Writers and Readers Festival
Last Thursday, students from the Writing 12 class left campus at 4:45 a.m. for the Vancouver International Writers Festival on Granville Island. Our first session, Thursday morning’s “Some Words on Film,” featured Don Calame and Robyn Harding, two versatile writers who work in both fiction and film. They shared with students the challenges, rewards, and perils of each genre. After the session, we visited the Vancouver Art Gallery, where the students saw a number of exhibitions, including “Dawn: Sketches and Paintings by the Group of Seven.” As part of the visit, we completed a couple of draft poems based on paintings. We were back on Granville Island Thursday evening for a reading and Q & A session by acclaimed American short story writer and novelist Lorrie Moore, who read from her new novel, A Gate at the Stairs. Moore is well known for her wit and for the power of her insight. These were on full display Thursday, prompting many students to purchase one of her books and have it signed.
On Friday, we attended “Coming of Age,” a panel discussion during which five vastly different writers talked about (and later read from) work focused on the journey through the challenging and sometimes brutal world of adolescence. After lunch at the Granville Island Market, our visit concluded with the “Mini Poetry Bash” on Friday afternoon. It was a pleasure to take such an appreciative group to the festival and to see them discover new possibilities for their own work.
– Jay Connolly