Intro: Courtney Slobogian

There is this sense that Winnipeg is constantly keeping secrets. But not the kind of secrets that spread around high schools and make kids hide in bathroom stalls or drive in around in their Ford tempos instead of going to class.

No, it’s more like Winnipeg keeps the kinds of secrets that are aching to be told / secrets that keep you moving through the seasons / secrets that you carry around in your back pocket / secrets that give way to smiling shyly at strangers or leaving a nice note on the napkin at your favourite breakfast spot for the server.

Winnipeg keeps secrets that remind you it is alive.

That’s what this years festival feels like for me. It is my very first year partaking in this wondrous event. And while I am partly very ashamed of this fact, I am treating it like a secret. Now clearly it is not exactly a secret.

And I wasn’t even sure I was going to admit to you that I had never been to the festival before (“does this make me less legitimate?!” I asked myself in a panic). But I have decided it will be our little adventure together.

Are you in?

As I tip toe through the festival with fresh eyes and a relentless curiosity of what this Winnipeg secret holds, I will share with you what it feels like to uncover the festival for the very first time.

I have been writing academically for a long time, but have only begun to own up to myself and others that I am in fact, a writer. Whatever the heck that means.

As I hesitantly embrace this new identity it excites me to be able to dive into a community of established, as well as newer writers, and take part in a week of work and play dedicated to the love of words.

Oh and I sure do love words.

It’s time to fall into the week, and see where I come out at the end of it all. The best part is that I get to take you along for the ride.

Talk to you soon!

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Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”

She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).

By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.