Eden Mills’ Writers Festival

Picturesque town hosts 26th annual writer’s festival

The Eden Mills Writer’s Festival hosted its Sunday, Sept. 14 reading day in the lovely little town of Eden Mills, a ten-minute drive northeast of Guelph. A crisp, slightly overcast day was befitting for many of the author’s readings, which varied in tone from light-hearted and playful, to courageously provocative and devastatingly personal (often all in one or two passages). The festival, organized in a manner that deftly highlighted the personalities of the town’s landmarks featured, quite literally, a wealth of Canadian and international authors reading and discussing their works.

For this piece, it made sense to look at what was happening at the sections themselves, what kind of books were read, and to keep a space for reflection on how the festival brings together nature and books, the rural and the cosmopolitan, and words and leaves. (Story continues after slideshow)

The Mill
On a gentle slope overlooking a lovely vista of willows and gentle water, a sea of enthusiastic listeners, equipped with the necessary lawn chairs and throw blankets, covered the grass to hear Shani Mootoo, David Adams Richards, and Eva Stachniak read from their most recent novels.

Mootoo read from Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab, a novel that follows a Trinidadian man named Jonathan, who attempts to reconcile his abandonment by his mother, Sid, who left Toronto to return to Trinidad and, in time, changed into a man named “Sydney.” The segments Mootoo read from were moving and visceral, painting not only a touching and striking portrait of West Indies identity, but also one of gender acceptance and consolidation of traumatic pasts.

Adams Richards’ reading was from his newest book Crimes Against My Brother, a slighly Faulkner-esque account of two Miramichi boys’ foray into manhood, and all the bleak, sometimes brutal, problems that plague such a journey. Stachniak’s latest novel, Empress of the Night, is a fictionalized account of Catherine the Great’s life as ruler of Tsarist Russia. Slightly playful in tone, and with focus laid on her family and the internal politics of Catherine’s court, the book is a follow-up to 2012’s The Winter Palace. Empress of the Night sees Catherine reflecting on her life, rule, and decision-making that established Russia as a world power and a truly “modern” state.

Publisher’s Way
York Street, the main road of Eden Mills’ town centre, became, for the afternoon, “Publisher’s Way.” With presses large and small promoting the freshest Canadian novels (and even some sought-after reprints) by authors at the festival and elsewhere, the Bookshelf-organized publisher’s section featured, again, a treasure trove of books new and old, and writers obscure and well known.

A delightful selection of affordable, local food was also available at the nearby food court, offering a moment to digest not just some delicious ice cream or samosas, but some of the brilliant readings offered throughout the day. Naturally, the coffee was flowing like water for the writers and enthusiasts alike.

The sculpture garden
Adjacent to a quiet pond of lily pads, as well as the town’s bridge and main street, laid the sculpture park. A quaint, gently rolling patch of swampy land, dotted with intriguing and varied wooden and bronze statues, hosted a slew of Canada Reads winners; the three being Heather O’Neill, Terry Fallis, and Miriam Toews.

Arguably, the standout reading came from O’Neill, an author from Montreal whose debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals, won the 2007 Canada Reads contest. She read a passage from her latest novel, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night. The novel follows the story of the Tremblay twins, Nicholas and Noushka, as they come of age in a shifting, referendum-era Montreal cultural landscape and come to understand themselves, all while living down the infamy of their folk-singer father, a “Quebecois Serge Gainsbourg” kind of character.

Later, in the same spot, British Columbia and U.K. based Kate Pullinger read a haunting passage from her latest book Landing Gear. The novel follows the story of a Pakistani stowaway named Yacub, who falls from an airplane’s landing gear into the car of Harriet, parked in a supermarket lot at the time. A story of personal and national worlds literally colliding, her book shifts between narrative perspectives and offers a chilling reflection based on real-life stories of stowaways in airplane landing gears.

The Chapel
At some point in the afternoon, in a small, sparsely and modestly decorated chapel, I saw a cake facing the church’s small organ. Upon further research and inspection, and after kindly being handed a morsel from publisher Dan Wells, it appeared the cake celebrated the 10th anniversary of Biblioasis, a Windsor-based indie press focused on publishing the freshest Canadian fiction and poetry.

John Metcalf, author and influential editor of Porcupine’s Quill Press, read a gleefully sardonic section from his short story collection Standing Stones, from a story about a group of young boys at a “borstal,” which he explained as the British equivalent to a juvenile hall. Metcalf’s reading was followed by a conversation with Leon Rooke, in which he, Metcalf, and Wells discussed Biblioasis’ founding, the founding of the Writer’s Festival by Rooke in 1989, as well as literature and life in general.

A few afterthoughts…
Walt Whitman wrote, in the “Song of Myself” sequence of his seminal Leaves of Grass, “I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.” “Leaf” does not just mean a leaf in this case, but the sheets of paper in which authors put their words to. Myself, and surely other bookworms at Eden Mills that afternoon, would be inclined to agree, especially after spending the day in the clean, country air, digesting readings from some of Canada’s finest and most important authors.

The setting for the festival not only offered a welcomed escape from the bustle of any given big city, but also offers an important “return to one’s roots,” especially for crafters of the written word. It was not only a delightful celebration of the written word, but was also one of the paper that we scribes set those words to.