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The Ottawa International Writers Festival is celebrating their 51st Festival (not the 51st State). The Festival’s 18 events run from October 22nd to October 24th and feature more than 25 of the most celebrated authors from Canada and around the world.
This year, the Festival partnered with Festival Alumna Tessa Hulls in an act of cross-border resistance and friendship. The idea was simple: an American’s celebration of Canadian Literature as beavers.
“As the person who usually comes up with the weird idea, I love it when someone comes to me prefacing something with, ‘Ok, so this is strange but hear me out…’ When the Ottawa International Writers Festival reached out about a ludicrous idea, I enthusiastically said ‘yes.’ Very quickly, Canadian Beavers escalated to be drawn in the maximalist density of Where’s Waldo. I had a blast painting it!”
Sean Wilson is the Festival’s Artistic Director. “I think we reached out to Tessa the first day Trump started calling us the 51st State. When she was at the Festival, she was such a warm presence. A lot of the time, authors have to whisk off to the next city as soon as their event is done, but Tessa attended the whole Festival, sketching every author and every panel.”
Then in May, everything changed. Tessa Hulls won the Pulitzer Prize for Feeding Ghosts, the very same book she brought to Spring 2024’s Festival.
Sean again: “We were sure that the project would die right there. Pulitzer Prize winners do not donate their time to draw beavers.”
Tessa: “The Festival reached out after the prize and asked if Canadian Beavers was still a go. I told them I wanted this to be my first post-Pulitzer project. Let me apologize for my country; we’ve gone entirely off the rails, and we are a terrible neighbor. As the daughter of immigrants, I feel both very much the byproduct of American culture, and somewhat separate from it.”
“I am an enormous lifelong fan of Michael Ondaatje (Divisadero is one of my favorite books) so if there’s ever room again in Ottawa for a semi-nomadic American author who will take any excuse to come engage with Canada’s literary landscape…”
This year’s Festival wrestles with the idea of identity. Sean Wilson: “The 51st Festival is one of the strongest yet. I think audiences will walk away feeling as though they have a better idea of what makes us human, let alone Canadian. Nothing is more emblematic of that than our Friday program. Both Friday events celebrate queer authors and queer identities.
At 6:30 PM we have Marc Bendavid, Susie Taylor and Shani Mootoo bringing three books that take the long view of life, community, and the sense of self over time.
At 8:00 PM we are welcoming back Ivan Coyote, who is bringing their hotly anticipated piece of theatre.
Combining Coyote’s equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking stories with long-time collaborator Clyde Petersen’s animations, Playlist will have you hitting rewind on your own list of songs that helped shape you.
The Ottawa International Writers Festival runs from October 22nd to 26th at Library and Archives Canada in 395 Wellington St in Ottawa. For tickets and information check out www.writersfestival.org.
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