The Literary Festival Season Has Begun!

So with the onslaught of Fall book awards come the annual procession of literary festivals. Canada is lucky enough to have quite a few of them, although there is always room for more! As you all know, I used to work for Wordfest, so this is a topic near and dear to my heart.

I just finished reading a fun little piece in the Globe and Mail interviewing various authors about their coping techniques on the festival circuit. And just so we’re clear, most authors are dying to be on this kind of tour, and find it an honour to simply be invited to these festivals. There are of course, those mega super stars who can pick and choose what they do, but for 98% of Canadian writers, these appearances are fun because they’re finally getting paid to read their own writing to audiences.

As Mark Medley notes at the beginning of the article, there is no shortage of debauchery at these things, and I can attest to that. Dave Bidini wrote an article about this, and lucky me, the inspiration for this came from a certain evening we both participated in during Wordfest. (Side note, he’s attending Wordfest again this year, go check him out!) Everyone seems to think that your university years are when you party hardest. In my case, it was when I was exposed to poets, musicians and fiction writers looking to let loose in the mountains.

Each festival week that I worked was a mixture of exhaustion and stress.  But every time an author I really admired spent time chatting with me, or genuinely thanked me for my hard work, it made it all worth it. I even have a few, treasured gifts from some writers who I can now call friends, which is just icing on the literary cupcake for me.

This is all to say that I’m a bit nostalgic when this season rolls around, because I miss the roller coaster of emotions that would typically accompany my work at the festival. However, being in the audience is just as fun, especially because I don’t have to worry if the readers are going to party too hard for their own good that night. They probably will, but I’ll be fast asleep at home while it’s happening.