The Winnipeg readers festival

I was thrilled when I was invited to participate in Thin Air, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival. Few things give me greater pleasure than reading to an attentive, engaged audience—okay, that’s not entirely true. I would read to three birds, if they perched on my windowsill. I just love reading my stories aloud. Bonus if some creature, even a little bird, is actually listening.

Well there were appreciative readers aplenty at the festival. I read at noon at the library downtown to a roomful of people, some of whom may have come into the library to get warm, others who were curious about this woman who had sailed across the ocean, still others looking, perhaps, for a quiet place to eat their lunch. But all of them listened politely and asked good questions. The half hour flew by.

That evening I was driven out to Gimli, a small town on the shores of Lake Winnipeg about an hour north of the city. There a crowd had gathered in the Unitarian Church, the heart of the town’s Icelandic community and once the mother church of the Unitarian movement in Western Canada. There were sailors in the audience who nodded as I read my account of our first storm at sea and shared their stories afterwards as we gathered at the front for coffee and some home baking.

There was another church in store for me. The next day I was driven to Carman, a very pretty prairie town about an hour south of Winnipeg, and there I read to The Wednesday Group, a couple dozen people who get together once a week to listen to speakers, think about big ideas, and ask questions. They asked some of the best questions I’ve ever fielded. You said you were never going to put yourself in the way of a broken heart again. Why did you? How do you provision for a month at sea? Were you ever lonely out there? The discussion continued over a lunch of homemade soup and fresh bread.

But as much pleasure as the readings gave me, I think sitting quietly in the audience as other writers performed was just as satisfying. So many stories. So many different voices. I was transported to the Great Bear Rainforest on the west coast of Canada in search of Sasquatch, to a modest house in Saskatoon built in 1928, inside the mind of a woman struggling with schizophrenia. To a boxing match in Las Vegas, to a horse farm in southwestern Ontario, on a walk through Winnipeg’s urban forest. From a small beach just outside St. John’s, Newfoundland to almost every place the ocean touches.

I promised myself when I came here, my suitcase already overstuffed, that I wouldn’t buy any books, but I couldn’t stop myself. The pile in my hotel room is growing steadily. It’s a good thing I’m going home today—I couldn’t carry any more books! But the festival continues until Monday. There’s still time to head down and collect your own armload of books.

This should really be called the Winnipeg Readers Festival.

Linda Kenyon
https://lindakenyon.ca