It’s common in the grassroots world to say something “started in someone’s living room,” but in the case of the Whistler Writers Festival, it’s true.
When writer Stella Harvey moved home from Europe in 2000, she was searching for a support network in Whistler for her writing. She put an ad in the local newspaper looking for other writers to critique and discuss each other’s work, and that weekend 26 people showed up at her door.
Just over a year later, she embraced the demand and hosted the first of what would become the Whistler Writers Festival, inviting UBC instructor Andreas Schroeder to come up to Whistler and lead a weekend of workshops, lectures and readings.
“The first festival, if you could really call it that, was in my living room with 20 people and Andreas Schroeder. And everybody stayed with us, which was interesting…” she laughs, speaking by phone on a rare break from pre-festival planning. “The focus in those early days, the first three to four years, was really on writing and developmental workshops for writers, and people stayed with us because we didn’t have any money. I had somebody from Vancouver I had never met before stay with us. Andreas stayed with us. And that went on for a while.”
With the support of her writers’ circle, Harvey would go on to write two novels and grow the festival to what it is has achieved this year: 55 guest authors and publishers from around the world, and an expected 1,500 visitors from as far as Saskatchewan, Ontario and Washington. Even more impressive, the influx comes in what is typically considered a slow season for Whistler.
“The festival used to be like 80/20, locals versus visitors, and now I would say it’s flipped – about 70 per cent come from outside of Whistler,” says Harvey, who just received Whistler’s 2015 Champion of the Arts award this summer. “After Thanksgiving is a slower time for Whistler, but it draws in a different crowd. And the fall can be absolutely specular here with the colours and the weather.”
Running Oct. 15-18, the festival (WhistlerWritersFest.com) has expanded to Thursday night and will launch with a fun evening of comedy quickies and writerly humdingers hosted by Charlie Demers (CBC’s The Debaters).
Meanwhile, on Friday highlights include Cooks with Books – a chefs reception and book signing with star blogger Emily Wight (Well Fed, Flat Broke), award-winning poet and author Susan Musgrave (A Taste of Haida Gwaii) and best-selling wine writer James Nevison (Had a Glass 2015) – as well as a new full-day workshop on pitching your book ideas to publishers, led by agents, editors and publishers from Anvil Press, Random House of Canada and more.
It’s a prime opportunity to rub shoulders with industry leaders and glean practical advice for your own projects.
“The intimacy is one thing that we have tried hard to preserve,” confirms Harvey, who organizes it so the majority of events take place within the confines of the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, where festival attendees can stay at a discounted rate. “It’s the thing that everyone says every year on their evaluation forms: the festival was intimate and they were able to have a drink with so-and-so or do this with so-and-so.”
On Saturday, in addition to the always-popular workshops on writing for young readers, plotting storylines and writing memoirs, the festival will mix things up with its first-ever workshops on writing comics and writing short films, as well as a reading salon starring the graphic novel. If you’re craving some fresh air, however, you can also take off for a few hours and hit the hiking and biking trails, the Village shops, or any of Whistler’s acclaimed spas.
You’ll want to be back in time for the crowning event of the weekend, though. Saturday night’s main stage reading features an evening with CBC (and Westender) personality Grant Lawrence in conversation with Order of Canada recipient Lawrence Hill. Hill is the author of nine books, including The Book of Negroes, the story of an 11-year-old child abducted from her village in West Africa and forced into slavery, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, and both CBC Radio’s Canada Reads and Radio-Canada’s Combat des livres.
Hill’s latest novel, The Illegal, tells the timely story of a young marathon runner, Keita Ali, fleeing for his life from a repressive government and forced into hiding.
“We’ve had Larry here a few times before and we’ve been really keen to have him back. He’s a Canadian icon and a wonderful reader,” explains Harvey.
If you don’t manage to get your fix up in Whistler, though, the Vancouver Writers Festival follows hot on its heels Oct- 20-25, featuring more time with Lawrence Hill, and panel discussions with the likes of John Vaillant (The Golden Spruce) and Anakana Schofield (shortlisted for the 2015 Giller prize for Martin John).
The Vancouver Art/Book Fair, the only international art book fair in Canada, is also in town, setting up at the Vancouver Art Gallery Oct. 16-18. An estimated 5,000 fans will mingle with over 100 small-run and indie publishers showcasing books, magazines, zines, digital publications, performative and other experimental work at this free event.
