Canadian author Margaret Atwood reads Quichotte by writer Salman Rushdie during Freedom to Write and to read: Standing with Salman Rushdie at the Toronto International Festival of Authors on Sept. 27. Listening in the background are, from the left, Grace Westcott, president of PEN Canada, Canadian writer John Ralston, publisher Louise Dennys, and English writer Ian McEwan.JORGE UZON/AFP/Getty Images
A few days ago, as she considered how it will feel to welcome audiences back to the first full-scale, in-person edition of the Vancouver Writers Fest in three years, artistic director Leslie Hurtig admitted to a little trepidation.
Last year’s fall festival, which took place in the optimistic pre-Omicron days, featured a smaller-than-usual program, and audiences capped at 50 per cent of capacity. This year’s edition, which runs Oct. 17 to 23, is supposed to be a return to normal; but so much has changed over the past few years that it’s hard to know what, exactly, “normal” means. And, frankly, many audience members have told Hurtig and other literary festival artistic directors across the country that they’re still not ready to come back.
“The pandemic is not over, as we all thought it might be,” said Hurtig during a recent phone call. But with the capacity for this year’s festival back to 100 per cent, a full schedule of events, and authors set to fly in from around the world, “I think the idea of filling those venues to capacity is what has my heart racing a little bit,” she acknowledged. “There’s a little bit of anxiety, because the pandemic isn’t over, and not everybody is ready to return to a theatre space.”
That’s not the only reason for anxiety. When literary festivals were forced to pivot to virtual programming during the pandemic, they found eager new audiences both at home and abroad: the Vancouver fest reported that its 2020 online audience was equivalent to the in-person attendance for the 2019 edition.
But how can festivals maintain those connections as they turn to focus on the core in-person festival experience? How can they make their budgets work again, and convince audiences to pay for tickets, after giving away so much content for free? The pandemic demonstrated people’s deep need for books and stories, but it also prompted something of a reckoning for festivals, which had done essentially one thing – bring together authors and audiences in the same physical space – for a long time without considering whether fundamental change might be in order.
From Vancouver to Toronto, Ottawa, and the East Coast, writers’ festivals are now in the midst of perhaps their greatest act of collective reinvention and experimentation in decades, in many cases refashioning themselves as modern content providers while trying to put into practice lessons from the pandemic.
All that while also trying to remember how to put out the welcome mat.
The Toronto International Festival of Authors, which this year runs its flagship fall event from Sept. 22 to Oct. 2, had something of a trial run in the spring with Motive, a three-day celebration of crime and mystery writing, which was held in person without capacity restrictions.
“It was a really good reminder, actually, in terms of those skills that we’ve forgotten,” said TIFA artistic director Roland Gulliver, with a chuckle. “The skills of standing up for long periods of time, the skills of seeing people, interacting with people again, remembering how to welcome people to the festival and talk to people and bring people together – all of those social professional skills that lay dormant.”
Gulliver, a former associate director of the Edinburgh International Book Festival who took over the top job at TIFA in early 2020, says that this fall’s edition is, in many ways, the festival he has been planning since he arrived. It lands about a month earlier in the calendar than most previous editions, to take advantage of the warmer weather and the outdoor spaces at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, where TIFA is based – to engage more with the city. But the pandemic has also left its mark on the festival.
The digital programs in 2020 and 2021, which were either free or all-you-can-watch for one price – supported by pandemic-era federal wage subsidies, which have now ended – spurred TIFA to offer daily and weekend passes this time. “That’s the biggest challenge of digital: we’re so used to consuming the majority of our content for free. For a festival, that’s a very difficult model to sustain.”
The virtual editions attracted about 25 per cent of their audience from outside of Canada, Gulliver said, including 15 per cent from the U.S. – none of whom would have previously been able to access TIFA’s programming. The 2021 edition included outreach to communities in Toronto that speak languages other than English, with events programmed in a range of languages including Bengali, French, Italian and Japanese. Prerecording enabled the videos to be equipped with English-language subtitles.
Still, there are very few digital events at this year’s TIFA. “For me, this year, the focus is bringing the festival back in person,” said Gulliver, who mentioned a special event at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on the evening of Oct. 1 held by the New York-based storytelling outfit the Moth. “But there is also that sense of, now, how do we think about those different audiences, and those international audiences?”
The Ottawa Writers Festival also wants to bring audiences back together, but it recognizes there are still many reasons people may not be able to attend in person. So it is offering a (paid) livestream of each event that will be available to watch only as it is taking place.
“I guess the thing that I’m carrying with me out of the pandemic is a sense that we need to do everything we can to make sure that anyone who wants access to what we’re doing, has access to it,” said Sean Wilson, the Ottawa festival’s longtime artistic director. “Being back in person is just fantastic. Heather O’Neill was just here, and Joshua Whitehead, and that energy is just so wonderful. But, at the same time, it’s important that we do not leave anyone behind.”
The festival is also continuing a (free) podcast it began producing during the pandemic, including interviews with Emma Donoghue about her new novel and the poet David Ly on his new collection.
“Not everyone is comfortable travelling, for environmental reasons as well – there are lots of reasons,” said Wilson. “And there are ideas and conversations that we feel our community really, really wants to experience. And so the podcast will allow us to do that safely and easily, and allow us to get authors who maybe aren’t available,” for an in-person event.
It’s all part of what Wilson says is his festival’s version of the government and business mantra to “build back better” as the pandemic grinds on.
On the West Coast, Hurtig is also trying to build back better, but with a sharply different strategy than Wilson’s.
This fall’s Vancouver Writers Fest will, like Ottawa, offer livestreams of events – but only for the kids-oriented programming during the daytime, for those school classes that cannot get to the Granville Island location of the festival. With livestreams in previous years, “we found that we were able to reach classrooms right across British Columbia,” says Hurtig. “I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of that now. The audience is joining us from Northern B.C. that couldn’t possibly come on a field trip to Granville Island. So that’s great.”
The other programming will also be filmed for digital distribution, but rather than sending out a lo-fi single-camera stream, the festival is bringing in professional crews to create tightly edited, four-camera productions of about 30 events, which will then be made available online in December, on a pay-what-you-can basis. “That’s a huge investment we’re making,” says Hurtig. “We’re taking a leap here.”
She believes it’s necessary to take that risk, because of the digital fatigue that has set in. “I think in 2020 and 2021, we did discover the power of digital events to bring people together. It was a wonderful band-aid to connect those who would have joined us in person to the authors and the ideas and these books that had been published.”
But, she says, “people have tired of digital events,” including the festival’s International Digital Book Club, which has had flagging participation rates.
“It’s not because the authors aren’t as popular, it’s because people have missed the human connection, of meeting up in a space, in a venue. Last year, when we got back onto the stage, I had tears in my eyes when I heard the murmur of audience members reacting to the authors on stage and what they were saying. The authors were crying on stage, because they could hear laughter or murmurs, and it meant that their audience was listening to them. You just don’t get that on a digital screen.”
Back in Ottawa, Wilson notes that he has been involved with the festival for all 25 years of its existence. The past two years have been tough, sure. Still, he says, “I think the end it’s going to be a good thing that we had to take a step back, and think about what really matters.”
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