The Citizen, 2019-04-11, Page 26The Blyth Festival is throwing
down the gauntlet in its quest for the
best cake in all the land. If you want
to pick up what they’re throwing
down, then get ready to enter the
Blyth Festival cake parade and bake-
off.
The Festival is hosting a cake-
baking contest complete with a cake
parade on opening night of
Cakewalk on Friday, June 28. It’s all
in the name of fun, with prizes
awarded in professional, amateur,
people’s choice and kids’ choice
categories. There might even be
prizes awarded for the best
Cakewalk-themed costumes.
The Festival is looking for the best
homemade cake prepared by either
an individual or a team, with
contestants invited to submit one or
more entries. All will be judged on
taste and appearance. Also, it is
going to keep the identities of the
judges under wraps, so you can’t
butter them up ahead of time.
All submissions will become
property of the Blyth Festival, with
slices available to patrons that night
for judging the People’s Choice
Award. Complete contest details and
entry forms are posted online at
www.blythfestival.com under the
Deeper Roots events.
THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019. PAGE 27.
Bake-off
set for
premiere
The Alice Munro Festival of the
Short Story returns for its 15th year
on May 25-26 with a line-up of 10
award-winning Canadian authors.
The two-day event takes place in
Wingham and Bayfield and includes:
author readings, writing master
classes, panel discussion and an
awards luncheon for the annual short
story contest.
Leading this year’s line-up is
respected bestselling author Nino
Ricci. His first novel, Lives of the
Saints, garnered international
acclaim, appearing in 17 countries
and winning a host of awards,
including the Governor General’s
Award for Fiction. It formed the first
volume of a trilogy that was adapted
as a miniseries.
Ricci also authored the novels
Testament, winner of the Trillium
Award, The Origin of Species, which
earned him a second Governor
General’s Award, and a biography of
Pierre Elliott Trudeau, included in
the Penguin’s Extraordinary
Canadians series. His most recent
novel Sleep, won the Canadian
Authors’ Award for Fiction. Nino
Ricci is currently the inaugural
holder of the Alice Munro Chair in
Creativity at the University of
Western Ontario.
The list of guest authors includes
three Scotiabank Giller Prize
finalists who all have new books
being published this spring. Mona
Awad, author of 13 Ways of Looking
at a Fat Girl, will be promoting her
new novel, Bunny. Described as The
Vegetarian meets Heathers, this
darkly funny, seductively strange
novel will be published by Penguin
Random House on June 7.
Anthony De Sa’s first book,
Barnacle Love, was critically
acclaimed and became a finalist for
the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize and
the 2009 Toronto Book Award. His
new novel, Children of the Moon,
follows the tumultuous story of Pó, a
Maasai girl with albinism who is
seen as a curse upon her tribe, to be
released in May.
Anakana Schofield the author of
the 2015 Giller Prize shortlisted
novel Martin John, brings her new
novel Bina: A Novel in Warnings that
will also be published in May.
Indigenous author Joshua
Whitehead had a break out success
with his 2018 novel Jonny
Appleseed, a unique, shattering
vision of First Nations life, full of
grit, glitter and dreams. The novel
was longlisted for a Giller Prize and
shortlisted for a Governor General’s
award in 2018. Alicia Elliott, a
Tuscarora writer from Six Nations of
the Grand River, reads from her new
non-fiction release A Mind Spread
Out on the Ground that asks
essential questions about the
treatment of Native people in North
America while drawing on intimate
details of her own life and
experience with intergenerational
trauma.
Amy Jones’s first novel, We’re All
in This Together, was a national
bestseller, won the Northern Lit
Award, and was a finalist for the
Stephen Leacock Medal for
Humour. Her new novel, Every Little
Piece of Me, examines family,
friendship, celebrity, and the cost of
living in the public eye – because
when everyone suddenly knows your
name, it’s easy to forget who you
really are. K.D. Miller’s short story
collection, Late Breaking, was
inspired by the work of Canadian
artist Alex Colville. The linked
stories form a suite of portraits that
bear witness to the vulnerability of
the elder heart, revealing that love,
sex and heartbreak are not the
domain of only the young.
Vancouver-based author Ian
Williams’s 2019 novel
Reproduction, is a tale of love
among inherited and invented
families that sweeps through a world
of racial and religious mash-ups,
cultural collisions and cross-
pollinations galore. William’s poetry
collection, Personals,was
shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry
Prize and the Robert Kroetsch
Poetry Book Award. His short story
collection, Not Anyone’s Anything,
won the Danuta Gleed Literary
Award for the best first collection of
short fiction in Canada.
Rounding out the list of this year’s
guest authors is Bayfield’s Andy
McGuire. His debut poetry
collection, Country Club, a lyrical,
wilderness of power, wealth, leisure
and desire, the poems freewheel
across state lines with panache and
flagrant feeling. McGuire’s second
poetry collection, I Hate Poems but I
Love Poetry, is forthcoming.
The 2019 Alice Munro Festival of
the Short Story takes place May 25-
26 in Wingham, and Bayfield.
Tickets and weekend passes for the
event went on sale on April 8. For
more information about the guest
authors and festival program,
including how to purchase tickets,
please visit alicemunrofestival.ca.
Ricci, Awad, De Sa featured at Munro Festival
‘Tractor Dan’
McGregor and Friends’ ‘New Friends Old Friends’, a trio of stories for young audiences,
opened on April 8 and runs through April 12. The play includes Tractor Dan, a scene from
which is shown above, Fiona and Ralph and The Amazing Adventures of Emily. The show is
produced/directed by Blyth’s Duncan McGregor, and features local actors of all ages. The
production is a fundraiser for The Foundation for Education and is presented in partnership
with the Blyth Festival and Memorial Community Hall. (Denny Scott photo)
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