by Anne DeGrace
Elephant Mountain Literary Festival writer-in-residence Shaena Lambert is excited to meet Dr. Suzanne Simard when the two present their writing at the festival’s All-Star event on Saturday, June 25, 7:30 p.m. at the Prestige Lakeside Resort.
It makes sense: Lambert wrote about an environmental activist in history, and Simard is an environmental activist today. This is the thing about EMLF: in the coming-together of creative minds, connections are sparked, shared passions ignited, and unforgettable conversations ensue.
Each of the four seemingly disparate writers featured at the All-Star event bring their brilliance and their passions. And somehow, a strange congruity is spun through this literary alchemy.
Fernie author Angie Abdou will present her new book This One Wild Life: A Mother-Daughter Wilderness Memoir. Interviewed on CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter, Abdou told host Shelagh Rogers how the book began through a “project” to help her shy, pre-teen daughter find a way forward.
“We were going to have this goal together,” she said, “to hike a peak a week. I had a feeling that that’s where we could find herself and her confidence — and find our connection to each other.”
Of course, things don’t always go as planned, and therein lies the humour as well as the intimacy. The book embraces nature, nurture, and the messy parts in between, and Abdou is a deft pen with it all.
Tom Wayman’s most recent poetry collection is Watching a Man Break a Dog’s Back: Poems for a Dark Time, a collection in three parts. B.C. Review writer Emma Rhodes notes “how masterfully Wayman tackles so many, and such drastically different, subjects while remaining sympathetic, cohesive, and often playful.”
Wayman addresses urban issues in all of their gritty nuance; considers individuals and interrelatedness; and examines the power of words and his own reasons for writing. This year Wayman joined Alice Munro, David Suzuki, and EMLF alumnus Joy Kogawa as winner of a George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, which suggests, indeed, the power in Wayman’s words.
I asked Shaena Lambert to tell me how she came to write about Germany’s first Green Party leader Petra Kelly for her 2020 novel Petra, which won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Award last year. She described when, as co-ordinator for the 1986 Vancouver Centennial Peace Festival, Kelly was among the 20 international movers-and-shakers invited to speak.
“Petra blew my socks off with her sheer charisma and speaking power,” she said. “She leaned into the microphone and wove together so many disparate ideas: Feminism, patriarchy, militarism, Tibet, sexual freedom – it was a giant, hugely intelligent web. I was smitten!”
When I read Lambert’s novel about this passionate, flawed, environmental activist I was smitten, too. And so shall you be.
I’d venture to say that Suzanne Simard embodies all of the above: love of the outdoors and how we see ourselves within that greater context; a profound understanding of this dark time; passion and activism. One of the world’s leading forest ecologists, Simard has reached millions through three TED talks, the documentary Fantastic Fungi, and especially her ground-breaking 2021 memoir, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, which explains how forest ecologies and fungal mycelium are interdependent — and why it matters. She also shows us how storytelling, the way that science is communicated, has the power to spark interest, imagination, and action. This fascinating author now presents her work in her hometown.
There’s one more star in this oh-so-stellar evening: the 2022 winner of the Richard Carver Award for Emerging Writers will take the stage to receive the award and give us all a peek at where a new generation of inspiring words might take us.
Former MLA Michelle Mungall — no stranger to a microphone, and as passionate as the rest of us — hosts this unforgettable All-Star evening. Let the alchemy begin!
The 11th annual Elephant Mountain Literary Festival takes place June 23 to 26 in Nelson, and includes storytelling, readings, music, panel discussions, workshops, and more. Full information at www.emlfestival.com.