Frye Festival: Times & Transcript Article
Festival's 10th anniversary season featured
Published Monday April 27th, 2009
The books are now closed on the 10th anniversary Frye Festival in Metro Moncton, and word of Canada's only bilingual festival of words and literature has apparently spread ever further.
An estimated 17,500 people took part in this year's celebration of words, up five per cent from last year.
Festival founder and chairwoman Dawn Arnold said if anyone thought economic worries would be enough to keep people away, they were wrong.
"Now is not the time to forget all that is beautiful and creative around us," she said. "During difficult times, literature is even more important and we need our authors to help us make sense of the world." The public seemed to agree.
If the number of book lovers who took part was huge, it was no doubt helped by the number of great writers who took part,
John Ralston Saul, Antonine Maillet, Robert J. Sawyer, Neil Smith, Don McKay, Monique Deland, Monique LaRue, Michèle Marineau, Jean Barbe, Sheree Fitch, and Alexandre Jardin among them.
They gave inspiring readings, offered glimpses of their creative processes, and advice on how to cope with the ups and downs of a writer's journey.
Key Frye Festival events created many fond memories: The Best of Canadian Lit evening featured three of today's best Canadian authors, Jane Urquhart, Miriam Toews, and Wayne Johnston.
Le Jardin des mots featured famed French novelist Alexandre Jardin, who showed that words can be so much more than just ink on paper. Both events were sold out and enthusiastically received. Crowds also gathered for the Frye Jam, KidsFest, Imagination at Work, Café Underground, various writing workshops, the Hackmatack event, and the Soirée Frye.
The 2009 festival saw 24 authors visit schools in southeast New Brunswick, Kent County, and the Acadian Peninsula for a total of 142 school visits. Also, two groups of students from Moncton had the chance to meet up-and-coming Canadian author Neil Smith and students from Bouctouche took part in the round table, How real is your fiction?
More than 800 screaming and yelling students invaded the Capitol Theatre for the Hackmatack event, more than 150 students exposed their work at Imagination at work, 30 young writers and singer-songwriters performed at the Café Underground, and 20 young writers read their texts at the Budding Writers event.
The Frye Festival donated $8,000 in books to various schools in the province and a total of $4,600 was awarded as bursaries to young authors.
To end the 10th edition on a high note, Paul Bossé, the festival's official poète flyé, presented four video poems he created to represent both the festival and Metro Moncton.
Arnold said the event only came together thanks to corporate sponsors and the efforts of about 150 volunteers.
The Frye Festival was fortunate to see its corporate sponsorship grow this year, while Atlantic Lottery Corporation, Lounsbury, Aliant, and the Delta Beauséjour, the four main sponsors who have been with the event since the very beginning, continued to show their support.
The 2010 Frye Festival will be held next April 19 to 25 in Moncton.
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