Author of the article: Eric Volmers
Publishing date: Jun 03, 2021 • 2 hours ago • 5 minute read • Shelley Youngblut, CEO of Wordfest, with her dog Clover. Photo by Heather Saitz. jpg
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Roughly a year before the pandemic hit, Shelley Youngblut met with book publishers in Toronto and floated what seemed like a radical idea at the time.
The CEO of Wordfest was interested in securing an appearance by British author Hilary Mantel, a two-time Booker Prize winner. She had just wrapped up her historical-fiction Wolf Hall trilogy about the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell with 2020’s The Mirror and the Light. Unfortunately, Mantel also had little interest in travelling extensively for a book tour, which meant Calgary was probably out of the question.
Author of the article: Eric Volmers
Publishing date: Feb 26, 2021 • February 26, 2021 • 4 minute read • Artist Vivek Shraya. Photo by Heather Saitz. jpg
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As far as realizations go, the one that led Vivek Shraya to turn her theatrical show How to Fail as a Popstar into a book seems like a bit of a downer.
The one-person show was meant to have a much longer life on stage. Shraya workshopped it in Calgary as part of the High Performance Rodeo in mid-January 2020. It then moved onto a successful 12-night run in Toronto in February, ending not long before COVID-19 shut all theatre productions down. But it was also supposed to travel to Germany in the spring of 2020 and then Vancouver in 2021. The idea of publishing it as a book initially held little appeal for Shraya but beca