Micaela Muldon
LANCE WRITER


It’s that time of year again for literature lovers.

BookFest Windsor– the county’s biggest literary event, is happening Oct. 25-27. This year, BookFest features over 50 authors and multiple genres, including fiction for every age group, poetry, non-fiction, drama and graphic novels.

“Each year, we seem to draw more writers that are well-known, and several of the people on our list are nominated for either Governor General’s Awards or [Trillium Book Awards],” said Lenore Langs, chairperson of BookFest Windsor. “What we try to do is vary and make our program broader. We always listen to what our audience is saying, and then we try to respond to the comments. So each year there usually is something that we haven’t done before.”

BookFest 2012 will feature this new releases, and will focus, in part, on the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812.

According to Langs, the festival will give amateur writers a chance to showcase their talents with a reading from the top three entrants in a literary contest that was held by BookFest earlier this year.

There will be an activity called Poetry on Demand, which is hosted and created by local author Vanessa Shields. To participate, a person must pick three words from a basket and give a word association for each of those words. Using these six words, Shields will pen a poem on the spot.

“Usually based on word associations that the people give, you get a sense, a little bit, about the person. Just by the words they associate with the words that they pick. For me, that is enough to be able to write a poem for that person, and they seem to really like it,” Shields said.

BookFest is also a truly all-ages event. Kids aged 10-13, who have won contests, will have a chance to read their own poetry. “It’s really inspiring and hopefully the kids who are writing at that age will continue to write,” said Shields.
And what would BookFest be without the chance to buy books?

“[BookFest is] an opportunity [people] probably wouldn’t have in terms of hav¬ing all of these authors’ works together,” Shields said of the books available for purchase.

The pages of BookFest start turning this weekend at the Capitol Theatre and a few off site venues, such as the Art Gallery of Windsor, Artcite, Freed Orman Centre at Assumption University, Phog Lounge and the Windsor Public Library. Weekend passes cost $25 for adults and $5 for students with a valid student ID. For more information, visit bookfestwindsor.com.