{"id":19979,"date":"2020-10-01T11:51:53","date_gmt":"2020-10-01T18:51:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=19979"},"modified":"2020-10-01T11:52:43","modified_gmt":"2020-10-01T18:52:43","slug":"victoria-festival-of-authors-celebrates-fifth-anniversary-with-free-online-programming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/10\/01\/victoria-festival-of-authors-celebrates-fifth-anniversary-with-free-online-programming\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria Festival of Authors celebrates fifth anniversary with free online programming"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Victoria Festival of Authors is Vancouver Island\u2019s largest celebration of books and book lovers. This year, it\u2019s celebrating its fifth anniversary, it\u2019s all online, and it\u2019s all free.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really important to us that it was free,\u201d says festival producer Laura Trunkey. \u201cWe just want to reach as many people as we can, and make sure there\u2019s no barrier to accessing the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starting on Wednesday, September 30, podcasts and Zoom meetings will be available on the festival\u2019s website. The event includes panels led by published authors from across Canada, poetry readings, and writing workshops. All works featured in the festival have been released in the past year, with the predominant focus being on the local writers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Catherine Hernandez is one of the many authors speaking at this year’s Victoria Festival of Authors (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe always want to have some local authors, so about a third of our authors are local, and the rest are from across Canada,\u201d says Trunkey. \u201cWe even have a couple streaming from the United States that are Canadian.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diversity of program panels and writing style is also of huge importance for the Festival of Authors. Trunkey emphasizes that these differences are essential to the festival\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really important to us that we have a diversity of voices in the festival, so we have all genres of writing,\u201d she says. \u201cWe have emerging authors as well as established authors. We like to pair those together because if someone goes to an event because of a particular author they know about or have read before, they\u2019ll also be introduced to newer authors or authors they haven\u2019t read before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trunkey says that while most of the authors had been invited before the festival transitioned online, she still had a vision for what the festival would look like.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe figured for our discussions Zoom was a good transition, but we always have a night of poetry reading and a night of prose reading, and those readings translate really well to a podcast,\u201d she says. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have to turn any [authors] away. Their programming was different than when we first invited them, but they were still able to participate in the festival.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the format of the festival might be different from previous years, the organizers are hoping that attendees are still able to enjoy the events.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have a city that really cares deeply about reading and writing,\u201d says Trunkey. \u201cI think that being able to maintain that community, although in a different form, has been something that a lot of people have really appreciated and are excited about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victoria Festival of Authors
\nFree, until Sunday, October 4
\nvictoriafestivalofauthors.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Victoria Festival of Authors is Vancouver Island\u2019s largest celebration of books and book lovers. This year, it\u2019s celebrating its fifth anniversary, it\u2019s all online, and it\u2019s all free. \u201cIt was really important to us that it was free,\u201d says festival producer Laura Trunkey. \u201cWe just want to reach as many people as we can, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19982,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19981,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19979\/revisions\/19981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}