‘Mid-week meltdown’ brings authors, fans together

Seven authors entertained a small audience during an intimate and fun literary event filled with laughter and kinship on Wednesday.

The readings were part of the AfterWords Literary Festival, which runs until Sunday.

Andrea Currie read from her memoir, Finding Otipemisiwak. It recalls Currie’s first-hand experience of the Sixties Scoop, which removed Indigenous children from their homes and adopted them out to largely non-native families, and the trials she faced because of it.

She read about meeting her lost siblings for the first time. The audience sat quietly as she spoke of the art installation that she and her oldest sister contributed to before they had ever met.

“To me, it’s an act of sovereignty to claim some space in this type of setting for different stories and different ways of telling them,” said Currie after the event.

“To contribute to a conversation that I think needs to happen, those of us that are able to show up and speak up need to do that.”

Amanda Peters, author of Waiting For the Long Night Moon, started the reading with “the first story (she) was ever proud of.”

She said that if people are inspired by her work to seek out more stories about land-back movements or fighting for Indigenous water-rights, she’ll be happy.

The event, the festival’s sold-out “midweek-meltdown,” also featured readings by Alex Pugsley, Amanda Peters, Cory Lavender, Deepa Rajagopalan, Lisa Alward and was emceed by writer Sarah Mian.

Mian, author of When the Saints, began the event with stories of a birthday-writing-getaway that ended in chaos when one of the group mates claimed the birthday brownies contained only a little marijuana.

The audience laughed and applauded as Mian introduced each author.

It was an intimate affair, with fewer than 40 people in the room. Some speakers brought poetry still being drafted and rewritten, while some brought novel-length fiction.

“It is beyond our wildest dreams,” said festival co-founder Stephanie Domet. “These people lined up on the street to get in here.”

This is the festival’s sixth year running in Halifax.

Domet said five years of growing pains, quarantines and ill-timed hurricanes have led to the present. She said almost every event is sold out for the first time ever. 

“We don’t want to become a big machine. We always want it to be just like this,” said Domet. She plans to keep the festival small and tied to Café Lara as long as possible. “Vibes are very important to us.”

Jessica Hiemstra, a writer in the audience, was thankful to share a room with so many like-minded people: people who care about art.

“I’m gonna go home with poetry in my heart, with orchestral, with leaves, with rage, with the climate crisis, with politics and all of it in company. So, I feel strengthened. Thank God for literature,” she said in an interview after the readings.