Lineup For Lakefield Literary Festival Announced

The Lakefield Literary Festival has announced its summer lineup of authors for July 19 and 20.

Author Sheila Het (left)i signs a copy of her novel, Pure Colour, for festival board member Bev Haun (right). Photo courtesy of Vanessa Stark and the Lakefield Literacy Festival.

The event will feature a lineup and a festival first novel-to-film discussion on how the writing process transfers to the big screen.

The summer program features:

• Friday, July 19 at 7:00 p.m.: Michael Crummey and filmmaker Christian Sparkes

• Saturday, July 20 at 10:00 Children's Tent at Cenotaph Park: Casey Lyall and Kevin Sylvester

• Saturday, July 20 at 2:00: Drew Hayden Taylor and Elizabeth Renzetti and Kate Hilton

• Saturday, July 20 at 4:30: Meet the Author Reception

• Saturday, July 20 at 7:00: Charlotte Gray and Tim Cook

More details about the authors, their books and tickets will be released next month according to a press release.

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Lakefield Literary Festival's Young Writers Contest Names Record Number Of Winners

Seven winners for the Lakefield Literary Festival’s Young Writers Contest have been announced including, for the first time ever, a three way tie for the senior fiction category.

Winners in front of St Peter Secondary. Photo by Angela O’Grady

This year saw 92 entries to the contest from local schools throughout the Peterborough region.

2022 Young Writers Winners: 

• Junior Fiction: Kellan MacKenzie, Grade 10, SPSS 

• Junior Non-fiction: Madeleine Hill, Grade 10, SPSS 

• Junior Poetry: Kellan MacKenzie, Grade 10, SPSS 

• Senior Fiction: Clementine MacLeod, Grade 11, Adam Scott. Justin Ehlert, Grade 12, PACE. Hailey Cavanagh, Grade 11, SPSS. 

• Senior Non-fiction: Toula Pappas, Grade 11, SPSS 

• Senior Poetry: Abigail Auger, Grade 12, SPSS

Each of the winners will receive $200.00, a commemorative plaque, and publication in the Festival’s ebook.

Justin Ehlert, who attends PACE, was one of three winners in the Senior Fiction category.

Ehlert calls his piece ‘meta-fiction’.

“There was two layers,” he said. “One was me talking about my thought process as I was writing the story and then the story itself was about a man who recently lost his father.”

He says his story started with the setting, a lake, then he built a character around that and went from there.

“Truthfully I’m more of a reader than a writer,” he said. “I started this piece as an assignment and my teacher encouraged me to finish it and to submit it.”

Elhert says winning this contest may encourage him to write more in the future, though he doesn’t plan on making a career out of it.

Keeping writing as a hobby was a common theme among winners.

Abigail Auger, a grade 12 student at St Peter says she worries if she made a career of writing she would begin to see it as a chore.

Her poem which was inspired by the television series Gossip Girl won her first place in the Senior Poetry category.

She plans to attend Trent University to study Forensics.

Contest Co-Organizer and retired teacher Andrew Milner says he looks forward to reading entries every year.

“They’re such mature writers, it’s fascinating to see what they come up with every year,” he said.

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PCVS Graduate Kerry Clare To Present At 23rd Annual Lakefield Literary Festival

The Lakefield Literary Festival has been an institution in the Kawarthas for more than 20 years. In commemoration of Margaret Laurence, Catharine Parr Traill, Susanna Moodie and the community’s ongoing literary heritage, the festival celebrates Canadian authors and promotes the joy of reading and writing among children and adults.

Kerry Clare

This year's 23rd edition (running July 14th to 16th) kicks off with local PCVS graduate Kerry Clare, author of Mitzi Bytes. This debut novel from Clare explores social life in the age of the internet.

Clare is also editor of the anthology The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood. Her essays, reviews and short fiction have appeared in publications such as The Globe and Mail and Chatelaine. She teaches about the art of blogging at the University of Toronto, and writes about books and reading at her popular website, PickleMeThis.com. 

Other hosts/presenters this year include the likes of Douglas Gibson, Charlotte Gray, Andrew Larsen, Jane urquhart and Marni Jackson. The Lakefield Literary Festival events are held at a variety of venues which you can find here. For more info, visit the Lakefield Literary Festival website.

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