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Literary Scene -
Write Around Town
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By: Deanna McFadden
July 2008
Summer has finally arrived. Kudos to all of you who have come back from the long weekend with red, peeling noses from reading your books in the great, wide outdoors. My long weekend reading tended toward the classics as I tackled Jane Austen's wonderful Mansfield Park. The weather was perfect for reading, and here's hoping the whole summer passes by in this way, warm days, cooler nights, some rain, some sunshine, all of which bodes well for the upcoming The Scream Literary Festival.
 The festival itself runs from July 3rd to the 14th with various events in many parts of the city, each promising to be entertaining if not downright engaging. On Thursday July 3rd at the Supermarket, poet Ken Babstock heads on stage with a band of merry writers including Priscilla Uppal, Kevin Connolly, Stuart Ross and Emily Schultz. Their event is titled "The Scream Alumni Night." On July 4th, there's a spooky Freedom in Death event that's billed as a Fake Wake. The night honours illustrious and, well, dead literary and art stars such as Diego Rivera and Laura Ingalls Wilder. Here's guessing those two have never headlined the same event in the lives. How could you miss such a thing?
Piles of events are listed within the week's program online, and the two weeks culminate in one uber event at 7:00pm on Monday July 14th at the Dream Stage in High Park with twelve writers speaking their words out into the summer night. The long list of talented wordsmiths include: Wayne Compton, Dani Couture, Claudia Dey, Sonnet L'Abbé, Ron Giii, David W. McFadden, Motion, Sina Queyras, Ray Robertson, Mariko Tamaki, Carl Wilson and Jacob Wren. There's a suggested $10.00 donation to their PWYC "cacophonic evening of performances by new and established Canadian writers." The event will be hosted by Misha Glouberman, host of the Trampoline Hall Lectures.
And while we're talking all things literary and High Park, why not see the classic Dream in High Park this year? The Canadian Stage Company's annual tribute to showing off their Shakespeare outdoors runs June 24 - August 31st with an "urban, hip-hop," version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Performances run Tuesday through Sunday and it's also PWYC (with the same $10.00 suggested donation).
So for the month of July, it's a little bit old, a lot new, and lots of fresh air to go with your dusty habit of reading classics late into the summer nights. So Dream and Scream your little literary hearts out this month.
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