Canada hosts the two best Author Festivals in the World
Just back from the International Festival of Authors in Toronto. This event together with Montreal’s Blue Metropolis, has to be the best if its kind in the world. Every year both Festivals bring together hundreds of acclaimed authors from around the planet. Both encourage attending authors to meet and mingle, the former in the Fall (meet, Toronto), the latter is the Spring (mingle, Montreal). I’m sure that more than just glowing jacket cover blurbs flow forth from these gatherings. Friendships and hangovers for a start. Insights, publishing deals, perhaps even the odd love affair or two, as well. One thing is certain: not enough Canadians are aware of these amazing, Olympian events. Directors Geoffrey Taylor and Linda Leith should be feted, congratulated, Order of Canada-ed for what they have accomplished.
What other English language festivals worldwide can boast of bringing together more authors of such outstanding quality?
Thanks to the assistance of Shane, Kelly (see below) and Alfreda in the media office,
my time interviewing the following authors was filled with nothing but smooth, hitch-free conversation.
Stay tuned and listen, in the coming weeks, for chats with
Rivka Galchen
Nedeem Aslam
Joe Dunthorne
Aleksandar Hemon
Ross Raisin
Junot Diaz
Anne Enright
Nam Le
Joseph Boyden
Amitav Ghosh
But before this, a conversation with Beryl Barr,
co-ordinator of one of the biggest used book sales in the United States, and Rebecca Rosenblum,
author of Once [published by biblioasis] a collection of short stories which won this year’s Metcalf Rooke Award.
