Words Alive (1)

This is the first of a three-part sto­ry about Words Alive.

When my short sto­ry “Heat Death, or, Answer­ing the Ouroboros Ques­tion*” was accept­ed for pub­li­ca­tion in Tesser­acts 14, I was asked if I’d be inter­est­ed in doing a read­ing at the upcom­ing Words Alive fes­ti­val. The answer, of course, was “Of course!”

This past week­end was the fes­ti­val. What a blast it was.

The fes­ti­val took place over two days. Fri­day evening there were read­ings by three authors — Craig Rus­sell, a local author, who read from his nov­el Black Bot­tle Man, reviewed by yours tru­ly ear­li­er this year; Michelle Berry, read­ing from her nov­el This Book Will Not Save Your Life, a book about mor­bid obe­si­ty, arson, magi­cians, and all man­ner of fam­i­ly dra­ma; and Thomas Trofimuk, who read from both his nov­el Wait­ing for Colum­bus — about a man in a mod­ern-day Seville asy­lum who believes he’s Christo­pher Colum­bus — and from a forth­com­ing nov­el whose title eludes me at the moment.

After the read­ings, there was a wine and cheese event, and writ­ers min­gled with the crowd. I met a gent who works at Win­nipeg’s McNal­ly-Robin­son book­store, order­ing SF/F, which is pret­ty much my writ­ing baili­wick. (Hi there, Chad­wick, if you’re read­ing this!) I also had a chance to chat with both Michelle and with Thomas, who signed the copy of his book that I bought. All the writ­ers I met this week­end were very friend­ly, very hap­py to be here, and very inter­est­ed in what their read­er (and, in my case, poten­tial read­ers) had to say.

Stay tuned! Tomor­row I’ll talk about the sem­i­nars I went to dur­ing the day on Sat­ur­day (Screen­writ­ing and Writ­ing for Young Adults), and then I’ll dive head­long into my own read­ing on Sat­ur­day night!

Part 2 will be pub­lished tomorrow.

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* Yes, the title real­ly is that pretentious.