THIN AIR Festival

THIN AIR 2023 – Livres en fête

THIN AIR 2023 IS NOW OVER, CHECK BACK IN SEPTEMBER!

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Our month-long celebration of books and ideas is now a hybrid hub of creative content in English and French, with a lively array of real-time events in person and online. Listen to readings, glimpse the behind-the-scenes details of a writing life, sign up for a workshop or two to develop your own skills. We’re proud to share some of the best new books by writers from across the country and further afield. Discover books by writers you love, and find some new favourites to add to your list! 

Dates: September 20th – October 18th.

Where: In person and at thinairfestival.ca

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So, how will the festival work this year?

Three years ago, we joined the rest of the planet in pivoting to a virtual festival, and we’re going to take advantage of all the things we learned then as we roll out this year’s version.

Once again, we’re creating a lively “destination” website for festival goers to explore. Our featured writers are sharing their work with readings and conversations, and our website visitors will be able to wander through all that creative content at their own time and in their own way. Basically, a make-your-own-(bookish)-adventure!

We are keen to share our line-up of writers and their fantastic new books! We’d love to have you follow us on our socials where we’ll be posting pretty much every weekday from now until our September 20 kick-off.

What is different this time

This year, we are planning a handful of in-person events, some of them in partnership with our friends at McNally Robinson Booksellers! They’ll be hosted on-site at McNally’s.

The events will also be live-streamed and uploaded to the festival website shortly thereafter, so folks from far and near will still be able to be part of the crowd at any time! Of course, if the pandemic flares again, we may all be obliged to attend in that virtual space…

A big shout-out to the folks at McNally Robinson who are masterminding this undertaking! Details about all of these in-person festival events will be posted to their website, and also to our own.

THIN AIR 2023 – Livres en fête: a primer

SO WHEN IS IT HAPPENING?
Now that THIN AIR has a big online component, we’ve adopted a regular date span. We kick things off September 20 and wind things down again on October 18.

AND WHO IS BEING FEATURED?
We have a confirmed roster of over 50 writers this year, and they represent the whole gamut, from short story writers and playwrights and poets to graphic novelists and memoirists and translators and slammers. The whole line-up will be revealed on September 20 when our festival site goes live, but in the meantime, we have a big social media campaign shining a light on each one.

 

HOW IS THE FESTIVAL STRUCTURED THIS YEAR?
THIN AIR 2023 is a hybrid festival again this year, meaning some aspects are virtual, and others are in-person events.

1. The virtual part…
From September 20 through October 18, our destination festival website (thinairfestival.ca) will be accessible 24/7, allowing you to wander through and discover the writers and books we’re featuring at whatever times suit you best. Once again this year, our writers are submitting imaginative, entertaining, insightful, personal video shorts to give you a better picture of who they are and what they write.

We are also hosting several virtual events in real time, from conversations with writers and translators, to Writing Craft workshops. We are also collaborating with our partners on two big ones: the Free Press Book Club, and Niizhotay Stories.

Livres en fête has a healthy line-up of real-time virtual conversations and one writing workshop.

2. The in-person part…
Our long-time partnership with McNally Robinson Booksellers makes up the core of our in-person programming. Together, we are co-presenting half a dozen hybrid events at the Grant Park Store. These will also be live-streamed on McNally’s YouTube channel.

We are also stretching out a bit. We’ll host an in-person festival launch on September 20 and festival wrap-up on October 18 at Kilter Brewery in St Boniface.

Once we hit September 20, the actual thinairfestival.ca site will be live and all of our events will be trackable there. In the meantime, please visit our regular website (thinairwinnipeg.ca) and find all of the events on our calendar listings there as the final details are confirmed. (We’re excited to report that our main website will be undergoing a major overhaul over the next few months. It’s not the most user-friendly at the moment, so please bear with us!)