The AfterWords Literary Festival is entering its 8th year and it isn’t slowing down. The festival was co-founded by Ryan Turner and Stephanie Domet as a four-day festival with a combination of readings, conversations, panel discussions, workshops, and celebratory events around literature. “We try really hard to bring a wide variety of writers and thinkers together, and to put them together in different combinations,” Domet, the co-founder and co-executive director of Afterwords Literary Festival told CTV. Erin Wunker, author of “All the Waking Hours” and professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Dalhousie University, has been supporting the festival since it’s inception, but this year she will be reading her works. “Stories are so central to the way that we understand one another, especially when we’re coming from different experiences,” said Wunker, All the Waking Hours author and professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Dalhousie University. “So, it becomes a really wonderful way not only to listen to stories, but to encounter stories you might not otherwise in your everyday life.” One of her students, Maya Aucoin, is a pre-med student at Dalhousie and attended one of the events on Monday. “It opens my eyes on other writers’ perspectives,” Aucoin told CTV News. “As someone who is of a different nationality and race and writing about something so sensitive and putting it into words and just opening my whole grasp on life and how people can write about such sensitive topics, but also the work that’s put into it as well.” For Aucoin, reading and writing is an escape, like it is for many in the creative realm, which is why this festival is so appealing. “It’s so meditative. I’m actually able to sit down and think everything else but biology and physics and just be able to sit down and create stuff, which is very, very fun,” she said. The first festival took place in the fall of 2019 with twenty writers from across Canada, the United States, and around the world. This year there are over 50 artists involved, and the event needed to move venues as there was so much demand for some of the readings. “I just think that the more people find out about us, the more they want to come and see our events or support us or hang out with us, and that’s what’s making it grow, is just that kind of enthusiasm and interest from the community,” Domet added. As a registered charity, the festival raises funds to support accessible year-round programming and opportunities, as well as developing aspiring writers of all ages and communities, especially those historically underserved. “We also just started this amazing program. It has long been our dream to try to serve young writers between the ages of 13 and 17,” said Domet. " Weekly during the school year, drop-in free creative writing workshops for young writers between the ages of 13 and 17, which happens at the Anchor Youth Center on Gottingen Street." For more Nova Scotia news, visit our dedicated provincial page
