One of the biggest draws at the Saskatchewan Festival of Words are the author readings, which feature festival presenters speaking about their own work, and question periods providing a chance for participants to interact directly.
If you're a fan of Guy Gavriel Kay, Casey Plett, Kim Fu, Bradley Somer, and/or Nicholas Herring, read on for the highlights of their Saturday reading sessions.
Guy Gavriel Kay
Kay is one of Canada's greatest writers of historical fiction and fantasy. His books have a "quarter turn" toward the fantastical, Kay is fond of saying, a phrase coined by a literature review. He is a member of the Order of Canada, the author of 15 internationally bestselling books, and one volume of poetry. On Saturday morning, he read from a memorial poem he wrote for his dear friend Eddie Greenspan, who died in 2014.
Kay, 68, noted that as authors grow older, elegiacal themes become more and more prominent in their writing due to the inevitable loss of friends and family. From the second, third, and fourth stanzas of "Sooner gather the birds," by Kay, originally published in The Advocates' Journal:
You were lost so fast, old friend.
I talk to you all the time. Even give you
the last word now, though we battled over that
for almost forty years. It's painful to make a joke
but I'll leave it here, because joking was one
of the things we did all the time. All the time.Everyone knew how funny you were.
A signature. Delivery and wit
like that will shape a reputation:
In a courtroom, a cafe, on a stage.But that can become the thing remembered.
People don't look past.
A few did. A few of us knew.
No one mourns very deeply or for long
someone only fast with a quip.
Casey Plett
Plett is known for her unflinching exploration of vulnerability and the mundane commonalities of human beings, leading her to win the Amazon First Novel Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award (twice), and to be nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
From a story called "Rose City: City of Roses":
We stared at each other awkwardly. It’s age-old: You meet someone whose mould of pariah weirdo looks something like yours, and you try to reach out, but you’re on guard, because what if you hate each other, or what if she sucks? Plus, what if somebody clocks the two of you together when, on your own, you would’ve gone undetected? That mode of thought was around more back then, partly because of gatekeeping bullshit and partly because of good reason.
Cleo said, “Do you want a drink?”
I sipped from her water bottle (vodka) and handed it back and she tipped it up. And her body visibly relaxed. Like I could see the electricity running through her veins.
Kim Fu
Fu is the author of two novels, a book of poetry, and a short story collection, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (2022), which won the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award, the 2022 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and was a finalist for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Fu read from her short story "Twenty Hours," a mildly absurd, yet possibly prophetic first-person exploration of future forms of immortality raising uneasy questions about the ultimate moral boundary:
After I kill my wife, I had twenty hours before her new body finished printing downstairs. I thought about how to spend the time. I could clean the house, as a show of contrition, and when she returned to find me sitting at the shining kitchen island, knick-knacks in place on dusted shelves, a pot of soup on the stove, we might not even need to discuss it. I could buy flowers. I could watch the printing, which still fascinated me, the weaving and webbing of each layer of tissue, the cross-sectional view of her internal workings like the ringed sections of a tree trunk.
Bradley Somer
Somer is an archaelogist and an anthropologist who has traveled the world exploring and studying human pre-history, cultures, and how people have changed and are changing the world. He has a talent for finding and exploring highly unusual and thought-provoking perspectives: For example, Somer's second novel, the award-winning Fishbowl (2015), is a story from the perspective of a goldfish named Ian who is in the process of falling from a 27th-story balcony.
Somer read the audience an essay he wrote explaining the genesis of his latest novel, Extinction (2022). Extinction is about a park ranger attempting to protect the last living grizzly bear in a future where climate change and capitalism have resulted in a mass extinction event.
The essay is titled "ALL THE PRETTY BEASTS: WHAT WE CHOOSE TO SAVE OF OUR NATURAL WORLD" and was originally published on CrimeReads.com:
Let’s consider the following. Let’s be viciously honest with ourselves. Attempt to subvert any subconscious moralizing and sanctimony. Let’s be aware of the pervasive noise of ideological bias and the West’s besotted predilection toward climate sanctimony. Let’s truly think. When you arrive at your answer, don’t say it, not even in a whisper; actualization may sully your resolve.
The question is: When was the last time a white rhino did anything for you?
Though flippant, it’s an important question, perhaps even one of the most important ones. I thought about this, too. It took time and dedicated wattage. Really. Slow down. The world is moving too fast now, and it’s scattered our abilities. Stop reading and think this through. Why, right now, are there armed guards laying their lives down to protect these beasts from poachers? Why are human lives being traded for animal ones?
Nicholas Herring
Herring is a carpenter, lobster fisherman, and writer from Prince Edward Island. His debut novel, Some Hellish (2022), won the second annual Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, shocking him, he said, with its instant acclaim. In awarding the prize, the jury compared him to Cormac McCarthy, for his bleak, sharp, beautiful prose, and the deep philosophical thought behind its dark humour and unexpected adventure.
"Thank you very much," Herring said to the audience. "I forgot to say this at the other things that I did, but this is so very cool to be here, and yeah, it's overwhelming. This is not my natural environment, I'm a fisherman and I'm used to be covered in fish guts and people swearing at me.
"When I won the award, which was crazy, the executive director of the Writers' Trust said I gave the worst speech ever. So, that was very humbling. ... It's a funny thing, like, you write a book, and if you're lucky enough to be published, which I was, then people sort of assume that you can speak in public. And I cannot do that thing. I'm quietly dying up here right now."
Despite Herring's humility and self-deprecation — he noted that during his first book tour, he became increasingly anxious and uncomfortable rather than getting used to it — the audience at the reading was responsive, laughing, nodding and immediately posing several questions after he finished.
Optimistically, Herring said the feeling after finishing his book, despite knowing "nobody in the world was waiting for this" and he might be the only one who cared, was almost religious.
"It was a very powerful thing," he said thoughtfully. "Maybe that's how it is for everyone, but, I think I'll try to chase that again."
