Our 20th Anniversary festival was a fantastic success!

What’s the recipe for a successful literary festival? 

Let's start with readings by six Canadian writers who inspire and entertain.

Add an enthusiastic, standing-room-only audience.

Our resident bookseller (Roxanne's Reflections Book and Card Shop in Fergus)

and MC extraordinaire (yup, that's Roxanne showing off her dance moves)

supervises the set-up of her mini-bookshop, aided by some enthusiastic

volunteers.

Why not include a post-readings reception and an illuminating Q&A with the authors?

Of course you also need treats and snacks galore. (Yes, there was wine!)

Throw in an intermission that features a chance to mingle and chat, and then applaud the winners (the young and no-so-young!) of the annual short story contest.

And how about offering a bookshop in the lobby?

On Sunday, May 25 in Aboyne, Ont., the sun was shining and the Museum garden was in bloom – who could ask for more?

Patricia and Laura, ready to take tickets.

Authors Brad Smith and Anita Stewart chill in theGreen Room before

the readings.

Authors Susanna Kearsley, Scott Chantler and Mary Swan

relax with snacks before the readings get underway.

Scott Chantler keeps the audience spellbound as

he explains the background of his graphic novel, Two Generals.

Andrew Pyper reads to a packed house

in Aboyne Hall at the Wellington County Museum.

“Thank you for a wonderful event last Sunday,” said one of the contest winners who was in attendance. “I was thrilled with my prize and learned so much from the Q&A session. Writers are so generous and encouraging to other writers. I hope to attend every year!”

Yes, another successful Elora Writers’ Festival is done, and the hardworking committee is already looking ahead to next year.

Stay tuned for information about some upcoming new initiatives we’re working on, such as the EWF Book Club and an evening of Books & Beer. Details to follow!

Thanks to our six authors – Mary Swan, Brad Smith, Anita Stewart, Scott Chantler, Susanna Kearsley and Andrew Pyper – as well as our volunteers, sponsors and (of course!) all those who came out to support and celebrate great Canadian writing.

We can’t wait until Festival 2015!

Treats from Fergies of Fergus. Yes, those are edible notebooks!

Famous First Words

I just discovered this article by Andrew Pyper on The Globe and Mail website. It's a fitting addendum to yestersday's post.

"Novelists can be superstitious ninnies sometimes. The good-luck coffee mug we set next to the keyboard every morning, the song we put on six-hour repeat, the Ideal Reader we summon to mind who kisses the tops of our heads and sends us off on a new day’s fabrications. Some of these fixations are helpful, others worrying symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder. But no writerly preoccupation is more universally shared – or has been the cause of more agonized hours staring at the blank page – than the First Line. [...]
     How we begin a book is widely considered to be a matter so crucial, so decisive in determining whether a book soars or stalls, so elusive and mysterious, it’s often spoken of in terms closer to spell-casting than sentence making. So much is asked of the first line it can sometimes feel like an impossible burden to be carried by a handful of words."
— Andrew Pyper, The Globe and Mail
Read more...

Buy all of Andrew Pyper's books here...