Sudbury, Ontario hosted its first annual Words In The Wilderness Literary Festival , July 23 to 29, 2010. What a blast!

I was pleased to be invited to read from my debut novel, Swampy Jo  on Friday night at Tom Davies Square, to a small, appreciative crowd. I met some great people, including Sudbury poet laureate Roger Nash; Festival Chair Miriam Harrison and a lovely woman named Aura, who was also pivotal in launching this first festival, along with Kenneth Lillie-Paetz , a writer and art director for Open Minds Quarterly  magazine; and a performance artist named Spider Allan, with whom I had a rivetting chat about how capable children are in adapting to the confusing and sometimes twisted messages they're given about the world, themes I've explored in my novel.

On Saturday, Marie Bilodeau  -- a tireless fantasy writer who'd just sent the final book in a trilogy to the printer -- joined me on a fiction panel to discuss the business and lifestyle of being a writer. Among others, in the audience were established horror writer David Nickle, author Margo Little , author (and my husband!) Barry Grills , and publisher Laurence Steven of Scrivener Press .

At a beer-&-pizza reception at the elegantly rustic Fromagerie Elgin, I met Paul Ungar and Justin Malette-Larcher , editors of Halfway Between Here and There , a media & culture coverage site which offers reviews of the latest games, movies, music, books, and so on.

I also had the pleasure of meeting horror author Gord Rollo , and bought his book The Jigsaw Man because the premise of a desperate man being willing to sell his arm to a surgeon intent on rebuilding his disabled son was just too good to pass up. Gord assures me that "it's a love story, really." We'll see. . .

I missed the Horror panel on Sunday, but you can find info on Sean Costello's new book, Here After , available through Scrivener Press.

The Festival was great fun!  
Catch the rest of this year's events, and plan to join the fray next year.
http://wordsinthewilderness.wordpress.com/

Jennifer