Canada’s only bilingual international literary festival, The Frye Festival, happened last week in Moncton, New Brunswick.
Named after Moncton-raised Canadian literary theorist Northrop Frye, the festival is a celebration of books, ideas and the imagination. The Frye Fest began in 1999 at a public conference featuring Acadian novelist, playwright, and scholar Antonine Maillet and Ottawa-born political philosopher and public intellectual John Ralston Saul.
This year’s festival ran from April 21rd to May 1st and included more than forty artists and authors, including children’s authors, graphic novelists, storytellers, poets, playwrights, and spoken-word artists. Look for Billy-Ray Belcourt, a writer and academic from the Driftpile Cree Nation; Montreal-based novelist Kim Thúy; Rebecca Salazar, editor of Atlantic Canada’s iconic literary journal, The Fiddlehead; Andrée Levesque Sioui, a Wendat singer-songwriter from a Wendake community near Quebec City; and Jean-Paul Eid, a Quebec graphic novelist, among many others.
The festival’s extensive youth program featured an exhibit of student artwork, a public reading event for youth, a music showcase for young musicians, a literary debate, writing competitions, and a variety of readings and presentations in local schools.
See the full program here.
Catherine Fisher, blogger
