Vancouver Writers Fest 2018 - Equity, Inclusion, Access

I think this was my 10th or 11th year volunteering for the Vancouver Writers Fest. It's one of my most favourite things to do in the city - for a week on Granville there are tons of events focused on all things lit (heh). It's the best deal in the city - if you commit 12 hours you are eligible to a free ticket to an event and as long as there is space at events your volunteer pass gets you in for free. I've been doing the volunteer front of house thing for a while, either as an usher or this year all my shifts were as the volunteer front of house manager. The new Artistic Director Leslie Hurtig has really done an amazing job. The diversity of events and the free day (more on that in a bit) really showed how having new blood infused into a long running event can make a difference. 

All events on the Saturday were free. FREE. It was awesome to see how full the events were. By making events centred around books and reading it adds value to our community especially in an era where gaslighting the public is commonplace complete with the  silencing of marginalized voices. 

The nerd that I am took notes at all the events this year. I'm so glad I did, because for the most part, each event was great, exploring many complex themes. It helps me remember what I learned and whose books I need to get from the library. Here's a flavour of what I saw:

Finding Home

To be home is to belong. Home is a place, but it is also a feeling; one increasingly absent for tens of millions across the globe, whether refugees or settled immigrants.

Authors:

Elaine Castillo (America is Not the Heart)

Amitava Kumar (Immigrant, Montana)

Sisonke Msimang (Always Another Country)

Moderator: Kathryn Gretsinger (CBC)

This event was probably my favourite and one of the best things I've seen at the Writers Fest in all my years attending. The authors had such great chemistry on stage together which led to a really interesting conversation about the diaspora, the complexity of identity and the politics of language and nostalgia. The conversation went beyond the cliched notion that immigrants are " torn between 2 places." Home doesn't just mean geography, it is rooted in language and feeling. 

Elaine Castillo started out being an academic (she still is, she has a great critical mind and fierce brute honesty) who wanted to dig deeper into the granular reality of life. She incorporates a class analysis into her work - talking about how immigration can often flatten issues like class and the disparities that exist in so many ways in the class structure (like capitalism, colonialism, racism, etc.). There's a reluctance to talk about it in traditional American literature. I loved how she told us off the bat that she doesn't translate Tagalog words in her novel for the reader.  If white writers don't have to provide a glossary of hipster terms related to Brooklyn, then why should writers of colour always have to explain the meaning of their words. She also talked about the tension between the privilege of not caring about leaving a place and the romance of the place you left behind. 

In the case of Sisonke Msimang, she grew up in exile from South Africa and growing up, she constantly moved from place to place until Nelson Mandela was freed from jail. When Mandela was freed her family moved back to South Africa. She didn't have a choice  - her parents made that choice for her. She talked about how most stories from South African are big stories, stories centred around an extraordinary backdrop where mostly male characters are at the centre. When the backdrop of the struggle is apartheid, the small things can lost, no granularity and texture - you have to go and explore where life is lived to truly tell the story. Everything centred around Nelson Mandela - nothing would change until he was free and then when he was freed, everything was supposed to change. And it didn't. All of this meaning was wrapped up in one man. 

 In the new South African she is a person who has a huge amount of power, simply by being part of the middle class - something that she's working on to prepare and recognize and reconcile in a way. She talked about Truth and Reconciliation and its failures because it means nothing without action. Action to shift power and organize. Powerful stuff. 

Amitava Kumar is man from India who talked about home as what you're always writing towards. That it's what you always go back to - not a place but a feeling. Immigration gives you a chance to create a new home. His book sounds interesting - a collage of ideas and stories blending into one narrative. I'm looking forward to picking that one up. 

What a way to start off my festival!

Crossing Genres

Some writers' talents traverse form. Four of these unusual polymaths engage in discussion about their work.  Do their stories always manifest in a particular medium or does deciding how to use an idea come later? How does the evolution of their work in one area impact the others? Do they ever feel hindered by their cross industry approach?

Amber Dawn (Sodom Road Exit)

Claudia Dey (Heartbreaker)

Jordan Tannahill (Liminal)

Jaap Robben (You Have Me to Love)

Moderator: Shaena Lambert

First off, Shaena Lambert is the best moderator I've ever seen in Vancouver. I really liked that we started off with a conversation and then went into the readings. She was well prepared and asked great questions and stepped back to allow the writers to talk to each other. 

This event was interesting because all of these authors were venturing into novel territory for the first time. Claudia Dey talked about having a cinematic idea come to her and how it manifested itself into novel form, Jaap Robben is a children's writer  from Holland and his novel was inspired by his experience in a care home for people with Alzheimer's, Amber Dawn started writing a memoir that morphed into fiction and Jordan Tannahill took a moment of liminality from his life and explored it through fiction. 

They covered how they wrote, how they craft their stories and the solitude of novel writing. I've never thought about that before - how plays are collaborative, and TV shows and how other artistic mediums lend themselves to involving more than the writer. It takes a bit of hubris to write in a form you've never written in before - writing is so personal and the confidence each of them exuded while talking about their processes was so inspiring. They all seemed so comfortable moving from form to form - that they often tear down their original ideas and end up creating something totally different. Trauma, obsession, hope and thresholds are all integral to the themes they covered.

YA Rising

It's the worst kept secret in publishing that many - if not most - fans of young adult novels are not as young as one might expect. This addictive genre not only encourages a love of reading in future generations but also captivates older minds with its riveting plot lines and immersive new worlds.

Kim Purcell (This is Not a Love Letter)

Rachel Hartman (Tess of the Road)

Uzma Jalaluddin (Ayesha at Last)

Moderator: Susan Nielsen

YA = Young Adult

I love me some good YA fiction. It's really how I came of age in my reading journey. I went to Sweet Valley to hang with the Wakefield twins, I was part of the Babysitter's Club, I sleuthed alongside Tom and Dietmar across Canada, laughed alongside Bruno and Boots, followed the Tillerman family and so much more. I also harbour a serious penchant for high school TV dramas - give me My So Called Life, 90210, The OC, Buffy....I love it all. 

So when I saw this event listed I had to ensure that I could go! I was not disappointed. 

I really liked how Kim Purcell started off her reading. She read the first page and then asked the audience to shout out a number and she would read from that page...page 84. Her novel centred around an interracial teenage couple where the boy goes missing right before they graduate. Her novel was inspired by her our personal story where one of her best friends in high school disappeared 2 weeks before they graduated from high school - it showed her the inherent injustice of white privilege where the cops didn't take the report of her friend seriously right away, probably because he wasn't white. She wanted to explore complex themes of race and injustice, mental health challenges as well as first love.

Rachel Hartman tackles sexual assault and consent in her novel Tess of the Road. She wanted to explore the idea of the romanticizing the "bad boyfriend" and this notion that you can fix them when reality is that you can't (a theme not just for adolescence but one we all encounter even as grown ups). How do you become the protagonist of your own story again? Girls are raised with misinformation about love and sex which makes them vulnerable for sexual assault. In this book Tess, the protagonist, has to relearn her body and consent. This just shows how pervasive rape culture is in our communities and YA fiction is a great medium to address it, to name it and to be a catalyst for conversation.

Uzma Jalaluddin's Ayesha at Last is a re-imagining of Pride and Prejudice set in a Muslim community in Toronto (Scarborough). While the book isn't classified as YA, it has elements that fit the genre. The characters are a little older and experience first love later in life and the complexity of being a second generation immigrant, balancing cultural expectations of have a "day job" and pursuing art. 

I would say that the only reason I would ever want kids would be to share my love of reading with them! 

Love Four Ways

This irresistible, binding, and sometimes elusive feeling that drives us is also the beating heart of the finest stories in world literature. 

Kathy Page (Dear Evelyn)

Jordan Tannahill (Liminal)

Sarah Winman (Tin Man)

Dionne Brand (Theory)

Moderator: Mandy Lee Catron

This one was OK - the writers didn't seem to have as much space to discuss the questions, the moderator was good but possibly too involved in the topic herself (which led to her taking up too much time responding to their responses - out of excitement and curiosity but when you only have a limited amount of time, it cut into what we could gleam from the writers themselves). 

Each of these works had very different approaches to love. Kathy Page's Dear Evelyn is about a heteronormative couple in a 70 year marriage (inspired by the author's parent's marriage), Dionne Brand's Theory is not about love per se, but about a protagonist interested in ideas, Sarah Winman's Tin Man looks at the kindness of strangers a a form of love, and finally Jordan Tannahill's Liminal is about the relationship between a gay son and his mother. 

We explored the themes of parental love and how that often connects us to the idea of what love it - how we are drawn to the familiar and how it informs our sexuality. They started to take the conversation away from the normative and conventional notions of love and explored things like the shame of pleasure (especially for women and girls), possession, oppression, gender roles, marriage, queer love, and capitalism. 

Would You Rather

Carrieanne Leung (That Time I Loved You)
Lindsey Wong (Woo Woo)
Shazia Hafiz Ramji (Port of Being)
Beni Xiao (Bad Egg)
Uzma Jalauddin (Ayesha at Last)

Moderator: Dina Del Bucchia

This was a great assortment of women of colour on stage for a fun idea - a "would you rather" conversation! Each of them had such a different voice and style that the readings themselves were really interesting. They were also all really funny!

Good Reads

Selecting a title that provides hours of scintillating conversation is a challenge every book club regularly faces. 

Uzma Jalaluddin (Ayesha at Last)

Esi Esugyan (Washington Black)

Kathy Page (Dear Evelyn)

Monique Gray Smith (Tilly and the Crazy Eights)

Moderator: Caroline Adderson

This was a cool event that highlighted book clubs - there were lots of people there attending with their book clubs - it was so cute. Each book was very different from the others. The moderator was great - she took the time to ask each author something specific to their work or their experience. We heard about Monique Gray Smith's road trip and experience writing about indigenous elders, Uzma's yearning to write about the intersectional immigrant experience based in Toronto, Kathy Page's opportunity to build in autobiographical experience in her novel, and Esi Edugyan's discovery of the Titchborn Claimant Affairs of 1860s/1870s. 

The discussed how social justice played out in each of their works. They also talked about the entertainment of storytelling and the joy of writing. 

Buffy Sainte Marie in Conversation with Andrea Warner

I was so excited to watch the conversation between Andrea Warner and Buffy Sainte Marie. Earlier this year, I read Andrea Warner's book "We Oughta Know: How Four Women Ruled the 90s and Changed Canadian Music." It was a little nostalgic for me - bringing me back to my formative years in high school where Alanis Morrissette, Shania Twain, Celine Dion and Sarah McLachlan could be heard on Z95FM (kids, as your parents) everyday. I loved her tone and voice - it is clear that she's a music fan first and a critic second. When I saw that she was authorized to tell the legendary Buffy Sainte Marie's life story - I was excited. 

As expected the room was full of progressives - I ran into Irene and Lee and saw with them. Their conversation was just that. A conversation between two people who have mutual respect and admiration for each other. They talked about natural talent vs. rote learning and rigid creative processes. They talked about the barriers indigenous musicians face in the music industry. They talked about Buffy's influence and relationships with other musicians like Elvis, Joni Mitchell, Donovan. They talked about politics and protest songs. They talked about life.

I learned that Buffy Sainte Marie is an educator and a bibliophile. She reads a lot. She knows a lot. Her analysis on capitalist and class structures is incredible and how she translates it into music is so inspiring. What resonated with me were her last words to us:

"Don't be afraid of making the world better!"

Don't worry I won't.

Overall this was a great festival centred on equity, access and inclusion. My kind of event!