Event Info
Outport Infighting
Presented by Kingston WritersFest
2:30pm - 3:30pm
$0-$21.69
Event Description
Outport Infighting
Michael Crummey with Barbara Bell
Reading and Conversation
Bellevue
2:30 – 3:30 pm
Event Sponsor:
Chez Piggy & Pan Chancho
Love, corruption, sabotage, revenge, vendettas, violence, grievance and retribution. Two powerful families vying for the scarce resources of the north Atlantic fishery, and a community divided. You’d better grab another cup of coffee! Join Michael Crummey and Barbara Bell as they talk The Adversary, a dark slice of generational drama from an isolated outport on Newfoundland's northern coastline.
Michael Crummey
“I have a very strong sense that what makes Newfoundland… unique,” says Michael Crummey, “what’s different about us is the stories we have, of what we came from and what we are. It’s an unbelievably rich tradition.”
Michael Crummey was born and raised in Newfoundland, though he’s secured his status as honorary local following a spell in Kingston as a student and writer, during which time he was the inaugural recipient of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Poetry. His first poetry collection won the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Poetry; his second was short-listed for the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award. His fiction novels are equally acclaimed: Galore won the Canadian Authors Association’s Fiction Award, the Commonwealth Prize, was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Award and the Governor General’s Award. Sweetland was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and River Thieves was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Innocents was finalist for the Giller Prize, Governor General’s Literary Awards, and Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. The Writers’ Trust jury called it a "cruel and beautiful adventure tale and meditation on survival, solitude, and adolescent desire... By turns touching and harrowing... this novel is a page-turning masterclass in landscape writing and the longings and sorrows of the human heart. Crummey’s fine ear for the vernacular and the poetic casts a preternatural beauty over this terrifying world that lingers long after the story has ended."
This year Michael returns with The Adversary, a story about a ruthless act of sabotage that sets off decades of acrimony in an isolated outport on Newfoundland’s northern coastline.
Barbara Bell
Barbara Bell is a familiar face to the festival crowd – she was at the first festival planning meeting in 2009 and was Artistic Director from 2014-2020. “I’m interested in creative exploration of the big questions,” she says, “why am I here? What is my purpose? How do I live my most authentic life?” so it’s no surprise to see her new career path, as a Certified Integral Professional Coach with her own practice, TurasLife Coaching.
Barbara has flexed her creative muscle in many ways, as an actor, theatrical and film producer, television host, editor, and writer. Barbara won the Eastern Ontario Drama League’s Award for Best Actress for her ‘courageous’ and ‘riveting’ title role performance in Dacia Maraini’s Mary Stuart.
She wrote, produced, and performed the one-woman play, Dreams and Desires in Kingston and at fringe festivals across the western provinces. She co-produced: a 28-minute film, Pretty Pieces, which screened at the Reel Heart International Film Festival, among others; several shorts including the award-winning Digging Up Plato; and the feature Fault which debuted at the Kingston Canadian Film Festival.
Barbara is past chair of the City of Kingston’s Arts Advisory Committee, sat on the inaugural Mayor’s Arts Awards Nominations Working Group, and also sat on Kingston Arts Council’s Arts Advocacy Committee and the Kingston Writers’ Refugee Committee.
Venue
2 Princess Street
Open / Operational
In-Person Event
Sat. September 30th 2023 + Add to Calendar
Holiday Inn Kingston-Waterfront, an IHG Hotel
