Strong Canadian voices filled every corner of Eden Mills Sunday as the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival celebrated its 30th year.
Approximately 1,500 people came to the event throughout the weekend, making it the largest turnout the festival has ever seen.
“It's been lovely seeing people lying on rolling hills and on picnic blankets watching authors and everywhere I've looked at the reading sites have been really full,” said artistic director Nicola Dufficy.
With readings from popular authors, writer’s workshops for aspiring authors, book signings, book sales, wine on a porch, wood-fired pizza, shuttles to take attendees around the little village, the festival was vibrant with activity.
Dufficy said the event is particularly successful because it is a community-driven and is only possible with the collective effort of people working together to organize it.
“You know the fact that it is based in this small village and people open up their backyards as their reading sites and their homes as green rooms, you know it wouldn't happen without the total support of the whole community,” said Dufficy.
“And I think the authors feel that experience too. There's a sense of hospitality and sense of being at home when they're at Eden Mills that they don't get at another festival - you know, they're really welcomed to the space,”
She said more authors were invited this year than ever before.
With celebrated authors like Marina Endicott, Guy Gavriel Kay and Emma Donoghue among many others, this year's event definitely stood out.
Author Emma Donoghue, a regular at the event - who wrote the popular novel Room in 2010 in the perspective of a five-year-old boy confined in a room with his mother which was later adapted into a film in 2015 directed by Lenny Abrahamson - read parts from her new novel, Akin and said holding these readings makes for a lovely atmosphere with an engaged audience.
“The audience is unusually passionate about books. They bring their kids here even. They're always very kind of awake. They're not your average audience."
Many up and coming authors who published their first books were seen at the festival engaging with the audience and supporting local literature.
"I publish a lot of kids books. I published around 400 chapter books by kids and one of the kids I work with told me that I should publish my own work instead of everybody else’s and it was like a wake-up call,” said author Charlotte Safieh who self-published her first children’s book, A Cry For The Ocean about plastic pollution and the power of caring.
She said the festival to meet people who work for environmental organizations and showed support for the cause of her book.
“It's such a nice atmosphere. Everybody is so friendly and really warm.”
