Once again, this year the International Festival of Authors was hosted just across our street and at seventeen other locations across our province by the Harbourfront Centre and it featured a hundred and ninety authors from around the world and included readings by Scotiabank Giller Prize, Governor General’s Literary Awards and Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize finalists. In its 32nd year, the IFOA boasted participants like Edem Awumey- Grand Prix Littéraire de L’Afrique Noire winner and a finalist for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt, Ken Babstock a winner at the 1997 Canadian National Magazine Awards, Peter Behrens- winner of Governor General's Award for Fiction and Amitav Ghosh, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and winner of Arthur C. Clarke Award and Dan David Prize, amongst others.
Hearing the festive trumpets, I also went to visit the authors @ Harbourfront. As an invisible but sonorous voice set the mood for the evening, the audience was informed that each of the four authors will be reading for twenty minutes and following the first two authors, a fifteen minutes recess will be taken. Promptly thereafter, the first author was introduced. He was none other than our very own Linwood Barclay. Formerly a writer of the thrice-weekly humour column in the Toronto Star, he has also authored more than a dozen books. His reading from the prologue of a recently published book - The Accident definitely proved to be a hit with the audience, as it gradually made its way from the comic to the mysterious.
Next on stage was Amitav Ghosh with River of Smoke, the second volume of what will be the Ibis trilogy. He treated his audience to a humorous anecdote (absolutely fictitious off course) of how a man named Behram rose to prominence amongst the English passengers of a ship, when Napoleon, in exile at this time, invited him to his residence. All that can be said about the piece is that it left the audience giggling and curious to learn more.
Following a fifteen minutes break, Nancy Huston read to the audience. Huston’s books have won the Prix Goncourt des Lyceéns, Prix Elle and Governor General’s Literary Award. Her novel The Mark of the Angel won the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle, Canadian Jewish Fiction Book Award and Torgi Award and was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Fault Lines won the Prix Femina and was shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Orange Prize. Huston presented Infrared, which follows Rena, a photographer who specializes in infrared techniques, who, through a parallel journey, explores her relationships past and present. The bold language, curious portrayal of characters and vividly descriptive passages in the section she read from, won her much appreciation from the audience.
The evening concluded with a reading by Heather Jessup. Currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto and a Creative Writing instructor at Dalhousie University, this is Jessup’s first novel. Set against the backdrop of Cold War-era Toronto, The Lightning Field gave us a slice of an engineer’s life who works in the suburbs of Toronto. Tragic yet hopeful, the novel explores loss and unexpected offerings.
As people migrated to the book signing desks, I took my leave of IFOA 2011, hoping to be back next year, and also hoping to meet a host of other talented authors who I could not this year...
 |
| Top- Audience, Bottom- Venue (Fleck Theater) |
 |
| Author Amitav Ghosh at the Signing desk |
 | |
| With Author Amitav Ghosh |
No comments:
Post a Comment