Canada’s Frye Festival brings four leading writers from Canada’s Atlantic coastline to discuss the history, culture and landscape of the region they describe in their novels, poetry and travelogues. The events is followed by a drinks reception at which the audience can meet and talk to the speakers.

This is a unique opportunity to hear four of Canada’s best-known writers who are making a rare visit to the UK for the festival. Beth Powning, Michael Crummey, Serge Patrice Thibodeau and Sue Goyette have shaped the literature of Canada’s east coast and their work has resonated across the world. The history of Atlantic Canada, for a long time a British colony, means arrivals and departures and comings and goings are a major theme of its literature.  The authors will talk about history, mythology of place and identity – all themes that link their work.

Powning’s latest novel is A Measure of Light, the story of a Puritan who flees persecution in 17th-century England, only to find the Puritan establishment of Massachusetts just as vicious. She was awarded New Brunswick’s Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for High Achievement in English-Language Literary Arts in 2010.

Crummey is a poet, short story writer and novelist. His novel Galore won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Novel. His latest novel is Sweetland, a story about one man’s struggle against the forces of nature and the ruins of memory.

Thibodeau is a poet and essayist. His collection of sensitive and precise observations of a walker inspired by the mascaret – or tidal bore – of the Petitcodiac River, One, won the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.

Goyette is an award-winning author of four collections of poetry. The most recent is Ocean, a finalist in the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize, in which an offbeat cast of characters give absurd explanations for common and uncommon occurrences, while the ocean lurks in the background.

Discussions will be chaired by critic and academic Professor Thomas Hodd, who teaches Canadian literature at Université de Moncton, and reviews for Canadian newspapers.

The Frye Festival exists to feed imaginations. It is an annual celebration of books and ideas that takes place in Moncton, New Brunswick, on Canada’s Atlantic coast. Named after literary critic Northrop Frye, the festival welcomes more than 40 francophone and anglophone writers from Canada and abroad every year, making it Canada’s only bilingual literary festival.
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There will be an opportunity to meet the writers after the discussion at a drinks reception included in the price for event.

Reception sponsored by The Canadian High Commission.