A Few Notes on This Year's Festival

Covid Protocols
According to provincial public health requirements, we’re planning to fill our venues to no more than 50% capacity and to seat our audience with social distancing and masks.

For this reason, when purchasing tickets for larger, seated events, you’ll be asked to indicate if anyone else will be joining you at the festival, so we can seat you together. Of course, if your plans change after booking tickets, you can call or email us at any time to adjust things.

One reason we are able to have in-person events this year is the availability of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines that are helping to protect us, our families, and our communities—including at events like our festival.

With that in mind, the Board of CTWF would like to encourage all of you to get your full COVID-19 vaccine prior to the festival. It is not a requirement to attend; however, doing so may help to put your mind more at ease for in-person events outside your usual bubble, and allow us all to fully focus on the wonderful writers and artists who are participating this year. And of course, the protection will extend far beyond the festival.

Venues & Locations
In recent years, all our festival events have taken place at the Gaelic College. However, this year, after hosting our opening night reading series at the Gaelic College, as usual, the festival will then travel to a series of new venues and locations: Baddeck, We’koqma’q, Margaree Forks, Belle Côte and Chéticamp.

If you wish, you can of course just pick out your favourite events to attend. But the program of events is designed so that you can join us for the entire festival should you wish to do so, with time allotted for meals and driving between events. We’d be delighted to see you follow the festival from beginning (in St. Ann’s) to end (in Chéticamp), touring some of the beautiful sites, scenery, and communities across this part of the island. :)

Ticketing Options
We’re unfortunately not able to offer festival passes this year, as the venues have different capacities. However, we’re striving to keep prices as low as possible (free in several cases) to increase accessibility, so you’ll find attending all events will still cost less than a festival pass would have in previous years.

Meals & Accommodations
While we’ve loved sharing meals and dormitory hallways with you at past festivals, in light of the pandemic, we’ve decided it would be best and safest not to do so this year. So those visiting from farther afoot, please plan for booking your own accommodations and enjoying the many lovely restaurants and cafes along the festival route.

This year is all a bit of a learning process as we adapt to this different approach and to the evolving guidelines and restrictions. So please feel free to contact us if you have questions about any of it!

2021 FESTIVAL SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, OCT 1, 2021 • Gaelic College, St. Ann’s

7:30 p.m. | Friday Night Reading Series

Hosted by Alexander MacLeod, this event will feature readings by Francesca Ekwuyasi, Christy-Ann Conlin, Alan Syliboy, Jon Tattrie, Sylvia D. Hamilton, Donna Morrissey, Michelle Sylliboy, and Tyler LeBlanc. It will be held in the beautiful Great Hall of the Clans, at the Gaelic College in St. Ann's.

SATURDAY, OCT 2, 2021 • Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, Baddeck

9:00 a.m. | ***CANCELLED***Fiction Workshop with Christy-Ann Conlin

SATURDAY, OCT 2, 2021 • Bras D’or Yacht Club, Baddeck

9:00 a.m. | Workshop (for adults) on How to Write for Children with Alan Syliboy

SATURDAY, OCT 2, 2021 • Skye River Trail, We’koqma’q

1:30 p.m. | Heard in the Highlands

A series of readings in a beautiful woodland setting, featuring readings by local authors Julie Curwin, Rebecca Silver Slayter, Brenda MacLennan-Dunphy, & Bill Conall, along with musical performances by Bill Conall & Shawnee Paul. This is an outdoor event, so please come dressed for the weather. Please note that in the event of heavy wind or rain, Heard in the Highlands will be cancelled.

SATURDAY, OCT 2, 2021 • Bras D’or Yacht Club, Baddeck

4:00 p.m. | Breathe, Write, Repeat: A Workshop for Body & Mind (Baddeck)

A workshop featuring gentle yoga, meditation and writing exercises. Designed to ground the body, free the breath, and open the mind to receive inspiration, this workshop is intended for writers and yoga practitioners of all stages. Led by poet, yoga teacher and festival board member Susan Paddon & writer and festival director Rebecca Silver Slayter, the workshop will include a series of gentle stretches, guided meditation and freewriting exercises.

* Please bring a yoga mat, mask, water, and writing materials. If you don’t have access to a yoga mat, please contact the festival to arrange to borrow one.

SATURDAY, OCT 2, 2021 • Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, Baddeck

7:30 p.m. | saturday night at the festival

An evening of music, author conversations, and live painting. Our evening program will include the following events:

• 7:30 p.m.: "The Thing With Feathers": The Role of Hope in Life & Art

A panel conversation hosted by Alexander MacLeod, featuring Donna Morrissey, Christy-Ann Conlin and Jon Tattrie. The past year and a half has made hope more precious, more challenging, and more scarce for many. This conversation might explore the nature of the relationship, in the authors' most recent books, between hope and the past—between what Emily Dickinson called “the thing with feathers” and healing, recovery or progress. Or whether authors face pressure to seek out stories of hope or resolve fictional stories in a way that facilitates hope... or where, in a time of multiple collective crises, the authors themselves have found hope.

• 8:30 p.m.: A Conversation with Francesca Ekwuyasi

Alexander MacLeod will interview Francesca Ekwuyasi about her writing process and her work.

• 9:30 p.m.: Live Painting with Alan Syliboy and a Musical Performance by Shawnee Paul & Brian Doyle

Alan Syliboy will create a painting on stage, set to a background of live music by Shawnee Paul & Brian Doyle.

SUNDAY, OCT 3, 2021 • Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site, Baddeck

9:00 a.m. | memoir Workshop with donna morrissey

SUNDAY, OCT 3, 2021 • Bras D’or Yacht Club, Baddeck

9:00 a.m. | poetry Workshop with sylvia d. Hamilton

SUNDAY, OCT 3, 2021 • Grounds behind the Drs. Coady & Tompkins Memorial Library, Margaree Forks

1:30 p.m. | Reading & Panel • Beyond Words: Writers Making music, Film & ARt

A reading and panel conversation with Alan Syliboy, Sylvia D. Hamilton, and Michelle Sylliboy, hosted by Alexander MacLeod. A panel discussion on the subject of balancing a writing career with work in the visual and the performing arts. The three featured writers also create work in the media of film, photography, painting, music and/or sculpture. How do these different art practices inform or inspire one another? How does the creative process or impact differ?

These event will take place outdoors, on the grounds behind the Coady & Tompkins Memorial Library in Margaree Forks. In the event of unsuitable weather for an outdoor event, it will be held at the Belle Côte Community Centre instead.

SUNDAY, OCT 3, 2021 • Belle Côte Community Centre, Belle Côte

4:00 p.m. | Breathe, Write, Repeat: A Workshop for Body & Mind (Belle Côte)

A workshop featuring gentle yoga, meditation and writing exercises. Designed to ground the body, free the breath, and open the mind to receive inspiration, this workshop is intended for writers and yoga practitioners of all stages. Led by poet, yoga teacher and festival board member Susan Paddon & writer and festival director Rebecca Silver Slayter, the workshop will include a series of gentle stretches, guided meditation and freewriting exercises.

* Please bring a yoga mat, mask, water, and writing materials. If you don’t have access to a yoga mat, please contact the festival to arrange to borrow one.

SUNDAY, OCT 3, 2021 • Raveston Music School, Chéticamp

7:30 p.m. | Sunday night in CHéTICAMP

Our Sunday evening program will include the following events:

• 7:30: A Reading & Conversation with Tyler LeBlanc
Barbara Le Blanc will interview Tyler LeBlanc about his book Acadian Driftwood, from which he will share a reading.

• 8:30: Songs & Stories with Ronald Bourgeois
A performance by musician and storyteller Ronald Bourgeois.

 

2021 FEATURED ARTISTS

francesca ekwuyasi

is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging.
francesca's debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize, was a finalist for CBC's 2021 Canada Reads competition and a 2021 Lambda Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Governor General's Award and the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
Her writing has been published in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, GUTS magazine, the Puritan, Canadian Art, and elsewhere. Her story "Ọrun is Heaven" was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize.
Supported through the National Film Board's (NFB) Film Maker's Assistance Program (FAP) and the Fabienne Colas Foundation, francesca's short documentary Black + Belonging has screened in festivals in Halifax, Toronto, and Montreal.

Donna Morrissey

has published six nationally bestselling novels. She has received awards in Canada, the U.S. and England, and her novel Sylvanus Now was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize.
Donna’s fiction has been translated into several different languages. She was nominated for a Gemini for her script The Clothesline Patch (which won a Gemini for best production). Her latest novel, The Fortunate Brother, spent six weeks on the bestseller list, and won the Arthur Ellis Award for best crime novel of 2017.
Her memoir, Pluck, has just been released by Penguin in both Canada and the US, and she is currently editing a new novel for release in 2022, and a second memoir about her father.
Aside from mentoring with Humber College in Toronto, Donna has a private mentoring/story editing service. In her spare time she splays on the couch, watching Dr. Seuss with her grandson, Bentley.

Alexander MacLeod

(Festival Host) is a fiction writer and a professor of English Literature and Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. Light Lifting, his debut short fiction collection, won an Atlantic Book Award and was named a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, The Frank O’Connor Short Story Award and The Commonwealth Book Prize. The collection was also named a “Book of the Year” by the American Library Association, The Irish Times, The Globe and Mail, and Amazon.ca. Alexander recently won an O Henry Prize for his short story, “Lagomorph,” and in Spring 2022 his newest book, Animal Person, will be published internationally.

Sylvia D. Hamilton

is a writer, filmmaker and artist known for her landmark films Black Mother Black Daughter, Portia White: Think on Me and The Little Black School House. Screened in festivals in Canada and abroad, they are widely used in schools and universities throughout Canada. Her poetry collection, And I Alone Escaped to Tell You, was a finalist for the 2015 League of Canadian Poets Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the 2018 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Award. Her solo multi-media installations have been featured in galleries and museums in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario. She has received several honorary degrees, a Gemini Award, and the 2020 Governor General’s Award in History (Popular Media). She is an Inglis Professor at the University of King’s College in Halifax.
Photo (c) Adams Photography.

Michelle Sylliboy

(Mi’kmaq/L’nu) is an award-winning author and Interdisciplinary artist. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised on her traditional L'nuk territory in We'koqmaq, Cape Breton. While living on the traditional, unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, Sylliboy completed a BFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and a Masters in Education from Simon Fraser University. She is currently a PhD candidate in Simon Fraser University’s Philosophy of Education program, where she is working to reclaim her original written komqwej’wikasikl language. Her collection of photography and L’nuk hieroglyphic poetry, Kiskajeyi—I Am Ready, was published by Rebel Mountain Press in 2019 now available as an ebook. She was recently appointed at St FX University as new tenure track faculty in Education, Modern Language and Fine Arts departments.

Jon Tattrie

works as a journalist for CBC News in Halifax. He holds a master’s degree in writing from the University of King’s College. He is the author of two novels and five books of non-fiction, including Peace by Chocolate, Daniel Paul: Mi'kmaw Elder, and the bestselling biography The Hermit of Africville.
Photo (c) Giselle Melanson Tattrie.

Alan Syliboy

is a well-known Mi’kmaw artist based in Milbrook First Nation near Truro, Nova Scotia. He studied privately with Maliseet artist Shirley Bear and then attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, has had a number of commissions for art installations, designed a coin for the Canadian Mint, illustrated books, sat on art juries and taught a number of workshops and courses. His children’s books include The Thundermaker and Mi’kmaw Animals.

Christy-Ann Conlin

is the author of two acclaimed novels, Heave and The Memento. She is also the author of the short fiction collection, Watermark, a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Award and the Evergreen Award. Heave was a national bestseller, a finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Dartmouth Book Award and was a Globe & Mail Top 100 Book. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals including Best Canadian Stories, Brick, Geist, Room, and Numéro Cinq. Her short fiction has also been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the American Short Fiction Prize. Her
radio broadcast work includes co-creating and hosting CBC Fear Itself, a national summer radio series. Christy Ann studied theatre at the University of Ottawa and screenplay writing at the University of British Columbia. She was born and raised in seaside Nova Scotia where she still resides.
Photo (c) Kate Inglis.

Tyler LeBlanc

was born and raised in a tiny fishing village on Nova Scotia’s south shore. He studied history and journalism as an undergraduate and holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. His writing has appeared in This Magazine, Modern Farmer, Explore, Dal Magazine, and The Coast. His book Acadian Driftwoodwon the 2021 Evelyn Richardson Award for Non-Fiction and the 2021 Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing.

Ronald Bourgeois

is a multi-award-winning singer-songwriter who is widely recognized as one of the Acadie’s primary artists. Originally from Chéticamp, Ronald has inherited the rich musical tradition deeply rooted in the history and culture of Cape-Breton. With simple lyrics and catchy melodies the artist weaves his creative work carefully interlacing imagery and music into engaging musical stories that crossover age and musical genres. Since 1981 Ronald Bourgeois has maintained a continuous creative and performance career encompassing a catalogue of over 300 songs, featuring 72 various recorded versions, by a host of artists from Acadie, Quebec, Louisiana and France.

Barbara Le Blanc

taught for the Department of Education at University Sainte-Anne, Nova Scotia, from July 1995 to August 2016. She has written a number of articles on Acadian culture and a children's book, Acadie en fête published by BBC and Longman Publications in Great Britain. Her book Postcards From Acadie: Grand-Pré, Evangeline, and the Acadian Identity, published by Gaspereau Press, examines the role of an historic site in the construction of a sense of Acadian group identity and belonging. She received the Lèger Comeau Medal from the Société nationale de l’Acadie in 2003, an award that honours people who have contributed in a remarkable way in the promotion of Acadie and the Acadians. In 2014, she received the André D. Cormier Certificate from the Société Promotion Grand-Pré for her contributions to Grand-Pré National Historic Site.

Shawnee Paul

is a Mi'kmaw musician from Eskasoni who has been playing the fiddle since the age of seven. Before her grandfather, Wilfred Prosper, passed, he gave her a fiddle and she soon began instructions from Eddy Rogers. 

Since childhood, Shawnee loved playing music and learning new instruments. This led her to study music at Acadia University where she received her Bachelor of Music Education degree in May 2019 and her Bachelor of Education in May 2021. Shawnee is a passionate musical educator and loves to share this passion through musical education. 

Brian Doyle

was born on Cape Breton Island and has been on stage since the age of fourteen. He has played the rock and blues scene around the world with many successful groups including his own project Greyloch, a Celtic rock fusion group nominated for The East Coast Music Association's Rock Album of the Year in 2000. The latest ECMA nomination for the current album Live Off the Floor, which pairs him with Scott MacMillan for their second recording, brings Brian to a total of three nominations and one win. Two solo albums are currently in the works.

Brenda MacLennan-Dunphy

was born and raised in Cape Breton Island, and except for her various adventures world-wide, she has kept her roots firmly planted in her home ground of Inverness County. She began writing later in life when she wrote a fictionalized account of her grandparent’s story which became the beloved musical John Archie and Nellie which was produced in 2012 and again in 2016. This story later evolved into her first novel Never Speak of This Again (Pottersfield Press, 2018). She has written and produced three other plays (The Weddin’ Dance, Displacement, The Rèiteach) which were all well supported by the local community. Her second novel, The Silence of the Vessel, was published in the fall of 2020 (Pottersfield Press).

Bill Conall

won the 2014 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for his novel The Promised Land: a novel of Cape Breton. His earlier novel The Rock in the Water was short-listed for the same award. In the Has Been category, Bill Conall has a significant backlist. Present and former occupations include library assistant, long-haul trucker, salesman (cars, wine, trade show exhibits, commercial printing, encyclopedia, signage), road musician, printer, fork lift operator, bartender, recording artist, and writer. Bill lives on the back side of Murray Mountain in Cape Breton with artist Rosemary McLean. Bill’s most recent publication is a collection of short fiction titled Some Days Run Long.


Julie Curwin

is a psychiatrist who divides her time between Sydney and Boularderie Island, Cape Breton, where she lives with her husband Chris and a variety of furry friends. Her short stories have won numerous awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for "World Backwards" (2008) and the David Adams Richards Prize for a group of short stories. Her first book, The Appendage Formerly Known as Your Left Arm, won the 2021 Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction and was shortlisted for the John Savage First Book Award.

Rebecca Silver Slayter

is the author of the recently released novel The Second History and In the Land of Birdfishes, which was shortlisted for the WilliamSaroyan International Prize for Writing. She was named one of CBC's Ten Writers to Watch, and is the artistic director of the Cabot Trail Writers Festival and an editor of Brick literary journal.

Susan Paddon

is a poet, fiction writer, yoga instructor and member of the Cabot Trail Writers Festival board. Her debut collection Two Tragedies in 429 Breaths, was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and the ReLit Award, and won the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award. Originally from St. Thomas, Ontario, she attended McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal. She currently resides in Margaree, Nova Scotia.