STARFest offers up a bookshelf-full of events

In only four years, the St. Albert Readers' Festival has become an established beacon on the literary calendar, having hosted such luminaries as Will Ferguson, Carmen Aguirre, Charlotte Gill and Carol Shaben.

Local bibliophiles are getting ready to crack open the spines on a new edition of their favourite festival, one that will see the long-awaited appearance of some of this country's most-celebrated authors.

"I still have to keep pinching myself that we are finally bringing Boyden and Martel to St. Albert, and I am not the only one who is excited if the ticket sales are anything to go by," exclaimed library director Peter Bailey, referring to headliners Joseph Boyden and Yann Martel.

"But it's not just a two-man show. All of our authors are garnering a lot of interest. With Giller Prize winners and nominees, Leacock Medal nominees, and a raft of Best First Novel award winners, we are delighted with our 2014 lineup."

That lineup includes St. Albert-raised author Padma Viswanathan who was recently announced as a nominee for this year's Giller Prize.

The festival runs from Oct. 17 to Nov. 3 and features 11 names, each hosted by one of eight local writers including Janice MacDonald, Marty Chan, Stacey Brotzel, Diana Davidson, Anne Bailey, Paula Simons and Curtis Gillespie.

Here's a synopsis of the first five author events.

Ian Hamilton – a writing racehorse

The man behind the Ava Lee series started out as a newspaper and magazine writer but it took a major health scare to transform him into a novelist. Having just recovered from an aortic aneurysm didn't stop him from kickstarting his new career into high gear.

"I came out from the hospital and sat down to write, and I didn't stop," he said, adding that the story ideas came out of the blue as well. "I had no idea. I played around with writing but never dedicated myself to it. When this hit me, I decided that if I was going to do it, I'd better do it. So I sat down and I started to write."

Now 68, he wrote four books within that first year, a prolific pace by anyone's standards. That was 2009. Now, he has six novels and a novella in the series, with the latest one, The Two Sisters of Borneo, released in February. The King of Shanghai is set to come out in December.

They relate the experiences and adventures of a titular character, a young Chinese-Canadian forensic accountant. Hamilton is the star of the first STARFest event, and he's coming prepared to talk about his books, his career and the business of being a storyteller.

"One of the big differences between my business days and the writing days is just how lonely writing is. It is a very lonely profession. My life before this was the opposite – 100 phone calls a day."

He said that even though he meets many people who approach him and confess their love for his books, it always catches him by surprise. The film and television rights for the Ava Lee series have been purchased. No word on when those versions might come out.

Susanna Kearsley and Eva Stachniak – the Russian connections

These two authors are set to discuss their recent novels, both of which have a distinctly Russian inspiration.

"Both our books are about Russian Empresses named Catherine: mine about the first Catherine (who was the widow of Peter the Great) and hers about the second Catherine, who was called 'the Great' in her own right," Kearsley explained. "I think that will make for a fun and fascinating discussion, at least for me, and hopefully for our audience, too."

She is a former museum curator, an experience that probably helped greatly when writing her modern Gothic romance mystery novels such as Mariana and Every Secret Thing. The Firebird is about a young woman who has the gift of remote viewing: using an object as a touchstone to see people and events that relate to it. She needs to use it to prove that an old carving once belonged to Catherine the Great.

She describes this new book as a "sort-of-sequel" to her New York Times bestselling novel, The Winter Sea.

"When I was finished writing that book, the historical characters wouldn't sit down and be still, they kept moving in my imagination, so I knew I wanted to continue their story, but I didn't want to use the same modern-day frame."

Eva Stachniak, on the other hand, has a new book that features the same former czarina as she reflects on how she came to rule throughout nearly 40 years of Russia's Golden Age.

The Polish-born author came to Canada as her own country was set to plunge into its Solidarity crisis but she never really left.

"As every immigrant is, I was asked where I was from. My writing is the answer to this question. I tell stories from behind the former Iron Curtain, stories I brought with me and re-examined through my new, Canadian point of view."

Empress of the Night is her second novel about Catherine the Great. She reveres the historical figure, despite how she tried to make ruin of Stachniak's own homeland.

"She was one of the most powerful women in history, whose reign shaped the history of Russia, Poland, and Ukraine. She was a towering figure in the Polish consciousness, hated and cursed, held responsible for Poland's disappearance from the map of Europe for over a century, and for me, [she was] an irresistible challenge."

Padma Viswanathan – homecoming queen

This St. Albert-raised writer is thrilled to come back to the city with her second – and newly nominated for the Giller Prize – book, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao. It recounts the Air India tragedy from the perspective of a therapist trying to help family members recover from the loss of their loved ones, all while he is deeply affected himself.

A few years ago, she brought her first novel, The Toss of a Lemon, to a reading at Chapters.

"That was sort of my return as a writer but this is certainly my first time coming to the public library, which is the key institution in St. Albert that formed me," she admitted.

"I still remember the librarian, Sydney, when it was still at its Grandin Road location. She was one of my childhood heroes. I always wanted to work there. Eventually a couple of my friends did. I did a program to train to work there called Teens in Library Training – TILT, I remember. They never hired me. Instead now, 30 years later, they're bringing me back to read. It's quite a decent way to make up for that oversight when I was a teenager, I think."

Looking forward to her chat with "distinguished" host Danielle Metcalf-Chenail. Viswanathan isn't sure of how full the room will be for her presentation but "I'll give just as much effort for four people who are related to me as I will to 100 people who aren't. I'm not interested in how many readers there are, just that they're all passionate and willing to engage in talking about books."

Joseph Boyden – bringing history home

This native Ontarian has always felt connected to history, meaning both his own history and that of the country too. His writing has always brought with it the experiences of the First Nations peoples of the northern part of his province. His new book, The Orenda, is no different.

"It draws me. Sometimes I don't choose my subject matter; it chooses me. This is a story I've known all my life, about the Jesuits coming to that part of Canada. I grew up in that area. My family being mixed blood, I've always been fascinated by history. I believe that history is not something of the past. It controls where we are now and will control our future."

Some might think that it's possibly the driest source material that one could use to create a compelling story. Boyden disagrees.

"You're always battling against that idea. I was told in school that Canadian history is boring. It's simply not the case. I think it's some of the richest subject matter you can write about. I don't look at it as a challenge so much as I can't wait for people to read about this because it's something that I don't think a lot of people know about."

He added that his audiences confirm that argument. His books have a strong following and have received critical acclaim too. His 2008 title, Through Black Spruce, won the Giller Prize that year, while this current work was shortlisted for the same prize last year.

Jane Christmas – humour (and honesty), she wrote

Going up for the Leacock Medal for Humour is no laughing matter. Jane Christmas' newest book, And Then There Were Nuns: Adventures in a Cloistered Life, could almost have gotten the prize just based on its title.

Her other titles are similarly structured and amusing. There's The Pelee Project: One Woman's Escape from Urban Madness, What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Mid-Life Misadventure on Spain's Camino de Santiago de Compostela, and my favourite, Incontinent on the Continent: My Mother, Her Walker and Our Grand Tour of Italy. She describes that last one as a road trip with her "mobility challenged, stubborn, argumentative mother."

In real life, however, the author talks straight about the serious events that led to her name being on such wordy covers. She was involved in a bad car accident in her mid-40s.

"It shocked me into taking some action in straightening out my life and start realizing my dreams. I felt constantly run down, ragged from working and commuting, and also from juggling motherhood as a single parent. By chance, I spent a holiday on Pelee Island and it totally changed my life."

The destination is a small island in Lake Erie, considered to be the southernmost inhabited point in Canada. She kept returning to the spot and eventually decided to make the big move.

She sold her house and quit her job and moved. She still wrote though, offering a weekly column to the National Post about the experience of detaching from modern life and getting back to basics. The series was a hit. A publishing contract followed, and the rest is history.

Christmas will be sure to offer some anecdotes about the trials and tribulations of being a writer when she makes her appearance.

"It wasn't easy. I had to keep working full time to support my family, but I loved writing so much that I would get up at 5 a.m. and write until 7 a.m. when it was time to get my kids up and ready for school. And then I'd write constantly on the weekends."

The acclaimed author admits that her reputation is for irreverence but her new book started off with her serious exploration about joining a convent.

"I also wanted to write the book that would appeal to people of faith and to people of no faith; that it would be modern and meaningful, and raise some of the difficult and hypocritical things that people encounter in religion."

Memoirs have a duty to be honest. That's why she included details of her rape from 30 years ago, something she admits was uncomfortable to include in the book, but she knew that her readers appreciated her honesty and rawness.

"Many of them, like me, were raped and never reported the attack to the police but instead suppressed the memory. We all know that anything we try to suppress will eventually come screaming out of us."

She, like the others, is eager for STARFest as connecting with readers is what writing is all about, she says.