– by Derek Peach –
Thanks to the 2015 Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival Committee, you can buy tickets to attend a series of four readings by selected local authors you also enjoyed in 2013. The first event on the New Year’s literary calendar will be Patrick Lane and Lorna Crozier at the Red Brick Café on February 13th beginning at 7 p.m.
Patrick Lane was inducted as an Officer of the Order of Canada in November 2014 just weeks after the launch of his last collection of poems, Washita. Typed over a long period with one finger of his left hand, Lane was yet able to say, “It is rare to feel anything deeply. My life is a feast if I allow it to be.” This is the man of whom Jane Urquart said, “Patrick Lane is our most essential poet: tough, tender, fearless, and beautifully dangerous.”
Lorna Crozier is a Governor General’s Award-winning poet and author with numerous books of poetry and anthologies of non-fiction to her credit. She continues to write and teach and give benefit readings as an expression of what she might have commented on in It Is Night: “Outside my mind, the wind is reckoning./Always there is something/to figure out.”
To attend an evening with these two jewels in our crown of local authors, you can go to Tanner’s Book Store on Beacon Avenue, Sidney or Munro’s Books in Victoria where you may have bought that volume of their work for your friend. Tickets will be $10 and they will go fast, as the rapid sell-out in 2013 attests.
The year 2015 will be a wonderful feast of literary events hosted by the Sidney and Peninsula Literary Festival Committee and sponsored by Seaside Magazine, culminating in the festival October 2 – 4th. There are several opportunities to live your resolution to participate more fully in that part of your community. On behalf of the festival, the Star Cinema will show “Far From the Madding Crowd” based on Thomas Hardy’s celebrated novel. The showing will take place July 29th, 2015. Look for posters and reminders to attend this beautifully filmed classic. During the first weekend in October at least 15 to 18 authors will participate in two Gala events, readings and workshops, youth activities, and a Sunday Brunch. Look for our youth and adult writing competitions scheduled for the early fall. More details will be provided over the next few months on all these events.
If you would like to contribute financially to the festival by sponsoring an author or join in organizing the festival, please get in touch with Gillian Crowley, grant writer and promotions coordinator at gillian1916@gmail.com.
