That mostly means I'm bossy. But also that I've carried laptops, camcorders, cameras, and phones into THIN AIR events and trained them on THIN AIR festival staff/authors/volunteers.
Inevitably, one of the days of the festival, I forget batteries and the device in question takes a dirt-nap, mid-event. Inevitably, I start to sag mid-festival and either miss or am egregiously late to an event I'd circled and underlined earlier in the week.
(I like it when the venues have back doors, so I slip in without being noticed. I also like it when the venues serve tea. So that the sag is slightly less pronounced.)
Before this degenerates any further, I'll offer a snippet of advice or two on how to get the most of your festival.
My ABSOLUTE favourite events at THIN AIR? The afternoon book chats, for their shocking yet consistent intimacy.
The nooners are anything but intimate, given the venue (the Carol Shields Auditorium at the Millennium Library), but they're always interesting.
The campus readings get you up close and personal with the authors if you can figure out getting to events during the day and can navigate the various campuses. Campi? (I have to admit, the U of M is still too far away for me to bother...)
In terms of authors, I particularly want to see/hear Carolyn Smart, Sandra Birdsell, David Bergen, Michael Lista, and Joan Thomas...
...but I will admit that the author I'm most looking forward to seeing/hearing is myself. Which sounds ABSOLUTELY awful, but reading at THIN AIR has been a dream of mine for as long as I've been attending the festival. I'm so honoured that me and my book are being included and more than a little nervous I'll fuck it all up.
Heh.
* * *
Ariel Gordon has two chapbooks to her credit, The navel gaze (Palimpsest Press) and Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 (Rubicon Press), and this spring, Palimpsest published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump. She recently won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer at the Manitoba Book Awards. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
And yes, you should be nervous.
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