Amanda Farnel, executive director of the Saskatchewan Festival of Words, said she was pleased with the return to in-person events in 2022 and revealed 2023’s initial author line-up: Guy Gavriel Kay, Michelle Good, Paul Huebener, and Bradley Somer.
“I was really nervous about what was going to happen,” Farnel admitted. “We hadn’t had an in-person festival in two years. You always have that thought in your head that, ‘Oh no, no one’s going to come back,’ and we’re just going to have to fake people into the sessions and pretend we have attendees.
“But people came out! And they really enjoyed it, and everyone was so happy to be here.”
Farnel said she was relieved at how well the festival did this year. The combined in-person/online format will be the standard going forward.
Farnel and Sarah Simison, the festival’s managing artistic director, gave profuse thanks to the interns, volunteers, facility staff, and the Lampblack Studios team for all their work making the event happen.
Michelle Good, author of Five Little Indians, and Dr. Paul Huebener, a professor of English and the author of Nature’s Broken Clocks, were expected to be in Moose Jaw this year but were unable to appear. They have committed to coming next year.
Guy Gavriel Kay will also appear. Kay was born in Weyburn, SK and raised in Winnipeg. He helped Christopher Tolkien in editing The Silmarillion (1977) and is the author of works such as The Fionavar Tapestry, Tigana, Sailing to Sarantium, and many more.
Bradley Somer has degrees in archaeology and anthropology and travelled the wilderness in Canada, the US, Australia, and the Caribbean for many years before deciding to write fiction instead. His book Fishbowl is the story of a goldfish’s perspective as it falls 27 stories after leaping from its bowl.
Final Festival panel: Between the Sheets
(Editor’s note: the lowercase spelling of katherena vermette is by her preference.)
The final panel of the Festival of Words featured authors katherena vermette and Will Ferguson discussing the relationship between authors and their fans. The panel was moderated once again by Amanda Leduc, author of The Centaur’s Wife.
Ferguson, a three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, said that his fans fall into genre-defined categories — and resent his switching back and forth.
“I do find that there seem to be people who say, ‘I really like your nonfiction, but your fiction is too dense, I don’t like it,’ or ‘I like your fiction, but your nonfiction is silly and trying too hard.’ And they’re both correct.”
Ferguson wondered if there was a difference between readers and fans, and eventually concluded that readers read for the books, while fans read for the author.
“So, the trick is to bring your fans from one genre to the other,” he laughed. “That’s always the challenge.”
vermette agreed with Ferguson, noting that because she has written in multiple genres she often encounters surprised fans.
“The other day, we were in the bookstore, and someone was surprised that these picture books belong to me, because they knew me as a novelist,” she said. “It’s kind of disconnected in that way. But I also feel it all comes from the same source. I always seem to talk about the same themes, it’s just in a different costume.”
Ferguson and vermette both said that while staying true to themselves is important, they do try to be considerate of their readers.
“I love that sense of being in conversation with the reader, both as you’re writing the book and then also when the book comes out into the world,” Leduc said. “Because, you know, part writing a book is going out into the world and promoting it, and literally being in conversation with your readers.”
