Forty-Eight Hours and Counting...

There is still time... you can be on the cancellation/waiting list for Dinner Tickets. Call 519-843-4391 right now. But if all else fails, "Readings Only" tickets are available at the door.

And don't forget:  YOUNG WRITERS CONTEST winners will be announced at a one-hour gathering on Sunday, May 29, in Aboyne Hall (no admission charge) at 11:00 A.M. (OPEN CONTEST winners will be anounced during the Readings Intermission.)


See you all there!

Tickets are going fast; especially the "Dinner (& Readings)" tickets. Buy them here.

"There’s a good reason the cover image is of a broken plate.”*

According to Chatelaine, short story writer Sarah Selecky could easily be the next Alice Munro. That’s a formidable statement, but equally formidable is Selecky’s Giller-shortlisted nomination for her debut collection of short fiction, This Cake is For
the Party.

"The cover of Sarah Selecky’s debut fiction collection is striking in its insistence upon ruin, lack and nostalgia: A jaggedly reassembled smashed plate is home to a cluster of crumbs, a consumption-smeared fork and the counter-insistent title declaration, This Cake is for the Party. [...]Selecky sinks her teeth into something far more powerful than the violence of loss: She skillfully wrests devastation from its customary gloom of lamentation and regret, and bares its overwhelming beauty."
— Lisa Foad, The Globe and Mail
Read more...

You'll find This Cake is For the Party and tickets to the Festival at Roxanne's Reflections Book & Card Shop.

And you can meet Sarah Selecky (along with Johanna Skibsrud, Richard Greene, Alison Pick, Cynthia Holz and Nicholas Ruddock) at the Festival on Sunday, May 29, 2011.
*The Star

Healing Words

It is remarkable how many physicians have produced great works of fiction and poetry—from Anton Checkhov and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author Vincent Lam. It leads one to wonder what links these seemingly disparate vocations. According to Austin Ratner (a first-year MFA student and graduate of Johns Hopkins medical school) and author of The Jump Artist (Bellevue Literary Press):
"They're both what are sometimes described as callings [...] ways of meaningfully addressing myself to human experience and suffering."

"If you take the heart of The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, the lungs from Vincent Lam’s Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures and the brain of Liam Durcan’s Garcia’s Heart, you might end up with a body that resembles Nicholas Ruddock’s The Parabolist."— Clair Cameron, The Globe and Mail



On Sunday, May 29, physician/author Nicholas Ruddoch will join Johanna Skibsrud, Richard Greene, Sarah Selecky, Alison Pick and Cynthia Holz for an afternoon of readings. There's a good chance you will hear something from Mr. Ruddoch's novel The Parabolist.