Authors to share love of writing at Lakefield Literary Festival

— Authors Barbara Mitchell, Michael Redhill and Kyo Maclear will be at the 24th annual Lakefield Literary Festival delivering writing craft talks.

The festival takes place from July 13 to 15 in Lakefield. The talks — on fiction, non-fiction and picture books will be held at Lakefield College School on July 14 and 15.

“We are proud to be part of our area’s large and active writing and arts community,” said John Boyko, chairman of the Lakefield Literary Festival board.

Tickets are $30 and are on sale now through the Lakefield Literary Festival website and at two local bookstores, that can be found on the website.

Mitchell, from Otonabee, will be at Lakefield College on July 14 at 10 a.m. Her talk is titled Mapping Your Past: Writing Family History and will discuss resources and techniques that are needed to grab information to map out a story.

Her book, Mapmaker, Philip Turnor in Rupert’s Land in the Age of Enlightenment, will be drawn on for examples on her process with turning research into a memoir or biography.

Giller Prize winner Michael Redhill from Toronto wrote the novel Bellevue Square as well as novels for young adults, four collections of poetry and two plays. Redhill also writes a series of crime novels under the name Inger Ash Wolf.

He will have a wide range of discussions on his take on the novel as an art form and will present on July 14 starting at 1 p.m. H

e will discuss the birth of the novel and how it’s changed and progressed over 400 years.

Kyo Maclear from Toronto will be the last author presenting at the festival.

She is currently a doctoral student at York University where she holds a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship — a program that attracts and retains world-class doctoral students by offering a significant financial award.

Maclear will discuss the picture book and how it has become one of the most versatile and popular of literary formats, with many of its elements that can apply to longer forms of writing.

Her most recent book and national bestseller is Birds Art Life, shortlisted for the Ontario 2018 Trillium Book Award.

The full program of the festival can be found at www.lakefieldliteraryfestival.com.

Volunteers run the festival with sponsorship from local businesses and individuals, and it is considered a non-profit organization.