Non-fiction highlights at Whistler
September 19th, 2022
The Whistler Writers Fest will be featuring a strong line-up of non-fiction writers this year.
For starters, there will be non-fiction writers at the Literary Cabaret: We’re Back, Live Baby event at the Maury Young Arts Centre on Oct. 14 at 7 pm PDT. There, you’ll find Norma Dunning (pictured at right) (Kinauvit?: What’s Your Name? The Eskimo Disc System and a Daughter’s Search for her Grandmother) and Tamar Glouberman (Chasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life).
Dunning is an Inuk writer, professor and grandmother and her new book is a personal exploration of trying to legally solidify her existence as an Inuk woman. Her book offers a vital perspective and nuance to the limited records left about the Eskimo Identification Tag System, which no government has yet apologized for and which was a symbol of the dehumanizing treatment of the smallest Indigenous population in Canada.
Tamar Glouberman
Glouberman’s book chronicles her time spent as a woman whitewater guide working on some of the most challenging and remote rafting rivers in North America. But when a trip ends in a fatal accident, she is consumed by guilt and retreats from the water she loves. Her book chronicles her journey towards forgiveness and dealing with life in the face of tragedy.
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Kagan Goh
The Writers of Non-Fiction Panel at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler on Oct. 15, 10 am PDT will highlight four guest authors who will share their stories of intimate journeys on life’s surprising pathways. The panel and audience discussion will centre around readings by Kagan Goh (Surviving Samsara), Merilyn Simonds (Women, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay), and Debra Thompson (The Long Road Home: On Blackness and Belonging in North America). The event will also include the winner of the Whistler Independent Book Award for non-fiction.
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Marsha Lederman will be at the Booklovers’ Literary Salon talking about her new book Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed. Lederman explores what happened to her parents during the Holocaust, and the impact on her own life, one generation later. The Booklovers’ Literary Salon is Oct. 14 at 4 p.m. PDT online and in-person.
NOTE: Marsha Lederman will also be at the Vancouver Writers Festival, October 18, 6 pm for the Sisters of Resistance event. She will be interviewed about her book by Tilar J. Mazzeo who wrote Sisters in Resistance, which explores the “moral thicket” of living during World War II—and how three women delivered critical evidence of Axis war crimes to Allied forces. Lederman will also be one of the authors (as well as Brian Thomas Isaac who authored All The Quiet Places) in conversation with CBC’s Shelagh Rogers for the Power of Story event on October 20 at 6 pm. For more information, visit: https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-events
Merilyn Simonds
Lederman will also be teaching a workshop: Using Journalism Skills in Memoir Writing on Saturday, Oct. 15 at 9 am at the Fairmont Whistler and online. In a similar vein, Merilyn Simonds will lead Baring the Bones: How to make the Story Part of the Story on Oct. 15 at 3 pm also in person and online.
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