Moncton, New Brunswick’s annual Frye Festival has released an events list for its 22nd iteration. The literary festival will be taking place digitally, from April 16-25 on Frye Festival’s very own YouTube channel. Authors and special guests from across Canada and abroad will feature in discussions, reading, lectures and more to create a world-class creativity opportunity for people of all ages.
Headlining this year’s festival is award-winning Indigenous author Lee Maracle, who will deliver the always-anticipated Maillet-Frye Lecture, and partake in a follow-up Q&A hosted by writer Jael Richardson. Her 2018 non-fiction title, My Conversations With Canadians, one of her several critically acclaimed works, continues to be best-seller to this very day.
Also positioned as must-see events are this year’s bilingual round-table discussions, each of them delving into themes laced with intrigue. Tackling the importance of individuality in their works will be Lorrie Jean-Louis, Sophie Létourneau, Canisia Lubrin, and Shani Mootoo in the “Seeing Eye to I” discussion. “Deconstructing She” will shine a light on women’s ability to decimate societal norms, and will feature Amber Dawn, francesca ekwuyasi, Sophie Létourneau, and Mirion Malle. Finally, “In Other Words” will see writers Daniel Grenier and Madeleine Thien, alongside translators Pablo Strauss and Catherine Leroux will explore the ability of literary translation to transcend both culture and language.
The 22nd edition of the festival also marks its first collaboration with the Louisiana Book Festival, and will focus on the first collection of poetry by Louisianan Francophone women, and will take place during the event “Ô Malheureuse: voix de la Louisiane.”
“Art is Life” will see novelists Shani Mootoo and Carol Bruneau explore the role that art plays in our everyday life, and how such artists occupy space within their books. Souvankham Thammavongsa and David A. Robertson will be in conversation about cultural heritage in “The Stories We Inherit,” and André Alexis’s event “The Night Piece” is one that promises warmth and humour. Further, Eden Robinson, author of the “Trickster” trilogy of books will be in conversation with writer and poet Rosanna Deerchild, and Amanda Leduc, participating in events “Fairy Tales Retold” and “When Nature Reclaims” will aim to reimagine childhood stories with more diversity, and dream up a world where nature takes itself back, respectively.
The festival’s French-language programming will include Amin Maalouf, discussing his new novel, Nos fréres inattendus, while Laurent Binet and Catherine Leroux will discuss alternate history, including a 16th-century Incan invasion of Europe and a Detroit with French as its first language. Furthermore, the remains of war-time humanity will be explored in “Dans le clair-obscur des guerres” by Yara El-Ghadban and Melchior Mbonimpa, and Michel Bastarache and Micheline Savoie will discuss their books, stylized in a way that they read as letters to their children.
The “Epistola” exhibition will bring visual arts to the festival as well, consisting of works by Marc-Antoine K. Phaneuf and Blake Morin. “Entre les lignes: l’art et les pensées écrites,” meanwhile, will see Elise Anne LaPlante, Camille Larivée, and Chloé Savoie-Bernard discuss the role of writing in art.
It wouldn’t be the Frye Festival without New Brunswick-focused events, either. Flyés Kayla Geitzler and Jean-Philippe Raîche will open the festival with their opening poem alongside musicians Sebastian Michaud and Denis Surette, and “Prelude” will once again see six emerging writers from the festival’s home province take centre-stage. Featuring this year will be Shayne Michael, Félix Perkins, Phiautha Dantiste, Kieran Pridgeon, Kelsey Klip, and Odette Barr. The 2021 Atlantic Book Awards finalists will also be announced, followed by a screening of Emilie Peltier’s short film Matin Ecchymose, accompanied by sign language interpretations by Mo Bolduc.
The festival’s youth program will showcase events for youths ages 4-17, including “Storytime Readings,” which will see festival presenters give readings of one of their works. “Frye Academy 2021” saw Naomi Fontaine’s work “Shuni” the winner of literary debates between students in grades 9 to 12. The awards ceremony for the “Provincial Creative Writing Contest,” involving over sixty high school students across the province, will also be held. Finally, actress and filmmaker Bianca Richard will star in a collection of video clips in “Imagination At Work” and “Budding Writers,” which will bring to life the collective works of children in grades K-4 and 5-8, respectively, and Christine Melanson will host “Words on Stage,” which will see several performances by high school students.
For more information on the 2021 Frye Festival, including a complete schedule of events and programming details, you can visit them online at www.frye.ca.