For book lovers suffering the post-summer blues, put these dates on the calendar: Oct. 14 to 24.
Yes, it’s two weeks until Halloween, but it’s also the 10-day run of LitFest: Edmonton’s Nonfiction Festival.
Set in a variety of venues across Edmonton including Milner Library Theatre, Haven Social Club, Citadel Theatre, City Centre Mall, city hall and Sutton Place Hotel, it celebrates stories about life, travel, food and wine, politics and nature.
In the tightly packed sessions there are a series of performances, intimate conversations with prominent authors and hands-on workshops. And yes, debates will wrestle important and sometimes heated issues such as the environment.
“We tackle big ideas with passion and humour. Writers are quite naturally drawn to topics they are passionate about. Non-fiction does a beautiful job at taking a slice of life and charging it with new meaning,” says producer David Cheoros.
The line-up of 50 authors is second to none. In a special salute to Alberta Literary Award winners, the festival presents Mia Atienza, recipient of the Amber Bowerman Memorial Travel Writing Award for One Flamenco Night, and Joan Dixon, recipient of the James H. Gray Award for her stirring non-fiction work The Perils of War and Mother-Son Relationships.
Will Ferguson, a Calgary-based award-winning humour writer with books published in more than 30 countries, reads his newest release Beyond Belfast, chronicling a hike in search of his ancestry in Northern Ireland.
“He’s such a genuine Canadian author. He has certain roots in other countries, but he has a distinctly self-effacing, funny perspective on the world and he’s immediately engaging.”
Perhaps one of the more impassioned debates on the controversial oilsands will involve Satya Das, author of Green Oil: Clean Energy for the 21st Century and Ezra Levant, author of his new book Ethical Oil.
“It will very much involve the audience and I suspect they will represent a fair cross-section of ideas. It will not be a quiet discussion. We want a mix of measured ideas and impassioned conversation.”
And in a related concern, geopolitical expert Cleo Paskal discusses the meat of her new book – Global Warming: How Environmental Economic and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map.
Joseph Boyden and John Ralston Saul, two of Canada’s leading thinkers, offer new dramatic insights into their respective novels on aboriginal culture.
“They attempt to make sure we remember the extraordinary Canada that has shaped the way we are.”
Popular culture is the theme for Dan Gardner (Future Babble) and Andrew Potter’s (The Rebel Self) discussion.
“Andrew’s book is about how counterculture is marketed and subverted into the mainstream,” Cheoros says. “Dan is a brilliant analysis expert and looks at how predictions as an industry are accepted and no one follows up to see if they are accurate. And in scholarly analysis, most experts are as accurate as monkeys. Yet we still listen to the experts because we don’t know where else to go.”
Elsewhere, Cheoros, a self-professed food lover has put his stamp on the festival by pairing several literary events with cuisine. In Savouries, three authors describe the plethora of available locally grown food and then chef Gail Osbeck serves up a four-course prairie meal.
A Brunch of Writers partners food columnist Amy Jo Ehman and cartoonist Sara Leavitt for a lavish spread at Sutton Place Hotel. And at Genu-Wine, Litfest tackles global issues accompanied by serious wine sampling.
In a special salute to Legacy Magazine, the festival launches Alberta Encore, a coffee table book of favourite stories, photos and poetry. The kick-off also features a discussion with publisher Barbara Dacks and Morinville writer Marty Chan among others.
The festival opens with a jazz cabaret and has lined up a story slam and the cinema of Guy Maddin featuring William Beard.
Individual tickets range from $5 to $75 and passes are from $50 to $150. Call 780-420-1757 or purchase online at: www.tixonthesquare.ca. For complete information, check out www.litfestalberta.org.
