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A guide to the ninth Readers & Writers Festival

Navigating three full days and nights of workshops and seminars with an all-star lineup of authors and guests at the helm
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Whistler's word nerds breathed a collective sigh of relief earlier this year when it was announced that the Whistler Readers & Writers Festival was, in fact, returning for a ninth year.

In case you didn't hear, the Vicious Circle (the group that organizes the festival) had actually pulled the plug on the annual event late last year after they concluded they simply couldn't cover the operating costs associated with hosting the festival. The cancellation led to an outcry, not only from the local literary community but from down in Vancouver, where the news reached Hal Wake, director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival (VIWF). After some discussion, the two organizations decided to partner, with VIWF covering the costs of bringing writers to Vancouver, and the Vicious Circle stepping in to bring writers to Whistler for the Oct. 14-16 festival.

So what does that mean for the Whistler's Readers & Writers Festival?

Well, for one, we're being given access to some very impressive names in the literary world. Kate Pullinger, author of The Mistress Of Nothing and winner of the 2009 Governor General Award; two-time Governor General nominee, Patricia Young, author of An Autoerotic History of Swings; 2009 winner of the Writers Trust of Canada Non-Fiction prize and the B.C. Booksellers' Choice Award, Brian Brett, who wrote Trauma Farm; Russell Wangersky, the award-winning author of The Glass Harmonica; City of Victoria Butler Book Prize-winning author, Terence Young; short-story author Jenn Farrell; writing couple and former Whistler writers in residence, Merilyn Simonds and Wayne Grady; and two-time Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize-winning author Caroline Adderson, are a few of the big names heading our way in just a few weeks.

Of course, we'll also be hearing from some of our local writers: Leslie Anthony, Stephen Vogler, Michel Beaudry and Lisa Richardson are also on the schedule.

Aside from the quality of the lineup, this year's festival features some very fun events designed to help people dive right into the world of words. And the best part is, everyone can get in on the action - readers and writers of all levels are welcome.

Organizers have changed the format a bit, opting to offer two complete "streams" of programming on Saturday for $110, rather than hosting individual workshop sessions and allowing people to cherry-pick just one or two (though you can opt for just a few classes, just at a higher individual price of $25 per class). While this might mean a bit of a bigger investment, it also means that you'll probably get a lot more out of your involvement in the festival.

So, the big question is: are you interested in learning about how traditional and digital media can work together, or do you want to find out how to craft great stories? (The full program for the festival, complete with detailed workshop descriptions, is available at www.theviciouscircle.ca.) There are quite a few workshops and seminars that have captured my attention; unfortunately, they seem to be evenly split between the two streams, so I may have to be a bit ruthless with my decision-making. The State of Book Publishing Today and The New Paradigm: The Book Is Dead And Who Is In The Nursery? strike me as two particularly intriguing sessions that delve into aspects of the industry, while The Prickly Art of Self Editing with Rebecca Wood Barrett and Michel Beaudry's The Power Of A Good Story, promise to be practical skill-builders. Oh, too many choices! It's almost as bad as the shampoo section of the grocery store...

Don't feel like investing $110 or a full day in strengthening your writing skills? That's okay, too - there are two events that are part of this year's festival that you should still try and check out.

The first is a PechaKucha session at Maxx Fish on Friday, Oct. 15. I know, it's got a weird name, but I promise that the concept is actually pretty cool. The name comes from the Japanese term for "chit chat." The concept is based on a simple presentation format that sees 20 images presented for 20 seconds each, which keeps things moving at a rapid pace. The presentations will be followed by a performance by the spoken word artist C.R. Avery. Tickets to this event are $15. If you want more information check out www.pecha-kucha.org/night/whistler.

The other session well worth checking out is a series of readings with guest authors at the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre on Saturday, Oct. 16, starting at 7:30 p.m. There, Kathy Page, Merilyn Simonds, Wayne Grady, Russell Wangersky, Brian Brett, Kate Pullinger, Jenn Farrell, Terence Young, Patricia Young and Caroline Adderson will share excerpts with the audience, while Stephen Vogler emcees. Tickets to this session are $20.

There are also quite a few free events being hosted at the Whistler Public Library for the festival, which means that you can still get in on the action even if you don't have a lot of coin right now.

On Thursday, Oct. 14, Leslie Anthony kicks things off at 7 p.m. with the launch of his latest literary project, White Planet: A Mad Dash Through Modern Global Ski Culture at the library.

On Saturday afternoon, there's a special workshop designed for young writers (aged 12 to 19), dubbed Stop Making Sense, or How To Keep It All Remarkable. The session is sponsored by Creekbread and hosted by Terrence Young. He'll take participants through a range of exercises that will help them craft their own responses to prompts, questions, riddles and exemplars, all designed to help strengthen their imaginative powers.

At 5 p.m. the same day, Merilyn Simonds, Wayne Grady, Patricia Young and Terence Young will take part in Write. Fight. Love, dishing the dirt on what happens when someone else's characters are part of your domestic landscape, or when a character bearing an uncanny resemblance to you appears in your loved one's work.

All in all, the ninth annual Whistler Readers and Writers Festival (the one that almost never was) is shaping up to be a memorable affair with some heavy-hitting word nerds hard at work behind the scenes.

And provided people ante up to show their support for the festival and the local literary community, this could be the first year of a long, successful partnership with the VIWF.