2023 FESTIVAL SCHEDULE & TICKETS
To book online, you can click the buttons below to add tickets to your cart,
or call 902.224.5231 and we’d be glad to book your tickets over the phone!
Workshop
with Mel Sweetnam
$50
"Book arts" is a new programming area for the Cabot Trail Writers Festival, exploring the point of intersection between the literary arts and fine art. At this book-arts workshop, natural dye artists and educator Mel Sweetnam will guide participants in making ink using natural materials.
People have been making inks from plants for thousands of years. In this three hour, introductory workshop, you will learn timeless techniques to make beautiful inks for writing and drawing. We'll forage together for useful plants, discuss their properties, then learn the full process for converting them to usable inks for use in journalling, calligraphy, or painting. The instructor will also provide some historically important material plants and minerals for ink making. You will then explore mark making with natural inks on watercolour paper (provided). You will leave with your own collection of multi-coloured ink tests and explorations on paper, and new skills that you can use wherever you wander.
Suitable for teenagers and adults. All experience levels are welcome, and fun is strongly encouraged. If you've ever wanted to feel like an ancient alchemist, this is your chance!
(Note: Ticket prices include workshop material costs.)
Friday Night Reading Series
$40
Hosted by Jared Bland, our opening night event will feature readings by Kate Beaton, Darren Calabrese, Habiba Cooper Diallo, Omar El Akkad, Nicholas Herring, shalan joudry, Amanda Peters, William Ping, and Shelagh Rogers. It will be held in the beautiful Great Hall of the Clans, at the Gaelic College in St. Ann's.
Workshop
with Habiba Cooper Diallo
$30
Author Habiba Cooper Diallo, whose high school journal was published as the powerful and acclaimed book #BlackInSchool, will lead writers of all levels in a two-hour workshop exploring the art and practice of keeping a journal.
Workshop with
shalan joudry
$30
shalan joudry will lead participants in exploring what sounds, sights, smells of this landscape can be woven into written and spoken poetry. All languages are highly encouraged! We will participate in writing exercises, share some of our ideas in a supportive environment. You can write or speak your poetics. Weather-permitting we will include a walk outdoors (not far) to find elements to work with. Please bring: your own notebook, pencil, water and a snack, and please be prepared to go outside.
(Note: A scholarship is available for all Mi’kmaw participants to cover the cost of this workshop; this fee waiver can be selected at the time of purchase from our ticketing website or booked over the phone or by email.)
Brunch with
Shelagh Rogers
$30
Join Shelagh Rogers for brunch, as the renowned journalist and beloved former host of CBC Radio's program The Next Chapter shares stories and insights from her time on the air, talking with writers and readers across the country. Having just retired from 15 years hosting the flagship literary program and a 43-year career at CBC, Shelagh will offer an engaging and wide-ranging talk with her characteristic warmth and humour... over eggs!
(Note: Meal is included in ticket price.)
Heard in the Highlands
Free
A stroll among the changing colours of the forest surrounding the Gaelic College, featuring Amanda Peters, William Ping, Habiba Cooper Diallo and Nicholas Herring (the four writers participating in our subsequent panel, “First Words: The Journey into Print”) sharing readings from their debut books. Musical guest TBA.
Please dress for the weather and meet at the junction of MacKillop Road and the Cabot Trail, just east of the Gaelic College entrance. In case of rain, performances will take place in the Pavillion, a sheltered outdoor performance area at the rear of the Gaelic College campus.
Panel on
First Words
Free
Authors Amanda Peters, William Ping, Habiba Cooper Diallo and Nicholas Herring will join this panel conversation with moderator Rebecca Silver Slayter, sharing their experiences publishing their first books: the process of writing the book and of bringing it out into the world, the expectations and surprises they encountered, any advice for aspiring writers, and other stories and insights about what they learned along the way.
Photography Presentation
& Talk with Darren Calabrese
Free
Award-winning photojournalist Darren Calabrese will share projections of his photography and discuss his new book Leaving Good Things Behind: Photographs of Atlantic Canada, which explores the complex experience of returning to the east coast, where he grew up, after years away, and documenting, from behind his camera, the compelling beauty, challenges and contradictions of this part of the world...and of coming home.
Saturday Night at the Festival
$40
This ticket includes admission to the full Saturday evening program, which encompasses the following three events:
THE MYTH OF THE MARITIMES (panel) • 7 p.m.
Moderated by William Ping, this panel conversation will feature Nicholas Herring, Darren Calabrese, and Kate Beaton discussing the complicated history of how loving and leaving the Maritimes has shaped our relationship to this place, both for those who stay and those who leave; the ways the Maritimes have been romanticized or deromanticized in art, music, and stories and perhaps your own work; and the unique meaning and power of “home" in this part of the world.A CONVERSATION WITH OMAR EL AKKAD (interview) • 8:30 p.m.
Jared Bland will interview Omar El Akkad, author of 2021-Giller Prize winning novel What Strange Paradise and 2018 Canada Reads finalist American War, about his work and influences.LIVE MUSIC WITH PROJECT ANURAG (musical performance) • 9:45 p.m.
The family of musicians behind Project Anurag (Anurag, Priya and Om Ware) will perform a lively, joyous, eclectic mix of traditional Indian, fusion and Bollywood music on a multitude of different instruments.
Workshop with Kate Beaton
$30
In this workshop with Kate Beaton, author of modern-classic picture books like King Baby and The Princess and the Pony, participants will learn how to approach the art of writing books for children.
(Note: To make extra clear, because this is always a challenging detail to clarify, the workshop is designed for adult writers who want to write for child readers... rather than for child writers [whose authorly development is very, very important but will be addressed in festival programming at another time!].)
Workshop with Omar
El Akkad
$30
In this workshop with Omar El Akkad, participants will discuss the construction of unforgettable sentences. Using examples from Toni Morrison, Garth Greenwell, and many others, we will look at how to put together a single thought, a string of thoughts, or in some cases an entire constellation of ideas and emotions in the space between two periods.
Medicine Stories
Free
Amanda Peters, shalan joudry and Andrea Currie will co-host this workshop, which will be a hybrid of readings and sharing of thoughts on themes related to their experiences, challenges, and dreams as Indigenous writers. Readings and conversation between these three writers will address issues such as finding one’s voice in a colonial context that has made Indigenous identity confusing and contentious; writing about traditional practices and ceremony while honouring protocols and creating contemporary expressions of our traditions; and exploring how our lands and waters shape our imaginations and speak through our writing.
Amanda is a member of Glooscap First Nation, shalan is a member of Bear River First Nation, and Andrea is a member of the Métis Nation from the Red River territory in Manitoba.
Sunday Night in Inverness
$30
This ticket includes admission to the Sunday evening program (Inverness County Centre for the Arts), which encompasses the following events:
READING & CONVERSATION WITH KATE BEATON (reading & interview) • 7 p.m.
Shelagh Rogers will interview Kate Beaton, Cape Breton author of the world-acclaimed, 2023 Canada Reads-winning graphic memoir Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, and invite Kate to share a reading with the audience.SONGS & STORIES WITH Cameron Chisholm & Brian Doyle (musical performance) • 8:20 p.m.
2023 FESTIVAL AUTHORS
Omar El Akkad
is an author and a journalist. He has reported from Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, and many other locations around the world. His work earned Canada's National Newspaper Award for Investigative Journalism and the Goff Penny Award for young journalists. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Le Monde, Guernica, GQ, and many other newspapers and magazines. His debut novel, American War, is an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, the Oregon Book Award for fiction, and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and has been nominated for more than ten other awards. It was listed as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, NPR, and Esquire, and was selected by the BBC as one of 100 Novels That Shaped Our World. Omar El Akkad’s second novel, What Strange Paradise, was awarded the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Photo credit: Kateshia Pendergrass
Kate Beaton
was born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada. The collections of her landmark strip Hark! A Vagrant and Step Aside, Pops each spent several months on the New York Times graphic novel bestseller list. She has also published the picture books King Baby and The Princess and the Pony. Her most recent book is Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, a graphic memoir that was named a New York Times Notable Book, one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books, and the winner of Canada Reads 2023. Beaton lives in Cape Breton with her family.
Photo credit: Morgan Murray
Shelagh Rogers
is a veteran broadcast-journalist, most recently with The Next Chapter, a program about writing in Canada. Shelagh is an Honorary Witness for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Chancellor Emerita of UVic. In 2011, she received an Order of Canada for promoting Canadian culture and for advocacy in mental health, truth and reconciliation, and adult literacy. She was the 2022 Symons Medalist and is thrilled to be part of the Cabot Trail Writers Festival.
Amanda Peters
is the Globe & Mail and Toronto Star bestselling author of The Berry Pickers. A writer of Mi'kmaq and settler ancestry, her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain Magazine, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review and Filling Station Magazine. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Unpublished Prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers' Trust Rising Stars program. A graduate of the Master of Fine Arts Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Amanda Peters has a Certificate in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. She lives in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, with her fur babies, Holly and Pook.
shalan joudry
is a Mi'kmaw mother, poet, playwright, oral storyteller and ecologist. The author of three books, her second book of poetry is Waking Ground (2020). Her recent play, Koqm, won the 2023 Merritt Award for Outstanding New Play. shalan lives in her home territory of Kespukwitk (southwest Nova Scotia) with her family in their community of L’sitkuk (Bear River First Nation).
Photo credit: Dan Froese
Nicholas Herring
has published fiction in The Puritan and The Fiddlehead. He works as a carpenter and lives on PEI. Some Hellish, his first novel, won the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2022 and was praised by the jury as “droll and philosophical, ribald and poetic.”
Photo credit: Norma Jean MacLean
William Ping
is a Chinese-Canadian writer from Newfoundland. After completing his Master of Arts at Memorial University in 2020, he was named a Fellow of the School of Graduate Studies. He received the 2022 Cox & Palmer Creative Writing Award as well as the 2021 Landfall Trust. His debut novel, Hollow Bamboo, which he wrote for his master’s degree, received the Award for Thesis Excellence from the English department and was shortlisted for the 2023 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
Photo credit: Violet Ryan-Ping
Habiba Cooper Diallo
was a finalist in the 2020 Bristol Short Story Prize, the 2019 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition, and the 2018 London Book Fair Pitch Competition. Habiba lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is an advocate and activist in support of women’s maternal health. Her high school journal was published as #BlackInSchool, an acclaimed account of systemic racism and call for justice and educational reform.
Darren Calabrese
is a documentary and editorial photojournalist who was born in New Brunswick and raised on a 400-acre woodlot. Now Darren and his wife Tammy split their time between the woodlot and Nova Scotia, where they live by the ocean in Halifax raising their two daughters. His work has been recognized by World Press Photo, Pictures of the Year International, Communication Arts, Magenta Foundation, American Photography 34, News Photographers Association of Canada, and National Geographic. Darren’s first book, Leaving Good Things Behind: Photographs of Atlantic Canada was a bestseller.
Photo credit: Harriet Calabrese