Festival of Words releases details of 25th-anniversary event this July

The Saskatchewan Festival of Words has finalized its schedule of events for this year’s event and the team is excited to share what they have planned for the 25th anniversary of the popular literary festival. The 2021 Festival of Words will be another virtual event, confirmed interim director Amanda Farnel, but the organizing team has some exciting new features this year that will help boost excitement.

“It’s really exciting and kind of disappointing to not be able to host it the way we originally intended to, in-person,” said Farnel. “But I think we’ve got some really, really cool ideas to host it virtually that will make it feel like it’s in person and I’m really excited to show that to people.” For starters, the 2021 Festival will be taking place on its own individual website, with live events streaming by video. Each event will begin by showing off its “venue” — with a video tour of a Moose Jaw venue to give viewers a more visceral feel of what attending an in-person festival is like. “We want to be able to bring the festival to people that can’t come to Moose Jaw,” said Farnel.

There will be other additional features on the website for festival patrons to enjoy, like open chat and video messaging boards where guests can interact with one another and story highlights from past festivals to celebrate the event’s history.

More features, like an online trivia section and bookstore, and additional content like pre-recorded panels with Festival guests and walking tours of local attractions like Crescent Park will also be available. Farnel also said that the festival is working to offer a chance for local guests to view the Festival in person, with a live-stream viewing of sessions at the Mae Wilson Theatre for a limited audience, provided public health orders allow.

Festival passes are available on a pay-what-you-can model this year, said Farnel, as organizers wanted the event to stay as accessible as possible while still providing support for future events.

“We don't want to prohibit people from attending because they don’t have the funds, so it’s whatever you can afford,” said Farnel. “We give a suggested amount, to let people know what we would have charged, but it is pay whatever you can because as long as you attend the festival and enjoy it and share it with other people, we’re happy.”

The official schedule, available in full online, is packed with 15 events over the span of July 15-18, including author readings, panels, and workshops for guests to attend. Farnel said there’s plenty of great things to attend, including panels on subverting genres, fantasy writing, and the ins and outs of publicity marketing.

“Our opening night panel is going to be all about festivals and it will kind of be a highlight of the past 25 years of the Festival. And it also gives the point of view of authors, what they’ve experienced at festivals and kind of what goes behind the scenes,” said Farnel. “We’re really excited about that.”

The popular Kids Ink Workshop is back, run by hometown YA author Melanie MacFarlane, and the Great Big Book Club will be discussing Jael Richardson’s new dystopian release, Gutter Child.

The annual Festival concert will be taking place on the Saturday night of the schedule, with the performers yet to be announced. Farnel said the show will look a lot like last year, with a live-stream happening online and a select number of in-person tickets available to guests in Moose Jaw.

All of the reading sessions have been put together based on a theme this year, bringing together authors with similar genres or topics, as the sessions will be more like a moderated Q&A discussion.

Farnel also highlighted the incredible lineup of guest authors this year, which includes fantasy author C.L. Polk who was recently featured on Canada Reads, author Dorothy Ellen Palmer who is currently writing one of the newest Sherlock Holmes books and Saskatchewan's Youth Poet Laureate Peace Akintade.

“I could say great things about every single person [attending],” said Farnel. “We really try to focus on creating a variety of people and genres and ideas, to give you a little bit of everything.”

After the success of last year’s virtual festival, Farnel said she’s excited to offer some new features this year that will hopefully make things feel a little closer to what long-time patrons are used to from an in-person event.

That’s not to say the Festival is planning on moving to a strictly virtual venue permanently, said Farnel, but she feels confident that the past two years have broadened the team’s horizons.

“I think this has given us an opportunity to experiment and play with a medium we haven’t really put a lot of time and effort into before the pandemic,” said Farnel. “And so when we do get back to in-person stuff, [I think] we’ll still have some sort of hybrid, online and in-person stuff going on.” Registration for the Festival of Words will open on June 1, with further announcements about the event still yet to come. Full details about the 2021 Saskatchewan Festival of Words can be found online at festivalofwords.com/schedule.