DETAILS
Festival runs from Oct. 12 to Nov. 2
Tickets for all author events are $5 each. Tickets for the Oct. 13 special event Bye Bye Blues: The Music and The Film are $25 each.
All author events are to be held online. Existing ticket holders will receive emails outlining changes to any in-person events they were registered for, including information about their options regarding the difference in ticket prices for online events. For more information, please email [email protected].
Full details are available at STARFest.ca.
Autumn is a special time of year for many reasons, and STARFest accounts for 15 of them. The St. Albert Readers' Festival is back and its 2021 season features three handfuls of author events (with one special presentation of a film — see Anna Borowiecki's preview of Bye Bye Blues: The Music and The Film on page 60).
Festival organizers promise a star-studded slate of popular authors from diverse genres for STARFest 2021. They also promise that those stars are going to stay shiny and safe, and you will, too. With that in mind, the fest is moving to an all-virtual format for all of its author appearances from Oct. 12 to Nov. 2.
“We were holding out. We were really hopeful that we'd be able to do safe, in-person events,” began festival director Michelle Steinhusen, “but in between attendees being nervous, some authors were starting to get a little bit nervous, and just looking at the numbers, we thought this would be the safest way to do it. It also makes it, in a way, more accessible for people. We had heard from some people that they really wanted to see the authors but were concerned about in-person, and now anybody can go who wants to. We do have some people who are a little bit disappointed, but they're also all very understanding.”
The Gazette presents capsule previews of the first three author appearances here, with more previews to come in the subsequent three Wednesday editions of the paper.
Helen Humphreys — Tues., Oct. 12 at 6:30 p.m.
Helen Humphreys, the acclaimed and award-winning author of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and memoir, brings her 19th book to kick off STARFest 2021.
Based on a true story, Rabbit Foot Bill focuses on the friendship of Leonard, a lonely boy in a prairie town and Bill, an outsider, in 1947. At first, having Bill as a friend is liberating for Leonard, but it quickly turns into a test of his scruples when he witnesses Bill commit murder. The story catches up with them two years later when Bill is an inmate at a mental institution in Saskatchewan where Leonard works. The reunion gives Leonard a chance to find out what really happened that day.
Steinhusen is excited to bring back STARFest alumnus Humphreys with this page-turner for local audiences.
“It's nice to have her back,” she said, noting that Humphreys, along with Anne Wheeler and Chevy Stevens, were heavily requested from audience members in 2020.
“We always ask the attendees [for] their suggestions and their requests. All three of these authors were names that came up multiple times from the last year's STARFest. Those first three are fan-requested and we’re excited to have them.”
The recipient of the Harbourfront Festival Prize for literary excellence, Humphreys is also a previous winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, a Lambda Literary Award for Fiction, and the Toronto Book Award. She has also been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Trillium Book Prize, and CBC Radio’s Canada Reads.
Anne Wheeler — Thurs., Oct. 14 at 7 p.m.
It’s time to say, "Hello hello," to Anne Wheeler, the Edmonton-born screenwriter and filmmaker behind Bye Bye Blues, the multi-Genie award-winning 1989 swinging crowd-pleaser of a music-filled love story based during the Second World War. Proving that you don’t simply garner seven honorary doctorates and the Order of Canada for being a slouch, she has also helmed Loyalties and dozens of other films, TV movies, and episodes of TV series. Screenwriting aside, STARFest is for book-writers and it's her first book of non-fiction that brings her to local audiences.
Despite its title, Taken by the Muse: On the Path to Becoming a Filmmaker isn’t just about filmmaking: it’s about finding yourself and following your path. It's a collection of stories from the author's own life that she has long wanted to get down on paper.
"I've been wanting to write down the stories that I probably won't ever make films about, but I think they're going to be lost if one doesn't put them in some sort of form that will be sustained," she began.
"I have written a lot of films and I've also written film scripts that haven't been made. I was moved to, as a storyteller, just want to make sure that I collect some of those stories and make sure that they're saved. The ones that are in the book are ones that I have used over the years to teach sometimes."
These are stories that she has even read at story slams, so they very much have the sense of being told to you by Wheeler herself. A life in theatre does also lend to many moments of comedy and drama, and so this book could become fodder for the stage, too, she suggested.
"A lot of people have actually read the stories out loud. I have some theatre groups that kids are considering making them into live performances. They're all moments in my time — in my 20s — events and people that really changed the course of my life, people I learned something from, events I learned something from."
Taken by the Muse was a finalist for the 2021 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize and a finalist for a High Plains Book Award. It's also on Steinhusen's list.
"My mom absolutely loved it and totally identified with it because it's in the 70s. It's a memoir, but it's also the story of Anne having just gotten divorced, traveling around the world trying to figure out who she was, or where to go next with her life. Everybody who has read it has absolutely raved about it," Steinhusen said.
Chevy Stevens — Fri., Oct. 15 at 7 p.m.
Crime novel fans, pay attention: B.C. author Chevy Stevens is coming to town … virtually, of course.
“Her thrillers are fantastic. She has so many books. I also wanted to have something for everybody, so making sure that we had those … genre authors — the thriller authors and the horror authors and the romance authors — made sure that nobody's being left out. And I've actually read several of her books, too, and they're quite good,” Steinhusen remarked.
Published in August, Dark Roads is a grisly tale of many missing young women who have gone missing over decades while traveling Cold Creek Highway. This unsettling story follows Hailey McBride, who lives in Cold Creek and knows how to live off the land and fend for herself. Circumstances bring her to an abusive household from which she must escape.
After a year, a new woman named Beth comes to town to try to discover what happened to her sister who was murdered there. Cold Creek doesn’t sound like a great place to live, and sure doesn’t sound like any place you’d want to visit, either.
