“[For students], it’s an opportunity to learn, engage, and maybe get out of the ivory tower”
This year marked the 26th anniversary of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. Writers from across Canada came together from Oct 26th to 29th to read from their work and answer questions about their craft.
“It’s an opportunity for readers and curious people to come together, meet their neighbours, and get inspiration,” said Sean Wilson, the festival’s artistic director.
The writers this year included Waubgeshig Rice, who was reading from the sequel of his bestselling postapocalyptic novel Moon of the Crusted Snow. The first novel follows the inhabitants of an Indigenous reserve surviving after the apocalypse.
The sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves, comes back a generation later to follow Nangohns, the daughter of the first protagonist. Rice also answered questions about the links between a metaphorical apocalypse and the real-life extermination of Indigenous ways of living.
“People throw around terms like ‘colonial’ or ‘post-colonial’, and we often tend to look at that as if it’s something related to the distant past. But when you hear from Indigenous people, especially storytellers, artists, and knowledge keepers, you begin to understand that colonialism is not something that we can refer to in the past tense. It is ongoing,” said Wilson.
Between panels, festival-goers could visit the festival cafe serving gourmet meals prepared by a professional chef. Perfect Books, a local business, also had a pop-up bookstore where titles from the various panels could be purchased.
This year, the festival gave university students discounted entry to the festival, with the tickets reduced to only $5 per event.
“[For students], it’s an opportunity to learn, to engage, and maybe get out of the ivory tower, as some people call the educational institutions,” said Wilson. “You’re hearing right from the experts, people with real lived experience and deep knowledge.”
