Queen’s University to be Represented at Kingston WritersFest

Published on: 2011/09/21 - in News

Queen’s faculty, staff and alumni make a good showing for Queen’s at this year’s Kingston WritersFest, a festival that attracts some of the top writers from across North America.

English professor Rosemary Jolly is participating in ‘Readings in Honour of J.M. Coetzee’, an event honouring the 2003 Nobel Prize winning writer who is taking part in festival and several academic workshops at Queen’s during a visit to Kingston this week.

Dr. Jolly is a personal friend of Mr. Coetzee and was able to convince the internationally acclaimed writer to travel from his home in Australia to Kingston.

“I’m thrilled John is coming to Kingston. Any academic institution or book festival in the world would be honoured to have him as a guest,” says Dr. Jolly.

Susan Olding, a staff member at the Queen’s Writing Centre, is moderating a talk called ‘Life Lessons’ with author and alumna Y.S. Lee, MA’99, PhD’05. Dr. Lee’s two books (A Spy in the House, The Body at the Tower) have been translated into seven languages. Ms Olding participated in last year’s WritersFest, talking about her book Pathologies: A Life in Essays.

There are eight other writers with ties to Queen’s who will grace the Kingston WritersFest stage as either a presenter or moderator: James Bartleman, LLD’04; Lara Bozabalian, Artsci’99, Ed’04; Romeo Dallaire, LLD’03; Steven Heighton, Artsci’85, MA’86; Daniel Moses, a Queen’s National Scholar; Helen Humphreys, Queen’s University fall 2009 writer in residence; Timothy Taylor, MBA’87; and Robert Paul Weston, Artsci’98.

“The festival has been a big success partly because of the hard work of its artistic director, its programmer and its many volunteers, but also because Kingston was ready for a literary festival,” says Mr. Heighton. “Kingston has always been a literary town and it has always been supportive of its many authors – which is one of the reasons I feel I was right to choose Kingston as a place to make a life as a writer.”

Kingston WritersFest runs from Sept. 22 to Sept. 25. For more information visit the website.

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Release source: Queen’s University News Centre  | Photo by “MervtheSwerve” (Flickr)