StoryFest
The Greenwood Centre for Living History is delighted to continue our cherished tradition of over 20 years with StoryFest. This annual event invites esteemed Canadian authors to share insights about their remarkable books and much more. We are thrilled to present our 2024 lineup and hope you share our excitement. We look forward to seeing you there!
StoryFest's 2024 Upcoming Authors
StoryFest 2024 Workshop
Daniaile Jarry
Page to Screen: The Art of Screenwriting
Saturday, October 19 – 10 am to 5 pm
Cost: $150
Daniaile Jarry is a multifaceted talent with 40 years of experience in global film, television and publishing, including literary management, development, packaging, production and programming. As president of QV Productions, an international film/TV literary management company, she has overseen the creation of concepts in English and French and works on the development, licensing, packaging and production of feature films, TV series in live action and animation with multiple creative writing and producing teams across Canada, the United States and Europe.
During Page to Screen: The Art of Screenwriting, Daniaile Jarry will look at various aspects of writing for the screen. These include how to write a strong treatment based on a novel, short story, media article or headline, or a personal true story, and how to adapt the story arc from the source material to a screenplay format. Other elements will include character development, breaking treatments into beats, dialogue and pacing. She will also cover the logistical aspects of writing to budget, current industry trends, and bringing your screenplay to market.
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Page to Screen: The Art of Screenwriting – Workshop Schedule
10:00 – Meet and greet to find out each participant’s experience, goals and expectations, including a brief icebreaker activity to encourage daylong networking.
10:30 – Intro: Writing a strong treatment based on a novel, a short story, an article, a headline, or a true story, including a brief overview of what a treatment is and why it’s so important.
11:00 – Adapting a story arc from source material to screenplay format with an interactive exercise to encourage participants to get this process started.
11:30 – Character development with role-playing to explore character dynamics and create unique profiles.
Noon – Breaking treatment into beats using a template/example screenplay as illustration.
12:30 – Lunch: A light lunch will be provided. Please advise Greenwood ahead of time of any food allergies, specific dietary requirements by sending an email to history@greenwoodcentre.org
13:30 – Dialogue: developing your characters’ unique voices through a writing exercise that focuses specifically on character voice.
14:30 – A discussion about pacing with examples/clips from well-known screenplays.
15:00 – Writing your first draft with tips to overcome writer’s block and create a writing routine.
16:00 – Editing, notetaking and revising: the importance of peer reviews, reading aloud.
16:15 – Industry trends: What’s the market seeking? What sells, what doesn’t? Price points.
16:30 – Pitching/marketing: Advice on how to query agents, attend pitch festivals, and use online platforms effectively.
17:00 – Wrap-up with time for any other questions/discussion with refreshments.
Follow-Up: Workshop participants will be eligible for exclusive offers / discounts if they would like to sign up subsequently for private coaching with Daniaile Jarry.
StoryFest 2024 Spring Guest
NAHLAH AYED
Nahlah Ayed is an award-winning writer, broadcaster, and currently producer and host of CBC’s Ideas. For two decades, Ayed worked in hot zones around the globe—from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Her first book, A Thousand Farewells, was a finalist for the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Awards.
The War We Won Apart went on sale May 28th, 2024, published by Viking Canada in hardcover (ISBN 9780735242067) 416 pages, and will be on sale at the StoryFest event.
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Love, betrayal, and a secret war: Nahlah Ayed’s new book is the untold story of two elite agents, one Canadian, one British, who became one of the most decorated couples of World War II.
On opposite sides of the pond, Sonia Butt, an adventurous young British woman, and Guy d’Artois, a French-Canadian soldier and thunderstorm of a man, are preparing for war.
From different worlds, their lives first intersect during clandestine training to become agents with Winston Churchill’s secret army, the Special Operations Executive. As the world’s deadliest conflict to date unfolds, Sonia and Guy learn how to parachute into enemy territory, how to kill, blow up rail lines, and eventually . . . how to love each other. But not long after their hasty marriage, their love is tested by separation, by a titanic invasion—and by indiscretion.
Writing in vivid, heart-stopping prose, Ayed follows Sonia as she plunges into Nazi-occupied France and slinks into black market restaurants to throw off occupying Nazi forces, while at the same time participating in sabotage operations against them; and as Guy, in another corner of France, trains hundreds into a resistance army.
Reconstructed from hours of unpublished interviews and hundreds of archival and personal documents, the story Ayed tells is about the ravaging costs of war paid for disproportionately by the young. But more than anything, The War We Won Apart is a story about love: two secret agents who were supposed to land in enemy territory together but were fated to fight the war apart.
Previous Guests
2023
Anita Anand
Kathy Reichs
Lesley Chesterman
Maureen Meyhew
R.H Thomson
Waubgeshig Rice
Eliza Reid
2022
Martha Wainwright
Patterson Webster
Gillian Sze
Nita Prose
Kaie Kellough
Debra Thompson
Tarah Schwartz
Linda Leith
David Heti
Iain Reid
2021
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Russell Banks
Perdita Felicien
Marie-Louise Gay
Mary Lawson
Kent Nagano
Katherena Vermette
Amanda Leduc
David Homel
2020
Annabel Lyon
Emily Urquhart
Joan Thomas
Margaret MacMillan
Michaela DiCesare
Michelle Good
Tommy Schnurmacher
Anakana Schofield
Steven Price
Alix Ohlin
Frances Itani
Rawi Hage
Ann Hui
D’Arcy Jenish
Dave Williams
Michael Redhill
Sylvain Rivard
Liona Boyd
Marjorie Simmins
Zoe Whittall
Ian Hamilton
Ken Dryden
Catherine McKenzie
David Adams Richards
Mary Walsh
Lawrence Hill
Daniel Levitin
Beth Powning
Monia Mazigh
Laurie Gough
Douglas Gibson
Lee Maracle
Ian Howarth
Alexandre Trudeau
Nisha Coleman
Saleema Nawaz
John Farrow
Eric Siblin
Heather O’Neill
James Orbinski
Terry Fallis
Marina Endicott
Takriluk Partridge
Don McKay
Monique Polak
Ian McGillis
Gail Anderson
Gwynne Dyer
Guy Vanderhaeghe
Kim Thúy
Ann-Marie MacDonald
Kathleen Winter
Lisa Moore
Tomson Highway
Lauren B. Davis
David Halton
Sean Michaels
Terry Mosher
Margaret Atwood
Kate Pullinger
Michael Winter
Paul Thompson
Peter Behrens
Merilyn Simonds
Graeme Gibson
Stephanie Bolster
Monty Reid
Arleen Paré
Roméo Dallaire
Ian Keteku
Oana Avasilichioaei
Paris Elizabeth Sea
Michael Crummey
Emma Donoghue
Charles Foran
Helen Humphreys
Bonnie Laing
Michael Ondaatji Linda Spalding
Sally Armstrong
Wayson Choy
Lauren B. Davis
Elizabeth Hay
Ami McKay
Jeffrey Simpson
Linden MacIntyre
Joel Yanofsky
Catherine Chandler
Margaret Trudeau
Gary Townsend
John Asfour
Merilyn Simonds Wayne Grady
Anthony De Sa
Wayne Johnston
Bill Haugland
Colleen Curran
Trevor Ferguson (aka John Farrow)
Johanna Skibsrud
Louise Penny
M.G. Vassanji
Nino Ricci
Claire Holden Rothman
Jason Heroux
Robyn Sarah
Claudia Coutu Radmore
Jane Urquhart
Jan Wong
Donna Morrissey
Maria Loggia
Jeff Heinrich
Stevie Cameron
Joseph Boyden
William Toye
Shane Kelly
Mark Smith
Jon Paul Fiorentino
Susan McMaster
Susan Gillis
Mark Abley
Tony Hushion
Claire Mowat
Noah Richler
Roy MacGregor
Mark Smith
Lorne Elliott
Gil Courtemanche
Karen Molson
Karen Molson
Ken McGoogan
Barry Callaghan
Louisa Blair
Dinu Bumbaru
Charlotte Gray
Jane Brierley
Mark Abley
Victor Owen
Victoria Freeman
J.L. Granatstein
Marian Fowler
Ed Lawrence
Christopher Moore
Sylvia Fraser
Philippe Gigantès
Award-winning author and broadcast journalist Carol Off spent a decade and a half talking to people in the news five nights a week as the co-host of CBC Radio’s As It Happens. Along with her stellar writing and reporting career, those 25,000 interviews have given her a unique vantage point on the subject matter of her new book: how the words that once clearly defined civil society and social justice are being used for completely different political agendas.
David O’Meara is the award-winning author of five collections of poetry. His books have won the Archibald Lampman Award four times and been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Award, the Trillium Book Award and the K.M. Hunter Award. He is the director of the Plan 99 Reading Series which is now in its 20th year of welcoming contemporary Canadian literary writers to Ottawa with many of the events held at the Manx Pub that he runs. He was also the founding Artistic Director for the VERSeFest Poetry Festival.
Rick Mofina is a former journalist and bestselling author of more than 30 crime fiction thrillers that have been published in nearly 30 countries. He is a two-time winner of The Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence, a Barry Award winner, a four-time Thriller Award finalist, and a two-time Shamus Award finalist. Library Journal calls him “One of the best thriller writers in the business.”
Good fortune and far-flung assignments let Whit Fraser see Canada’s Arctic as few others have. His passion for the Arctic and its peoples began more than five decades ago when he relocated from Nova Scotia to the Canadian Arctic to work with CBC North. From his base in Iqaluit (then called Frobisher Bay) and later Yellowknife, he travelled throughout the Canadian North as well as to Alaska and Greenland. His media coverage included the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, the negotiations leading to the signing of comprehensive Inuit land claims agreements, the historic First Ministers’ meetings to affirm Indigenous rights in Canada’s constitution, and Nunavut’s establishment as Canada’s largest and northernmost territory. Following his 25-year broadcasting career, he became the founding chair of the Canadian Polar Commission from 1991-1997 and worked with the board of directors on measures to improve Northern health and address social issues, as well as to enhance science policy in polar regions. As the executive director of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the national Inuit organization, from 2001 to 2006, he coordinated the Inuit-specific agenda presented to the Kelowna First Ministers’ meeting on Aboriginal issues in 2005.
Elizabeth Renzetti is a bestselling author and journalist who has spent much of her career writing about women’s issues with urgency, anger and humour. She joined The Globe & Mail as a copyeditor in 1989 and subsequently caried out various duties, including as editor of the Arts & Books section. She was the newspaper’s London correspondent from 2004 to 2012. Her columns about women’s issues earned her the Landsberg Award in 2020.
Marc Garneau has distinguished himself in three fields. As a naval officer with the Canadian Armed Forces, he spent 10 years as a combat systems engineer. In 1984, he became the first Canadian astronaut to go to space, and later became president of the Canadian Space Agency from 2001 to 2005. As a federal politician, he has served as Liberal house leader, Minister of Transport, and Minister of Foreign Affairs.