The Cabot Trail Writers Festival is produced by the Cabot Trail Writers Festival Society, a registered Nova Scotia non-profit society. Our Joint Stock Registry number is 3253532.

Volunteer Board of Directors:

  • Monika Dutt (Co-Chair)

  • Suzi Oram-Aylward (Co-Chair)

  • Robert Burbach (Treasurer)

  • Alicia Peres (Secretary)

  • Karen Bernard

  • Donnie Calabrese

  • Anne Lèvesque

  • AnnMarie MacKinnon

  • Afreen Shadan

Executive & Artistic Director: Rebecca Silver Slayter

Administrative Manager: Kimberly Tilsley

Event Manager: Mary Ann Wilson

Volunteer Coordinator: Isabelle Tanner

OUR ORIGINS

The first Cabot Trail Writers Festival was held in 2009, but its creation was inspired by something that took place a couple of years earlier, when Africadian poet George Elliott Clarke accepted an invitation to read to the St. Ann’s Bay Book Club at a tiny community hall in Cape Breton.

Word of mouth spread eagerly and widely, and when Clarke arrived to the island he found himself reading to a room packed wall to wall with attentive, grateful listeners. In that response and enthusiasm, Gary Walsh and Jeannette Mac Donald (the festival founders) recognized the need and opportunity for programming that would bring books and authors from across the country into the room (and into conversation) with the readers and writers of this island.

And so the Cabot Trail Writers Festival was born directly out of the community, spontaneously and organically, out of the way that Cape Breton showed up for literature that one night in North River. 

For our first two years, the festival operated as a committee of the St. Ann’s Bay Development Association (SABDA), a registered non-profit community association whose goals include community and economic development. Since then, the founding board has retired, new members have joined to carry their vision forward, and the festival has relocated to the Gaelic College to accommodate our ever-growing audience and programming—and yet, even as we grow and evolve, what remains unchanged is the warmth, intimacy and vitality of this community-shaped festival.

OUR VISION

A festival that connects us and transforms community through the celebration of storytelling and literature.

OUR MISSION

●      To create joyous and magical experiences through the art and craft of storytelling.

●      To honour the land as an essential character in the stories of the Indigenous peoples of Unama’ki (Cape Breton) as well as all who have settled on this island.

●      To embrace and elevate stories in all of their forms.

●      To cultivate responsive programming, communication, and outreach within an anti-oppression framework

●      To nurture an evolving community by inspiring and challenging our audience to connect with openness and curiosity.

OUR ARTISTIC VISION

We strive to foster the communities of readers and writers in Unama’ki/Cape Breton, facilitate their two-way participation in a wider literary culture and conversation, and cultivate an inclusive, engaging, inspiring and accessible festival in an intimate rural setting that celebrates literature’s unique ability to connect us: 

• where readers connect with writers (and with one another), 

• where the diverse communities of Cape Breton, of Canada and of Turtle Island connect together, 

• and where culture connects with place.