Cabot Trail Writers Festival
at North River
The second annual Cabot Trail Writers Festival will be held at North River on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island. The festival will take place over the weekend of October 1 through 3, when the island's fall colours will be at their most breathtaking.
Visit us after this year's Hike the Highlands annual hiking and nature festival, running September 10–19, or stay on to take in the Celtic Colours International Festival, Cape Breton's best-known music festival, running October 8–16.
If you've been paying attention, you will know that we have already enjoyed several satellite events this year featuring interesting and diverse authors. We are excited now to announce our lineup of authors for this year's festival. Tickets will be on sale September 4!
Photo © courtesy of Carol Kennedy
The Authors
Our 2010 lineup of authors brings a wide range of skills and styles, and we think each author is at the top of his or her game.
We are very excited to present
Newfoundland's award-winning poet and novelist
Michael Crummey,
author of Galore (Doubleday), 2009 Governor
General's Literary Awards finalist and 2010 winner, Commonwealth Writers
Prize for Best Book (Canada & Caribbean), and
River Thieves (Anchor Canada 2001),
a 2001 Giller Prize finalist.
Now a Nova Scotian, South Africa's
Marq de Villiers
is a journalist, non-fiction author, and a former editor and publisher
of Toronto Life magazine. His book
Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious
Resource won the 1999 Governor General's Award for
Non-Fiction and the 1999 Canadian Science Writers Award, and
Witch in the Wind: The True Story of the
Bluenose (Thomas Allen 2007) won the 2008 Evelyn
Richardson Prize for Non-fiction and the 2008 Dartmouth Book
Award for Non-fiction.
Rounding
out this year's panel of authors is children's author, poet, and novelist
Sheree Fitch.
Her recently published first novel for adults,
Kiss the Joy As It Flies (Vagrant Press
2008), was a finalist for the 2009 Stephen Leacock Award for Humour.
Sleeping Dragons All Around
(Doubleday 1989; Nimbus 2009) won a 1990 Atlantic Booksellers
Choice award.
The Music!
Music is a large part of Cape Breton life; indeed, our festival is followed by the island-wide Celtic Colours music festival starting October 8. We think that music is writing in another, more widely understood language. And so we choose to add a little music to our festival.
Our wrap-up Sunday Brunch
with all the authors this year features singer/songwriter
Carmel Mikol, who hails
from right here in North River, Cape Breton. Carmel thinks of herself
as a storyteller, and that's how we see it, too!
If you would like to volunteer at the festival, or sponsor festival activities, please visit our information pages:
