FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 30, 2014
CONTACT:
Stella Harvey
stella25@telus.net
whistlerwritersfest.com
Whistler Readers and Writers Festival in Conjunction with the Whistler Arts Council and with the Support of the Whistler Blackcomb Foundation Launches Authors in Schools Program
Students receive books and presentations by award-winning authors
Whistler, BC — This week the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, in conjunction with the Whistler Arts Council, launches the Authors in Schools Program, involving secondary schools in the Sea to Sky Corridor, from Squamish to Mt. Currie. Students in Grade 11 and 12 English classes will receive books by one of two guest authors, and later attend author presentations at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre.
Our 2014 secondary school program authors include Joseph Boyden and Katherina Vermette. Students will have an opportunity to read and study our guest authors’ books, and later meet them at a reading and Q&A presentation at the Squamish Lil’Wat Cultural Center. Joseph Boyden, writer of Three Day Road and The Orenda, has won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His novel The Orenda won Canada Reads in 2014. Katherina Vermette’s poetry collection, North End Love Songs, was the winner of the 2013 Governor General’s Literary Award.
The primary purpose of the program is to inspire students about the process of writing and storytelling, through engagement with local and Canadian authors. “This program is closest to my heart,” said Stella Harvey, Director of the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival. “After we ran the pilot program last year with First Nation’s author Richard Wagamese, we received feedback from teachers and principals indicating that some non-reader students finished a complete book for the first time. As well, several of the students formed a book club focused on First Nations authors. Knowing that this literacy program has an impact on our youth is incredible.
The Authors in Schools program is sponsored by The Whistler Blackcomb Foundation, the B.C. Arts Council, the Whistler Arts Council and the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival. In November 2014, a similar Author in the Schools program will be presented to students from elementary school to grade 10 in the Sea to Sky Corridor, this time with our very own local authors.
The Authors in the Schools Program is organized by the Whistler Readers and Writers Festival, a non-profit organization, founded in 2001 to promote literary arts throughout Whistler and the Sea to Sky corridor.