Carleton students have free admission again this spring to the city’s largest celebration of literature and ideas, the Ottawa International Writers Festival.
“I’m just thrilled that Carleton has continued to do this,” artistic director for the festival Sean Wilson said.
“We’re seeing more and more students coming out every festival.”
He said the challenge is getting people out the first time, but after that, they’re hooked.
“We’ve all got those scars from bad Shakespeare in high school,” Wilson said.
“Literature is a big part of what we do, but we’re also looking at science, we’re also looking at history, looking at politics,” he said. “Our festival is a festival of ideas.”
Some of those ideas, appearing in print, do not have the approval of the Canadian government.
Black Kiss 2, a 12-issue comic book series about Hollywood, sex, and vampires by scheduled festival speaker Howard Chaykin, was stopped at the borders of Canada and the United Kingdom.
Wilson said despite the censure of one of the “pioneers of American comic books,” he hopes they will be able to get the new books into the festival.
Chaykin is scheduled to speak on the limits of free speech, violence and sex in art, and creative freedom April 28 at 4 p.m. at Knox Presbyterian Church on Elgin Street.
The festival runs April 25 to 30, and has three pre-festival writer talks April 10, 18, and 20.
Famous names include Giller Prize-winning author Will Ferguson; Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series; CBC WireTap host Jonathan Goldstein, who will be speaking with Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret; international award-winner Guy Gavriel Kay showing his new book River of Stars; and Lee Smolin, founder of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, who will be defending his position that time is the only thing that is real.
Wilson said the festival continues to attract international talent because, despite some struggling independent bookstores in Ottawa, people in the city are still hungry for books.
“We’re selling more books at the festival every year. For the last four years book sales have continued to climb,” he said.
The writers festival is held twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.
At last fall’s festival, Wilson said book sales were up 30 per cent. Between both festivals last year and including a few smaller events held throughout the year, he said $45,000 worth of books were sold.
“We’re changing the way we buy the books, but people are still buying books,” Wilson said. “We’re still hungry.”
About 10,000 people attended the spring and fall festivals last year, he said.
The festival is run by a small group of volunteers and paid staff.
Throughout the year there are 90 volunteers contributing more than 1,000 hours, Wilson said, and only four full-time staff.
“We have a third of the staff of any other literary festival in the country, of the big ones,” Wilson said.
“We’re a lean, mean, fighting machine. All of our resources are focused on delivering the talent to the city.”
