Writers ready for STARFest

There's no need to dust off your telescopes even though the stars are almost out for STARFest. The third annual St. Albert Readers Festival is set to kick off in 10 days. For nearly two full weeks, local literature lovers will be treated to more authors than in both of the first two years combined.

There are so many authors on the billet that even many of the hosts are authors themselves.

"I'm really pumped about STARFest this year," exclaimed library director Peter Bailey. "It is bigger and better than ever. Hosting a literary festival is a high-profile way of demonstrating that the 21st century library is about people, about connections and conversation – not only collections."

He added that the festival is a direct result of the library's recent master plan, Cultivating Community, produced in 2010.

"STARFest comes from that plan, part of the library's objective to serve St. Albert in new ways, to focus not only on the things we have, but the things we do," Bailey said.

"I love how it makes the library a real community gathering place in October, with our community engaged in conversations about ideas and words and thoughts. And especially gratifying in our splintered digital age: people are talking to each other, really cultivating community at their local public library."

There are 12 authors headlining this year's STARFest, and several of them will be hosted by other writers and authors, two of whom are last year's winners of the Governor General's Award for Fiction (Linda Spalding) and non-fiction (Ross King).

Here is a look at some of the people who will be taking the limelight between Oct. 15 and 27.

Anakana Schofield – Oct. 19, with Trevor Cole, and hosted by Michael Hingston

This author has a fine history of writing for The Globe and Mail plus numerous other Canadian newspapers and has a strong background in theatre and film, including documentary filmmaking in Ireland.

It's that last note that perhaps gave her the muster to pen Malarky, her début novel published just last year. It tells the story of Our Woman, a doting Irish mother and wife of a farmer who comes into her own a little late in life, but finds out it's better to come late than never at all.

It won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award this year, was on 16 best book of the year lists, and was up for two other book prizes. The CBC also had her pegged on its writers-to-watch list last year. Now local audiences can catch this writer chat about her work and her craft live and in person. She said that she has wanted this moment to come for a long, long time.

"It has been my single ambition to come to Edmonton and St. Albert," she explained.

The author stumbled onto a copy of The Best Edmonton Stories by local historian Tony Cashman. She loved it so much that she read it to her son.

"Literacy is vital. Reading is the best thing we have in our universe and thus that makes readers the best thing in our universe," she said. "We need to focus a great deal more on reading and readers and less on writing and writers. We need to return to higher standards of discourse around reading, ways of reading and language and up our ambitions for what the novel can become."

Carol Shaben – Oct. 19

It took personal tragedy to inspire Carol Shaben to come up with her first book, Into the Abyss. Her father was one of several passengers on a commuter plane that went down in northern Alberta in 1984. He was one of four to live.

Two of the others were Paul Archambault (who was the only one to escape uninjured) and Const. Scott Deschamps, the RCMP officer who was escorting Archambault. Despite his prisoner's history of theft and breaking-and-entering, Deschamps decided to take off his prisoner's handcuffs pre-flight. Archambault rewarded that trust by working hard to keep all survivors alive in the sub-zero temperatures.

Shaben said she was compelled to write this story not just because her father was involved, but because of how the event transpired.

"It was one of those things where I would tell the story and people would say, 'That's unbelievable!' You had the sense that this was an unbelievable piece of history… but it was one of those things that had its hooks in me."

"I kept thinking that this has got to be told, otherwise it's just going to be consigned to the dustbin of history. It was too important – not only the fabric of our history as a province and as a country – but also too telling about what true character is and how we often judge just based on their station in life. Really we don't know what people have, what heroism, lives inside them until they're tested."

Hero though he was, Archambault didn't become a celebrity. He was still itinerant and destitute, and died in a frozen ditch in Grande Prairie barely six years afterward. Shaben said the book was also her way of saying thanks to the man.

Into the Abyss won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction last year.

Andrew Pyper – Oct. 20, hosted by Paul Matwychuk

Perhaps the most prolific author on this year's STARFest slate, Pyper has six bestselling novels under his belt, including his most recent title, The Demonologist. Like Schofield, he has high hopes for meeting readers in St. Albert.

"I'm always surprised by the different ways that different audiences respond to a reading – do they gasp at the scary parts? Do they yawn? I love the questions they ask. I always learn something new," he said.

Pyper will read from The Demonologist, a book he describes as a psychological thriller with horror elements. It has already been a top Canadian hardcover fiction bestseller and is being developed into a film by Hollywood director Robert Zemeckis, of Forrest Gump and Back to the Future fame.

The story is about a university professor who put his knowledge of demonic mythology to work to rescue his daughter from the underworld.

For Pyper, getting people to read anything is practically as important as reading something worthwhile.

"Literacy is nothing less than the measurement of a culture – a civilization – and the priorities it sets," he said. "Reading is synonymous with freedom. It saves lives and at the same time it defines lives."

He added that being a full-time writer means he lives a bit of a solitary life, far from true to his generally social nature. His invitation to public events like STARFest means a nice change of pace.

"I get to put on some proper clothes instead of the pajamas I wear to work, get out and meet some people and talk about the things that matter most to me."

Todd Babiak – Oct. 25, hosted by Anne Bailey

Babiak is no stranger to Edmonton nor is he entirely unfamiliar to audiences in this city. He has been to the St. Albert Public Library to support his own books and those of others at previous STARFests.

He'll be taking the lion's share of the limelight this time around.

"I'm very comfortable in the star role," he replied, drily. "It's a real thrill. I like coming to St. Albert. It's such a city of ambition in its way, and a literary city."

"It's a city where you can come to town and have a great conversation about literature. Not every bedroom community can do that," he continued, stopping his foot just short of his mouth. "I know that because St. Albert isn't one."

The good-humoured former journalist is probably the only one among all of the current and previous presenters to rally support around two brand new books. Last month, the University of Alberta Press released Just Getting Started, his love song to the Edmonton Public Library's first century of bringing books to the masses.

It's his other book that's getting most of the attention these days, however. Come Barbarians is his fifth novel and a distinct departure from his other lighter yet still literary works, including Toby: A Man, The Book of Stanley and The Garneau Block. He described it as a book about a couple that moves to France to save their marriage yet find themselves in dire circumstances beyond their control. A tragedy starts them on a path through dark politics, crime and intrigue that further threaten their union and their lives.

He wrote it as a book that he'd enjoy reading, in much the same vein as Graham Greene or John le Carré, two of his recent favourite authors. Come Barbarians has already received a lot of interest from the public at large too.

"I've never seen a book – that I've written – take off so quickly, that's for sure. In a week, I would say I've probably sold what took six months with the last book. There's just a lot of interest. Maybe it's because it's more of a commercial book or maybe because it's just plain better! I don't know. This one is not funny and not light."