Yesterday’s News and Tomorrow’s Talks

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Catherine Austen

Kids Lit2014_1 — KidLit Cafe 2014 Authors and Illustrators

I was at this year’s KidLit Cafe, an annual celebration of local children’s authors and illustrators hosted by the Ottawa Public Library and the Ottawa Children’s Literature Round Table. (That’s old news but it’s all I’ve got at hand.)

If you didn’t catch all the authors at left – Alan Neal, me (Catherine Austen), Don Cummer, Cécile Beaulieu Brousseau, Betty Large, Mike Stewart, Rachel Eugster, Brenda Chapman, and Frances Itani – back in October, you missed your chance. (But you can still check out our book links on the library website.)

If you did catch us there, thanks for coming out in the rain. It was a fun day. I always love the opportunity to read in a devil voice from 28 Tricks for a Fearless Grade 6. (Which is not about the devil. At all. Really, it’s not a scary book. But yeah, there’s a devil voice. It’s funny, trust me. You had to be there.)

There was a lot of fun stuff going on in the Ottawa area last month. For instance, I got to dress up like Mary Poppins and that’s always fun.

But there’s plenty of literary happenings in the National Capital Region in November, too.

The Ottawa Public Library has several FREE drop-in author visits for kids, teens and adults. (Okay, several of the November talks are over, yesterday’s news already, but several are still to come and you could go to them:

November 8: Sonia Tilson (The Monkey Puzzle Tree)
November 12: Barbara Fradkin (memoir writing workshop)
November 15: Monia Mazigh (Mirrors and Mirages)
November 17: E. Lockhart + Sara Mlynowski (Author of the Ruby Oliver books) + (Author of Whatever after series)

Check out the details on the OPL website. (I particularly like the awesome double-bill on November 17th with best-selling teen fiction authors E. Lockhart sand Sara Mylnowski.)

If you don’t live in Ottawa, check out what’s going on at your own local library. Even if there are no visiting authors, there are bound to be books.

Also coming up this month at various venues in Ottawa (but not for free, so I probably won’t be going), the Ottawa International Writers Festival is hosting talks by the likes of John Ralston Saul, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Denise Chong, Conrad Black, and the wonderful author for all ages, Cary Fagan.

No, it’s not the International Writers’ Festival – that was in October, it’s over, old news – but the Festival does literary stuff year-round. Check out the complete listing for November on the Festival website.

As for me, I will not be speaking anywhere in November. I won’t be going out in public dressed as Mary Poppins, either. I won’t be going out much this month at all. Instead, I’ll be holed up in my jammies piecing together the last bits of a literary thriller that I’ve been writing for, oh, three years, for which I finally figured out the ending. Hurrah! (I’ll talk all about it next year. You won’t be able to shut me up.)

Have a wonderful weekend.