Pre-view: living the festival

So, the festival. Those eight days of writers at the end of September. I suppose I should write about the goings on, huh?

I've attended the festival for many years, both as a civilian and as a volunteer. This year, I've added a third hat and will be commenting on the festival from this blog.

Every year, I sit down with the festival program and try to come up with a bit of a schedule for myself. I dog-ear certain pages, daub others with highlighter, and transfer bits of information to my day-timer, even knowing that the day-timer will be abandoned mid-week and I will return to the program, trying to recall what seemed like a must-see a few weeks before.

Fatigue is inevitable with a festival that runs over eight days, probably even more so when your real life runs in a parallel stream.

(This is me at last year's festival, feeling - and looking - knackered, not surprising given my day-job and my small child. Plus, my shoes were ugly.)

Some festivals - the folk fest springs to mind - are a short-lived way of life, in that while it lasts, you spend your time living the festival.

THIN AIR doesn't work like that. While some people take the week off or even clear their evening social calendars to attend as many of the Mainstage events as possible, no one pitches a tent at the Forks and there is nary a whales' tail being peddled outside MTYP.

Also, the various series that run during the day are targeted to different audiences. The university events are for, well, university students and other interested people on campus. The noon event at the Millennium Library downtown is for office types who like a little lit with their lunches. The afternoon book chats are for ladies who lunch and various freelance-types (i.e. those with afternoons to themselves).

Over the past couple of years, I've made a point of attending some of the uni events, some of the afternoon book chats, a couple of Mainstages, and even the After Words series in its various incarnations.

Partially, that's because I live downtown, where many of the daytime events occur, and partially, that's because the festival has become an essential part of the fall for me.

I commit to being there as much as possible.

(Which is an elaborate way of saying that I always intend to attend about a third more events than I actually get to.)

More later on ACTUAL EVENTS I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO.

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Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.

A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.