family.
By her accounts, her early life was anything but normal.
“Crazy,” she laughed. “Crazy enough to fill two books.”
Person is behind the matched set of bestselling memoirs
North of Normal and
Nearly Normal.
“My grandparents moved me to the Kootenay Plains of Alberta around Jasper when I was a baby. We lived in a tipi there for four years, totally away from civilization, totally self-relevant, and then we moved to a different teepee camp. I lived in and out of teepee and tents and crazy shelters for the first decade of my life.”
Her second decade doesn’t sound much more stable. She entered a modelling competition and was a catalogue model (to escape her family, she said) and doing photo shoots in New York by the time she was 15, eventually retiring from that life before she was 30.
Despite the wildness of it all, she finds that people are still able to really relate and appreciate her stories.
“Amazingly yes. It’s funny because when I wrote my first book, one thing that held me back from writing it for so long was ‘who’s going to relate to this?’ I don’t know anyone else who’s really done it the way I did. I thought people would just think it was too weird. But I think the universal themes of growing up feeling like an outsider and wondering if I’d ever fit in with my peers rang true for a lot of people. And just the whole ‘crazy dysfunctional family’ thing that a lot of us have to deal with in different scenarios and ways.”
She wanted to become a writer ever since her teen years. Knowing that her story was interesting was one thing that encouraged her to put it all down on paper. Discovering that it was therapeutic enough to get out kept her going.
She’s taking a break from the autobiographies as she tries her hand at putting some great fiction down. Don’t worry, Person-lovers. She said that elements of her crazy life will likely still find their way into her new stories too.
Person will come to St. Albert on Sunday when she takes the stage with host Miji Campbell at 2 p.m.
This author has 22 minutes
Mary Walsh: you know her, you love her. She’s an actress and comedian probably best known for her work on CBC TV’s
This Hour has 22 Minutes. Who hasn’t secretly longed for her character Marg Delahunty to visit the White House in her warrior outfit and ask some pertinent questions of certain individuals on camera.
Well, she’s a social activist too and now, she can also call herself a writer with her first work of fiction.
“[She’s] a very busy woman and we are just thrilled that she has been able to fit St. Albert and STARFest into her schedule to share her debut novel,
Crying for the Moon,” said Heather Dolman, the festival’s programmer. “And with Peter Brown as interviewer … what a winning combination.”
The story is about a young woman’s coming of age in Newfoundland in the 1960s.
Certainly, Walsh already has a lot going for her, which is probably why her event will mark the cap to this year’s Readers’ Festival when she arrives on Mon., Nov. 6 at the Kinsmen Banquet Centre.
Dolman calls it “the grand finale for yet another incredible year for STARFest.”
“The cast of authors and interviewers in this, our seventh year of STARFest, has been outstanding, covering a wide variety of topics and genres, all incredibly powerful and thought-provoking.”
Walsh will be hosted by Peter Brown, former local CBC Radio host and prominent humorist in his own right.
