The 19th edition of the Frye Festival brought 35 new authors to New Brunswick and a lesson that Northrop Frye himself would have endorsed: books create better communities.
“Literature is creating more tolerance and empathy and that was really important to Northrop Frye,” said Frye Festival board of directors’ chair Suzanne Cyr.
Frye’s values were celebrated in each event this week. From small book talks to reading performances, his legacy as a literary critique and advocate for literary imagination and empathy was present in the greater Moncton area from April 20 to April 28.
One of the festival’s strongest events was a public conversation with Tima Kurdi, author of The Boy on the Beach. The memoir’s title takes its name from the photo of a Syrian boy, victim of the refugee crisis, who washed up dead on a beach in 2015 and made global headlines.
Kurdi has a more personal connection to the photo. The boy was her nephew.
At the event, she talked about her book and gave new insights into her life in Syria before the civil war and her life after, as she sees the devastation her home has faced.
Attendees gained insight into a new version of Syria, a happy and hopeful life that Kurdi lived before the war. The conversation allowed the audience to bridge connections between their families and Kurdi’s and feel the shock of the Syrian conflict as it affected the individuals.
“It makes this tragedy that Syria has unfortunately become, it humanizes it. This is what fiction and non-fiction in this case does,” said executive director of the Frye Festival Diana Newton.
“It makes something abstract that is not part of our lives…close to us and gives us the opportunity to do something about it…It’s made it real for people and reinforced the fact that what we need in this world is kindness toward each other.”
Reading can help us empathize with another family and another person, but it can also help us live our own lives.
Zoey Leigh Peterson, Frye Festival author of Next Year for Sure, said, for her, not only does reading enhance one’s ability to express emotion and feel critically but it reveals different ways to live.
“I am interested in books that show me lots of different ways to be a person in the world and allow me to think about how I want to be a person.”
Frye Festival isn’t just a festival celebrating adult literature. Authors visit a total of more than 5000 kids with school visits throughout the week and there are numerous events catered toward kids ranging from infants to teenagers.
KidsFest is always a highlight according to both Cyr and Newton.
The three-and-a-half-hour event incorporated numerous word-themed activities such as bingo and fishing for words. At the end, to kids’ delight, mascots of local and literary characters such as Geronimo Silton and Clifford the Big Red Dog arrived.
And promoting reading gives kids more gifts than just people stuffed in colourful costumes.
“For younger people it teaches critical thinking. It fills our hearts and heads with imagination. It makes a tremendous positive contribution,” said Cyr.
In addition, festival authors get a chance to speak to other authors, share ideas, and bond through common experience.
Frye Festival author, Claire Cameron, said the community fostered by literary festivals is one of the things that keeps her going.
“There’s a familiarity because we go through a lot of the same things everyday.”
Another aspect that makes the Frye Festival so special is it brings together two lingual communities.
Two of the festival’s central events, the Soirée Frye and the Frye Jam, invited both French and English authors to read out excerpts from their books. Soiree Frye, the more formal event, hosted at the Capital Theatre had musical interludes between readings.
Frye Jam invited guests to have a drink and sit around small tables while they listened to French and English readings backed up by images on screen and thematic instrumentals by Les Païens. Comic interludes and introductions were performed by Poète Flyée, Monica Bolduc.
Diana Newton believes that one of the strongest aspect of the festival is its generous bilingualism.
“Any new language is an opening to an entirely additional world.”
Next year is the festival’s 20th anniversary. Although there are no concrete plans yet, Newton, who plans to stay on for a 2nd term as executive director is hoping for great things. She loves the festival’s ability to bring people of different communities together to be engaged by literature.
“In our busy lives, it reminds us just to take a little breather and pick up a book and just dive into it.”