For nine years, Kingston WritersFest has been bringing writers and readers together for what is now five days of literary events. This year's festival kicked off last night, and will continue through Sunday with an eclectic offering of bookish events certain to tickle the literary fancy of a variety of readers.
This year's schedule includes what are fast becoming classic WritersFest events, such as tonight's International Marquee, featuring a conversation between renowned author Lawrence Hill and journalist Eric Friesen, the sold out Book Lovers' Lunch with Ben McNally, the Saturday Night Speakeasy which combines poetry and prose with jazz music and dim lighting and the Robertson Davies Lecture which will be delivered this year by Thomson Highway.
WritersFest also has a strong offering of unique programming featuring authors who write in a myriad of genres, from poetry, to fiction, to memoir and more! Some not to be missed events include Freedom to Speak, Freedom to Act, a conversation amongst writers on censorship, Big Idea: Think Tank on the Environment where nature and the environment are the focus and Reading Women: Biscotti and Books where readers can join four female writers for afternoon tea and bookish chats. WritersFest also offers a collection of Writers Studio workshops, allowing aspiring writers the opportunity to get writing tips and advice from the pros and a selection of French language programming called Joie de livres!
Open Book is thrilled to welcome Kingston WritersFest featured author Priscila Uppal to the site. Priscilla is a professor of English at York University and is the author of two novels, ten collections of poetry and a memoir, Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother, which was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Prize and the Governor General’s Award. In her latest book, Cover Before Striking: Stories, Priscila delivers thirteen pieces featuring characters who push their lives to new levels of intensity, danger or passion as they test their limits and those of the world.
Priscila will grace the WritersFest stage twice, first in Explore/Experiment/Invent: Short Fiction, where she will share the stage with fellow writers of short fiction, Mark Anthony Jarman and Mark Sampson. She will also lead a Writers Studio class, Writing Poetry for Grownups, where she will lead participants through the exercises of reading poetry, writing poetry and editing poetry.
Today, Priscila speaks with Open Book about writing for readers and not herself, her love of the hotel bar and glamming it up for literary festivals.
Open Book:
Tell us about what you’ll be reading at this year’s festival.
Priscila Uppal:
I’ll be reading from my new book of short stories, Cover Before Striking. Although I have a list of set “reading pieces”—excerpts from 5 mins to 20 mins, depending on the logistics of the reading—that I think are engaging out loud, I haven’t always decided which piece I am going to read before I actually give the reading. I like to feel the energy of the room, listen to the other readers, think about the theme or concept behind the reading and then pick what I think works best in terms of the entire event, rather than just in terms of my own book of stories. So, I can’t tell you who you will encounter at this particular reading: might be my poetic pyromaniac, or my disoriented sleepwalker, or my handcuffed holidayer, or my ex-olympian research subject…we’ll see who pops out and wants to meet this particular audience.
OB:
How do you manage the shift between being a solitary writer and a public reader?
PU:
I enjoy it. Although I write with only the needs of the piece of writing in mind, I don’t write for myself. I look forward to the work being out in the world for others, for whoever finds it and needs it. It is quite satisfying to meet readers, to give interviews, to have formal and informal discussions, as it challenges me as a writer to communicate in new ways, to go deeper into the reasons I create in the first place. The energy of a live reading or presentation can be invigorating. It’s an amazing gift when people take time out of their busy schedules to go to hear you live, so I try to think about what experience might be meaningful to this particular audience, and I design my reading accordingly.
OB:
What is one luxury you allow yourself when you go "on tour" with a book?
PU:
I love hotel bars, love them, love sitting up at the bar and having a glass of sparkling wine after a reading well done. I also love meeting old friends on tour and making new friends and the hotel bar is also a great place to do that.
OB:
What will you have with you in your bag while you're attending the Kingston WritersFest?
PU:
I will have my running gear—I love running along the Lake Ontario in Kingston, especially past the yacht club where I love reading the names people give their boats. Plus a couple of changes of “costume”—I enjoy dressing up for festivals, indulging in a bit of glam. Plus a couple of notebooks for lines or ideas that might pop up during the week.
OB:
What are you most looking forward to about this year's festival?
PU:
I am looking forward to inspiring books, inspiring conversations and an inspiring landscape.
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