LitFest 2020

Michelle Parise, Alone: A Love Story: Experience a bit of Parise's Calabrese heritage as you cook along with her reading. Food is love, family, and all things Italian.

Vivek Shraya, God Loves Hair: Colour in Juliana Neufeld's illustrations from the 10th anniversary edition of the book as you listen to this reading. This book comes with an author-signed bookplate.

Beyond the Food Court: An Anthology of Literary Cuisines: The authors of this book are writers from diverse ethnic backgrounds that call Edmonton home. The reading is a selection of short parts from five of the contributors, each musing on foods found here and in their homeland. Enjoy this with a mix of international spices and accompanying recipes.

David Berry, On Nostalgia: Nothing says "memories of Edmonton" like a walk along the High Level Bridge, along with a cup of cocoa and sweet treats.

To kick off the festival in virtual space, the contributors to Beyond the Food Court — all writers from diverse ethnic backgrounds that call Edmonton home — gather to celebrate the launch of their anthology, along with editor and publisher Luciana Erregue.

Top-ranking podcasters Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow of Call Your Girlfriend discuss their new book, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close. Note: Admission to this event includes a copy of Big Friendship, delivered by Glass Bookshop.

James Raffan explores the challenges and opportunities that come with writing about the environment. He discusses creative nonfiction as an effective approach to engaging readers, and addresses the connections between wild spaces and Indigenous peoples, along with the challenges of voice and appropriation that exist for the creative nonfiction writer.

Three panelists with memoirs on incredible resilience, and finding your identity amid challenges of all kinds. Featuring Helen Knott (In My Own Moccasins), David A. Robertson (Black Water), and Christa Couture (How to Lose Everything).

Alone: A Love Story is Michelle Parise's memoir of falling in love, the fallout of infidelity, and everything messy in between. Her memoir is the inspiration behind the hit CBC podcast of the same name.

This seminar will touch upon some of the questions that keep me awake: How do you write a memoir when your memory’s shot? How do you tell the truth when the truth hurts others? When is nonfiction therapy and when is it art?

In these pandemic times, we're all looking for ways to spend time in the great outdoors. Authors Gina Rae La Cerva (Feasting Wild), Julia Zarankin (Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder), and Tørbjørn Ekelund (In Praise of Paths) offer stories and ideas on how to make the most of your time outside. Hosted by Alexis Kienlen. 

Join us in meeting Ian Keteku, spoken word poet, musician, and artist, with a look into his celebrated body of work, his new book and latest album, and an immersive Q & A about his process of writing, his history as an artist, and where he is headed next. Ian's work is transcendent, defying the boundaries of single disciplines and genres, and asking listeners to lean in and embrace art for all it has to offer. This event is not to be missed for fans of sound, words, and music. Hosted by Edmonton Poet Laureate, Nisha Patel.

From the distinct and vibrant voice behind Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi comes the story of pursuing a dream and defying the odds, reminding us all of hockey’s power to unite. Author Harnarayan Singh discusses his new book with Sportsnet senior columnist Mark Spector.

The youngest ever winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, Billy-Ray Belcourt mines his personal history to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be in his debut memoir, A History of My Brief Body. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place.

Jordan Abel is a multimedia artist with roots in exploring colonization through textual and poetic interpretation. His work encompasses multifaceted research and presents an intense, calculated and human look at the conditions of living in a colonial state. His works weave a technical mastery of elements and story, provoking us to think about how we read and what we're reading. His new work, out soon, is again defiant of a single genre. Join us in this reading and Q&A, hosted by Matthew James Weigel.

Co-curated by LitFest and Edmonton Poetry Festival, this year's Nonfiction Slam will feature prose stories and poetry entries. 4 stories, 4 poems, one winner. All glory. Grab a beverage and join in to be part of the live audience that votes for winner!

Everything you need to know about oral biography in one easy lesson, with renowned biographer Michael Posner.

New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Lindy West will be in conversation with Vivek Shraya.

Are you fascinated by poetry, languages, and art? Are you curious to witness Indigenous language reclamation and revitalization through creative self-expression? Then please join us for The Polyglot’s (www.the polyglot magazine.com) launch of our double issue—nimitêyaniy and nitêh. These issues were curated by Naomi McIlwraith and Dorothy Thunder, and feature 36 brilliant Indigenous poets and artists. This launch showcases a film of sixteen of our contributors reading their poems or talking about their art, weaving their insights on language, culture, and Indigenous identities

The Polyglot would like to acknowledge and deeply thank the Edmonton Arts Council for their support and funding of this project. A special mahsi cho to the Edmonton Poetry Festival for supporting us with this launch. The covers of the issues feature art by Lana Whiskeyjack (nimitêyaniy) and Jade Roberts (nitêh). The words of the issues correspond to tongue and heart in nêhiyawêwin (Cree).

Whether we’re writing memoir, fiction, or reported non-fiction, our ability and willingness to confront our own bias and privilege informs the quality, richness, and intellectual rigour of our work. Editor and journalist Lauren McKeon knows that recognizing bias is a messy and often uncomfortable task. It involves talking—and, more importantly, listening—to people who have different lived experiences than we do, and being deeply honest about our own assumptions, experiences, and shortcomings. In this 90-minute workshop, McKeon discusses strategies for tackling bias in our research and writing, and how to intentionally hold space for diverse voices. The author also talks about how she learns from each project, and why recognizing privilege and bias is constant, ever-evolving, and always worthwhile work.

If “the poem does not start until you start to tell the truth” then a poet’s work is to be relentless in the search for that truth both on and off the page. This workshop is an excavation into the bone, into the truth, to write poems from the depth of our personal experiences. Through a series of writing exercises and discussion, the workshop will ask, “Who am I?”, “What do I want to say?”, "Why does my story matter?" and “What is my responsibility to myself and to the audience in telling my story?”

A one-on-one conversation with author Amanda Leduc (Disfigured: On Fairy Stories, Disability, and Making Space) and poet Brandon Wint (Divine Animal).

It's Food Matters + the annual Brunch of Writers rolled into one online potluck! Host Jennifer Cockrall-King leads the way with MasterChef Canada season 3 winner Mary Berg and Beyond the Food Court Luciana Erregue and Mila Philipzig.

Both Cole’s activism and journalism find vibrant expression in his first book, The Skin We’re In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power. Puncturing the bubble of Canadian smugness and naive assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year—2017—in the struggle against racism in this country. In conversation with host Jesse Lipscombe. This event is presented by STARfest.