Author Heather O’Neill (right) signed books and chatted with audience members following an Oct. 18 talk she gave at the Hudson Village Theatre as part of the ongoing StoryFest literary festival. (Photo by Kristina Edson)
Literary celebration continues with film screening
Anyone who’s shied away from attending a literary festival or author reading for fear of feeling out of their element, should toss that concern aside. Such events are a wonderful chance to come face to face with the authors, poets, and other artists who often impact our lives in subtle or profound ways.
The annual Greenwood StoryFest is a great example. The ongoing literary festival, now in its 15th season, started with one author event and has grown to welcome some of Canada’s most notable writers including: Margaret Atwood, Roméo Dallaire, Michael Ondaatje, Nancy Richler, Graeme Gibson, Linden MacIntyre, and many more. On Oct. 18 a capacity crowd attended such a talk at the Hudson Village Theatre, when Heather O’Neill, author of Lullabies for Little Criminals (Harper Perennial, 2006) The Girl Who Was Saturday Night (Harper Collins Publishers, 2014) and Daydreams of Angels (Harper Collins Publishers, 2015), among others, took the stage. The often informal events allow featured authors to read from current or past works, talk about their writing process (or lack thereof) and generally let readers get to know them on a more personal level. Audience members are usually able to ask questions. In the case of O’Neill’s event, she revealed what it was like to grow up in Montreal’s red light district with a father she called a terrible parent always on the wrong side of the law, but who loved her the best he could. He taught her to lie and create a narrative for herself that allowed her to succeed where he could not. O’Neill was kidnapped by her mother, a drifter, when she was five years-old. She spent several years living in the southern U.S. as a result. A young O’Neill was home alone reading a library book when her mother knocked on the apartment door and said they were going for a ride. And though she took the book with her and kept it throughout the following years, O’Neill worried incessantly about the accumulating fine and how she would pay it when she got back home. Rather than recounting it as a horrific tale, O’Neill told the tale in a charming and often amusing way. Making sense of such an unconventional childhood is what led O’Neill to develop what she called her “magical realism” style of writing. It allows her to write about the gritty, graphic and often sexual topics she favours with a sort of wide-eyed innocence. O’Neill also treated the audience to a reading from her upcoming novel, The Lonely Hearts Hotel (Harper Collins Canada) due out in early February.
Festival continues
Up next for StoryFest will be the Oct. 24 screening of the film Jane Austen’s Love and Friendship, taking place at the Hudson Village Theatre. There will be a matinee (2 p.m.) and an evening (7:30 p.m.) screenings. Gwynne Dyer, a Canadian journalist and military historian, will present at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 27 at St. James Church Hall, while novelist Guy Vanderhaeghe, will present a breakfast workshop at St. James Church at 9 a.m. on Oct. 29. Greenwood is a “living” museum in Hudson that dates to the 1730s. It was a private waterfront home until its last resident, Phoebe Nobbs Hyde, bequeathed it to the Canadian Heritage of Quebec. Greenwood is open to visitors who are able see firsthand how the people who’ve lived there over the years.lived.
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